Diseases are notwithstanding uncommon, with the exception that in autumn, before the severe cold commences, nearly all suffer from a cough and cold. Very bad skin eruptions and sores also occur so frequently that a stay in the inner tent is thereby commonly rendered disgusting to Europeans. Some of the sores however are merely frostbites, which most Chukches bring on themselves by the carelessness with which during high winds they expose the bare neck, breast and wrists to the lowest temperature. When frostbite has happened it is treated, even though of considerable extent, with extreme carelessness. They endeavour merely to thaw the frozen place as fast as possible partly by chafing, partly by heating. On the other hand we never saw anyone who had had a deep frostbite on the hands or feet, a circumstance which must be ascribed to the serviceable nature of their shoes and gloves. From the beginning of October 1878 to the middle of July 1879 no death appears to have happened at any of the encampments near us. During the same time the number of the inhabitants was increased by two or three births. During the wife's pregnancy the husband was very affectionate to her, gave her his constant company in the tent, kissed and fondled her frequently in the presence of strangers, and appeared to take a pride in showing her to visitors.

We had no opportunity of witnessing any burial or marriage. It appears as if the Chukches sometimes burn their dead, sometimes expose them on the tundra as food for beasts of prey, with weapons, sledges, and household articles. They have perhaps begun to abandon the old custom of burning the dead, since the hunting has fallen off so that the supply of blubber for burning has diminished. I have before described the pits filled with burned bones which Dr. Stuxberg found on the 9th September, 1878, by the bank of a dried-up rivulet. We took them for graves, but not having seen any more at our winter station, we began to entertain doubts as to the correctness of our observation[280]. It is at least certain that the inhabitants of Pitlekaj exclusively bury their dead by laying them out on the tundra.

Regarding the man, buried or exposed in this way, whom Johnsen found on the 15th October, Dr. Almquist, who himself visited the place the next day, makes the following statement—



"The place was situated five to seven kilometres from the village Yinretlen, near the bottom of the little valley which runs from this village in a southerly direction into the interior. The body was exposed on a little low knoll only two fathoms across. It was covered with loose snow, and was not frozen very hard. When it was loosened there was no proper pit to be seen in the underlying snow and ice. The corpse lay from true N.N.W. to S.S.E., with the head to the former quarter. Under the head lay two black rounded stones, such as the Chukches use in housekeeping. Besides these there was no trace of anything underlying or covering the corpse. The clothes had been torn by beasts of prey from the body, the back was quite untouched, but the face and breast were much wasted, and the arms and legs almost wholly eaten up. On the knoll evident traces of the wolf, the fox, and the raven were visible. Close to the right side of the corpse had lain the weapons which Johnson had brought home the day before. Near the feet was found a sledge completely broken in pieces, evidently new and smashed on the spot. Not far off, we found lying on the snow pieces of a pesk and of foot-coverings, both new and of the finest quality. Beasts of prey had undoubtedly torn them off and pulled them about. On the knoll there were found besides five or six other graves, distinguished by small stones or a wooden block lying on the even ground. Two of the graves were ornamented by a collection of reindeer horns. The severe cold prevented me from ascertaining whether these stones concealed the remains of buried corpses. I considered that I might take the Chukch's head, as otherwise the wolves would doubtless have eaten it up. It was taken on board and skeletonised."

In the spring of 1879, after the snow was melted, we had further opportunities of seeing a large number of burying-places, or more correctly of places where dead Chukches had been laid out. They were marked by stones placed in a peculiar way, and were measured and examined in detail by Dr. Stuxberg, who gives the following description of them:—



"The Chukch graves on the heights south of Pitlekaj and Yinretlen, which were examined by me on the 4th and 7th July, 1879, were nearly fifty in number. Every grave consisted of an oval formed of large lying stones. At one end there was generally a large stone raised on its edge, and from the opposite end there went out one or two pieces of wood lying on the ground. The area within the stone circle was sometimes over-laid with small stones, sometimes free and overgrown with grass. At all the graves, at a distance of four to seven paces from the stone standing on its edge in the longitudinal axis of the grave or a little to the side of it, there was another smaller circle of stones inclosing a heap of reindeer horns, commonly containing also broken seals' skulls and other fragments of bones. Only in one grave were found pieces of human bones. The graves were evidently very old, for the bits of wood at the ends were generally much decayed and almost wholly covered with earth, and the stones were completely overgrown with lichens on the upper side. I estimate the age of these graves at about two hundred years."

The Chukches do not dwell in snow huts, nor in wooden houses, because wood for building is not to be found in the country of the coast Chukches, and because wooden houses are unsuitable for the reindeer nomad. They live summer and winter in tents of a peculiar construction, not used by any other race. For in order to afford protection from the cold the tent is double, the outer envelope inclosing an inner tent or sleeping chamber. This has the form of a parallelopiped, about 3.5 metres long, 2.2 metres broad, and 1.8 metre high. It is surrounded by thick, warm, reindeer skins, and is further covered with a layer of grass. The floor consists of a walrus skin stretched over a foundation of twigs and straw. At night the floor is covered with a carpet of reindeer skins, which is taken away during the day. The rooms at the sides of the inner tent are also shut off by curtains, and serve as pantries. The inner tent is warmed by three train-oil lamps, which together with the heat given off by the numerous human beings packed together in the tent, raise the temperature to such a height that the inhabitants even during the severest winter cold may be completely naked. The work of the women and the cooking are carried on in winter in this tent-chamber, very often also the calls of nature are obeyed in it. All this conduces to make the atmosphere prevailing there unendurable. There are also, however, cleanlier families, in whose sleeping chamber the air is not so disgusting.

In summer they live during the day, and cook and work, in the outer tent. This consists of seal and walrus skins sewed together, which however are generally so old, hairless, and full of holes, that they appear to have been used by several generations. The skins of the outer tent are stretched over wooden ribs, which are carefully bound together by thongs of skin. The ribs rest partly on posts, partly on tripods of driftwood. The posts are driven into the ground, and the tripods get the necessary steadiness by a heavy stone or a seal-skin sack filled with sand being suspended from the middle of them. In order further to steady the tent a yet heavier stone is in the same way suspended by a strap from the top of the tent-roof, or the summit of the roof is made fast to the ground by thick thongs. At one place a tackle from a wrecked vessel was used for this purpose, being tightened with a block between the top of the roof and an iron hook frozen into the ground. The ribs in every tent are besides supported by T-formed cross stays.

The entrance consists of a low door, which, when necessary, may be closed with a reindeer skin. The floor of the outer tent consists of the bare ground. This is kept very clean, and the few household articles are hung up carefully and in an orderly manner along the walls on the inner and outer sides of the tent. Near the tent are some posts, as high as a man, driven into the ground, with cross pieces on which skin boats, oars, javelins, &c., are laid, and from which fishing and seal nets are suspended.

In the neighbourhood of the dwellings the storehouse is placed. It consists of a cellar excavated at some suitable place. The sites of old Onkilon dwellings are often used for this purpose. The descent is commonly covered with pieces of driftwood which are loaded with stones, at one place the door, or rather the hatch, of the cellar consisted of a whale's shoulder-blade. In consequence of the unlimited confidence which otherwise was wont to prevail between the natives and us, we were surprised to find them unwilling to give the Vega men admittance to their storehouses. Possibly the report of our excavations for old implements at the sites of Onkilon dwellings at Irkaipij had spread to Kolyutschin, and been interpreted as attempts at plunder.



The tents were always situated on the sea shore, generally on the small neck of land which separates the strand lagoons from the sea. They are erected and taken down in a few hours. A Chukch family can therefore easily change its place of residence, and does remove very often from one village to another. Sometimes it appears to own the wooden frame of a tent at several places, and in such cases at removal there are taken along only the tent covering, the dogs, and the most necessary skin and household articles. The others are left without inclosure, lock, or watch, at the former dwelling-place, and one is certain to find all untouched on his return. During short stays at a place there are used, even when the temperature of the air is considerably under the freezing-point, exceedingly defective tents or huts made with the skin boats that may happen to be available. Thus a young couple who returned in spring to Pitlekaj lived happy and content in a single thin and ragged tent or conical skin hut which below where it was broadest was only two and a half metres across. An accurate inventory, which I took during the absence of the newly married pair, showed that their whole household furniture consisted of a bad lamp, a good American axe, some reindeer skins, a small piece of mirror, a great many empty preserve tins from the Vega, which among other things were used for cooking, a fire-drill, a comb, leather for a pair of moccassins, some sewing implements, and some very incomplete and defective tools.

