The other sort of fire-implement consists of a dry wooden pin, which by a common bow-drill is made to rub against a block of dry half-blackened wood. The upper part of this pin runs in a drill block of wood or bone. In one of the tools which I purchased, the astragalus of a reindeer was used for this purpose. In the light-stock holes have been made to give support to the pin, and perhaps to facilitate the formation of the half-carbonised wood-meal which the drilling loosens from the light-stock and in which the red heat arises. When fire is to be lighted by means of this implement, the lower part of the drill pin is daubed over with a little train-oil, one foot holds the light-stock firm against the ground, the bowstring is put round the drill pin, the left hand presses the pin with the drill block against the light-stock, and the bow is carried backwards and forwards, not very rapidly, but evenly, steadily, and uninterruptedly, until fire appears. A couple of minutes are generally required to complete the process The women appear to be more accustomed than the men to the use of this implement. An improved form of it consisted of a wooden pin on whose lower part a lense-formed and perforated block of wood was fixed. This block served as fly-wheel and weight. Across the wooden pin ran a perforated cross-bar which was fastened with two sinews to its upper end. By carrying this cross-bar backwards and forwards the pin could be turned round with great rapidity. The implement appears to me the more remarkable as it shows a new way of using the stone or brick lenses, which are often found in graves or old house-sites from the Stone Age.
Among the Chukches, as among many other wild races, lucifer matches have obtained the honour of being the first of the inventions of the civilised races that have been recognised as indisputably superior to their own. A request for lucifer matches was therefore one of the most common of those with which our friends at Behring's Straits tormented us during winter, and they were willing for a single box to offer things that in comparison were very valuable. Unfortunately we had no superfluous supply of this necessary article, or perhaps I ought to say fortunately, for if the Chukches for some years were able to get a couple of boxes of matches for a walrus tusk, I believe that with their usual carelessness they would soon completely forget the use of their own fire-implements.
Among household articles I may further mention the following:—
The hide-scraper ([fig. 1, p. 117]) is of stone or iron and fastened to a wooden handle. With this tool the moistened hide is cleaned very particularly, and is then rubbed, stretched, and kneaded so carefully that several days go to the preparation of a single reindeer skin. That this is hard work is also shown by the woman who is employed at it in the tent dripping with perspiration. While thus employed she sits on a part of the skin and stretches out the other part with the united help of the hands and the bare feet. When the skin has been sufficiently worked, she fills a vessel with her own urine, mixes this with comminuted willow bark, which has been dried over the lamp, and rubs the blood-warm liquid into the reindeer skin. In order to give this a red colour on one side, the bark of a species of Pinus (?) is mixed with the tanning liquid. The skins are made very soft by this process, and on the inner side almost resemble chamois leather. Sometimes too the reindeer skin is tanned to real chamois of very excellent quality.
Two sorts of ice mattocks, the shaft is of wood, the blade of the spade-formed one of whalebone, of the others of a walrus tusk, it is fixed to the shaft by skin thongs with great skill
Sometimes both the shaft and blade are of bone, fastened together in a somewhat different way.
Hones of native clay-slate. These are often perforated at one end and carried along with the knife, the spoon, and the sucking-tube, fastened with an ivory tongs in the belt.
Home-made vessels of wood, bone of the whale, whalebone, and skin of different kinds.
Knives, boring tools, axes and pots of European, American, or Siberian origin, and in addition casks, pieces of cable, iron scrap, preserved-meat tins, glasses, bottles, &c., obtained from ships which have anchored along the coast. Vessels have regularly visited the sea north of Behring's Straits only during the latest decades, and the contact between the sailors and the Chukches has not yet exerted any considerable influence on the mode of life of the latter. The natives, however, complain that the whalers destroy the walrus-hunting, while on the other hand they see with pleasure trading vessels occasionally visiting their coasts.