298 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



numerous people, and the popular saying that their hearths on 

 the banks of the Kolyma at one time outnumbered the stars 

 in the sky seems a reminiscence of more prosperous days. But 

 great inroads have been made by epidemics, tribal wars, the 

 excessive use of coarse Ukraine tobacco and of bad spirits, 

 indulged in even by the women and children. " A Yukaghir, 

 it is said, never intoxicates himself alone, but calls upon his 

 family to share the drink, even children in arms being supplied 

 with a portion 1 ." Their language, which A. Schiefner regards 

 as radically distinct from all others 2 , is disappearing even more 

 rapidly than the people themselves, if it be not already quite ex- 

 tinct. In the eighties it was spoken only by about a dozen old 

 persons, its place being taken almost everywhere by the Turki 

 dialect of the Yakuts. 



There appears to be a curious interchange of tribal names 



between the Chukchi and their Koryak neighbours, 

 an^Ko^yaks. the term ^ryak being the Chukchi Khorana, 



" Reindeer," while the Koryaks are said to call 

 themselves Chauchau, whence some derive the word Chukchi. 

 Hooper, however, tells us that the proper form of Chukchi is 

 Tuski, "Brothers," or ''Confederates 3 ,' 7 and in any case the 

 point is of little consequence, as Dittmar is probably right in 

 regarding both groups as closely related, and sprung originally 

 from one stock 4 . Jointly they occupy the north-east extremity 

 of the continent between the Kolyma and Bering Strait, together 

 with the northern parts of Kamchatka ; the Chukchi lying to the 

 north, the Koryaks to the south, mainly round about the north- 

 eastern inlets of the Sea of Okhotsk. Reasons have already been 

 advanced for supposing that the Chukchi were a Tungus people 

 who came originally from the Amur basin. In their arctic 

 homes they appear to have waged long wars with the Onkilon 

 (Ang-kali) aborigines, gradually merging with the survivors and 



1 Lansdell, I. p. 299. 



Ueber die Sprache der Jukagiren in Melanges Asiatiqucs, 1859, in. p. 



595 -sq. 



3 Ten Months among the Tents of the Tuski. 



4 Ueber die Koriaken 11. iJinen nahe verwandten Tchouktthen, in Bui. Acad. 

 Sc. St Petersburg, XII. p. 99. 



