UNDISCOVERED SHEEP IN ASIA 67 



I strolled on the beach without bringing down any game. 

 A female eider duck and her brood swam hurriedly away 

 from the shore, the old bird refusing to rise at our approach 

 and leave her little ones defenceless on the water. A large 

 number of red phalarope busily scurried to and fro on a 

 little sandspit, hke so many ants, as they picked for food 

 in the edge of the water. 



Kleinschmidt came back from the few huts which 

 marked the Chukchi settlement upon a small bluff at 

 the head of the bay, to inform us that the most of the men 

 of this village were off salmon fishing, and that he had 

 seen in an igloo the skin of a young sheep. We were 

 anxious lest the men would not return in time for us to 

 employ them in hunting. 



Later in the evening, however, a skin boat came 

 alongside with three strapping fellows in it. We showed 

 them a photograph of a sheep's head, which they recog- 

 nized. They explained with many gestures that the like 

 animals Uved on the hills about us, indicating a general 

 westerly direction. But, "No more," they said, ''all 

 finished." Their long story, interpreted by one of our 

 Ittygran men who knew a little English, and sifted 

 down to a word or two, meant that they had seen three 

 sheep and shot them all about fifteen days ago, and that 

 they had come upon the animals two "sleeps" inland from 

 the village. This might mean that it would be ordinarily 

 two days marching of eight or ten hours per day, or 

 possibly it might be as much as thirty-six hours marching 

 each day, or a total of seventy-two'hours, according to the 

 circumstances in which the natives may have found 

 themselves. It was not unusual for them to go long 

 distances without lying down to sleep if lack of food or 

 other emergency necessitated a rapid or prolonged march. 



