504 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



feitor than in the case of the ptarmigan bargain. For a couple 

 of my comrades undertook to make the boy ashamed in the 

 presence of the other Chukches, saying with a laugh " that he, 

 a Chukch, must have been very stupid to commit such a mis- 

 take," and it actually appeared as if the scoff had in this case 

 fallen into good ground. Another time, while I was in my 

 watch in the ice-house, there came a native to me and informed 

 me that he had driven a man from Irgunnuk to the vessel, but 

 that the man had not paid him, and asked me on that account 

 to give him a box of matches. When I replied that he must 

 have been already well paid on the vessel for his drive, he said 

 in a whining tone, " only a very little piece of bread." He was 

 not the least embarrassed when I only laughed at the, as I well 

 knew, untruthful statement, and did not give him what he 

 asked. 



The Chukches commonly live in monogamy ; it is only 

 exceptionally that they have two wives, as was the case with 

 Chepurin, who has been already mentioned. It appeared as if 

 the wives were faithful to their husbands. It was only seldom 

 that cases occurred in which women, either in jest or earnest, 

 gave out that they wished a white man as a lover. A woman 

 not exactly eminent for beauty or cleanliness said, for instance, 

 on one occasion, that she had had two children by Chukches, 

 and now she wished to have a third by one of the ship's folk. 

 The young women were modest, often very pretty, and evidently 

 felt the same necessity of attracting attention by small 

 coquettish artifices as Eve's daughters of European race. We 

 may also understand their peculiar pronunciation of the lan- 

 guage as an expression of feminine coquetry. For when they 

 wish to be attractive they replace the man's ?'-sound with a soft 

 s ; thus, horang (reindeer) is pronounced by the women kosang, 

 tirkir (the sun) tiskis, and so on. 



The women work very hard. Not only the management of 

 the children, the cooking, the melting of the ice, the putting 

 the tent in OKler, the sewing, and other " woman's work," lie to 

 their hand, but they receive the catch, in winter in the tent, in 

 summer at the beach, cut it in pieces, help with the fishing, at 

 least when it is in the neighbourhood of the tent, and carry out 

 the exceedingly laborious tanning of the hides, and prepare 

 thread from sinews. In summer they collect green plants 

 in the meadows and hill-slopes in the neighbourhood of the 

 tents. They are therefore generally at home, and always busy. 

 The men have it for their share to procure for their family food 

 from the animal kingdom by hunting and fishing. With this pur- 

 pose in view they are often out on long excursions. In the tent 

 the man is for the most part without occupation, sleeps, eats, 

 gossips, chats with his children, and so on, if he does not pass 



