XL] MILD WEATHER FOLLOWED BY SEVERE COLD. 
5 
blubber cellars, which were soon filled to overflowing. At 
Yinretlen, the encampment nearer us, the hunters on the other 
hand had obtained only eight seals. Gladness and want of care 
for the morrow at all events prevailed here also, and our skin- 
clad friends availed themselves of the opportunity to exhibit a 
self-satisfied disdain of the simple provisions from the Vega, 
which the day before they had begged for with gestures so pitiful, 
and on which they must, in a day or two, again depend. The 
children, who had fallen off during recent weeks, if not in com¬ 
parison with European children, at least with well-fed Chukch 
ones, began speedily to regain their former condition, and likewise 
the older people. Begging ceased for some days, but the vessel’s 
deck still formed a favourite rendezvous for crowds of men, 
women, and children. Many passed here the greater part of 
the day, cheerful and gay in a temperature of —40° C, gossiped, 
helped a little, but always only a little, at the work on board, 
and so on. The mild weather, the prospect of our getting free, 
and of an abundant fishing for the Chukches, however, soon 
ceased. The temperature again sank below the freezing-point, 
that is of mercury, and the sea froze so far out from the shore 
that the Chukches could no longer carry on any fishing. Instead 
we saw them one morning come marching, like prisoners on an 
Egyptian or Assyrian monument, in goose-march over the ice 
toward the vessel, each with a burden on his shoulder, of whose 
true nature, while they were at a distance, we endeavoured in 
vain to form a guess. It was pieces of ice, not particularly 
large, which they, self-satisfied, cheerful and happy at their new 
hit, handed over to the cook to get from him in return some of 
the Imuka (food) they some days before had despised. 
The first time the temperature of the air sank under the 
freezing-point of mercury, was in January. It now became 
necessary to use instead of the mercury the spirit thermometers, 
which in expectation of the severe cold had been long ago hung 