The boats are made of walrus skin, sewed together and stretched over a light frame-work of wood and pieces of bone. The different parts of the frame-work are bound together with thongs of skin or strings of whalebone. In form and size the Chukches' large boat, atkuat, called by the Russians baydar, corresponds completely with the Greenlander's umiak or woman's boat. It is so light that four men can take it upon their shoulders, and yet so roomy that thirty men can be conveyed in it. One seldom sees anatkuat, or boats intended for only one man; they are much worse built and uglier than the Greenlander's kayak. The large boats are rowed with broad-bladed oars, of which every man or woman manages only one. By means of these oars a sufficient number of rowers can for a little raise the speed of the boat to ten kilometres per hour. Like the Greenlanders, however, they often cease rowing in order to rest, laugh, and chatter, then row furiously for some minutes rest themselves again, row rapidly, and so on. When the sea is covered with thin newly formed ice they put two men in the fore of the boat with one leg over in order to trample the ice in pieces.

During winter the boats are laid up, and instead the dog-sledges are put in order. These are of a different construction from the Greenland sledges, commonly very light and narrow, made of some flexible kind of wood, and shod with plates of whales' jawbones, whales' ribs, or whalebone. In order to improve the running, the runners before the start are carefully covered with a layer of ice from two or three millimetres in thickness by repeatedly pouring water over them.[281] The different parts of the sledge are not fastened together by nails, but are bound together by strips of skin or strings of whalebone. On the low uncomfortable seat there commonly lies a piece of skin, generally of the Polar bear. The number of dogs that are harnessed to each sledge is variable. I have seen a Chukch riding behind two small lean dogs, who however appeared to draw their heavy load over even hard snow without any extraordinary exertion. At other sledges I have seen ten or twelve dogs, and a sledge laden with goods was drawn by a team of twenty-eight. The dogs are generally harnessed one pair before another to a long line common to all,[282] sometimes in the case of short excursions more than two abreast, or so irregularly that their position in relation to the sledge appears to have depended merely on the accidental length of the draught-line and the caprice of the driver. The dogs are guided not by reins but by continual crying and shouting, accompanied by lashes from a long whip. There is, besides, in every properly equipped sledge a short and thick staff mounted with iron, with a number of iron rings attached to the upper end. When nothing else will do, this staff is thrown at the offending animal. The staff is so heavy that the animal may readily get its death by such a throw. The dogs know this, and in consequence are so afraid of this grim implement that the rattling of the rings is sufficient to induce them to put forth extreme efforts. During rests the team is tied to the staff, which is driven into the snow.

The dog harness is made of inch-wide straps of skin, forming a neck or shoulder band, united on both sides by a strap to a girth, to one side of which the draught strap is fastened. Thanks to the excellent protection against the harness galling which the bushy coat of the dogs affords, little attention is needed for the harness, and I have never seen a single dog that was idle in consequence of sores from the harness. On the other hand, their feet are often hurt by the sharp snow. On this account the equipment of every sledge embraces a number of dog shoes of the appearance shown in the accompanying woodcut. They are used only in case of need.



The Chukch dogs are of the same breed, but smaller, than the Eskimo dogs in Danish Greenland. They resemble wolves, are long-legged, long-haired, and shaggy. The ears are short, commonly upright, their colour very variable, from black or white, and black or white spotted, to grey or yellowish-brown. For innumerable generations they have been used as draught animals, while as watch dogs they have not been required in a country where theft or robbery appears never to take place. The power of barking they have therefore completely lost, or perhaps they never possessed it. Even a European may come into the outer tent without any of the dogs there informing their owners sleeping in the inner tent by a sound of the foreigner's arrival.

On the other hand, they are good though slow draught animals, being capable of long-continued exertion. They are as dirty and as peaceable as their owners. There are no fights made between dog-teams belonging to different tents, and they are rare between the dogs of an encampment and those of strangers. In Europe dogs are the friends of their masters and the enemies of each other, here they are the friends of each other and the slaves of their masters. In winter they appear in case of necessity to get along with very little food, they are then exceedingly lean, and for the most part are motionless in some snow-drift. They seldom leave the neighbourhood of the tent alone, not even to search for food or hunt at their own hand and for their own account. This appears to me so much the more remarkable, as they are often several days, I am inclined to say weeks, in succession without getting any food from their masters. A piece of a whale, with the skin and part of the flesh adhering, washed out of frozen sandy strata thus lay untouched some thousand paces from Pitlekaj, and the neighbourhood of the tents, where the hungry dogs were constantly wandering about, formed, as has been already stated, a favourite haunt for ptarmigan and hares during winter. Young dogs some months old are already harnessed along with the team in order that they may in time become accustomed to the draught tackle. During the cold season the dogs are permitted to live in the outer tent, the females with their young even in the inner. We had two Scotch collies with us on the Vega. They at first frightened the natives very much with their bark. To the dogs of Chukches they soon took the same superior standing as the European claims for himself in relation to the savage. The dog was distinctly preferred by the female Chukch canine population, and that too without the fights to which such favour on the part of the fair commonly gives rise. A numerous canine progeny of mixed Scotch-Chukch breed has thus arisen at Pitlekaj. The young dogs had a complete resemblance to their father, and the natives were quite charmed with them.

When a dog is to be killed the Chukch stabs it with his spear, and then lets it bleed to death. Even when the scarcity was so great that the natives at Pitlekaj and Yinretlen lived mainly on the food we gave them, they did not eat the dogs they killed. On the other hand they had no objection to eating a shot crow.

When the Chukch goes out on the ice to hunt seals he takes his dogs with him, and it is these which take home the catch, commonly with the draught-line fastened directly to the head of the killed seal, which is then turned on its back and dragged over the ice without anything under it. One of the inhabitants of Yinretlen returned from the open water off the coast after a successful hunting expedition with five seals, of which the smallest was laid on the sledge, the others being fastened one behind the other in a long row. After the last was drawn a long pole, which was used in setting the net.

The dress of the Chukches is made of reindeer or seal-skin. The former, because it is warmer, is preferred as material for the winter dress. The men in winter are clad in two pesks, that which is worn next the body is of thin skin with the hair inwards, the outer is of thick skin with the hair outwards. Besides, they wear, when it rains or wet snow falls, a great coat of gut or of cotton cloth, which they call calico. On one occasion I saw such an overcoat made of a kind of reindeer-chamois leather, which was of excellent quality and evidently of home manufacture. It had been originally white, but was ornamented with broad brown painted borders. Some red and blue woollen shirts which we gave them were also worn above the skin clothes, and by then showy colours awakened great satisfaction in the owners. The Chukch pesk is shorter than the Lapp one. It does not reach quite to the knees, and is confined at the waist with a belt. Under the pesk are worn two pairs of trousers, the inner pair with the hair inwards, and the outer with the hair outwards. The trousers are well made, close fitting, and terminate above the foot. The foot-covering consists of reindeer or seal-skin moccasins, which above the foot are fastened to the trousers in the way common among the Lapps. The soles are of walrus-skin or bear-skin, and have the hair side inwards. On the other parts of the moccasin the hair is outwards. Within the shoes are seal-skin stockings and hay. The head covering consists of a hood embroidered with beads, over which in severe cold is drawn an outer hood bordered with dog-skin. The outer hood is often quite close under the chin, and extends in a very well-fitting way over the shoulders. To a complete dress there also belong a skin neckerchief or boa, and a neck covering of multiple reindeer-skins, or of different kinds of skins sewn together in chess-board-like squares. In summer and far into the autumn the men go bareheaded, although they clip the hair on the crown of the head close to the root.

During the warm season of the year a number of the winter wraps are laid off in proportion to the increase of the heat, so that the dress finally consists merely of a pesk, an overcoat, and a pair of trousers. The summer moccassins are often as long in the leg as our sea-boots. In the tent the men wear only short trousers reaching to the hip, together with leather belts (health-belts) at the waist and on the arms. The man's dress is not much ornamented. On the other hand the men often wear strings of beads in the ears, or a skin band set with large, tastefully arranged beads or a leather band with some large beads on the brow. The leather band they will not willingly part with, and a woman told us that the beads in it indicate the number of enemies the wearer has killed. I am, however, quite certain that this was only an empty boast. Probably our informant referred to a tradition handed down from former warlike periods to the present time, and thus we have here only a Chukch form of the boasting about martial feats common even among civilised nations.

To the dress of the men there belongs further a screen for the eyes, which is often beautifully ornamented with beads and silver mounting. This screen is worn especially in spring as a protection from the strong sunlight reflected from the snow-plains. At this season of the year snow-blindness is very common, but notwithstanding this snow-spectacles of the kind which the Eskimo and even the Samoyeds use are unknown here.

