246 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. XIV. 
We also visited the dwellings of the reindeer-Chukch 
families. They resembled the Chukch tents we had seen 
before, and the mode of life of the inhabitants differed little 
from that of the coast-Chukches, with whom we passed the 
winter. They were even clothed in the same way, excepting 
that the men wore a number of small bells in the belt. The 
number of the reindeer which the three families owned was, 
according to an enumeration which I made when the herd had 
with evident pleasure settled down at noon in warm sunshine 
on a snow-field in the neighbourhood of the tents, only about 
400, thus considerably fewer than is required to feed three Lapp 
families. The Ohukches have instead a better supply of hsh, 
and, above all, better hunting than the Lapps; they also do 
not drink any coffee, and themselves collect a part of their 
food from the vegetable kingdom. The natives received us in 
a very friendly way, and offered to sell or rather barter three 
reindeer, a transaction which on account of our hasty departure 
was not carried into effect. 
The mountains in the neighbourhood of Konyam Bay were 
high and split up into pointed summits with deep valleys still 
partly filled with snow. ISTo glaciers appear to exist there at 
present. Probably however the fjords here and the sounds, 
like St. Lawrence Bay, Kolyutschin Bay, and probably all the 
other deeper bays on the coast of the Chukch Peninsula, have 
been excavated by former glaciers. It may perhaps be un¬ 
certain whether a true inland-ice covered the whole country; 
it is certain that the ice-cap did not extend over the plains of 
Siberia, where it can be proved that no Tee Age in a Scandi¬ 
navian sense ever existed, and where the state of the land from 
the Jurassic period onwards was indeed subjected to some 
changes, but to none of the thoroughgoing mundane revolutions 
which in former times geologists loved to depict in so bright 
was made by Von ]\Iidderidorf¥, who found a species of Physa on the 
Taiinnr Peninsnla, 
