PORT CLARENCE. (After a photograph by L.
Palander.) ]

[Illustration: ESKIMO AT PORT CLARENCE. (After photographs by L.
Palander.) ]

A certain elegance and order prevailed in their small tents, the
floor of which was covered with mats of plaited plants. In many
places vessels formed of cocoa-nut shells were to be seen, brought
thither, like some of the mats, by whalers from the South Sea
Islands. For the most part their household and hunting implements,
axes, knives, saws, breechloaders, revolvers, &c., were of American
origin, but they still used or preserved in the lumber repositories
of the tent, bows and arrows, bird-darts, bone boat-hooks, and
various stone implements. The fishing implements especially were
made with extraordinary skill of coloured sorts of bone or stone,
glass beads, red pieces of the feet of certain swimming birds, &c.
The different materials were bound together by twine made of
whalebone in such a manner that they resembled large beetles, being
intended for use in the same way as salmon-flies at home.

[Illustration: ESKIMO FISHING IMPLEMENTS, ETC.
1-6. Salmon hooks of stone of different colours, and bone in the
form of beetles, one-half of the natural size.
7. Fishing rod one-sixth.
8. End of rod.
9. Bone sinker with tufts and fish-hook, one-half.
10. Fish-hook with bone points, one-half.
11. Fish-hook with iron-wire points, one-half.
12. Snow spectacles one-third. ]

Fire was got partly with steel, flint, and tinder, partly by means
of the fire-drill. Many also used American lucifers. The bow of the
fire-drill was often of ivory, richly ornamented with hunting
figures of different kinds. Their tools were more elegant, better
carved and more richly coloured with graphite[348] and red ochre than
those of the Chukches; the people were better off and owned a larger
number of skin-boats, both _kayaks_ and _umiaks_. This undoubtedly
depends on the sea being here covered with ice for a shorter time
and the ice being thinner than on the Asiatic side, and the hunting
accordingly being better. All the old accounts however agree in
representing that in former times the Chukches were recognised as a
great power by the other savage tribes in these regions, but all
recent observations indicate that that time is now past. A certain
respect for them, however, appears still to prevail among their
neighbours.

The natives, after the first mistrust had disappeared, were friendly
and accommod