Meyer on Nephrite from Alaska. 3*73 



2nd vol. (1882), is represented a harpoon-point of bone and 

 nephrite * from Port Clarence (about 65° N. latitude, north 

 of Norton Sound), and he says : f 'Among these (i.e. 

 the ethnographical objects obtained in Port Clarence by 

 barter), may be mentioned bone etchings and carvings and 

 several arrow-heads and other tools of a species of nephrite 

 so puzzingly like the well known nephrite from High Asia, 

 that I am disposed to believe that it actually comes origin- 

 ally from that locality. In such a case, the occurence of 

 nephrite at Bering Strait is important, because it cannot be 

 explained in any other way than by supposing that the 

 tribes living here have carried the mineral with them from 

 their originial home in High Asia, or that during the stone 

 age of High Asia, a like extended commercial intercom- 

 munication took place between the wild races as now exists, 

 or at least some decades ago existed, along the northern 

 parts of Asia and America.' 



" Already in my essay, ' Die Nephritfrage, kein ethnolo- 

 gisches Problem' (March 1883), I expressed the following 

 view : ' Nephrite implements, from the Aleutian Islands, 

 and from the Eskimo on the American side of Bering 

 Strait, may just as well have come from sources in the New 

 World,' and that without trusting ourselves to pass judg- 

 ment in advance on the matter. In the meanwhile, Mr. 

 Baird's ' rough material ' was discovered (Ausland, 1883, 

 p.p. 456, 540, 580), though as we shall see farther on, it 

 was not nephrite, but only a mineral exteriorly very simi- 

 lar to nephrite. Capt. J. A. Jacobsen, however, brought 

 from Alaska, real rough nephrite, which seems to set the 

 question at rest. 



" Prof. Arzruni was so good as to place at my disposal, 

 the following statement: — 



" ' According to kind communications of Capt. Jacobsen, 

 green neprite is known to the Eskimo in situ, in the 

 extreme north-west of Alaska. Capt. Jacobsen obtained a 

 number of objects, made of this mineral, and also some 



* Page 229, Fig. 3, of English transalation, by A. Leslie, London, 

 1881. 

 f Page 236 of English translation. 



