446 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
some other reason unintelligible to him, we avoided touching the 
blubber-stores, but instead rooted up in search of old fragments 
of bone or stone-flakes. 
Remains of old dwellings were found even at the highest 
points among the stone mounds of Irkaipij, and here perhaps W'as 
the last asylum of the Onkilon race. At many places on the 
mountain slopes were seen large collections of bones, consisting 
partly of a large number (at one place up to fifty) of bears’ 
skulls overgrown with lichens, laid in circles, with the nose 
inwards, partly of the skulls of the reindeer. Polar bear,‘ and 
walrus, mixed together in a less regular circle, in the midst of 
which reindeer horns were found set up. Along with the 
reindeer horns there was found the coronal bone of an elk with 
portions of the horns still attached. Beside the other bones lay 
innumerable temple-bones of the seal, for the most part fresh 
and not lichen-covered. Other seal bones were almost com¬ 
pletely absent, which shows that temple-bones were not remains 
of weathered seal skulls, but had been gathered to the place for 
one reason or another in recent times. No portions of human 
skeletons were found in the neighbourhood. These places are 
sacrificial places, which the one race has inherited from the 
other. 
Weangel gives the following account of the tribe which lived 
here in former times :— 
“ As is well known the sea-coast at Anadyr Bay is inhabited 
by a race of men, who, by their bodily formation, dress, 
language, differ manifestly from the Chukches, and call 
themselves Onkilon - seafolk. In the account of Captain 
Billing’s journey through the country of the Chukches, 
he shows the near relationship the language of this coast 
tribe has to that of the Aleutians at Kadyak, who are of 
the same primitive stem as the Greenlanders. Tradition 
1 Among the bears’ skulls brought home from this place Lieut. Nordquist 
found after his return home the skull of a sea-lion {Otaria Stelleri). It is, 
however, uncertain whether the animal was captured in the region, or 
whether the cranium was brought hither from Kamchatka. 
