CHAPTER XIV.
Passage through Behring's Straits—Arrival at Nunamo—Scarce species of seal—Rich vegetation—Passage to America—State of the ice—Port Clarence—The Eskimo—Return to Asia—Konyam Bay—Natural conditions there—The ice breaks up in the interior of Konyam Bay—St. Lawrence Island—Preceding visits to the Island—Departure to Behring Island.
After we had passed the easternmost promontory of Asia, the course was shaped first to St. Lawrence Bay, a not inconsiderable fjord, which indents the Chukch peninsula, a little south of the smallest part of Behring's Straits. It was my intention to anchor in this fjord as long as possible, in order to give the naturalists of the Vega expedition an opportunity of making acquaintance with the natural conditions of a part of Chukch Land which is more favoured by nature than the bare stretch of coast completely open to the winds of the Polar Sea, which we hitherto had visited. I would willingly have stayed first for some hours at Diomede Island, the market-place famed among the Polar tribes, situated in the narrowest part of the Straits, nearly half-way between Asia and America, and probably before the time of Columbus a station for traffic between the Old and the New Worlds. But such a delay would have been attended with too great difficulty and loss of time in consequence of the dense fog which prevailed here on the boundary between the warm sea free from drift-ice and the cold sea filled with drift-ice.
Even the high mountains on the Asiatic shore were still wrapped in a thick mist, from which only single mountain-summits now and then appeared. Next the vessel large fields of drift-ice were visible, on which here and there flocks of a beautifully marked species of seal (Histriophoca fasciata, Zimm) had settled. Between the pieces of ice sea-birds swarmed, mostly belonging to other species than those which are met with in the European Polar seas. The ice was fortunately so broken up that the Vega could steam forward at full speed to the neighbourhood of St. Lawrence Bay, where the coast was surrounded by some more compact belts of ice, which however were broken through with ease. First, in the mouth of the fjord itself impenetrable ice was met with, completely blocking the splendid haven of St. Lawrence Bay. The Vega was, therefore, compelled to anchor in the open road off the village Nunamo. But even here extensive ice-fields, though thin and rotten, drifted about; and long, but narrow, belts of ice passed the vessel in so large masses that it was not advisable to remain longer at the place. Our stay there was therefore confined to a few hours.
During the course of the winter Lieutenant Nordquist endeavoured to collect from the Chukches travelling past as complete information as possible regarding the Chukch villages or encampments which are found along the coast between Chaun Bay and Behring's Straits. His informants always finished their list with the village Ertryn, situated west of Cape Deschnev, explaining that farther east and south there lived another tribe, with whom they indeed did not stand in open enmity, but who, however, were not to be fully depended upon, and to whose villages they therefore did not dare to accompany any of us.[344] This statement also corresponds, as perhaps follows from what I have pointed out in the preceding chapter, with the accounts commonly found in books on the ethnography of this region. While we steamed forward cautiously in a dense fog in the neighbourhood of Cape Deschnev, twenty to thirty natives came rowing in a large skin boat to the vessel. Eager to make acquaintance with a tribe new to us, we received them with pleasure. But when they climbed over the side we found that they were pure Chukches, some of them old acquaintances, who during winter had been guests on board the Vega. "Ankali" said they, with evident contempt, are first met with farther beyond St. Lawrence Bay. When we anchored next day at the mouth of this bay we were immediately, as usual, visited by a large number of natives, and ourselves visited their tents on land. They still talked Chukch with a limited mixture of foreign words, lived in tents of a construction differing somewhat from the Chukches', and appeared to have a somewhat different cast of countenance. They themselves would not allow that there was any national difference between them and the old warrior and conqueror tribe on the north coast, but stated that the race about which we inquired were settled immediately to the south. Some days after we anchored in Konyam Bay (64° 49' N. L., 172° 53' W.L. from Greenwich). We found there only pure reindeer-owning Chukches; there was no coast population living by hunting and fishing. On the other hand, the inhabitants near our anchorage off St. Lawrence Island consisted of Eskimo and Namollo. It thus appears as if a great part of the Eskimo who inhabit the Asiatic side of Behring's Straits, had during recent times lost their own nationality and become fused with the Chukches. For it is certain that no violent expulsion has recently taken place here. It ought besides to be remarked that the name Onkilon which Wrangel heard given to the old coast population driven out by the Chukches is evidently nearly allied to the word Ankali, with which the reindeer-Chukch at present distinguishes the coast-Chukch, also that, in the oldest Russian accounts of Schestakov's and Paulutski's campaigns in these regions, there never is any mention of two different tribes living here. It is indeed mentioned in these accounts that among the slain Chukches there were found some men with perforated lips, but probably these were Eskimo from the other side of Behring's Straits, previously taken prisoners by the Chukches, or perhaps merely Eskimo who had been paying a friendly visit to the Chukches and who had taken part as volunteers in their war of freedom. It therefore appears to me to be on the whole more probable that the Eskimo have migrated from America to Asia, than that, as some authors have supposed, this tribe has entered America from the west by Behring's Straits or Wrangel Land.
