XIV.] 



ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND. 



589 



even appears that gut clotlies are made here for sale to other 

 tribes ; otherwise it would be difficult to explain how Kotzebue's 

 sailors could in half an hour purchase at a single encampment 

 :^00 coats of this kind. At the time of our visit all the natives 

 went bareheaded, the men with their black tallow-like hair 

 clipped to the root, with the exception of the common small 

 border above the forehead. The women wore their hair 

 plaited and adorned wath beads, and were much tattooed, partly 

 after very intricate patterns, as is shown by the accompanying 

 woodcuts. Like the children they mostly went barefooted and 

 barelegged. They were well grown, and many did not look ill, 

 but all were merciless beggars, who actually followed our 

 naturalists on their excursions on land. 



TATTOOED WOMAN, FROM ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND. 



(After a drawing by A. Stuxberg.) 



The summer-tents were irregular, but pretty clean and light 

 huts of gut, stretched on a frame of drift-wood and whale-bones. 

 The winter dwellings were now abandoned. They appeared 

 to consist of holes in the earth, which were covered above, with 

 the exception of a square opening, with drift-wood and turf. 

 During winter a sealskin tent was probably stretched over 

 this opening, but it was removed for the time, probably to 

 permit the summer heat to penetrate into the hole and melt 

 the ice, which had collected during winter on its walls. At 

 several tents we found large under-jaws of whales fixed in the 

 ground. They were perforated above, and I suppose that the 

 winter-tent, in the absence of other framework, was stretched 

 over them, Masses of whale-bones lay thrown up along the 



