ere totally
wanting. Besides, I set one of the crew, the walrus-hunter Johnsen, free
for a consideral time from all work on board, in order that he might
wander about the country daily, partly for hunting, partly for
conversing with the natives. He succeeded in the beginning of winter in
killing some ptarmigan and hares, got for me a great deal of important
information regarding the mode of life of the Chukches, and procured
several valuable ethnographical objects. But after a time, for what
reason I could never make out, he took an invincible dislike to visit
the Chukch tents more, without however having come to any disagreement
with their inhabitants.

[Illustration: CHUKCHES ANGLING. ]

[Illustration: ICE-SEIVE. One-eighth of the natural size. ]

On the 5th October the openings between the drift-ice fields next
the vessel were covered with splendid skating ice, of which we
availed ourselves by celebrating a gay and joyous skating festival.
The Chukch women and children were now seen fishing for winter roach
along the shore. In this sort of fishing a man, who always
accompanies the fishing women, with an iron-shod lance cuts a hole
in the ice so near the shore that the distance between the under
corner of the hole and the bottom is only half a metre. Each hole is
used only by one woman, and that only for a short time. Stooping
down at the hole, in which the surface of the water is kept quite
clear of pieces of ice by means of an ice-sieve, she endeavours to
attract the fish by means of a peculiar wonderfully clattering cry.
First when a fish is seen in seen in the water an angling line,
provided with a hook of bone, iron or copper, is thrown down, strips
of the entrails of fish being employed as bait. A small metre-long
staff with a single or double crook in the end was also used as a
fishing implement. With this little leister the men cast up fish on
the ice with incredible dexterity. When the ice became thicker, this
fishing was entirely given up, while during the whole winter a
species of cod and another of grayling were taken in great quantity
in a lagoon situated nearer Behring's Straits. The coregonus is also
caught in the inland lakes, although, at least at this season of the
year, only in limited quantity.

[Illustration: SMELT FROM THE CHUKCH PENINSULA. _Osmerus eperlanus_,
Lin. one-third the natural size. ]

On the morning of the 6th October, we saw from the vessel an
extraordinary procession moving