The tent-village Nunamo, or, as Hooper writes, "Noonahmone," does not lie low, like the Chukch villages we had formerly seen, on the sea-shore, but pretty high up on a cape between the sea and a river which debouches immediately to the south-west of the village, and now during the snow-melting season was much flooded. At a short distance from the coast the land was occupied by a very high chain of mountains, which was split up into a number of summits and whose sides were formed of immense stone mounds distributed in terraces. Here a large number of marmots and lagomys had their haunt. The lagomys, a species of rodent that does not occur in Sweden, of the size of a large rat, is remarkable for the care with which in summer it collects great stores for the winter. The village consisted of ten tents built without order on the first high strand bank. The tents differed somewhat in construction from the common Chukch tents, and as drift-wood appears to be met with on the beach only in limited quantity, whale-bones had been used on a very large scale in the frame of the tent. Thus, for instance, the tent-covering of seal-skin was stretched downwards over the ribs or lower jawbones of the whale which were fixed in the ground like poles. These were united above with slips of whale-bones, from which other slips of the same sort of bones or of whalebone rose to the summit of the tent, and finally, to prevent the blast from raising the tent-covering from the ground, its border was loaded with masses of large heavy bones. Eleven shoulder-blades of the whale were thus used round a single tent. In the absence of drift-wood, whale and seal bones drenched in train-oil are also used as fuel in cooking in the open air during summer; a large curved whale rib was placed over the fire-place to serve as a pot-holder; the vertebræ of the whale were used as mortars; the entrances to the blubber-cellars were closed with shoulder-blades of the whale; hollowed whale-bones were used as lamps; shoes of whale-bone or pieces of the under-jaw and the straighter ribs were used for shoeing the sledges, for spades and ice-mattocks, the different parts of the implement being bound together with whale-bone fibres, &c. [345]
Masses of black seal-flesh, and long, white, fluttering strings of inflated intestines, were hung up between the tents, and in their interior there were everywhere to be seen bloody pieces of flesh, prepared in a disgusting way or lying scattered about, whereby both the dwellings and their inhabitants, who were occupied with hunting, had a more than usually disagreeble appearance. A pleasant interruption was formed by the heaps of green willow branches which were placed at the entrance of nearly every tent, commonly surrounded by women and children, who ate the leaves with delight. At some places whole sacks of Rhodiola and various other plants had been collected for food during winter. As distinctive of the Chukches here it may be mentioned in the last place that they were abundantly provided with European household articles, among them Remington guns, and that none of them asked for spirits.
Most of the seals which were seen in the tents were the common Phoca hispida, but along with them we found several skins of Histriophoca fasciata, Zimm., and I even succeeded, though with great difficulty, in inducing the Chukches to part with the skin and skull of this uncommon species, distinguished by its peculiar marking. The natives appeared to set a special value on its skin, and parted with it unwillingly. We had ourselves, as I have already stated, seen during our passage from Behring's Straits a number of these seals on the ice-floes drifting south, but the limited time at our disposal did not permit us to hunt them.