MIGRATIONS FROM SIBERIA. 167 



The Lakhuts, it is said, were not the first inhabitants of the 

 country along the banks of the river Kolyma. 1 The Omoki, a tribe 

 of fishermen, the Chelaki, a nomadic race possessing reindeer, thu 

 Tunguses, and the Iukahirs were their predecessors, These tribes 

 have so wholly disappeared that even their names are hardly re- 

 membered. An obscure tradition tells how "there were once more 

 hearths of the Omoki on the shores of the Kolyma than there are 

 stars in an xirctic sky." 2 The Onkilon, too, ouce a numerous ran 

 of fishers on the shores of the Gulf of Anadyr, are now gone no 

 man knows whither. Some centuries ago they are said to have 

 occupied all the coast from Cape Chelagskoi to Behring Strait, and 

 the remains of their huts of stone, earth, and bones of whales are 

 still seen along the shores. 3 The Omoki are said to have departed 

 fiom the banks of the Kolyma in two large divisions, with their 

 reindeer, and to have gone northward over the Polar ! 

 Numerous traces of their yourts are to be seen near the mouth of 

 the Indigirka. The Onkilon, too, fled away north, to the land 

 whose mountains aie said to be visible from Cape Jakan. 



Here we probably have the commencement of the exodus of the 

 Greenland Eskimo. It did not take place at one time, but spread 

 over a period of one or two centuries. The age of Mongol invasion 

 and conquest was doubtless the age of tribulation and flight for I lie 

 tribes of Northern Siberia. The Khivan genealogist Abu-'l Gha/.i 

 tells us that when Ogus Khan, a chief belonging to the conquer 

 ing family of Zingiz, made an inroad into the south, some of his 

 tribes could not follow him on account of the deep snow. 5 They 

 were called in reproach Karlik, and this very word, in its plural 

 form of Karalit, is the name which the Eskimos of Greenland 

 give themselves; but I do not attach much weight to this coin 

 cidence. 



The ruined yourts on Cape Chelagskoi mark the commencement 

 of a long march ; the same ruined yourts again appear on the shores 

 of the Parry group — a wide space of 1140 miles intervenes, which 

 is as yet entirely unknown. If my theory be correct, it should ho 

 occupied either by a continent or by a chain of islands ; lor I do 

 not believe that the wanderers attempted any navigation, or indeed 

 that they possessed canoes at all. They kept moving on in search 

 of better hunting and fishing grounds along unknown shores, and 

 across frozen straits, and the march from the capes of Siberia to 

 Melville Island doubtless occupied more than one generation of 

 wanderers. / 



1 Wrangell, p. 171. -' ll<id„ p. 0:J. ~ s [bid., j.. :;.<n. 



* Ibid, p. 181. ' Sfcrahlenl 



