IX.] 
TRAFFIC WITH THE CHURCHES. 
439 
availed myself of the opportunity of procuring by barter a 
large number of articles distinctive of the Chukches’ mode of 
life. Eight years before I had collected and purchased a large 
number of ethnographical articles, and I was now surprised at 
the close correspondence there was between the household 
articles purchased from the Chukches, and those found in 
Greenland in old Eskimo 'graves. 
, My traffic with the natives was on this occasion attended with 
great difficulty. For I suffered from a sensible want of the first 
condition for the successful prosecution of a commercial under¬ 
taking, goods in demand. Because, during the expeditions of 
1875 and 1876, I found myself unable to make use of the 
small wares I carried with me for barter with the natives, and 
found that Russian paper-money was readily taken. I had, at 
the departure of the Vega from Sweden, taken with me only 
money, not wares intended for barter. But money was of little 
use here. A twenty-five rouble note was less valued by the 
Chukches than a Kshowy soap-box, and a gold or silver coin less 
than tin or brass buttons. I could, indeed, get rid of a few 
fifty-ore pieces, but only after I had first adapted them by 
boring to take the place of earrings. 
The only proper wares for barter I now had were tobacco and 
Dutch clay pipes. Of tobacco I had only some dozen bundles, 
taken from a parcel which Mr. Sibiriakoff intended to import into 
Siberia by theYenisej. Certain as I was of reaching the Pacific 
this autumn, I scattered my stock of tobacco around me with 
so liberal a hand that it was soon exhausted, and my Chukch 
friends' wants satisfied for several weeks. I therefore, as far as 
this currency was concerned, already when the Vega was beset, 
suffered , the prodigal’s fate of being" soon left with an empty 
purse. Dutch clay pipes, again, I had in great abundance, from 
the accident that two boxes of these pipes, which were to have 
been imported into Siberia with the expedition of 1876, did not 
reach Trondhjem until the Ymer had sailed from that town. 
