THE TCHUKTCHIS. 



157 





rugged mountains hem it in on three sides, and a long spit, on which the native village 

 is situated, shelters it on the ocean (or Behring Sea) side. The Tchuktchis live in skin 

 tents. The remains of underground houses are seen, but the people who used them have passed 

 cnvay. The present race makes no use of such houses. Although their skin dwellings 

 appear outwardly rough, and are patched with every variety of hide walrus, seal, and 

 reindeer with here and there a fragment of a sail obtained from the whalers, they are 



TCHUKTCHI INDIANS HUILDING A HUT. 



in reality constructed over frames built of the larger bones of whales and walruses, and 

 very admirably put together. In this most exposed of villages the wintry blasts must be 

 fearful, yet these people are to be found there at all seasons. Wood they have none,* and 

 blubber lamps are the only means they have for warming their tents. The frames of 

 some of their skin canoes are also of bone. On either side of these craft, which are the 

 counterpart of the Greenland canoes it is usual to find a sealskin blown out tight and 

 the ends secured. These serve as floats to steady the canoe. They have very strong 

 fishing-nets, made of thin strips of walrus hide. 



* There is none growing, but a wreck or piece of drift-wood occasionally supplies their need. The writer 

 was in Behring Sea in the autumn of the year 1865, when the famed and dreaded privateer SJtenandoah burned 

 thirty American whale-ships, and the natives had then a considerable amount of wreckage, including complete 

 boats, which had come ashore. Vide the author's work, " Travel and Adventure in the Territory of Alaska," &c. 



