232 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT (ETH. ANN. 18 
Nome, but this has not occurred recently. On a clear day the head- 
land on the Siberian skore is visible from St Lawrence island, some 
40 or 50 miles away. 
During the summer of 1879 the Tinné from Anvik, on the lower 
Yukon, descended the river in several umiaks and visited St Michael 
to exchange their wooden tubs and dishes for seal oil and other 
products of the coast district. 
UNITS OF VALUE AND MEASUREMENT—NUMERATION 
UNITS OF VALUE 
The skins of mammals, being the most valuable portable property 
among the Alaskan Eskimo, give the most convenient standard of 
value. In very early days, before the advent of the Russians about 
the Yukon district, the skin of the full-grown land otter was consid- 
ered the unit of value. Equaling it was the skin of the large hair seal. 
Of late years the skin of the beaver has replaced the otter skin as 
the unit of trade value. All other skins, furs, and articles of trade 
generally are sold as “‘a skin” and multiples or fractions of “a skin,” 
as it is termed. In addition to this, certain small, untanned skins, 
used for making fur coats or blouses, are tied in lots sufficient to make 
a coat, and are sold in this way. It requires four skins of reindeer 
fawns, or forty skins of Parry’s marmot or of the muskrat, for a coat, 
and these sets are known by terms designating these bunches. Thus: 
Four fawn skins = no-ukh'-kit. 
Forty Parry’s marmot skins = chi-gikh'-kit. 
Forty muskrat skins = i-lig!-i-witkh'-kit. 
The pelt of a wolf or a wolverine is worth several ‘‘skins” in trade, 
while a number of pelts of muskrats or Parry’s marmot are required 
to make the value of ‘a skin.” 
The foregoing terms are of the Unalit, but similar ones are in use 
among all the Eskimo of this region. 
UNITS OF MEASUREMENT 
All units of linear measurement among these people are based on 
body measurements—mainly of the hand and the arm, which form the 
readiest standards. - Such units of measurement are used also by them 
for gauging the size and length of all of their tools, implements, and, 
in fact, of nearly everything made by them. 
As the length of a man’s hands and arms are usually in proportion 
to the length of his body, it is evident that bows, arrows, spears, boat 
frames, etc, when made by him according to a fixed number of spans or 
cubits, will be in direct proportion to himself, and thus especially suit- 
able to his use, whether he be large or small. 
