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They had experienced great hardships; had lived upon reindeer's entrails and tallow for weeks at a time; had been alive almost constantly with vermin; had spent the greater part of two long months in smoky Chukchi pologs, and had despaired, sometimes, of ever reaching a Russian settlement or seeing again a civilised human being; but hope and courage had sustained them through it all, and they had finally arrived at Anadyrsk safe and well.
Considering first the peoples of the Northern Mongolian division, we find in the typical Manchurian what is perhaps the nearest among modern people to the original race. Spreading northward and westward from the middle Asiatic plains, this great wave has produced the nomadic tribes of Siberia, like the Chukchi, the Buryats, and the Yukaghir.
Who they were, what they had come for, and how long they intended to stay, were questions which now agitated the whole Chukchi nation, but which no one could answer. Their little subterranean hut had been entirely buried, the natives said, by the drifting snows of winter, and nothing but a curious iron tube out of which came smoke and sparks showed where the white men lived.
They are almost exactly alike, both being very slenderly built men, with straight black hair, dark olive complexions, no beards, and more or less oblique eyes. They do not resemble a Chukchi or a Korak any more than a Chinaman resembles a Comanche or a Sioux. Their dress is very peculiar.
Cold and continual storms were persistent. Even a Chukchi dog can have too much of them. One day at the end of February a Chukchi who had lost his way came on board, carrying a dog by the hind legs. The man had lost his way on the ice, and had slept out in the cold with his dog.
We who are familiar with these discoveries of science can hardly realise how they appear to a wholly uneducated savage; but if a superior race of beings should come from the planet Mars and show us a mysterious instrument which enabled a man to be in two different places at the same time, we should understand the sensations of a Chukchi in looking through a field-glass.
He cursed Cossack law and the prohibitory measures to keep Americans out. More gold was over there than had ever been dreamed of in Alaska; even the mountains and rivers were unnamed; and he was going if he lived another year or two going to find his fortune or his end in the Stanovoi Mountains and among the Chukchi tribes.
On Saturday, Jan. 20th, N.S., Kozhevin returned from his visit to the Chukchis north of Anadyrsk, bringing as we expected later and fuller particulars with regard to the party of exiled Americans south of Bering Strait. It consisted, according to the best Chukchi intelligence, of only five men, and was located on or near the Anadyr River, about one day's journey above its mouth.
This is shown by a comparison of a modern Chukchi vocabulary with the one compiled by M. de Lesseps in 1788. Many words have altered so materially as to be hardly recognisable. Others, on the contrary, such as "tin tin," ice, "oottoot," wood, "weeñgay," no, "ay," yes, and most of the numerals up to ten, have undergone no change whatever.
This plan guaranteed absolute security against fraud, for there was not a Russian in all Siberia who dared to cheat one of these fierce savages, with the blade of a long lance ten inches from his breast bone. Honesty was emphatically the best policy, and the moral suasion of a Chukchi spear developed the most disinterested benevolence in the breast of the man who stood at the sharp end.
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