502 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
seemed very suspicious, and appeared afterwards to have 
been partly fabricated, or perhaps to have been misunderstood 
by us. But after our return to the world of newspapers we 
found that Menka had actually executed his commission. He, 
however, did not reach Anadyrsk until the Thence 
the packet was sent to Irkutsk, arriving there on the The 
news reached Sweden by telegraph six days after, on the 16th 
May, just at a time when concern for the fate of the Vega was 
beginning to be very great, and the question of relief expeditions 
was seriously entertained.^ 
In order to relieve the apprehensions of our friends at home, 
it was, however, exceedingly important to give them some 
accounts of the position of the Vega during winter, and I 
therefore offered all the purchasing power which the treasures 
of guns, powder, ball, food, fine shirts, and even spirits, collected 
on board, could exert, in order to induce some natives to convey 
Lieutenants Nordquist and Bove to Markova or Nischni 
Kolymsk. The negotiations seemed at first to go on very well, 
an advance was demanded and given, but when the journey 
should have commenced the Chukches always refused to start 
on some pretext or other^—now it was too cold, now too dark, 
now there was no food for the dogs. The negotiations had thus 
no other result than to make us acquainted with one of the 
few less agreeable sides of the Chukches’ disposition, namely 
the complete untrustworthiness of these otherwise excellent 
savages, and their peculiar idea of the binding force of an 
agreement. 
The plans of travel just mentioned, however, led to Lieu¬ 
tenant Nordquist making an excursion with dog-sledges in order 
to be even with one of the natives, who had received an advance 
^ The King of Sweden has since ordered a gold medal to be given to 
Wassili Menka in recognition of the fidelity with which he executed the 
commission of carrying our letters to a Eussian post station. 
