PORT CLARENCE 



IO3 



passing in sight of King Island and the Diamedes, and 

 about noon again dropped anchor behind a long sickle- 

 shaped sand spit, which curves out from the southern 

 headland, ten or twelve miles away. In the great basin 

 behind this sand bar a dozen vessels of the whaling fleet 

 were anchored and making ready to enter the Arctic 

 Ocean, where some of them expected to spend the winter. 

 The presence of the fleet had drawn together upon the 

 sand bar over two hundred Eskimo for trade and barter 

 with the whalers. Their shapely skin boats, filled with 

 people — men, women, children, and dogs, often to the 

 number of twenty — soon swarmed about our ship. They 



ESKIMOS ALONGSIDE SHIP IN ' OOMIAKS ' OR SKIN BOATS. 



had all manner of furs, garments, baskets, ornaments and 

 curios for sale or for barter. An animated and pictur- 

 esque scene they presented and dozens of cameras were 

 leveled at them. In dress they presented a much more 

 trim and shapely appearance than the people we had just 

 left in Siberia, though much the same in other respects. 