The men are not tattooed, but have sometimes a black or red cross painted on the cheek. They wear the hair cut close to the root, with the exception of a short tuft right on the crown of the head and a short fringe above the brow. The women have long hair, parted right in the middle, and plaited along with strings of beads into plaits which hang down by the ears. They are generally tattooed on the face, sometimes also on the arms or other parts of the body. The tattooing is done by degrees, possibly certain lines are first made at marriage.

The dress of the women, like that of the men, is double during winter. The outer pesk, which is longer and wider than the man's, passes downwards into a sort of very wide trousers. The sleeves too are exceedingly wide, so that the arm may easily be drawn in and stuck out. Under the outer pesk there is an inner pesk, or skin-shirt, and under them a pair of very short trousers is worn. Where the outer pesk ends the moccassins begin. At the neck the pesk is much cut away, so that a part of the back is bare. I have seen girls go with the upper part of the back exposed in this way even in a cold of -30 deg. or -40 deg.. The stockings have the hair inwards, they are bordered with dog-skin, and go to the knees. The moccasins, chin-covers, hoods, and neckerchiefs differ little from the corresponding articles of men's dress The woman's dress is in general more ornamented than the man's, and the skins used for it appear to be more carefully chosen and prepared. In the inner tent the women go nearly naked, only with quite short under-trousers of skin or calico or a narrow cingulum pudicitiae On the naked body there are worn besides one or two leather bands on one arm, a leather band on the throat, another round the waist, and some bracelets of iron or less frequently of copper on the wrists. The younger women however do not like to show themselves in this dress to foreigners, and they therefore hasten at their entrance to cover the lower part of the body with the pesk, or some other piece of dress that may be at hand.



When the children are some years old they get the same dress as their parents, different for boys and girls. While small they are put into a wide skin covering with the legs and arms sewed together downwards. Behind there is a four-cornered opening through which moss (the white, dead part of Sphagnum), intended to absorb the excreta, is put in and changed. At the ends of the arms two loops are fastened, through which the child's legs are passed when the mother wishes to put it away in some corner of the tent. The dress itself appears not to be changed until it has become too small. In the inner tent the children go completely naked.



Both men and women use snow-shoes during winter. Without them they will not willingly undertake any long walk in loose snow. They consider such a walk so tiresome, that they loudly commiserated one of my crew, who had to walk without snow-shoes after drifting weather from the village Yinretlen to the vessel, about three kilometres distant. Finally a woman's compassion went so far that she presented him with a pair, an instance of generosity on the part of our Chukch friends which otherwise was exceedingly rare. The frame of the snow-shoes is made of wood, the cross-pieces are of strong and well-stretched thongs. This snow-shoe corresponds completely with that of the Indians, and is exceedingly serviceable and easy to get accustomed to. Another implement for travelling over snow was offered by a Chukch who drove past the vessel in the beginning of February. It consisted of a pair of immensely wide skates of thin wood, covered with seal-skin, and raised at both sides. I had difficulty in understanding how these broad shapeless articles could be used with advantage until I learned from the accompanying drawing that they may be employed as a sort of sledges. The drawing is taken from a Japanese work, whose title when translated runs thus: A Journey to the north part of Japan (Yezo), 1804 (No. 565 of the Japanese library I brought home with me).



In consequence of the difficulty which the Chukch has during winter in procuring water by melting snow over the train-oil lamp, there can be no washing of the body at that season of the year. Faces are however whipped clean by the drifting snow, but at the same time are generally swollen or sore from frostbite. On the whole, the disposition of the Chukches to cleanliness is slight, and above all, their ideas of what is clean or unclean differs considerably from ours. Thus the women use urine as a wash for the face. At a common meal the hand is often used as a spoon, and after it is finished, a bowl filled with newly-passed urine instead of water is handed round the company for washing the hands. Change of clothes takes place seldom, and even when the outer dress is clean, new and well cut, of carefully-chosen beautiful skins, the under-dress is very dirty, and vermin numerous enough, though less so than might have been expected. Food is often eaten in a way which we consider disgusting, a titbit, for instance, is passed from mouth to mouth. The vessels in which food is served are used in many ways and seldom cleaned. On the other hand it may be stated that, in order not to make a stay in the confined tent-chamber too uncomfortable, certain rules are strictly observed. Thus, for instance, it is not permitted in the interior of the tent to spit on the floor, but this must be done into a vessel which in case of necessity is used as a night-utensil. In every outer tent there lies a specially carved reindeer horn, with which snow is removed from the clothes, the outer pesk is usually put off before one goes into the inner tent and the shoes are carefully freed from snow. The carpet of walrus-skin, which covers the floor of the inner tent, is accordingly dry and clean. Even the outer tent is swept clean and free from loose snow, and the snow is daily shovelled away from the tent doors with a spade of whalebone. Every article both in the outer and inner tent is laid in its proper place, and so on.



As ornaments glass beads are principally used, some of them being suspended from the neck and ears, others sewed upon the hood and other articles of dress, or plaited into the hair embroidery of very pleasing patterns is also employed. In order to embellish the pesks strips of skin or marmots' and squirrels' tails, &c., are sewed upon them. Often a variegated artificial tail of different skins is fixed to the hood behind, or the skin of the hood is so chosen that the ears of the animal project on both sides of the head. Along with the beads are fixed amulets, wooden tongs, small bone heads or bone figures, pieces of metal, coins, &c. One child had suspended from its neck an old Chinese coin with a square hole in the middle, together with a new American five-cent piece.



In former times beautiful and good weapons were probably highly prized by so warlike a people as the Chukches, but now weapons are properly scarce antiquities, which, however, are still regarded with a certain respect, and therefore are not readily parted with. The lance which was found beside the corpse (fig. 2 on p. 105) shows by its still partially preserved gold decorations that it had been forged by the hand of an artist. Probably it has formed part of the booty won long ago in the fights with the Cossacks. I procured by barter an ivory coat of mail (fig. 7 on p. 105), and remains of another. The ivory plates of the coat of mail are twelve centimetres in length, four in breadth, and nearly one in thickness, holes being bored at their edges for the leather thongs by which the plates are bound together. This binding has been so arranged that the whole coat of mail, when not in use, may be rolled together.



Along with the spear and the coat of mail the old Chukches used the bow for martial purposes. Now this weapon is employed only for hunting, but it appears as if even for this purpose it would soon go out of use. Some of the natives, however, use the bow with great accuracy of aim. The bows which I procured commonly consisted of a badly worked, slightly bent, elastic piece of wood, with the ends drawn together by a skin thong. Only some old bows had a finer form. They were larger, and made with care, for instance, they were covered with birch-bark, and strengthened by an artistic plaiting of sinews on the outer side. The arrows are of many kinds, partly with bone or wooden, and partly with iron, points. Feathers are generally wanting. The shaft is a clumsily worked piece of wood. Crossbows are occasionally used. We have even seen bows for playthings, with carefully made, non-pointed arrows. At the encampments near the winter station we found a couple of percussion-lock guns, with caps, powder and lead. They were evidently little used, and my attempt to induce the Chukches to undertake long journeys by promises of a gun with the necessary supply of powder and lead completely failed. When the Chukch, who carried our letters to Nischni Kolymsk, was after his return rewarded with a red shirt, a gun, caps, powder and ball, he wished to exchange the gun and ammunition for an axe.

The principal livelihood of the Chukches is derived from hunting and fishing. Both are very abundant at certain seasons of the year, but are less productive during the cold season, in which case, in consequence of the little forethought of the savage, there arises great scarcity both of food and fuel and the means of melting snow. Of their hunting and fishing implements I cannot give so complete accounts as I should wish, because they very carefully avoided taking any of the Vega's hunters with them on their hunting excursions.

The rough seal is taken with nets, made of strong seal-skin thongs. The nets are set in summer among the ground-ices along the shore. The animal gets entangled in the net and is suffocated, as it can no longer come to the surface to breathe. In winter the seal is taken partly with nets in "leads" among the ice, partly with the harpoon when it crawls out of its hole, it is also taken by means of a noose of thongs placed over its hole. In order to avoid the loss of the valuable seal-blood, which is considered an extraordinary delicacy by the Chukches, the animal is never killed by an edged tool, if that can be avoided, but by repeated blows on the head. The bear is killed by the lance or knife, the latter, according to the statement of a Chukch, being the surest weapon, the walrus and the largest kind of seals with the harpoon (fig. 1, p. 105), or a lance resembling the Greenlander's. Even the whale is harpooned, but with a harpoon considerably larger than the common, and to which as many as six inflated seal-skins are fastened. In order to kill a whale a great many such harpoons must be struck into it. Birds are taken in snares, or killed with bird-javelins, arrows, and slings. The last mentioned (fig. 3, p. 105) consist of a number of round balls of bone fastened to leather thongs, which are knotted together. Some feathers are often fixed to the knot in order to increase the resistance of the air to this part of the sling. When the sling is thrown the bone balls are thereby scattered in all directions, and the probability of hitting becomes greater. Every man and boy in summer carries with him such a sling, often bound round his head, and is immediately prepared to cast it at flocks of birds flying past. Common slings are also used, consisting of two thongs and a piece of skin fastened to them. The bird-dart (fig. 5, p. 105) completely resembles that used by the Eskimo. A kind of snare was used by the boys at Yinretlen to catch small birds for our zoologist. They were made of whalebone fibres.

