Our hosts and hostesses, comprising three families who dwelt in three arangas at this place, were always drinking tea. They used copper kettles to melt the ice in and Russian tea, put up in compressed slabs a foot long, eight inches wide and three-fourths of an inch thick. In our honor the old woman brought out cups and saucers of the prettiest china I have ever seen; the cups were very small, holding about three sips. Each cup was wrapped in a dirty cloth, on which the old woman wiped it after carefully spitting on it to make it clean. When I saw her method of dish-washing, I was impolite enough to ask Kataktovick to go out and get my mug from the sledge; when he returned with it our hostess looked disappointed, though whether from the large size of the mug or because I did not apparently appreciate her kindness in using her best china for us, I cannot say.
When we had finished the wooden dish of reindeer meat, which though uncooked was good eating, they brought in another filled with walrus meat, evidently taken from a walrus killed the previous summer, which had a smell that I cannot describe. Out of politeness I tried to eat it, but found it was a little too much for me. Kataktovick enjoyed it. Later on I asked him why he wanted the same food we had aft while he was on the ship and yet was willing to eat this foul walrus meat; he said he liked it. Apparently although they live pretty much on white man’s food the Eskimo enjoy getting back once in a while to walrus meat and blubber that have seen better days.
After the walrus meat we had more tea. I had about a hundred saccharine tablets with me, so when the fresh tea was brought in I used them all up in it.
I could see that the Siberians were puzzled about Kataktovick. They talked about him and to him; at first, I am quite sure, they did not think that he was an Eskimo. They evidently took me for a trader, though they had not seen me go up the coast. The sledge was all bundled up, so that they could not see what I had, and rather lightly loaded, so that apparently I had sold my goods and was now working down the coast on my homeward journey. They were in evident doubt about Kataktovick, because he and they could not understand each other’s speech. He would talk to them in the language of the Alaskan Eskimo and they would put up their hands and touch their faces to show that they did not understand. Then they would talk to him and he, in turn, would throw up his hands and say, “Me no savvy.”
After we had finished our second round of tea, they made signs to show that they wanted to know where we came from. I took out my charts, showed them where we drifted, pointed out Wrangell Island and told them of the men there, showed them where the ship sank and where we had just landed. I first made a ship out of matches. When I saw that this did not convey any idea to them I drew pictures on the charts; to show where the Karluk sank and what happened to make her sink, I drew a picture of a ship, surrounded it with lines intended to represent ice, clapped my hands and rubbed the whole thing out. This they understood well enough to know what I was driving at. They told me their names but I could neither pronounce them nor write them. We started our feast at two o’clock and continued through the afternoon and until late at night, having tea every five minutes.
We still had four or five of the little tin boxes of tabloid tea left; there were pictures of India on the box-covers which attracted the Chukches wonderfully. I had some Burberry cloth left and I had the old woman make a bag, into which I emptied the tea; then I gave the empty tins with their pretty covers to the children. The tea tablets interested the older folk so I contributed some to the “party.”
CAPTAIN BARTLETT’S CHART OF THE SIBERIAN COAST
AND BERING STRAIT
“After we had finished our second round of tea, they made signs
to show that they wanted to know where we came from.
I took out my charts, showed them where we
drifted, pointed out Wrangell Island and told
them of the men there, showed them
where the ship sank and where
we had just landed.” [See page 213.]
Spreading out the chart I inquired by signs about the people that we might find on our journey eastward, I was assured that we should see them all along the coast and that there were one or two communities of them like this on the way to Cape North. I could find Cape North on the chart, on which, of course, it was clearly marked. The Chukches, however, did not know what I meant when I used the name but finally one of them said “Irkaipij.” He repeated it again and again and at last I understood that it was another name for the same place. I laid a lot of matches on the chart, showing our course, and the same man, by means of these matches, indicated that at Cape North were several arangas. From the presence of cooking utensils, tea and tobacco I concluded, and, as I learned later, correctly, that I should run across Russian traders here and there on our march.