68 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
spoiled Vega-imo\uiiQ Heitinacka. They ran hither and thither 
like light-hearted and playful children, to put the net in order 
and procure all that was needed for the fishing. We had carried 
with us from the vessel a net nine metres long and one deep. 
Along its upper border fioats were fixed; to the lower was bound 
a long pole, to which were fastened five sticks, by which the pole 
was sunk to the bottom of the lagoon, a little way from the 
shore. Some natives wading in the cold water then pushed 
the net towards the land with sticks and the pole, which glided 
easily forward over the bottom of the lake, overgrown as it was 
with grass. In order to keep the fish from swimming away, the 
women waded at the sides of the net with their pesks much 
tucked up, screaming and making a noise, and now and then 
standing in order to indicate by a violent shaking that the water 
was very cold. The catch was abundant. We caught by 
hundreds a sort of fish altogether new to us, of a type which 
we should rather have expected to find in the marshes of the 
Equatorial regions than up here in the north. The fish were 
transported in a dog sledge to the vessel, where part of them was 
placed in spirits for the zoologists and the rest fried, not without 
a protest from our old cook, who thought that the black slimy 
fish looked remarkably nasty and ugly. But the Chukches 
were right: it was a veritable delicacy, in taste somewhat 
resembling eel, but finer and more fleshy. These fish were 
besides as tough to kill as eels, for after lying an hour and a 
half in the air they swam, if replaced in the water, about as fast 
as before. How this species of fish passes the winter is still more 
enigmatical than the winter life of the insects. For the lagoon 
has no outlet and appears to freeze completely to the bottom. 
The mass of water which was found in autumn in the lagoon 
therefore still lay there as an unmelted layer of ice not yet 
broken up, which was covered with a stratum of flood water 
several feet deep, by which the neighbouring grassy plains were 
inundated. It was in this flood water that the fishing took place. 
