30 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
the dogs pointed their ears, uttered a bark of joy, and ran at full 
speed towards the goal. We arrived at 10.30 p.m. In the tent 
we were hospitably received by its mistress, who immediately 
made the necessary preparations for our obtaining food and 
rest. Yettugin himself was not at home, but he soon returned 
with a sledge drawn by reindeer. These animals had scarcely 
been unharnessed when they ran back to the herd, which 
according to Yettugin’s statement was six kilometres east of 
the tent. 
“ I have never seen a family so afflicted with ailments as 
Yettugin’s. The sexagenarian father united in himself almost 
all the bodily ailments which could fall to the lot of a mortal. 
He was blind, leprous (?), and had no use of the left hand, the 
right side of the face, and probably of the legs. His body was 
nearly everywhere covered with the scars of old sores from four 
to five centimetres in diameter. As Hr. Almquist and I were 
compelled to pass the night in the same confined sleeping- 
chamber with him, it was therefore not to be wondered at that 
we drew ourselves as much as possible into our corner. The 
sleeping-chamber or inner tent of a reindeer-Chukch is besides 
much more habitable than that of a coast-Chukch; the air, if 
not exactly pure, may at least be breathed, and the thick layer 
of reindeer skins which covers the tent fioor may well compare 
in softness with our beds on board. Yettugin, his wife 
Tengaech, and his brother Keuto, slept out of doors in order 
to give us more room and not to disturb us when rising. 
Keuto had inherited no small portion of his father’s calamity. 
He was deaf, half idiotic, and on his body there were already 
traces of such spots as on the old man’s. Keuto was however an 
obliging youth, who during our stay in the tent did all that he 
could to be of use to us, and constantly wandered about to get 
birds and plants for us. He was a skilful archer; I saw him at a 
distance of twenty or twenty-five paces kill a small bird with a 
blunt arrow, and when I placed myself as a target he hit me right 
in the middle of the breast at a distance of perhaps thirty metres. 
“The 14th was employed by me in astronomical and 
geodetical observations, and by Dr. Almquist in excursions in 
the neighbourhood of Yettugin’s tent in order to investigate the 
fauna and flora of the neighbourhood. About 10 o’clock P.M. 
he returned, quite exhausted after eight hours’ walking in deep 
water-drenched snow under a perceptible solar heat. The 
results of the excursion were in all respects exceedingly good, 
not only in consequence of a number of finds in natural history, 
but also through the discovery that the shore of Kolyutschin 
