[344] The enmity appeared, however, to be of a very passive nature and by no means depending on any tribal dislike, but only arising from the inhabitants of the villages lying farthest eastward being known to be of a quarrelsome disposition and having the same reputation for love of fighting as the peasant youths in some villages in Sweden. For Lieut. Hooper, who during the winter 1848-9 made a journey in dog-sledges from Chukotskoj-nos along the coast towards Behring's Straits says that the inhabitants at Cape Deschnev itself enjoyed the same bad reputation among their Namollo neighbours to the south as among the Chukches living to the westward. "They spoke another language." Possibly they were pure Eskimo.
[345] There is still in existence a sketch of a tribe, living far to the south on the coast of the Indian Sea, who at the time of Alexander the Great used the bones of the whale in a similar way. "They build their houses so that the richest among them take bones of the whale, which the sea casts up, and use them as beams, of the larger bones they make their doors. Arrian, Historia Indica, XXIX. and XXX.
[346] These strata were discovered during Kotzebue's cucumnavigation of the globe (Entdeckungs Reise, Weimar, 1821, i. p. 146, and ii. p. 170). The strand-bank was covered by an exceedingly luxuriant vegetable carpet, and rose to a height of eighty feet above the sea. Here the "rock," if this word can be used for a stratum of ice, was found to consist of pure ice, covered with a layer, only six inches thick, of blue clay and turf-earth. The ice must have been several hundred thousand years old, for on its being melted a large number of bones and tusks of the mammoth appeared, from which we may draw the conclusion that the ice-stratum was formed during the period in which the mammoth lived in these regions. This remarkable observation has been to a certain extent disputed by later travellers, but its correctness has recently been fully confirmed by Dall. On the other hand, the extent to which the strong odour, which was observed at the place and resembled that of burned horns, arose from the decaying mammoth remains, is perhaps uncertain. Kotzebue fixed the latitude of the place at 66° 15' 36". During Beechey's voyage in 1827 the place was thoroughly examined by Mr. Collie, the medical officer of the expedition. He brought home thence a large number of the bones of the mammoth, ox, musk-ox, reindeer, and horse, which were described by the famous geologist Buckland (F. W. Beechey, Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Behring's Straits, 1825-28. London, 1831, ii. Appendix).
[347] Further Papers relative to the recent Arctic Expedition, etc. Presented to both Houses of Parliament. London, 1855, p. 917.
[348] Graphite must be found in great abundance on the Asiatic side of Behring's Straits. I procured during winter a number of pieces, which had evidently been rolled in running water. Chamisso mentions in Kotzebue's Voyages (iii. p. 169) that he had seen this mineral along with red ochre among the inhabitants at St. Lawrence Bay; and Lieut Hooper states in his work (p. 139), that graphite and red ochre are found at the village Oongwysac between Chukotskoj-nos and Behring's Straits. The latter colour was sold at a high price to the inhabitants of distant encampments. These minerals have undoubtedly been used in the same way from time immemorial, and they are probably, like flint and nephrite, among the few kinds of stone which were used by the men of the Stone Age. So far as is known, graphite come first into use in Europe during the middle ages. A black-lead pencil is mentioned and delineated for the first time by Conrad Gessner in 1565. The rich but now exhausted graphite seam at Borrowdale, in England, is mentioned for the first time by Dr. Merret in 1667, as containing a useful mineral peculiar to England. Very rich graphite seams have been found during recent decades, both at the mouth of the Yenisej (Sidoroff's graphite quarry) and at a spur of the Sayan mountains in the southern part of Siberia (Alibert's graphite quarry), and these discoveries have played a certain rôle in the recent history of the exploration of the country.
[349] Nephrite is a light green, sometimes grass-green, very hard and compact species of amphibolite, which occurs in High Asia, Mexico, and New Zealand. At all these places it has been employed for stone implements, vases, pipes, &c. The Chinese put an immensely high value upon it, and the wish to procure nephite is said often to have determined their politics, to have caused wars, and impressed its stamp on treaties of peace concluded between millions. I also consider it probable that the precious Vasa Murrhina, which was brought to Rome after the campaign against 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 Kascholong (i.e. a species of stone from the river Kasch). It has been brought home under this name by Renat, 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 quarts.
[350] The Eskimo however, like the Chukches, do not appear to have any proper religion or idea of a life after this.
[351] We have already found some land mollusca at Port Clarence, but none at St. Lawrence Bay. The northernmost find of such animals now known was made by Von Middendorff, who found a species of Physa on the Taimur Peninsula.
[352] That a fire-emitting mountain was to be found in Siberia east of the Yenisej is already mentioned in a treatise by Isaak Massa, inserted in Hessel Gerritz, Detectio Freti, Amsterdam, 1612. The rumour about the volcanos of Kamchatka thus appears to have reached Europe at that early date.
[353] Kotzebue says that he was the first seafarer who visited the island. This however is incorrect. Billings landed there on the 1st August (21st July), 1791. From the vessel some natives was seen and a baydar which was rowed along the coast. The natives however were frightened by some gunshots fired as a signal (Sarytchev's Reise, ii. p. 91, Sauer, p. 239). Billings says that the place where he landed (the south-east point of the island) was nearly covered with bones of sea-animals. It would be important to have these thoroughly examined, as it is not impossible that Steller's sea-cow (Rhytina) may in former times have occasionally come to this coast. At all events important contributions to a knowledge of the species of whales in Behring's Straits may be gained here.