I 



xii ] RUSSIANS AND CHUKCHES. 453 



of the Chukches' disposition and mode of life, but I believe at 

 all events that a more exhaustive statement of what the Vega 

 men experienced in this region will be interesting to my readers, 

 even if in the course of it I am sometimes compelled to return 

 to subjects of which I have already treated. 



In West-European writings the race, which inhabits the 

 north-easternmost portion of Asia, is mentioned for the first 

 time, so far as I know, by WiTSEN, who in the second edition of 

 liis work (1705, p. 671) quotes a statement by Volodomir 

 Atlassov, that the inhabitants of the northernmost portions of 

 Siberia are called Tsjuktsi, without, however, giving any detailed 

 description of the people themselves. In maps from the end of 

 the seventeenth century names are still inscribed on this portion 

 of land which were borrowed from the history of High Asia, as 

 " Tenduc," " Quinsai," " Catacora," &c., but these are left out in 

 VAN Keulen's atlas of 1709, and instead there stands here 

 Zuczari. From about the same time we fall in with some 

 accounts of the Chukches in the narrative of the distinguished 

 painter CoRNELis DE Bruin's travels in Eussia. A Russian 

 merchant, Michael Ostatiof, who passed fourteen years in 

 travelling in Siberia, gave de Bruin some information regarding 

 the countries he had travelled through ; among others he spoke 

 of Korakic and Socgtsic. The latter were sketched as a godless 

 pack, who worship the devil and carry with them their fathers' 

 bones to be used in their masfical arts. The same Russian who 

 made these statements had also come in contact with " stationary 

 (settled) Soegtsi, so called " because they pass the whole winter 

 hibernating, lying or sitting in their tents." ^ I have found the 

 first somewhat detailed accounts of the race in the note on page 

 110 of the under-quoted work, Hi&toire genMogique des Tartares, 

 Leyden, 1726. They are founded on the statements of Swedish 

 prisoners of war in Siberia. 



The Russians, however, had made a much earlier acquaintance 

 with the Chukches ; for during their conquest of Siberia they 

 came in contact with this race before the middle of the seven- 

 teenth century. A company of hunters in 1646 sailed down the 

 Kolyma river to the PoLar Sea. East of the Kolyma they fell 

 in with the Chukches, with whom they dealt in this way : they 

 laid down their goods on the beach and then retired, on which 

 the Chukches came thither, took the goods, and laid furs, walrus 

 tusks, or carvings in walrus ivory, in their place. ^ How such 



^ Cornelis de Bruin, Reizen over Moalcovie, door Persie en Irul'ie, &c., 

 Amsterdam, 1711, p. 12. The author's name is also written De Bruyn 

 and Le Brun. 



2 Herodotus already states in book iv. chapter 196, that the Cartha- 

 genians bartered goods in the same way with a tribe living on the coast of; 

 Africa beyond the Gates o£ Hercules. The same mode of barter was still 

 in use nearly two thousand years later, when the west coast of Africa 



