XIT.] 
VEGETABLE FOOD OF THE CHUKCHES. 
in 
soup is made from the pieces along with water, and is eaten 
warm. In the same way the contents of the reindeer stomach 
is used. Algge and different kinds of roots are also eaten, among 
the latter a kind of wrinkled tubers, which, as already stated 
(Vol. I., p. 450) have a very agreeable taste. 
In summer the Chukches eat cloud-berries, red bilberries, and 
other berries, which are said to be found in great abundance in 
the interior of the country. The quantity of vegetable matter 
which is collected for food at that season of the year is very 
considerable, and the natives do not appear to be very particular 
in their choice, if the leaves are only green, juicy, and free from 
any bitter taste. When the inhabitants, in consequence of 
scarcity of food, removed in the beginning of February from 
Pitlekaj, they carried with them several sacks of frozen veget¬ 
ables, and there were still some left in the cellars to be taken 
away as required. In the tents at St. Lawrence Bay there lay 
heaps of leaf-clad willow-twigs and sacks filled with leaves and 
stalks of Bhodiola. The writers who quote the Chukches as 
an example of a race living exclusively on substances derived 
from the animal kingdom thus commit a complete mistake. On 
the contrary, they appear at certain seasons of the year to be more 
“ graminivorous ” than any other people I know, and with respect 
to this their taste appears to mo to give the anthropologist a hint 
of certain traits of the mode of life of the people of the Stone Age 
which have been completely overlooked. To judge from the 
Chukches our primitive ancestors by no means so much re¬ 
sembled beasts of prey as they are commonly imagined to have 
done, and it may, perhaps, have been the case that helium 
omnium inter omnes ” was first brought in with the higher 
culture of the Bronze or Iron Age. 
The cooking of the Chukches, like that of most wild races, 
is very simple. After a successful catch all the dwellers in the 
tent gormandise on the killed animal, and appear to find a 
special pleasure in making their faces and hands as bloody as 