Fish are caught partly with nets, partly with the hook or with a sort of leister (fig. 6, p. 105). The nets are made of sinew-thread. I procured several of these, and was surprised at the small value which the natives set upon them, notwithstanding the hard labour which must have been required for preparing the thread and making the net. The nets are also sometimes used as drift-nets. The fishing-rod consists of a shaft only thirty centimetres long, to which is fixed a short line made of sinews. The extreme end of the line passes through a large sinker of ivory, to which are attached two or three tufts each with its hook of bone only, or of bone and copper, or bone and iron. The hook has three or four points projecting in different directions. I have before described how the hook is used in autumn in fishing for roach, also how the productive fishing goes on in the neighbourhood of Tjapka.

Even for the coast Chukch reindeer flesh appears to form an important article of food. He probably purchases his stock of it from the reindeer-Chukches for train-oil, skin straps, walrus tusks, and perhaps fish. I suppose that part of the frozen reindeer blood, which the inhabitants of the villages at our winter station used for soup, had been obtained in the same way. Wild reindeer, or reindeer that had run wild, were hunted with the lasso. Such animals, however, do not appear now to be found in any large numbers on the Chukch peninsula.

Besides fish and flesh the Chukches consume immense quantities of herbs and other substances from the vegetable kingdom.[283] The most important of these are the leaves and young branches of a great many different plants (for instance Salix, Rhodiola, &c.) which are collected and after being cleaned are preserved in seal-skin sacks. Intentionally or unintentionally the contents of the sacks sour during the course of the summer. In autumn they freeze together to a lump of the form of the stretched seal-skin. The frozen mass is cut in pieces and used with flesh, much in the same way as we eat bread. Occasionally a vegetable soup is made from the pieces along with water, and is eaten warm. In the same way the contents of the reindeer stomach is used. Algae and different kinds of roots are also eaten, among the latter a kind of wrinkled tubers, which, as already stated (Vol. I., p. 450) have a very agreeable taste.

In summer the Chukches eat cloud-berries, red bilberries, and other berries, which are said to be found in great abundance in the interior of the country. The quantity of vegetable matter which is collected for food at that season of the year is very considerable, and the natives do not appear to be very particular in their choice, if the leaves are only green, juicy, and free from any bitter taste. When the inhabitants, in consequence of scarcity of food, removed in the beginning of February from Pitlekaj, they carried with them several sacks of frozen vegetables, and there were still some left in the cellars to be taken away as required. In the tents at St. Lawrence Bay there lay heaps of leaf-clad willow-twigs and sacks filled with leaves and stalks of Rhodiola. The writers who quote the Chukches as an example of a race living exclusively on substances derived from the animal kingdom thus commit a complete mistake. On the contrary, they appear at certain seasons of the year to be more "graminivorous" than any other people I know, and with respect to this their taste appears to me to give the anthropologist a hint of certain traits of the mode of life of the people of the Stone Age which have been completely overlooked. To judge from the Chukches our primitive ancestors by no means so much resembled beasts of prey as they are commonly imagined to have done, and it may, perhaps, have been the case that "bellum omnium inter omnes" was first brought in with the higher culture of the Bronze or Iron Age.

The cooking of the Chukches, like that of most wild races, is very simple. After a successful catch all the dwellers in the tent gormandise on the killed animal, and appear to find a special pleasure in making their faces and hands as bloody as possible. Alternately with the raw flesh are eaten pieces of blubber and marrow, and bits of the intestines which have been freed from their contents merely by pressing between the fingers. Fish is eaten not only in a raw state, but also frozen so hard that it can be broken in pieces. When opportunity offers the Chukches do not, however, neglect to boil their food, or to roast pieces of flesh over the train-oil lamp—the word roast ought however in this case to be exchanged for soot. At a visit which Lieutenant Hovgaard made at Najtskaj, the natives in the tent where he was a guest ate for supper first seal-flesh soup, then boiled fish, and lastly, boiled seal-flesh. They thus observed completely the order of eating approved in Europe. The Chukches are unacquainted with other forks than their fingers, and even the use of the spoon is not common. Many carry about with them a spoon of copper, tinned iron, or bone (fig. 8, p. 117). The soup is often drunk directly out of the cooking vessel, or sucked up through hollow bones (see the figure on p. 104). Those are used as dunking cups, and like the spoons are worn in the belt. As examples of Chukch dishes I may further mention, vegetable soup, boiled seal-flesh, boiled fish, blood soup, soup of seal-blood and blubber. To these we may add soup from finely crushed bones, or from seal-flesh, blubber, and bones. For crushing the bones there is in every tent a hammer, consisting of an oval stone with a hollow round it for a skin thong, with which the stone is fastened to the short shaft of wood or bone. The bones which are used for food are finely crushed with this implement against a stone anvil or a whale's vertebra, and then boiled with water and blood, before being eaten. At first we believed that this dish was intended for the dogs, but afterwards I had an opportunity of convincing myself that the natives themselves ate it, and that long before the time when they suffered from scarcity of provisions. The hammer is further of interest as forming one of the stone implements which are most frequently found in graves from the Stone Age. That the hammer was mainly intended for kitchen purposes appears from the circumstance that the women alone had it at their disposal, and were consulted when it was parted with. Along with such hammers there was to be found in every tent an anvil, consisting of a whale's vertebra or a large round stone with a bowl-formed depression worn or cut out in the middle of it.



During winter a great portion of the inhabitants of Yinretlen, Pitlekaj, and as far as from Irgunnuk, came daily on board to beg or buy themselves provisions, and during this period they were fed mainly by us. They soon accustomed themselves to our food. They appeared specially fond of pea-soup and porridge. The latter they generally laid out on a snow-drift to freeze, and then took it in the frozen form to the tents. Coffee they did not care for unless it was well sugared. Salt they did not use, but with sugar they were all highly delighted. They also drank tea with pleasure. Otherwise water forms their principal drink. They were, however, often compelled in winter, in consequence of the difficulty of melting over the train-oil lamps a sufficient quantity of snow, to quench their thirst with snow. On board they often asked for water, and drank at once large quantities of it.

Spirits, to which they are exceedingly addicted, they call, as has been already stated, in conversation with Europeans, "ram," the pronouncing of the word being often accompanied by a hawking noise, a happy expression, and a distinctive gesture, which consisted in carrying the open right hand from the mouth to the waist, or in counterfeiting the unintelligible talk of a drunken man. Among themselves they call it fire-water (akmimil). The promise of it was the most efficient means of getting an obstinate Chukch to comply with one's wishes. In case they undertook to drive us with their dog-teams, they were never desirous of finding out whether any stock of provisions was taken along, but warned by our parsimony in dealing out spirituous liquor, they were unwilling to start until they had examined the stock of "ram." That drunkenness, not the satisfying of the taste, was in this case the main object, is shown by the circumstance that they often fixed, as price for the articles they saw we were anxious to have, such a quantity of brandy as would make them completely intoxicated. When on one occasion I appeared very desirous of purchasing a fire-drill, which was found in a tent inhabited by a newly-wedded pair, the young and very pretty housewife undertook the negotiation, and immediately began by declaring that her husband could not part with the fire-producing implement unless I gave him the means of getting quite drunk, for which, according to her statement, which was illustrated by lively gesticulations representing the different degrees of intoxication, eight glasses were required. Not until the man had got so many would he be content, that is, dead drunk. I have myself observed, however, on several occasions that two small glasses are sufficient to make them unsteady on the legs. Under the influence of liquor they are cheerful, merry, and friendly, but troublesome by their excessive caressing. When in the company of intoxicated natives, one must take good care that he does not unexpectedly get a kiss from some old greasy seal-hunter. Even the women readily took a glass, though evidently less addicted to intoxicants than the men. They however got their share, as did even the youngest of the children. When, as happened twice in the course of the winter, an encampment was fortunate enough to get a large stock of brandy sent it from Behring's Straits, the intoxication was general, and, as I have already stated, the bluish-yellow eyes the next day showed that quarrelsomeness had been called forth even among this peace-loving people by their dear akmimil. During our stay at the villages nearer Behring's Straits two murders even took place, of which one at least was committed by an intoxicated man.

