XIV.] 
USE OF WHALE-BONES. 
223 
tent. In the absence of drift-wood, whale and seal bones 
drenched in train-oil are also used as fuel in cooking in the 
open air during summer; a large curved whale rib was placed 
over the fire-place to serve as a pot-holder; the vertebrae of 
the whale were used as mortars; the entrances to the blubber- 
cellars were closed with shoulder-blades of the whale; hollowed 
whale-bones were used as lamps; slices of whale-bone or pieces 
' of the under-jaw and the straighter ribs were used for shoeing 
the sledges, for spades and ice-mattocks, the different parts 
of the implement being bound together with whale-bone 
fibres, &c.^ 
Masses of black seal-flesh, and long, white, fluttering strings 
of inflated intestines, were hung up between the tents, and in 
their interior there were everywhere to be seen bloody pieces 
of flesh, prepared in a disgusting way or lying scattered about, 
whereby both the dwellings and their inhabitants, who were 
occupied with hunting, had a more than usually disagreeble 
appearance. A pleasant interruption was formed by the heaps 
of green willow branches which were placed at the entrance 
of nearly every tent, commonly surrounded by women and 
children, who ate the leaves with delight. At some places 
whole sacks of Rhodiola and various other plants had been 
collected for food during wdnter. As distinctive of the Chukches 
here it may be mentioned in the last place that they were 
abundantly provided with European household articles, among 
them Remington guns, and that none of them asked for 
spirits. 
Most of the seals which were seen in the tents were the common 
Plioca hispida, but_ along with them we found several skins of 
1 There is still in existence a sketch of a tribe, living far to the south on 
the coast of the Indian Sea, who at the time of Alexander the Great used 
the bones of the whale in a similar way. ‘‘They build their houses so 
that the richest among them take bones of the whale, which the sea casts 
up, and use them as beams ; of the larger bones they make their doors. 
Arrian, Historia Indica, XXIX. and XXX.. 
