466 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 193 



or subarctic, the natural conditions of which form the transition 

 from the polar to the more temperate climate. 



Northward from the tundra extends the ocean, which forms a 

 special zone; we may call it, perhaps, ultrapolar. In America the 

 Polar Ocean, filled with a quantity of large islands and archipelagoes, 

 presents a special cultural zone inhabited by the Eskimo. This zone 

 has as a typical culture of human groups the hunting of sea mam- 

 mals, of larger and smaller kinds. The tundra, or as it is called in 

 America, the " barren grounds," is actually barren and the scanty 

 human groups inhabiting " barren grounds " have only a very 

 precarious existence. 



In Eurasia the relative importance of sea and land is wholly dif- 

 ferent. The Polar Sea is actually important for man only in the 

 far northeast, where the coast line is clearly cut out and sea game 

 come close to the coast so that the hunting of seal and walrus is 

 very well developed. Farther to the west the sea becomes shallow 

 and the coast low and swampy, so it is mostly left uninhabited and 

 only in certain points, more or less distant and isolated, do we find 

 the northern populations coming to the sea for hunting. Thus on 

 the northern part of the peninsula of Yamal in Siberia and on 

 vVhite Island, adjacent to the shore, there lives a branch of the 

 Samoyed, walrus hunters and bear hunters, almost wholly unknown, 

 which could not be included even in the last census of 1926. No 

 scientist has visited these Samoyed. Professor Shitkoff in 1910 spent 

 a week among them in the middle of August, but he had no time to 

 go over to the northern shore of White Island, where the hunting of 

 sea mammals actually takes place. According to some not very re- 

 liable information, the Samoyed must have sldn canoes and even 

 larger boats made of planks hewn of driftwood. This summer we 

 sent there an expedition of three young scientists — Mr. V. N. Cher- 

 nezov, Mr. S. M. Ratner, and Miss N. P. Kotovschikova. They 

 were taken there by the state steamer and left for a year with ample 

 provisions and scientific appliances. So, eventually, they will make 

 a detailed description of this branch of the Samoyed.^ 



Still farther to the west hunting of sea mammals is performed in 

 midocean, also on Spitzbergen and on Nova Zembla, but this hunting 

 is undertaken mostly by the Scandinavians, English, and Russians, 

 with larger ships and with the expenditure of considerable capital. 



2 The expedition came baclt in 1930. N. P. Kotovschikova died while staying alone 

 on the seashore with all the collections of the expedition, in expectation of the steamer 

 from the west. The expedition brought back valuable material, and reported the finding 

 by V. N. Chcrnezov of several ruins of half-underground houses of a tribe now extinct, 

 which the Samoyed call " Sirchi." These Sirchi once lived in various parts of the 

 Samoyed territory but have been extinct for a long time. They were a maritime tribe 

 and lived exclusively by hunting the sea-mammoth. Chernezov made some preliminary 

 excavations among the ruins, the results of which will bo published in the Memoirs of 

 the Academy of Sciences. It is planned to send another expedition to Yamal in 1931. 