However slight the contact the Chukches have with the world that has reached the standpoint of the brandy industry is, this means of enjoyment, however, appears to be the object of regular barter. Many of the Chukches who travelled past us were intoxicated, and shook with pride a not quite empty keg or seal-skin sack, to let us hear by the dashing that it contained liquid. One of the crew, whom I asked to ascertain what sort of spirit it was, made friends with the owner, and induced him at last to part with about a thimbleful of it, more could not be given. According to the sailor's statement it was without colour and flavour, clear as crystal, but weak. It was thus probably Russian corn brandy, not gin.

During a visit which Lieutenants Hovgaard and Nordquist made in the autumn of 1878 to the reindeer-Chukches in the interior of the country, much diluted American gin was on the contrary presented, and the tent-owner showed his guests a tin drinking-cup with the inscription, "Capt. Ravens, Brig Timandra, 1878". Some of the natives stated distinctly that they could purchase brandy at Behring's Straits all the year round. All the men in the tent village, and most of the women, but not the children, had at the time got completely intoxicated in order to celebrate the arrival of the foreigners, or perhaps rather that of the stock of brandy. As there are no Europeans settled at Behring's Straits, at least on the Asiatic side, we learn from the traffic in brandy that there are actually natives abstemious enough to be able to deal in it.

Tobacco is in common use, both for smoking and chewing.[284] Every native carries with him a pipe resembling that of the Tunguse, and a tobacco-pouch (fig 7, p. 117). The tobacco is of many kinds, both Russian and American, and when the stock of it is finished native substitutes are used. Preference is given to the sweet, strong chewing tobacco, which sailors generally use. In order to make the tobacco sweet which has not before been drenched with molasses, the men are accustomed, when they get a piece of sugar, to break it down and place it in the tobacco-pouch. The tobacco is often first chewed, then dried behind the ear, and kept in a separate pouch suspended from the neck, to be afterwards smoked. The pipes are so small that, like those of the Japanese, they may be smoked out with a few strong whiffs. The smoke is swallowed. Even the women and children smoke and chew, and they begin to do so at so tender an age that we have seen a child, who could indeed walk, but still sucked his mother, both chew tobacco, smoke, and take a "ram".

Some bundles of Ukraine tobacco, which I took with me for barter with the natives, put it into my power to procure a large number of contributions to the ethnological collection, which in the absence of other wares for barter I would otherwise have been unable to obtain. For the Chukches do not understand money. This is so much the more remarkable as they carry on a very extensive trade, and evidently are good mercantile men. According to von Dittmar (loc. cit. p. 129) there exists, or still existed in 1856, a steady, slow, but regular transport of goods along the whole north coast of Asia and America, by which Russian goods were conveyed to the innermost parts of Polar America, and furs instead found their way to the bazaars of Moscow and St. Petersburg. This traffic is carried on at five market places, of which three are situated in America, one on the islands at Behring's Straits, and one at Anjui near Kolyma The last-mentioned is called by the Chukches "the fifth beaver market."[285]



The Chukches' principal articles of commerce consist of seal-skin, train-oil, fox-skins and other furs, walrus tusks, whalebone, &c. Instead they purchase tobacco, articles of iron, reindeer skin and reindeer flesh, and, when it can be had, spirit. A bargain is concluded very cautiously after long-continued consultation in a whispering tone between those present. I employed spirit as an article for barter only in the last necessity, but they soon observed that the desire to become owner of an uncommon article of art or antiquity overcame my determination, and they soon learned to avail themselves of this, especially as in all cases I made full payment for the article and gave the fire-water into the bargain.

The lamp (see the figures at pp. 22, 23), with which light is maintained in the tent, consists of a flat trough of wood, bone of the whale, soap-stone or burned clay, broader behind than before, and divided by an isolated toothed comb into two divisions. In the front division wicks of moss (Sphagnum sp.) are laid in a long thin row along the whole edge. Under the lamp there is always another vessel intended to receive the train-oil which may possibly be spilled.

In summer the natives also cook with wood in the open air or in the outer tent, in winter only in the greatest necessity in the latter. For they find the smoke, which the wood gives off in the close tent, unendurable. Although driftwood is to be found in great abundance on the beach, scarcity of train-oil was evidently considered by the natives as great a misfortune as scarcity of food. Uinqa eek, no fuel (properly, no fire), was the constant cry even of those who drew loads of driftwood on board to earn bread for themselves. The circumstance that their fuel does not give off any smoke has the advantage that the eyes of the Chukches are not usually nearly so much attacked as those of the Lapps.

In the tent the women have always a watchful eye over the trimming of the lamp and the keeping up of the fire. The wooden pins she uses to trim the wick, and which naturally are drenched with train-oil, are used when required as a light or torch in the outer tent, to light pipes, &c. In the same way other pins dipped in train-oil are used.[286] Clay lamps are made by the Chukches themselves, the clay being well kneaded and moistened with urine. The burning is incomplete, and is indeed often wholly omitted.

Train-oil and other liquid wares are often kept in sacks of seal-skin, consisting of whole hides, out of which the body has been taken through the opening made by cutting off the head, and in which all holes, either natural or caused by the killing of the animal, have been firmly closed. In one of the forepaws there is then inserted with great skill a wooden air- and water-tight cock with spigot and faucet. In sacks intended for dry wares the paws are also cut off, and the opening through which the contents are put in and taken out is made right across the breast immediately below the forepaws.

Fire is lighted partly in the way common in Sweden some decades ago by means of flint and steel, partly by means of a drill implement. In the former case the steel generally consists of a piece of a file or some other old steel tool, or of pieces of iron or steel which have been specially forged for the purpose. Commonly the form of this tool indicates a European or Russian-Siberian origin, but I also acquired clumsily hammered pieces of iron, which appeared to form specimens of native skill in forging. A Chukch showed me a large fire-steel of the last mentioned kind, provided with a special handle of copper beautifully polished by long-continued use. He evidently regarded it as a very precious thing, and I could not persuade him to part with it. On the supposition that the metal of the clumsily hammered pieces of iron might possibly be of meteoric origin I purchased as many of them as I could. But the examination, to which they were subjected after our return, showed that they contain no traces of nickel. The iron was thus not meteoric.

The flint consists of a beautiful chalcedony or agate, which has been formed in cavities in the volcanic rocks which occur so abundantly in north-eastern Asia, and which probably are also found here and there as pebbles in the beds of the tundra rivers. As tinder, are used partly the woolly hair of various animals, partly dry fragments of different kinds of plants. The steel and a large number of pieces of flint are kept in a skin pouch suspended from the neck. Within this pouch there is a smaller one, containing the tinder. It is thus kept warm by the heat of the body, and protected from wet by its double envelope. Along with it the men often carry on their persons a sort of match of white, well-dried, and crushed willows, which are plaited together and placed in even rolls. This match burns slowly, evenly, and well.

The other sort of fire-implement consists of a dry wooden pin, which by a common bow-drill is made to rub against a block of dry half-blackened wood. The upper part of this pin runs in a drill block of wood or bone. In one of the tools which I purchased, the astragalus of a reindeer was used for this purpose. In the light-stock holes have been made to give support to the pin, and perhaps to facilitate the formation of the half-carbonised wood-meal which the drilling loosens from the light-stock and in which the red heat arises. When fire is to be lighted by means of this implement, the lower part of the drill pin is daubed over with a little train-oil, one foot holds the light-stock firm against the ground, the bowstring is put round the drill pin, the left hand presses the pin with the drill block against the light-stock, and the bow is carried backwards and forwards, not very rapidly, but evenly, steadily, and uninterruptedly, until fire appears. A couple of minutes are generally required to complete the process The women appear to be more accustomed than the men to the use of this implement. An improved form of it consisted of a wooden pin on whose lower part a lense-formed and perforated block of wood was fixed. This block served as fly-wheel and weight. Across the wooden pin ran a perforated cross-bar which was fastened with two sinews to its upper end. By carrying this cross-bar backwards and forwards the pin could be turned round with great rapidity. The implement appears to me the more remarkable as it shows a new way of using the stone or brick lenses, which are often found in graves or old house-sites from the Stone Age.



