410 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



ing-station with its chapel, consists of a few scattered crosses in 

 burial-places adjoining the settlement. At the village of Kaltkha- 

 gamute, within three days' travel of the Russian mission on the 

 Yukon, a graveyard there contains a remarkable collection of gro- 

 tesquely carved monuments and memorial posts, indicating very 

 clearly the predominance of old pagan traditions over such faint 

 ideas of Christianity as may have been introduced for these peo- 

 ple. Among monuments in this place the most remarkable is that 

 of a female figure with four arms and hands, resembling closely a 

 Hindoo goddess, even to its almond eyes and a general cast of 

 features. Natural hair is attached to its head, falling over the 

 shoulders. The legs of this figure are crossed in true oriental style, 

 and two of the hands, the lower pair, hold rusty tin plates, upon 

 which offerings of tobacco and scraps of cotton prints have been 

 deposited. The whole is protected by a small roof set upon posts. 



Other burial posts are scarcely less remarkable in variety of feat- 

 ure and coloring, and the whole collection would afford a rich har- 

 vest of specimens to any museum. Nearly all these figures are 

 human ffigies, though grotesque and misshapen, and drawn out of 

 proportion. No images of animals or birds, which would have in- 

 dicated the existence of totems and clans in the tribe, were to be 

 seen ; but here and there, over apparently neglected graves, a stick, 

 surmounted by a very rude carving of a fish, a deer, or a beluga, indi- 

 cative of the calling of the deceased hunter, could be discovered. 



Petroff, who has made the only hand-to-hand examination ever 

 conducted, by a white man, of the people of the Lower Kuskok- 

 vim, says that they resemble in outward appearance their Eskimo 

 neighbors in the north and west, but their complexion is perhaps a 

 little darker. The men are distinguished from those of other In- 

 nuit tribes by having more hair on the faces ; mustaches being 

 quite common, even with youths of from twenty to twenty-five, 

 while in other tribes this hirsute appendage does not make its ap- 

 pearance until the age of thirty-five or forty. Their hands and feet 

 are small, but both sexes are muscular and well developed, inclined 

 rather to embonpoint. In their garments they differ but little from 

 their neighbors hitherto described, with an exception of the male 

 upper garment, or parka, which reaches down to the feet, even 

 dragging a little upon the ground, making it necessary to gird it 

 up for purposes of walking. The female parkas are a little shorter. 

 Both garments are made of the skins of ground-squirrels, orna- 



