XII.] 
THE COAST AND EEINDEER CHUKCHES. 
81 
inhabitants at St. Lawrence Bay spoke Chukch, with little 
mixture of foreign words, and differed in their mode of life and 
appearance only inconsiderably from the Chukches, whom 
during the course of the winter we learned to know from nearly 
all parts of the Chukch peninsula. The same was the case with 
the natives who came on board the Vega while we sailed past 
East Cape, and with the two families we visited in Konyam Bay. 
But the natives in the north-west part of St. Lawrence Island 
talked an Eskimo dialect, quite different from Chukch. There 
were, however, many Chukch words incorporated with it. At 
Port Clarence on the contrary there lived pure Eskimo. Among 
them we found a Chukch woman who informed us that there 
were Chukch villages also on the American side of Behring’s 
Strait, north of Prince of Wales Cape. These cannot, however, 
be very numerous or populous, as they are not mentioned in the 
accounts of the various English expeditions to those regions ; 
they are not noticed for instance in Dr. John Simpson’s 
instructive memoir on the Eskimo at Behring’s Straits. 
We were unable during the voyage of the Vega to obtain any 
data for estimating the number of the reindeer-Chukches. But 
the number of the coast Chukches may be arrived at in the follow¬ 
ing way. Lieutenant Nordquist collected from the numerous 
foremen who rested at the Vega information as to the names 
of the encampments which are to be found at present on the 
coast between Chaun Bay and Behring’s Straits, and the number 
of tents at each village. He thus ascertained that the number 
of the tents in the coast villages amounts to about 400. The 
number of inhabitants in every tent may be, according to our 
experience, averaged at five. The population on the line of coast 
in question may thus amount to about 2,000, at most to 2,500, 
men, women, and children. The number of the reindeer-Chukches 
appears to be about the same. The whole population of Chukch 
Land may thus now amount to 4,000 or 5,000 persons. The 
Cossack Popov already mentioned, reckoned in 1711 that all the 
VOL. II. 
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