>:i.] 



FISHING IN A FRESH-WATER LAGOON. 



443 



with grass. In order to keep the fish from swimming away, the 

 women waded at the sides of the net with their ijeslcs much 

 tucked up, screaming and making a noise, and now and then 

 standing in order to indicate by a violent shaking that the water 

 was very cokl. The catch was abundant. We caught by 

 hundreds a sort of fish altogether new to us, of a type which 

 we should rather have expected to find in the marshes of the 

 Equatorial regions than up here in the north. The fish were 

 transported in a dog sledge to the vessel, where part of them was 



HEITINACKA. 



(After a i:)hotograph by L. Palandtr ) 



])Iaced in spirits for the zoologists and the rest fried, not without 

 a protest from our old cook, who thought that the black slimy 

 fish looked remarkably nasty and ugly. But the Chukches 

 were right : it was a veritable delicacy, in taste somewhat 

 resembling eel, but finer and more fleshy. These fish were 

 besides as tough to kill as eels, for after lying an hour and a 

 half in the air they swam, if replaced in the water, about as fast 

 as before. How this species of fish passes the winter is still more 

 enigmatical than the winter life of the insects. For the lagoon 