Among the Chukches, as among many other wild races, lucifer matches have obtained the honour of being the first of the inventions of the civilised races that have been recognised as indisputably superior to their own. A request for lucifer matches was therefore one of the most common of those with which our friends at Behring's Straits tormented us during winter, and they were willing for a single box to offer things that in comparison were very valuable. Unfortunately we had no superfluous supply of this necessary article, or perhaps I ought to say fortunately, for if the Chukches for some years were able to get a couple of boxes of matches for a walrus tusk, I believe that with their usual carelessness they would soon completely forget the use of their own fire-implements.

Among household articles I may further mention the following:—

The hide-scraper (fig. 1, p. 117) is of stone or iron and fastened to a wooden handle. With this tool the moistened hide is cleaned very particularly, and is then rubbed, stretched, and kneaded so carefully that several days go to the preparation of a single reindeer skin. That this is hard work is also shown by the woman who is employed at it in the tent dripping with perspiration. While thus employed she sits on a part of the skin and stretches out the other part with the united help of the hands and the bare feet. When the skin has been sufficiently worked, she fills a vessel with her own urine, mixes this with comminuted willow bark, which has been dried over the lamp, and rubs the blood-warm liquid into the reindeer skin. In order to give this a red colour on one side, the bark of a species of Pinus (?) is mixed with the tanning liquid. The skins are made very soft by this process, and on the inner side almost resemble chamois leather. Sometimes too the reindeer skin is tanned to real chamois of very excellent quality.



Two sorts of ice mattocks, the shaft is of wood, the blade of the spade-formed one of whalebone, of the others of a walrus tusk, it is fixed to the shaft by skin thongs with great skill.

Sometimes both the shaft and blade are of bone, fastened together in a somewhat different way.

Hones of native clay-slate. These are often perforated at one end and carried along with the knife, the spoon, and the sucking-tube, fastened with an ivory tongs in the belt.

Home-made vessels of wood, bone of the whale, whalebone, and skin of different kinds.

Knives, boring tools, axes and pots of European, American, or Siberian origin, and in addition casks, pieces of cable, iron scrap, preserved-meat tins, glasses, bottles, &c., obtained from ships which have anchored along the coast. Vessels have regularly visited the sea north of Behring's Straits only during the latest decades, and the contact between the sailors and the Chukches has not yet exerted any considerable influence on the mode of life of the latter. The natives, however, complain that the whalers destroy the walrus-hunting, while on the other hand they see with pleasure trading vessels occasionally visiting their coasts.

During our stay off the considerable encampment, Irkaipij, we believed, as I have already stated, that we had found a chief in a native named Chepurin, who, to judge by his dress, appeared to be somewhat better off than the others, had two wives and a stately exterior. He was accordingly entertained in the gunroom, got the finest presents, and was in many ways the object of special attention. Chepurin took his elevation easily, and showed himself worthy of it by a grave and serious, perhaps somewhat condescending behaviour, which further confirmed our supposition and naturally increased the number of our presents. Afterwards, however, we were quite convinced that we had in this case committed a complete mistake, and that now there are to be found among the Chukches living at the coast neither any recognised chiefs nor any trace of social organisation. During the former martial period of the history of the race the state of things here was perhaps different, but now the most complete anarchy prevails here, if by that word we may denote a state of society in which disputes, crimes, and punishments are unknown, or at least exceedingly rare. [287] A sort of chieftainship appears, at all events, to be found among the reindeer-Chukches living in the interior of the country. At least there are among them men who can show commmissions from the Russian authorities. Such a man was the starost Menka, of whose visit I have already given an account. Everything, however, indicated that his influence was exceedingly small. He could neither read, write, nor speak Russian, and he had no idea of the existence of a Russian Czar. All the tribute he had delivered for several years, according to receipts which he showed to us, consisted of some few fox-skins, which he had probably received as market-tolls at Anjui and Markova. Menka was attended on his visit to the vessel by two ill-clad men with a type of face differing considerably from that common among the Chukches. Their standing appeared to be so inferior that we took them for slaves, although mistakenly, at least with respect to one of them—Yettugin. He afterwards boasted that he owned a much larger reindeer-herd than Menka's, and talked readily, with a certain scorn, of Menka's chieftain pretensions. According to Russian authors there are actual slaves, probably the descendants of former prisoners of war, among the Chukches in the interior of the country. Among the dwellers on the coast, on the contrary, there is the most complete equality. We could never discover the smallest trace of any man exercising the least authority beyond his own family or his own tent.

The coast Chukches are not only heathens, but are also, so far as we could observe, devoid of every conception of higher beings. There are, however, superstitions. Thus most of them wear round the neck leather straps, to which small wooden tongs, of wooden carvings, are fixed. These are not parted with, and are not readily shown to foreigners. A boy had a band of beads sewed to his hood, and in front there was fastened an ivory carving, probably intended to represent a bear's head (fig. 6, on p. 117). It was so small, and so inartistically cut, that a man could undoubtedly make a dozen of them in a day. I, however, offered the father unsuccessfully a clasp-knife and tobacco for it, but the boy himself, having heard our bargaining, exchanged it soon after for a piece of sugar. When the father knew this he laughed good-naturedly, without making any attempt to get the bargain undone.

To certain tools small wooden images are affixed, as to the scraper figured above (fig. 3, p. 117), and similar images are found in large numbers in the lumber-room of the tent, where pieces of ivory, bits of agate and scrap iron, are preserved. A selection from the large collection of such images which I made is here reproduced in woodcuts. If, also, these carvings may, in fact, be considered as representations of higher beings, the religious ideas which are connected with them, even judged from the Shaman standpoint, are exceedingly indistinct, less a consciousness, which still lives among the people, than a reminiscence from former times. Most of the figures bear an evident stamp of the present dress and mode of life of the people. It appears to me to be remarkable, that in all the bone or wood carvings I have met with, the face has been cut flatter than it is in reality in this race of men. Some of the carvings appear to remind me of an ancient Buddhist image.



The drum, or more correctly, tambourine, so common among most of the Polar peoples, European, Asiatic, and American, among the Lapps, the Samoyeds, the Tunguses, and the Eskimo (see drawing on p. 24), is found in every Chukch tent. A certain superstition is also attached to it. They did not willingly play it in our presence, and they were unwilling to part with it. If time permitted it was concealed on our entrance into the tent. The drum consists of the peritoneum of a seal, stretched over a narrow wooden ring fixed to a short handle. The drumstick consists of a splinter of whalebone 300 to 400 millimetres long, which towards the end runs into a point so fine and flexible, that it forms a sort of whipcord. When the thicker part of the piece of whalebone is struck against the edge of the drum-skin, the other end whips against the middle, and the skin is thus struck twice at the same time. The drum is commonly played by the man, and the playing is accompanied by a very monotonous song. We have not seen it accompanied by dancing, twisting of the countenance, or any other Shaman trick.

We did not see among the Chukches we met with any Shamans. They are described by Wrangel, Hooper, and other travellers. Wrangel states (vol. i. p. 284) that the Shamans in the year 1814, when a severe epidemic broke out among the Chukches and their reindeer at Anjui, declared that in order to propitiate the spirits they must sacrifice Kotschen, one of the most highly esteemed men of the tribe. He was so much respected that no one would execute the sentence, but attempts were made to get it altered, first by presents to the prophets, and then by flogging them. But when this did not succeed, as the disease continued to ravage, and no one would execute the doom, Kotschen ordered his own son to do it. He was thus compelled to stab his own father to death and give up the corpse to the Shamans. The whole narrative conflicts absolutely with the disposition and manners of the people with whom we made acquaintance at Behring's Straits sixty-five years after this occurrence, and I would be disposed to dispute entirely the truthfulness of the statement, had not the history of our own part of the world taught us that blood has flowed in streams for dogmatic hair-splittings, which no one now troubles himself about. Perhaps the breath of indifferentism has reached even the ice-deserts of the Polar lands.

The drum has besides also another use, which appears to have little connection with its property of Shaman psychograph or church bell. When the ladies unravel and comb their long black hair, this is done carefully over the drum, on whose bottom the numerous beings which the comb brings with it from the warm hearth of home out into the cold wide world, are collected and cracked—in case they are not eaten up. They taste well according to the Chukch opinion, and are exceedingly good for the breast. Even gorm (the large, fully developed, fat larva of the reindeer fly, Oestrus tarandi) is pressed out of the skin of the reindeer and eaten, as well as the full-grown reindeer fly.

