126 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. XII. 
coast, on the contrary, there is the most complete equality. We 
could never discover the smallest trace of any man exercising 
the least authority beyond his own family or his own tent. 
The coast Chukches are not only heathens, but are also, so 
far as we could observe, devoid of every conception of higher 
beings. There are, however, superstitions. Thus most of them 
wear round the neck leather straps, to which small wooden tongs, 
or wooden carvings, are fixed. These are not parted with, and 
are not readily shown to foreigners. A boy had a band of beads 
sewed to his hood, and in front there was fastened an ivory 
carving, probably intended to represent a bear’s head (fig. 6, on 
p. 117). It was so small, and so inartistically cut, that a 
man could undoubtedly make a dozen of them in a day. I, how¬ 
ever, offered the father unsuccessfully a clasp-knife and tobacco 
for it, but the boy himself, having heard our bargaining, 
exchanged it soon after for a piece of sugar. When the father 
knew this he laughed good-naturedly, without making any 
attempt to get the bargain undone. 
To certain tools small wooden images are affixed, as to the 
scraper figured above (fig. 3, p. 117), and similar images are 
found in large numbers in the lumber-room of the tent, where 
pieces of ivory, bits of agate and scrap iron, are preserved. A 
selection from the large collection of such images which I made 
is here reproduced in woodcuts. If, also, these carvings may, in 
fact, be considered as representations of higher beings, the 
religious ideas which are connected with them, even judged 
from the Shaman standpoint, are exceedingly indistinct, less a 
consciousness, which still lives among the people, than a re¬ 
miniscence from former times. Most of the figures bear an 
evident stamp of the present dress and mode of life of the 
people. It appears to me to be remarkable, that in all the 
bone or wood carvings I have met with, the face has been cut 
flatter than it is in reality in this race of men. Some of the 
carvings appear to remind me of an ancient Buddhist image. 
