and the vertebrae and other bones of
the whale. They bartered these for bread. A load of five bits of
wood, from four to five inches in diameter and six feet long, was
commonly paid for with two or three ship biscuits, that is to say
with about 250 gram bread, the vertebra of a whale with two ship
biscuits, &c. By degrees two young natives got into the habit of
coming on board daily for the purpose of performing, quite at their
leisure, the office of servant. The cook was their patron, and they
obtained from him in compensation for their services the larger
share of the left victuals. So considerable a quantity of food was
distributed partly as payment for services rendered or for goods
purchased, partly as gifts, that we contributed in a very great
degree to mitigate the famine which during midwinter threatened to
break out among the population.

None of the natives in the neighbourhood of the _Vega's_ winter station
professed the Christian religion. None of them spoke any European
language, though one or two knew a couple of English words and a Russian
word of salutation. This was a very unfortunate circumstance, which
caused us much trouble. But it was soon remedied by Lieut. Nordquist
specially devoting himself to the study of their language, and that with
such zeal and success that in a fortnight he could make himself pretty
well understood. The natives stated to DE LONG in the autumn of 1879
that a person on the "man of war" which wintered on the north coast,
spoke Chukch exceedingly well. The difficulty of studying the language
was increased, to a not inconsiderable degree, by the Chukches in their
wish to co-operate with us in finding a common speech being so courteous
as not to correct, but to adopt the mistakes, in the pronunciation or
meaning of words that were made on the _Vega_. As a fruit of his studies
Lieut. Nordquist has drawn up an extensive vocabulary of this little
known language, and given a sketch of its grammatical structure.[255]
The knowledge of the Chukch language, which the other members of the
Expedition acquired, was confined to a larger or smaller number of
words; the natives also learned a word or two of our language, so that a
_lingua franca_ somewhat intelligible to both parties gradually arose,
in which several of the crew soon became very much at home, and with
which in case of necessity one could get along very well, although in
this newly formed dialect all grammatical inflections w