SIGNS OF THE NATIVES 47 



After having made a brief examination of all this I pushed on 

 farther for about three versts, where I found a path leading into 

 the very thick and dark forest which skirted the shore closely. ^^ 

 I held a brief consultation with my cossack, who had a loaded 

 gun, besides a knife and ax, as to what we should do in case we 

 met one or more persons, and I commanded him to do nothing 

 whatever without my orders. I myself was only armed with a 

 Yakut palma (dagger) ^^ for the purpose of digging up rocks 

 and plants. No sooner had we taken this path than I noticed 

 that the natives had tried to cover it up but had been prevented 

 by our quick approach and as a result had made it only more 

 conspicuous. W^e saw many trees recently bared of bark and con- 

 jectured that they must have used it for houses or amhars^^ 

 and that these must be near by, since in whatever direction we 

 looked there was no lack of fine forests. However, as the first 



84 This place was identified during my visit in 1922 as the point where 

 the shore changes its direction from northeast to north-northwest (see 

 chart, Fig. 4) in swinging around the hill that projects into the sea. (S) 



8 5 Pallas uses the German "Dolch," dagger, as an equivalent. The 

 word palma seems to be of Tungus origin (see M. A. Czaplicka: Aborigi- 

 nal Siberia: A Study in Social Anthropology, Oxford, 1914, 

 p. 360), signifying "a long knife with a wooden handle." In 

 R. Maak's "Vilyuiskii okrug Yakutskoioblasti," St. Petersburg, 

 1887, Vol. 3, p. xvi, it is stated that the palma, or batas, as 

 it is also called, is a large knife, distinguished by its long handle, 

 used by the Tungus in bear hunting. An illustration is given 

 {op. cit., PI. 9, Fig. 14) one-tenth natural size, which would make 

 the handle of the specimen figured about 17 inches and the blade 

 about 1 1 inches. A copy of this illustration is presented herewith 

 (Fig. 11). The palma with which Steller, when first landing on 

 Bering Island, killed a large number of blue foxes (see. below, foot- 

 note 323) is obviously the same as that he used on Kayak Island. 



According to Admiral Ferdinand von Wrangell (Expedition 

 to the Polar Sea, New York, 1841, p. 167) the Kolyma Yakuts pj^T^j 

 also used the word paVma for their large hunting knife. 



I am under obligation to Dr. T. Michelson of the Bureau of American 

 Ethnology for having put me on the track of the references in the first 

 paragraph. (S) 



86 Russian word meaning storehouses or sheds. 



