X.] 
STUDIES OF THE CHUKCH LANGUAGE. 
489 
never neglected, especially during the time when their hunting 
failed, to bring daily on board driftwood and the vertebrae and 
other bones of the whale. They bartered these for bread. A 
load of five bits of wood, from four to five inches in diameter 
and six feet long, was commonly paid for with two or three ship 
biscuits, that is to say with about 250 gram bread, the vertebra 
of a whale with two ship biscuits, &c. By degrees two young 
natives got into the habit of coming on board daily for the 
purpose of performing, quite at their leisure, the office of 
servant. The cook was their patron, and they obtained from 
him in compensation for their services the larger share of the 
left victuals. So considerable a quantity of food was distributed 
partly as payment for services rendered or for goods purchased, 
partly as gifts, that we contributed in a very great degree to 
mitigate the famine which during midwinter threatened to 
break out among the population. 
None of the natives in the neighbourhood of the Vegas 
winter station professed the Christian religion. None of them 
spoke any European language, though one or two knew a couple 
of English words and a Kussian word of salutation. This was 
a very unfortunate circumstance, which caused us much trouble. 
But it was soon remedied by Lieut. Nordquist specially devoting 
himself to the study of their language, and that with such zeal 
and success that in a fortnight he could make himself pretty 
well understood. The natives stated to De Long in the autumn 
of 1879 that a person on the ''man of war” which wintered on 
the north coast, spoke Chukch exceedingly well. The difficulty 
of studying the language was increased, to a not inconsiderable 
degree, by the Chukches in their wish to co-operate with us in 
finding a common speech being so courteous as not to correct, 
but to adopt the mistakes, in the pronunciation or meaning of 
words that were made on the Vega. As a fruit of his studies 
Lieut. Nordquist has drawn up an extensive vocabulary of this 
little known language, and given a sketch of its grammatical 
