ents of bone or
stone-flakes.

[Illustration: IMPLEMENTS FOUND IN THE RUINS OF AN ONKILON HOUSE.
1. Stone chisel-with bone handle, one-half the natural size.
2., 4. Knives of slate, one-third.
3., 7. Spear heads of slate, one-third.
5. Spear-head of bone, one-third.
6. Bone spoon, one-third. ]

Remains of old dwellings were found even at the highest points among
the stone mounds of Irkaipij, and here perhaps was the last asylum
of the Onkilon race. At many places on the mountain slopes were seen
large collections of bones, consisting partly of a large number (at
one place up to fifty) of bears' skulls overgrown with lichens, laid
in circles, with the nose inwards, partly of the skulls of the
reindeer, Polar bear,[243] and walrus, mixed together in a less
regular circle, in the midst of which reindeer horns were found set
up. Along with the reindeer horns there was found the coronal bone
of an elk with portions of the horns still attached. Beside the
other bones lay innumerable temple-bones of the seal, for the most
part fresh and not lichen-covered. Other seal bones were almost
completely absent, which shows that temple-bones were not remains of
weathered seal skulls, but had been gathered to the place for one
reason or another in recent times. No portions of human skeletons
were found in the neighbourhood. These places are sacrificial
places, which the one race has inherited from the other.

Wrangel gives the following account of the tribe which lived here in
former times:--

"As is well known the sea-coast at Anadyr Bay is inhabited
by a race of men, who, by their bodily formation, dress,
language, differ manifestly from the Chukches, and call
themselves Onkilon--seafolk. In the account of Captain
Billing's journey through the country of the Chukches, he
shows the near relationship the language of this coast
tribe has to that of the Aleutians at Kadyak, who are of
the same primitive stem as the Greenlanders. Tradition
relates that upwards of two hundred years ago these
Onkilon occupied the whole of the Chukch coast, from Cape
Chelagskoj to Behring's Straits, and indeed we still find
along the whole of this stretch remains of their earth
huts, which must have been very unlike the present
dwellings of the Chukches; they have the form of small
mounds, are half sunk in the ground and closed above with
whale ribs, which are covered with a thick l