;30 



THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 



[chap. 



species, especially at sea, where in flocks of six or seven it swam 

 incessantly backwards and forwards between the pieces of ice. 



No tents were met with in the neighbourhood of the vessel's 

 anchorage, but at many places along the beach there were seen 

 marks of old encampments, sooty rolled stones which had been 

 used in the erection of the tents, broken household articles, and 

 above all remains of the bones of the seal, reindeer, and walrus. 

 At one place, a large number of walrus skulls lay in a ring, 

 possibly remains from an entertainment following a large catch. 

 Near the place where the tents had stood, at the mouth of a small 

 stream not yet dried up or frozen. Dr. Stuxberg discovered some 

 small mounds containing burnt bones. The cremation had been 

 so complete that only one of the pieces of bone that were found 

 could be determined by Dr. Almquist. It was a human tooth. 

 After'cremation the remains of the bones and the ash had been 

 collected in an excavation, and covered first with turf and then 

 with small flat stones. The encamjDments struck me as having 



^^X^ 



'•Mi^' 



^> 



SF.CJloa or A CHUKCH GRAVE. 1 



(Alter a drawing by A. Stuxberg.) 

 a. Layer of burned bones, much weathered. b. Layer of turf and twigs. 



c. Stones. 



been abandoned only a few years ago, and even the collections 

 of bones did not appear to me to be old. But we ought to be 

 very cautious when we endeavour in the Arctic regions to 

 estimate the age of an old encampment, because in judging of 

 the changes which the surface of the earth undergoes with time 

 we are apt to be guided by our experience from more southerly 

 regions. To how limited an extent this experience may be 

 utilised in the high north is shown by Rink's assertion that on 

 Greenland at some of the huts of the Norwegian colonists, 

 which have been deserted for centuries, footpaths can still be 



1 Since we discovered the Chukches also bury their dead by laying 

 them out on the tundra, we have begun to entertain doubts wliether the 

 collection of bones delineated here was actually a grave. Possibly the':e 

 mounds were only the remains of fireplaces, where the Chukches had used 

 as fuel train-drenched bones, and which they had afterwards for some reason 

 or other endeavoured to protect from the action of the atmosphere. 



