The Onkilon catch seals in a kind of net made of leather straps, which they spread out under the ice, and in which the animal entangles itself with the head or flippers. When the walrus, which is particularly abundant about Koliutschin Island, creeps on shore, they steal upon it unawares, cut off its retreat, and kill it with their spears. Like the Esquimaux, they use dogs to drag their sledges.
The number of the Tchuktchi is greater than one might expect to find in so sterile a country. According to the Russian missionaries, there were, some years back, 52 ulusses or villages of the Onkilon, with 1568 tents, and 10,000 inhabitants; and Wrangell tells us that the Tennygk are at least twice as numerous, so that the entire population of the land of the Tchuktchi may possibly amount to 30,000.
98. AN ALEUT.
CHAPTER XXV.
BERING SEA—THE RUSSIAN FUR COMPANY—THE ALEUTS.
Bering Sea.—Unalaska.—The Pribilow Islands.—St. Matthew.—St. Laurence.—Bering’s Straits.—The Russian Fur Company.—The Aleuts.—Their Character.—Their Skill and Intrepidity in hunting the Sea-otter.—The Sea-bear.—Whale-chasing.—Walrus-slaughter.—The Sea-lion.
Bering Sea is extremely interesting in a geographical point of view, as the temperature of its coasts and islands exhibits so striking a contrast with that part of the Arctic Ocean which extends between Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Spitzbergen, and affords us the most convincing proof of the benefits we owe to the Gulf Stream, and to the mild south-westerly winds which sweep across the Atlantic. While through the sea between Iceland and Scotland, a part of the warmth generated in the tropical zone penetrates by means of marine and aërial currents as far as Spitzbergen and the western coast of Nova Zembla, the Sea of Bering is completely deprived of this advantage. The long chain of mountainous islands which bounds it on the south serves as a barrier against the mild influence of the Pacific, and instead of warm streams mixing with its waters, many considerable rivers and deep bays yearly discharge into it enormous masses of ice. Thus as soon as the navigator enters Bering Sea he perceives at once a considerable fall in the temperature, and finds himself suddenly transferred from a temperate oceanic region to one of a decidedly Arctic character. In spite, therefore, of their comparatively southerly position (for the Straits of Bering do not even reach the Arctic Circle, and the Andrianow Islands are ten degrees farther to the south than the Feroës), those frigid waters are, with regard to climate, far less favorably situated than the seas of Spitzbergen.
The same gradual differences of temperature and vegetation which we find in Unalaska, the Pribilow Islands, St. Laurence, and the Straits of Bering, within 10° of latitude, occur in the Shetland Islands, Iceland, Bear Island, and Spitzbergen at distances of almost 20°; so that in the Sea of Bering the increase of cold on advancing to the north is about twice as rapid as in the waters between North Europe and North America.
The long and narrow peninsula of Aliaska, which forms the south-eastern boundary of this inhospitable sea, shows us its influence in a very marked degree, for while the climate of the northern side of that far-projecting land-tongue has a decidedly Arctic character, its southern coasts fronting the Pacific enjoy a temperate climate. The mountain-chain which, rising to a height of five or six thousand feet, forms the backbone of the peninsula, serves as the boundary of two distinct worlds, for while the northern slopes are bleak and treeless like Iceland, the southern shores are covered from the water’s edge with magnificent forests. While on the northern side the walrus extends his excursions down to 56° 30´ N. lat., on the southern exposure the hummingbird is seen to flit from flower to flower as high as 61°, the most northerly point it is known to attain.