238 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
so puzzlingly like the well-known nephrite from High Asia, that 
I am disposed to believe that it actually comes originally from 
that locality. In such a case the occurrence of nephrite at 
Behring’s Straits is important, because it cannot be explained in 
any other way than either by supposing that the tribes living 
here have carried the mineral with them from their original 
home in High Asia, or that during the Stone Age of High Asia 
a like extended commercial intercommunication took place 
between the wild races as now exists, or at least some decades 
ago existed, along the north parts of Asia and America. 
On the north side of the harbour we found an old Euro¬ 
pean or American train-oil boiling establishment. In the 
neighbourhood of it were two Eskimo graves. The corpses had 
been laid on the ground fully clothed, without the protection 
of any coffin, but surrounded by a close fence consisting of a 
number of tent poles driven crosswise into the ground. Along¬ 
side one of the corpses lay a kayah with oars, a loaded double- 
barrelled gun with locks at half-cock and caps on, various other 
weapons, clothes,- tinderbox, snow-shoes, drinking-vessels, two 
masks carved in wood and smeared with blood (figures 1 and 
2, page 241), and strangely-shaped animal , figures. Such 
were seen also in the tents. Bags of sealskin, intended to be 
Mithridates, and has given rise to so much discussion, was nephrite. 
Nephrite was also perhaps the first of all stones to be used ornamentally. 
For we find axes and chisels of this material among the people of the 
Stone Age both in Europe (where no locality is known where unworked 
nephrite is found) and in Asia, America, and New Zealand. In Asia 
implements of nephrite are found both on the Chukch Peninsula and in old 
graves from the Stone Age in the southern part of the country. They 
have been discovered at Telma, sixty versts from Irkutsk, by Mr. J. N. 
Wilkoffski, conservator of the East Siberian Geographical Society. In 
scientific mineralogy nephrite is first mentioned under the name of Kascho- 
long {i.e. a species of stone from the river Kasch). It has heen brought 
home under this name by Eenat, a prisoner-of-war from Charles XII.’s 
army, from High Asia, and was given by him to Swedish mineralogists, 
who described it very correctly, though kascholong has since been 
erroneously considered a species of quartz. 
