alone, not even to search for food or hunt
at their own hand and for their own account. This appears to me so
much the more remarkable, as they are often several days, I am
inclined to say weeks, in succession without getting any food from
their masters. A piece of a whale, with the skin and part of the
flesh adhering, washed out of frozen sandy strata thus lay untouched
some thousand paces from Pitlekaj, and the neighbourhood of the
tents, where the hungry dogs were constantly wandering about,
formed, as has been already stated, a favourite haunt for ptarmigan
and hares during winter. Young dogs some months old are already
harnessed along with the team in order that they may in time become
accustomed to the draught tackle. During the cold season the dogs
are permitted to live in the outer tent, the females with their
young even in the inner. We had two Scotch collies with us on the
_Vega_. They at first frightened the natives very much with their
bark. To the dogs of Chukches they soon took the same superior
standing as the European claims for himself in relation to the
savage. The dog was distinctly preferred by the female Chukch canine
population, and that too without the fights to which such favour on
the part of the fair commonly gives rise. A numerous canine progeny
of mixed Scotch-Chukch breed has thus arisen at Pitlekaj. The young
dogs had a complete resemblance to their father, and the natives
were quite charmed with them.

When a dog is to be killed the Chukch stabs it with his spear, and
then lets it bleed to death. Even when the scarcity was so great
that the natives at Pitlekaj and Yinretlen lived mainly on the food
we gave them, they did not eat the dogs they killed. On the other
hand they had no objection to eating a shot crow.

When the Chukch goes out on the ice to hunt seals he takes his dogs
with him, and it is these which take home the catch, commonly with
the draught-line fastened directly to the head of the killed seal,
which is then turned on its back and dragged over the ice without
anything under it. One of the inhabitants of Yinretlen returned from
the open water off the coast after a successful hunting expedition
with five seals, of which the smallest was laid on the sledge, the
others being fastened one behind the other in a long row. After the
last was drawn a long pole, which was used in setting the net.

The dress of the Chukches is made of reindeer or seal-skin. The
former, because it