XII.] 



DANCING, AND ART. 



497 



|li 



placed themselves in rows, sang a monotonous, meaningless song, 

 hopped in time, turned the eyes out and in, and threw them- 

 selves with spasmodic movements, clearly denoting pleasure 

 and pain, now to the right, now to the left. " La saison " for 

 dance and song, the time of slaughtering reindeer, however, did 

 not happen during our stay, on which account ovir experience of 

 the Chukches' abilities in this way is exceedingly limited. 



All sport they entered into with special delight ; for instance, 

 some trial shooting which Palander set on foot on New Year's Day 

 afternoon, with a small rifled 

 cannon on the Vega. At 

 first the women sat aft with 

 the children, far from the 

 dreadful shooting weapon, 

 and indicated their feelings 

 by almost the same gestures 

 as on such occasions are 

 wont to distinguish the 

 weaker and fairer sex of 

 European race. But soon 

 curiosity took the upper 

 hand. They pressed forward 

 where they could see best, 

 and broke out in a loud 

 " Ho, ho, ho ! " when the 

 shot was fired and the shells 

 exploded in the air. 



Of what sort is the art- 

 sense of the Chukches ? As 

 they still almost belong t(j 

 the Stone Age, and as their 

 contact with Europeans has 

 been so limited that it has 

 not perhaps conduced to 

 alter their taste and skill in 

 art, this question appears 

 to me to have a great inter- 

 est both for the historian 

 of art, who here obtains 



information as to the nature of the seed from which at last the 

 skill of the master has been developed in the course of ages and 

 millenniums, and for the archseologist, who finds here a starting 

 point for forming a judgment both of the Scandinavian rock- 

 etchings and the palaeolithic drawings, which in recent times 

 have i>layed so great a part in enabling us to understand 

 the oldest history of the human race. We have therefore 

 zealously collected all that we could of Chukch carvings, 



K K 



^^^1 



MUtSICAL INSTRUMENTS. 



1. Whistle-pipe, natural size. 2. Wliistle-instru. 

 ment, one-eighth of natural size : a mouth-hole. 



