564 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



coast was surrounded by some more compact belts of ice, which 

 however were broken through with ease. First, in the mouth 

 of the fjord itself impenetrable ice was met with, completely 

 blocking the splendid haven of St. Lawrence Bay, The Ver/a 

 was, therefore, compelled to anchor in the open road off the 

 villasre Nunamo, But even here extensive ice-fields, though 

 thin and rotten, drifted about ; and long, but narrow, belts of 

 ice passed the vessel in so large masses that it was not advisable 

 to remain longer at the place. Our stay there was therefore 

 confined to a few hours. 



During the course of the winter Lieutenant Nordquist en- 

 deavoured to collect from the Chukches travelling past as 

 complete information as possible regarding the Chukch villages 

 or encampments which are found along the coast between 

 Chaun Bay and Behring's Straits, His informants always 

 finished their list with the village Ertryn, situated west of 

 Cape Deschnev, explaining that farther east and south there 

 lived another tribe, with whom they indeed did not stand in 

 open enmity, but who, however, were not to be fully depended 

 upon, and to whose villages they therefore did not dare to 

 accompany any of us.^ This statement also corresponds, as 

 perhaps follows from what I have pointed out in the preceding 

 chapter, with the accounts commonly found in books on the 

 ethnography of this region. While we steamed forward 

 cautiously in a dense fog in the neighbourhood of Cape 

 Deschnev, twenty to thirty natives came rowing in a large 

 skin boat to the vessel. Eager to make acquaintance with 

 a tribe new to us, we received them with pleasure. But when 

 they climbed over the side we fsund that they were pure 

 Chukches, some of them old acquaintances, who during winter 

 had been guests on board the Vega. " Ankali " said they, with 

 evident contempt, are first met with farther beyond St. Lawrence 

 Bay. When we anchored next day at the mouth of this bay 

 we were immediately, as usual, visited by a large number of 

 natives, and ourselves visited their tents on land. They still 

 talked Chukch with a limited mixture of foreign words, lived 

 in tents of a construction differing somewhat from the Chukches', 



^ The enmity appeared, however, to be of a very pa?!sive nature and b}' 

 no means depending on any tribal disHke, but only arising from the inhab- 

 itants of the villages lying farthest eastward being known to be of a 

 quarrelsome disposition and having the same reputation for love of fight- 

 ing as the peasant youths in some villages in Sweden. For Lieut. Hooper, 

 who during the winter 1848-9 made a journey in dog-sledges from Chukot- 

 skoj-nos along the coast towards Behring's Straits says that the inhabitants 

 at Cape Deschnev itself enjoyed the same bad reputation among their 

 NamoUo neighbours to the south as among the Chukches living to the 

 westward. "They spoke another language." Possibly they were pure 

 Eskimo. 



