IX.] 
STAY AT IRKAIPIJ. 
449 
Between ns and the inhabitants of the present Chukch village 
at Irkaipij there soon arose very friendly relations. A somewhat 
stout, well-grown, tall and handsome man named Chepurin, we 
took at first to be chief. He was therefore repeatedly entertained 
in the gunroom, on which occasions small gifts were given him 
to secure his friendship. Chepurin had clearly a weakness for 
gentility and grandeur, and could now, by means of the barter 
he carried on with us and the presents he received, gratify his 
love of show to a degree of which he probably had never 
before dreamed. When during the last days of our stay he paid 
a visit to the Vega he was clad in a red woollen shirt drawn over 
his “pesk,” and from either ear hung a gilt watch-chain, to the 
lower end of which a perforated ten-ore piece was fastened. 
Already on our arrival he was better clothed than the others, his 
tent was larger and provided with two sleeping apartments, one 
for each of his wives. But notwithstanding all this we soon 
found that we had made a mistake, when, thinking that a society 
could not exist without government, we assigned to him so 
exalted a position. Here, as in all Chukch villages which we 
afterwards visited, absolute anarchy prevailed. 
At the same time the greatest unanimity reigned in the little 
headless community. Children, healthy and thriving, tenderly 
cared for by the inhabitants, were found in large numbers. A 
good word to them was sufficient to pave the way for a friendly 
reception in the tent. The women were treated as the equals of 
the men, and the wife was always consulted by the husband when a 
more important bargain than usual was to be made; many times 
it was carried through only after the giver of advice had been 
bribed with a neckerchief or a variegated handkerchief. The 
in geograpliical journals, it appears strange that he has now for the first 
time made public this important voyage. At all events, Dallmann’s 
statement that the musk-ox occurs on the coast of the Polar Sea and on 
Wrangel Land is erroneous. He has here confused the musk-ox with 
the reindeer. 
G G 
