136 H. P. STEENSBY. 
Chukches and Eskimo as it has for the American Eskimo, because most of the 
hunting is done by the Reindeer Chukches, and other inland tribes. The majority 
must therefore stay at the coast all the year round, and they generally can only 
satisfy their inclination for reindeer meat by exchanging seal blubber for it. 
In earlier days, according to Bocoraz, people from Pacific settlements used 
to go up the Anadyr River to take part in the reindeer killing on the water. 
Fishing plays no great röle with the Eskimo and North Coast Chukches. In case 
of emergency a number of sea fish are caught, but the great salmon fishings in 
the streams are not carried on up north, because it is only in Anadyr River that 
the salmon begin to occur in great quantities. 
These salmon fishings are of great importance for the Pacific Coast inhabi- 
tants south of the Eskimo area, but besides this, the means of subsistence is 
here also characterized by the hunting of whales and seals. Here, from the South 
Coast Chukches to the Coast Koryaks and Kamchadales, and further south 
to the Giljaks, Ainos and Japanese coast inhabitants, we have an indigenous 
North-east Asiatic, or better, Pacific Asiatic economic culture, which, no 
doubt, is proportionately old, and the presence of which has hindered a more 
southern distribution of the Eskimo culture. From a geographical point of view 
it would be quite possible that the Eskimo culture in its Subarctic form might 
extend as far south as Kamchatka and the Sea of Okhotsk, perhaps even to 
the mouth of the Amur. 
Only a more exact investigation would be able to make clear the extent 
to which elements of Eskimo culture have entered into this original North-east 
Asiatic Coast culture. Bocoraz assumes that the detachable harpoon head 
employed by the Eskimo has reached the Amur along the coast of Asia. This, 
however, cannot mean that the North-east Asiatics first learnt the use of the 
harpoon from the Eskimo. The harpoon is an implement so widely distributed 
and so general, that we have no reason to believe that the North-east Asiatics 
have not always used it when hunting aquatic mammals. It only can mean then 
a specific kind of harpoon head!. 
The distribution of the kayak has been mentioned. The seal hunting of 
the North-east Asiatics, which takes place especially in the spring and autumn 
but not in the winter on account of the conditions of weather, is therefore not 
carried on from kayaks but from open boats. The boats employed at the seal 
hunting are generally rather small, and hold two men, a rower and a harpooner, 
just as one knows it, for instance, from Japanese drawings of Ainos hunting 
seals ?. 
At the whale hunting, on the other hand, which originally no doubt played 
a larger role than the seal hunting, larger boats which hold several men are 
employed. The mode of procedure with whale hunting quite calls to mind the 
already mentioned mode of procedure with the Eskimo at Pomt Barrow and 
1 It is of interest to notice the likeness between this,harpoon form from the 
Amur and the Eskimo form used for White Whale hunting even by the 
Polar Eskimo; cf. М. о. G., Vol. 34, fig. 35 and Scurenck, table 42, figs. 3—4. 
2 Cf., for example, Mac RITCHIE, fig. 114. 