Some more of the superstitious traits which we observed among the Chukches may here be stated. After the good hunting in February we endeavoured without success to induce the Chukches to give us a head or a skull of some of the seals they had killed. Even brandy was unsuccessfully offered for it, and it was only in the greatest secrecy that Notti, one of our best friends from Irgunnuk, dared to give us the foetus of a seal. A raven was once shot in the neighbourhood of the ice-house. The shot then went to the magnetical observatory, but before he entered, laid down the shot bird, the gun, and other articles in the before-mentioned implement chest placed in front of the observatory. A short time after there was great excitement before the tent. Some men, women, and children among the natives crowded round the chest screaming and shouting. For the Chukches had observed that the raven, having been only stunned by the shot, had begun to scream and flutter in the chest, and they now indicated by word and gesture that a great misfortune was about to happen. Pity is not, as is well known, one of the good qualities of the savage. It was clear that in this case too it was not this feeling, but fear of the evil which the wounded crow could bring about, that caused this scene, and when a sailor immediately after twisted the neck of the bird, the Chukches had no objection to receive and eat it.

The winter of 1878-1879 appears to have been uncommonly severe, and hunting less productive than usual. This was ascribed to our presence. The Chukches asked us anxiously several times, whether we intended to raise the water so high that the sea would reach their tents. When on the 11th February, after the hunting had failed for a long time, they succeeded at last in catching a number of seals, they threw water in their mouths before they were carried into the tents. This was done, they said, in order that the open "leads" in the ice should not close too soon.



Besides the drum the Chukches also use as a musical instrument a piece of wood, cloven into two halves, and again united after the crack has been somewhat widened in the middle, with a piece of whalebone inserted between the two halves. They also during the course of the winter made several attempts to make violins after patterns seen on board, and actually succeeded in making a better sounding-box than could have been expected beforehand. On the draught-strap of the dog sledge there was often a small bell bought from the Russians, and the reindeer-Chukches are said sometimes to wear bells in the belt.

The dance I saw consisted in two women or children taking each other by the shoulders, and then hopping now on the one foot now on the other. When many took part in the dance, they placed themselves in rows, sang a monotonous, meaningless song, hopped in time, turned the eyes out and in, and threw themselves with spasmodic movements, clearly denoting pleasure and pain, now to the right, now to the left "La saison" for dance and song, the time of slaughtering reindeer, however, did not happen during our stay, on which account our experience of the Chukches' abilities in this way is exceedingly limited.

All sport they entered into with special delight, for instance, some trial shooting which Palander set on foot on New Year's Day afternoon, with a small rifled cannon on the Vega. At first the women sat aft with the children, far from the dreadful shooting weapon, and indicated their feelings by almost the same gestures as on such occasions are wont to distinguish the weaker and fairer sex of European race. But soon curiosity took the upper hand. They pressed forward where they could see best, and broke out in a loud "Ho, ho, ho!" when the shot was fired and the shells exploded in the air.

Of what sort is the art-sense of the Chukches? As they still almost belong to the Stone Age, and as their contact with Europeans has been so limited that it has not perhaps conduced to alter their taste and skill in art, this question appears to me to have a great interest both for the historian of art, who here obtains information as to the nature of the seed from which at last the skill of the master has been developed in the course of ages and millenniums, and for the archaeologist, who finds here a starting point for forming a judgment both of the Scandinavian rock-etchings and the palaeolithic drawings, which in recent times have played so great a part in enabling us to understand the oldest history of the human race. We have therefore zealously collected all that we could of Chukch carvings, drawings, and patterns. The most remarkable of these in one respect or another are to be found delineated in the woodcuts on the preceding pages.[288]



Many of the ivory carvings are old and worn, showing that they have been long in use, probably as amulets. Various of the animal images are the fruit of the imagination, and as such may be instructive. In general the carvings are clumsy, though showing a distinctive style. If we compare them with the Samoyed images we brought home with us, it appears that the genius of the Chukches for art has reached an incomparably higher development than that of the Polar race which inhabits the western portion of the north coast of Asia, on the other hand, they are in this respect evidently inferior to the Eskimo at Port Clarence. The Chukch drawings too are roughly and clumsily executed, but many of them exhibit a certain power of hitting off the object. These figures appear to me to show that the objections which have been raised to the genuineness of various palaeolithic etchings, just on the ground of the artist's comparatively sure hand, are not justified. Even patterns and ivory buckles show a certain taste. Embroidery is done commonly on red-coloured strips of skin partly with white reindeer hair, partly with red and black wool, obtained in small quantity by barter from Behring's Straits. The supply of colouring material is not particularly abundant. It is obtained partly from the mineral kingdom (limonite of different colours, and graphite), partly from the vegetable kingdom (bark of various trees). The mineral colours are ground with water between flat stones. Bark is probably treated with urine. Red is the Chukches' favourite colour.

In order to make a contribution towards an answer to the disputed question, in what degree is the colour-sense developed among savages, Dr. Almquist during the course of the winter instituted comprehensive researches according to the method worked out by Professor FR. HOLMGREN. A detailed account of these is to be found in The Scientific Work of the Vega Expedition, and in various scientific journals. Here I shall only state that Dr. Almquist gives the following as the final result of his investigation. "That the Chukches in general possess as good an organ for distinguishing colours as we Swedes. On the other hand, they appear not to be accustomed to observe colours, and to distinguish sharply any other colour than red. They bring together all reds as something special, but consider that green of a moderate brightness corresponds less with a green of less brightness than with a blue of the same brightness. In order to bring all greens together the Chukches thus require to learn a new abstraction". Of 300 persons who were examined, 273 had a fully developed colour-sense, nine were completely colour-blind, and eighteen incompletely colour-blind, or gave uncertain indications.

From what has been stated above it appears that the coast Chukches are without noteworthy religion, social organisation, or government. Had not experience from the Polar races of America taught us differently we should have believed that with such a literally anarchic and godless crew there would be no security for life and property, immorality would be boundless, and the weaker without any protection from the violence of the stronger sex. This, however, is so far from being the case that criminal statistics have been rendered impossible for want of crimes, if we except acts of violence committed under the influence of liquor.



During the winter the Vega was visited daily, as has been stated in the account of the wintering, by the people from the neighbouring villages, while our vessel at the same time formed a resting-place for all the equipages which travelled from the western tent-villages to the islands in Behring's Straits, and vice versa. Not only our neighbours, but people from a distance whom we had never seen before, and probably would not see again, came and went without hindrance among a great number of objects which in their hands would have been precious indeed. We had never any cause to regret the confidence we placed in them. Even during the very hard time, when hunting completely failed, and when most of them lived on the food which was served out on board, the large depot of provisions, which we had placed on land without special watch, in case any misfortune should befall our vessel, was untouched. On the other hand, there were two instances in which they secretly repossessed themselves of fish they had already sold, and which were kept in a place on deck accessible to them. And with the most innocent countenance in the world they then sold them over again. This sort of dishonesty they evidently did not regard as theft but as a permissible commercial trick.

This was not the only proof that the Chukches consider deception in trade not only quite justifiable, but almost creditable. While their own things were always made with the greatest care, all that they did specially for us was done with extreme carelessness, and they were seldom pleased with the price that was offered, until they became convinced that they could not get more. When they saw that we were anxious to get ptarmigan, they offered us from their winter stock under this name the young of Larus eburneus, which is marked in the same way, but of little use as food. When I with delight purchased this bird, which in its youthful dress is rare, and therefore valuable to the ornithologist, a self-satisfied smile passed over the countenance of the seller. He was evidently proud of his successful trick. Some prejudice, as has been already stated, prevented the Chukches from parting with the heads of the seal, though, in order to ascertain the species existing here, we offered a high price for them "Irgatti" (to-morrow), or "Isgatti," if the promise was given by a woman, was the usual answer. But the promise was never kept. At last a boy came and gave us a skull, which he said belonged to a seal. On a more minute examination, however, it was found not to have belonged to a seal, but to an old dog, whose head it was evidently thought might, without any damage to the hunting, be handed over to the white magicians. This time it went worse with the counterfeitor than in the case of the ptarmigan bargain. For a couple of my comrades undertook to make the boy ashamed in the presence of the other Chukches, saying with a laugh "that he, a Chukch, must have been very stupid to commit such a mistake," and it actually appeared as if the scoff had in this case fallen into good ground. Another time, while I was in my watch in the ice-house, there came a native to me and informed me that he had driven a man from Irgunnuk to the vessel, but that the man had not paid him, and asked me on that account to give him a box of matches. When I replied that he must have been already well paid on the vessel for his drive, he said in a whining tone, "only a very little piece of bread." He was not the least embarrassed when I only laughed at the, as I well knew, untruthful statement, and did not give him what he asked.

