be on the north coast, but stated that the race
about which we inquired were settled immediately to the south. Some days
after we anchored in Konyam Bay (64 deg. 49' N.L., 172 deg. 53' W.L. from
Greenwich). We found there only pure reindeer-owning Chukches; there was
no coast population living by hunting and fishing. On the other hand,
the inhabitants near our anchorage off St. Lawrence Island consisted of
Eskimo and Namollo. It thus appears as if a great part of the Eskimo who
inhabit the Asiatic side of Behring's Straits, had during recent times
lost their own nationality and become fused with the Chukches. For it is
certain that no violent expulsion has recently taken place here. It
ought besides to be remarked that the name _Onkilon_ which Wrangel
heard given to the old coast population driven out by the Chukches
is evidently nearly allied to the word _Ankali_, with which the
reindeer-Chukch at present distinguishes the coast-Chukch, also that, in
the oldest Russian accounts of Schestakov's and Paulutski's campaigns in
these regions, there never is any mention of two different tribes living
here. It is indeed mentioned in these accounts that among the slain
Chukches there were found some men with perforated lips, but probably
these were Eskimo from the other side of Behring's Straits, previously
taken prisoners by the Chukches, or perhaps merely Eskimo who had been
paying a friendly visit to the Chukches and who had taken part as
volunteers in their war of freedom. It therefore appears to me to be on
the whole more probable that the Eskimo have migrated from America to
Asia, than that, as some authors have supposed, this tribe has entered
America from the west by Behring's Straits or Wrangel Land.
The tent-village Nunamo, or, as Hooper writes, "Noonahmone," does
not lie low, like the Chukch villages we had formerly seen, on the
sea-shore, but pretty high up on a cape between the sea and a river
which debouches immediately to the south-west of the village, and
now during the snow-melting season was much flooded. At a short
distance from the coast the land was occupied by a very high chain
of mountains, which was split up into a number of summits and whose
sides were formed of immense stone mounds distributed in terraces.
Here a large number of marmots and lagomys had their haunt. The
lagomys, a species of rodent that does not occur in Sweden, of the
size of a large rat, is remarkable for the care with which in summer
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