hukch woman, who stated that true Chukches were
found also on the American side, north of Behring's Straits. Two of
the men spoke a little English, one had even been at San Francisco,
another at Honolulu. Many of their household articles reminded us of
contact with American whalers, and justice demands the recognition
of the fact that in opposition to what we commonly see stated,
contact with men of civilised race appears to have been to the
advantage and improvement of the savage in an economical and moral
point of view. Most of them now lived in summer-tents of thin cotton
cloth, many wore European clothes, others were clad in trousers of
seal or reindeer-skin and a light, soft, often beautifully
ornamented _pesk_ of marmot skin, over which in rainy weather was
worn an overcoat made of pieces of gut sewn together. The
arrangement of the hair resembled that of the Chukches. The women
were tattooed with some lines on the chin. Many of the men wore
small moustaches, some even a scanty beard, while others had
attempted the American goatee. Most of them, but not all, had two
holes from six to seven millimetres in length, cut in the lips below
the corners of the mouth. In these holes were worn large pieces of
bone, glass, or stone (figure 9, page 237). But these ornaments were
often removed, and then the edges of the large holes closed so much
that the face was not much disfigured. Many had in addition a
similar hole forward in the lip. It struck me, however, that this
strange custom was about to disappear completely, or at least to be
Europeanised by the exchange of holes in the ears for holes in the
mouth. An almost full-grown young woman had a large blue glass bead
hanging from the nose, in whose partition a hole had been made for
its suspension, but she was very much embarrassed and hid her head
in a fold of mama's _pesk_, when this piece of grandeur attracted
general attention. All the women had long strings of beads in the
ears. They wore bracelets of iron or copper, resembling those of the
Chukches. The colour of the skin was not very dark, with perceptible
redness on the cheeks, the hair black and tallow-like, the eyes
small, brown, slightly oblique, the face flat, the nose small and
depressed at the root. Most of the natives were of average height,
appeared to be healthy and in good condition, and were marked
neither by striking thinness nor corpulence. The feet and the hands
were small.

[Illustration: ESKIMO AT