a no less agreeable change from the preserved
provisions. The Chukches besides offered us daily a large number of
different kinds of birds, especially when they observed that we paid
a higher price for many rare kinds of birds, though small and of
little use for food, than for a big, fat goose. The Chukches killed
small birds either by throwing stones, or by shooting them with bow
and arrows, in connection with which it may be observed that most of
them were very poor archers. They also caught them with whalebone
snares set on bare spots on the beach, generally between two
vertebrae of the whale. For pebbles are very scarce, but the bones
of the whale are found, as has been already stated, at most places
in large numbers on the strand-banks where the tents are pitched. In
June we began to get eggs of the gull, eider, long-tailed duck,
goose, and loom, in sufficient number for table use. The supply,
however, was by no means so abundant as during the hatching season
on Greenland, Spitzbergen, or Novaya Zemlya.

A little way from the vessel there were formed, in the end of May,
two "leads," a few fathoms in breadth. On the 31st May I sent some
men to dredge at these places. They returned with an abundant yield,
but unfortunately the openings closed again the next day, and when I
and Lieutenant Bove visited the place there was a large,
newly-formed _toross_ thrown up along the edge of the former
channel. Another "lead" was formed some days after, but closed again
through a new disturbance of the position of the ice, a high
ice-rampart, formed of loose blocks, heaped one over another,
indicating the position of the former opening. Even the strongest
vessel would have been crushed in such a channel by the forcing
together of the ice. Of a different sort from both these occasional
leads was an extensive opening, which showed itself a kilometre or
two north of the vessel. It is probable that with few interruptions,
which, however, might have been difficult to pass, it extended as
far as Behring's Straits, where, according to the statements of the
Chukches, several whalers had already made their appearance. Round
the vessel itself, however, the ice still lay fast and unbroken. Nor
did the Chukches appear to expect that it would break up very soon,
to judge by the number of vehicles drawn by dogs or reindeer which
still passed us, both to the east and west. One of these travellers
must here be specially mentioned, as his journ