The Chukches commonly live in monogamy; it is only exceptionally that they have two wives, as was the case with Chepurin, who has been already mentioned. It appeared as if the wives were faithful to their husbands. It was only seldom that cases occurred in which women, either in jest or earnest, gave out that they wished a white man as a lover. A woman not exactly eminent for beauty or cleanliness said, for instance, on one occasion, that she had had two children by Chukches, and now she wished to have a third by one of the ship's folk. The young women were modest, often very pretty, and evidently felt the same necessity of attracting attention by small coquettish artifices as Eve's daughters of European race. We may also understand their peculiar pronunciation of the language as an expression of feminine coquetry. For when they wish to be attractive they replace the man's r-sound with a soft s; thus, korang (reindeer) is pronounced by the women kosang, tirkir (the sun) tiskis, and so on.



The women work very hard. Not only the management of the children, the cooking, the melting of the ice, the putting the tent in order, the sewing, and other "woman's work," lie to their hand, but they receive the catch, in winter in the tent, in summer at the beach, cut it in pieces, help with the fishing, at least when it is in the neighbourhood of the tent, and carry out the exceedingly laborious tanning of the hides, and prepare thread from sinews. In summer they collect green plants in the meadows and hill-slopes in the neighbourhood of the tents. They are therefore generally at home, and always busy. The men have it for their share to procure for their family food from the animal kingdom by hunting and fishing. With this purpose in view they are often out on long excursions. In the tent the man is for the most part without occupation, sleeps, eats, gossips, chats with his children, and so on, if he does not pass the time in putting his hunting implements in order in a quite leisurely manner.

Within the family the most remarkable unanimity prevails, so that we never heard a hard word exchanged, either between man and wife, parents and children, or between the married pair who own the tent and the unmarried who occasionally live in it. The power of the woman appears to be very great. In making the more important bargains, even about weapons and hunting implements, she is, as a rule, consulted, and her advice is taken. A number of things which form women's tools she can barter away on her own responsibility, or in any other way employ as she pleases. When the man has by barter procured a piece of cloth, tobacco, sugar, or such like, he generally hands it over to his wife to keep.

The children are neither chastised nor scolded, they are, however, the best behaved I have ever seen. Their behaviour in the tent is equal to that of the best-brought-up European children in the parlour. They are not, perhaps, so wild as ours, but are addicted to games which closely resemble those common among us in the country. Playthings are also in use, for instance, dolls, bows, windmills with two sails, &c. If the parents get any delicacy they always give each of their children a bit, and there is never any quarrel as to the size of each child's portion. If a piece of sugar is given to one of the children in a crowd it goes from mouth to mouth round the whole company. In the same way the child offers its father and mother a taste of the bit of sugar or piece of bread it has got. Even in childhood the Chukches are exceedingly patient. A girl who fell down from the ship's stair, head foremost, and thus got so violent a blow that she was almost deprived of hearing, scarcely uttered a cry. A boy, three or four years of age, much rolled up in furs, who fell down into a ditch cut in the ice on the ship's deck, and in consequence of his inconvenient dress could not get up, lay quietly still until he was observed and helped up by one of the crew.



The Chukches' most troublesome fault is a disposition to begging that is limited by no feeling of self-respect. This is probably counterbalanced by their unbounded hospitality and great kindness to each other, and is, perhaps, often caused by actual necessity. But they thus became veritable torments, putting to a hard test the patience, not only of the scientific men and officers, but also of the crew. The good nature with which our sailors met their demands was above all praise.

There was never any trace of disagreement between the natives and us, and I have every reason to suppose that our wintering will long be held in grateful remembrance by them, especially as, in order not to spoil their seal-hunting, I strictly forbade all unnecessary interference with it.



It is probably impossible for a Chukch to take the place of a European workman. It has, however, happened that Chukches have gone with whalers to the Sandwich Islands, and have become serviceable seamen. During our wintering two young men got accustomed to come on board and there to take a hand, in quite a leisurely way, at work of various kinds, as sawing wood, shovelling snow, getting ice on board, &c. In return they got food that had been left over, and thus, for the most part, maintained not only themselves, but also their families, during the time we remained in their neighbourhood.

If what I have here stated be compared with Sir EDWARD PARRY'S masterly sketches of the Eskimo at Winter Island and Iglolik, and Dr. SIMPSON'S of the Eskimo in North-western America, or with the numerous accounts we possess of the Eskimo in Danish Greenland, a great resemblance will be found to exist between the natural disposition, mode of life, failings and good qualities of the Chukches, the savage Eskimo, and the Greenlanders. This resemblance is so much more striking, as the Chukch and the Eskimo belong to different races, and speak quite different languages, and, as the former, to judge by old accounts of this people, did not, until the most recent generations, sink to the unwarlike, peace-loving, harmless, anarchic, and non-religious standpoint which they have now reached. It ought to be observed, however, that in the Eskimo of Danish Greenland no considerable alteration has been brought about by them all having learned to read and write and profess the Christian religion—although with an indifference to the consequences of original sin, the mysteries of redemption, and the punishments of hell, which all imaginable missionary zeal has not succeeded in overcoming. Their innocent natural state has not been altered in any considerable degree by being subjected to these conditions of culture. It is certain besides, that the blood which flows in the veins of the Greenlander is not pure Eskimo blood, but is mingled with the blood of some of the proudest martial races in the world. When we consider how rapidly, even now, when Greenland is in constant communication with the European mother-country, all descendants of mixed blood become complete Eskimo in language and mode of life, how difficult it often is, even for parents of pure European descent, to get their children to speak any other language than that of the natives, and how they, on their part, seldom borrow a word from the Europeans, how common mixed marriages and natives of mixed blood are even now—in view of all this it appears to me much more probable that Erik the Red's colonists were quietly and peacefully converted into Eskimo, than that they were killed by the Eskimo. A single century's complete separation from Europe would be sufficient to carry out thoroughly this alteration of the present European population of Greenland, and by the end of that period the traditions of Danish rule would be very obscure in that land. Perhaps some trifling quarrel between a ruler of the colony and a native would take the foremost place among the surviving traditions, and be interpreted as a reminiscence from a war of extermination.



Even the present Chukches form, without doubt, a mixture of several races, formerly savage and warlike, who have been driven by foreign invaders from south to north, where they have adopted a common language, and on whom the food-conditions of the shore of the Polar Sea, the cold, snow, and darkness of the Arctic night, the pure, light atmosphere of the Polar summer, have impressed their ineffaceable stamp, a stamp which meets us with little variation, not only among the people now in question, but also—with the necessary allowance for the changes, not always favourable, caused by constant intercourse with Europeans—among the Lapps of Scandinavia and the Samoyeds of Russia.

It would be of great psychological interest to ascertain whether the change which has taken place in a peaceful direction is progress or decadence. Notwithstanding all the interest which the honesty, peaceableness, and innocent friendliness of the Polar tribes have for us, it is my belief that the answer must be—decadence. For it strikes us as if we witness here the conversion of a savage, coarse, and cruel man into a being, nobler, indeed, but one in whom just those qualities which distinguish man from the animals, and to which at once the great deeds and the crimes of humanity have been due, have been more and more effaced, and who, if special protection or specially favourable circumstances be absent, will not be able to maintain the struggle for existence with new races that may seek to force their way into the country.

[Footnote 271: The north coast of America still forms the haunt of a not inconsiderable Eskimo population which, for a couple of centuries, has extended to the 80th degree of latitude. As the climate in the north part of the Old World differs little from that which prevails in corresponding regions of the New, as at both places there is an abundant supply of fish, and as the seal and walrus hunting—at least between the Yenisej and the Chatanga—ought to be as productive as on the north coast of America, this difference, which has arisen only recently, is very striking. It appears to me to be capable of explanation in the following way. Down to our days a large number of small savage tribes in America have carried on war with each other, the weaker, to escape extermination by the more powerful races, being compelled to flee to the ice deserts of the north, deeming themselves fortunate if they could there, in peace from their enemies, earn a living by adopting the mode of life of the Polar races, suitable as it is to the climate and resources of the land. The case was once the same in Siberia, and there are many indications that fragments of conquered tribes have been in former times driven up from the south, not only to the north coast of the mainland, but also beyond it to the islands lying off it. In Siberia, however, for the last 250 years, the case has been completely changed by the Russian conquest of the country. The pressure of the new government has, notwithstanding many single acts of violence, been on the whole less destructive to the original population than the influence which the Europeans have exerted in America. The Russian power has at least held a wholly beneficial influence, inasmuch as it has prevented the continual feuds between the native races. The tribes driven to the inhospitable North have been enabled to return to milder regions, and where this has not taken place they have, in the absence of new migrations from the South, succumbed in the fight with cold, hunger, and small-pox, or other diseases introduced by their new masters. ]