The entrance consists of a low door, which, when necessary, may be closed with a reindeer skin. The floor of the outer tent consists of the bare ground. This is kept very clean, and the few household articles are hung up carefully and in an orderly manner along the walls on the inner and outer sides of the tent. Near the tent are some posts, as high as a man, driven into the ground, with cross pieces on which skin boats, oars, javelins, &c., are laid, and from which fishing and seal nets are suspended.
In the neighbourhood of the dwellings the storehouse is placed. It consists of a cellar excavated at some suitable place. The sites of old Onkilon dwellings are often used for this purpose. The descent is commonly covered with pieces of driftwood which are loaded with stones, at one place the door, or rather the hatch, of the cellar consisted of a whale's shoulder-blade. In consequence of the unlimited confidence which otherwise was wont to prevail between the natives and us, we were surprised to find them unwilling to give the Vega men admittance to their storehouses. Possibly the report of our excavations for old implements at the sites of Onkilon dwellings at Irkaipij had spread to Kolyutschin, and been interpreted as attempts at plunder.
The tents were always situated on the sea shore, generally on the small neck of land which separates the strand lagoons from
the sea. They are erected and taken down in a few hours. A Chukch family can therefore easily change its place of residence, and does remove very often from one village to another. Sometimes it appears to own the wooden frame of a tent at several places, and in such cases at removal there are taken along only the tent covering, the dogs, and the most necessary skin and household articles. The others are left without inclosure, lock, or watch, at the former dwelling-place, and one is certain to find all untouched on his return. During short stays at a place there are used, even when the temperature of the air is considerably under the freezing-point, exceedingly defective tents or huts made with the skin boats that may happen to be available. Thus a young couple who returned in spring to Pitlekaj lived happy and content in a single thin and ragged tent or conical skin hut which below where it was broadest was only two and a half metres across. An accurate inventory, which I took during the absence of the newly married pair, showed that their whole household furniture consisted of a bad lamp, a good American axe, some reindeer skins, a small piece of mirror, a great many empty preserve tins from the Vega, which among other things were used for cooking, a fire-drill, a comb, leather for a pair of moccassins, some sewing implements, and some very incomplete and defective tools.
The boats are made of walrus skin, sewed together and stretched over a light frame-work of wood and pieces of bone. The different parts of the frame-work are bound together with thongs of skin or strings of whalebone. In form and size the Chukches' large boat, atkuat, called by the Russians baydar, corresponds completely with the Greenlander's umiak or woman's boat. It is so light that four men can take it upon their shoulders, and yet so roomy that thirty men can be conveyed in it. One seldom sees anatkuat, or boats intended for only one man; they are much worse built and uglier than the Greenlander's kayak. The large boats are rowed with broad-bladed oars, of which every man or woman manages only one. By means of these oars a sufficient number of rowers can for a little raise the speed of the boat to ten kilometres per hour. Like the Greenlanders, however, they often cease rowing in order to rest, laugh, and chatter, then row furiously for some minutes rest themselves again, row rapidly, and so on. When the sea is covered with thin newly formed ice they put two men in the fore of the boat with one leg over in order to trample the ice in pieces. During winter the boats are laid up, and instead the dog-sledges are put in order. These are of a different construction from the Greenland sledges, commonly very light and narrow, made of some flexible kind of wood, and shod with plates of whales' jawbones, whales' ribs, or whalebone. In order to improve the running, the runners before the start are carefully covered with a layer of ice from two or three millimetres in thickness by repeatedly pouring water over them.[281] The different parts of the sledge are not fastened together by nails, but are bound together by strips of skin or strings of whalebone. On the low uncomfortable seat there commonly lies a piece of skin, generally of the Polar bear. The number of dogs that are harnessed to each sledge is variable. I have seen a Chukch riding behind two small lean dogs, who however appeared to draw their heavy load over even hard snow without any extraordinary exertion. At other sledges I have seen ten or twelve dogs, and a sledge laden with goods was drawn by a team of twenty-eight. The dogs are generally harnessed one pair before another to a long line common to all,[282] sometimes in the case of short excursions more than two abreast, or so irregularly that their position in relation to the sledge appears to have depended merely on the accidental length of the draught-line and the caprice of the driver. The dogs are guided not by reins but by continual crying and shouting, accompanied by lashes from a long whip. There is, besides, in every properly equipped sledge a short and thick staff mounted with iron, with a number of iron rings attached to the upper end. When nothing else will do, this staff is thrown at the offending animal. The staff is so heavy that the animal may readily get its death by such a throw. The dogs know this, and in consequence are so afraid of this grim implement that the rattling of the rings is sufficient to induce them to put forth extreme efforts. During rests the team is tied to the staff, which is driven into the snow. The dog harness is made of inch-wide straps of skin, forming a neck or shoulder band, united on both sides by a strap to a girth, to one side of which the draught strap is fastened. Thanks to the excellent protection against the harness galling which the bushy coat of the dogs affords, little attention is needed for the harness, and I have never seen a single dog that was idle in consequence of sores from the harness. On the other hand, their feet are often hurt by the sharp snow. On this account the equipment of every sledge embraces a number of dog shoes of the appearance shown in the accompanying woodcut. They are used only in case of need.
The Chukch dogs are of the same breed, but smaller, than the Eskimo dogs in Danish Greenland. They resemble wolves, are long-legged, long-haired, and shaggy. The ears are short, commonly upright, their colour very variable, from black or white, and black or white spotted, to grey or yellowish-brown. For innumerable generations they have been used as draught animals, while as watch dogs they have not been required in a country where theft or robbery appears never to take place. The power of barking they have therefore completely lost, or perhaps they never possessed it. Even a European may come into the outer tent without any of the dogs there informing their owners sleeping in the inner tent by a sound of the foreigner's arrival.
On the other hand, they are good though slow draught animals, being capable of long-continued exertion. They are as dirty and as peaceable as their owners. There are no fights made between dog-teams belonging to different tents, and they are rare between the dogs of an encampment and those of strangers. In Europe dogs are the friends of their masters and the enemies of each other, here they are the friends of each other and the slaves of their masters. In winter they appear in case of necessity to get along with very little food, they are then exceedingly lean, and for the most part are motionless in some snow-drift. They seldom leave the neighbourhood of the tent alone, not even to search for food or hunt at their own hand and for their own account. This appears to me so much the more remarkable, as they are often several days, I am inclined to say weeks, in succession without getting any food from their masters. A piece of a whale, with the skin and part of the flesh adhering, washed out of frozen sandy strata thus lay untouched some thousand paces from Pitlekaj, and the neighbourhood of the tents, where the hungry dogs were constantly wandering about, formed, as has been already stated, a favourite haunt for ptarmigan and hares during winter. Young dogs some months old are already harnessed along with the team in order that they may in time become accustomed to the draught tackle. During the cold season the dogs are permitted to live in the outer tent, the females with their young even in the inner. We had two Scotch collies with us on the Vega. They at first frightened the natives very much with their bark. To the dogs of Chukches they soon took the same superior standing as the European claims for himself in relation to the savage. The dog was distinctly preferred by the female Chukch canine population, and that too without the fights to which such favour on the part of the fair commonly gives rise. A numerous canine progeny of mixed Scotch-Chukch breed has thus arisen at Pitlekaj. The young dogs had a complete resemblance to their father, and the natives were quite charmed with them.