138 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[oHAP. xn. 
examination, however, it was found not to have belonged to a 
seal, but to an old dog, whose head it was evidently thought 
might, without any damage to the hunting, be handed over to 
the white magicians. This time it went worse with the counter¬ 
feiter than in the case of the ptarmigan bargain. For a couple 
of my comrades undertook to make the boy ashamed in the 
presence of the other Chukches, saying with a laugh “ that he, 
a Chukch, must have been very stupid to commit such a mis¬ 
take,” and it actually appeared as if the scoff had in this case 
fallen into good ground. Another time, while I was in my 
watch in the ice-house, there came a native to me and informed 
me that he had driven a man from Irgunnuk to the vessel, but 
that the man had not paid him, and asked me on that account 
to give him a box of matches. When I replied that he must 
have been already well paid on the vessel for his drive, he said 
in a whining tone, “ only a very little piece of bread.” He was 
not the least embarrassed when I only laughed at the, as I well 
knew, untruthful statement, and did not give him what he 
asked. 
The Chukches commonly live in monogamy; it is only 
exceptionally that they have two wives, as was the case with 
Chepurin, who has been already mentioned. It appeared as if 
the wives were faithful to their husbands. It was only seldom 
that cases occurred in which women, either in jest or earnest, 
gave out that they wished a white man as a lover. A woman 
not exactly eminent for beauty or cleanliness said, for instance, 
on one occasion, that she had had two children by Chukches, 
and now she wished to have a third by one of the ship’s folk. 
The young women were modest, often very pretty, and evidently 
felt the same necessity of attracting attention by small 
coquettish artifices as Eve’s daughters of European race. We 
may also understand their peculiar pronunciation of the lan¬ 
guage as an expression of feminine coquetry. For when they 
wish to be attractive they replace the man’s ?’-sound with a soft 
