CHAP. XIV.] THE ESKIMO AT PORT CLARENCE. 
235 
manner that they resembled large beetles, being intended for 
use in the same way as salmon-flies at home. 
Fire was got partly with steel, flint, and tinder, partly by 
means of the fire-drill. Many also used American lucifers. The 
bow of the fire-drill was often of ivory, richly ornamented with 
hunting figures of different kinds. Their tools were more 
elegant, better carved and more richly coloured with graphite ^ 
and red ochre than those of the Chukches; the people were 
better off and owned a larger number of skin-boats, both 
kayaks and umiaks. This undoubtedly depends on the sea 
being here covered with ice for a shorter time and the ice being 
thinner than on the Asiatic side, and the hunting accordingly 
being better. All the old accounts however agree in represent¬ 
ing that in former times the Chukches were recognised as a 
great power by the other savage tribes in these regions, but 
all recent observations indicate that that time is now past. A 
certain respect for them, however, appears still to prevail among 
their neighbours. 
1 Graphite must be found in great abundance on the Asiatic side of 
Behring’s Straits. I procured during winter a number of pieces, which had 
evidently been rolled in running water. Chamisso mentions in Kotzebue’s 
Voyages (iii. p. 169) that he had seen this mineral along with red ochre 
among the inhabitants at St. Lawrence Bay ; and Lieut. Hooper states in 
his work (p. 139), that graphite and red ochre are found at the village 
Oongwysac between Chukotskoj-nos and Behring’s Straits. The latter 
colour was sold at a high price to the inhabitants of distant encamp¬ 
ments. These minerals have undoubtedly been used in the same way from 
time immemorial, and they are probably, like flint and nephrite, among 
the few kinds of stone which were used by the men of the Stone Age. So 
far as is known, graphite came first into use in Europe during the middle 
ages. A black-lead pencil is mentioned and delineated for the first time 
by Conrad Gessner in 1565. The rich but now exhausted graphite seam 
at Borrowdale, in England, is mentioned for the first time by Dr. Merret 
in 1667, as containing a useful mineral peculiar to England. Very rich 
graphite seams have been found during recent decades, both at the 
mouth of the Yenisej (Sidoroff’s graphite quarry) and at a spur of 
the Sayan mountains in the southern part of Siberia (Alibert’s graphite 
quarry), and these discoveries have played a certain role in the recent 
history of the exploration of the country. 
