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The first of these, which may be called the North American Indian class, comprises the wandering and settled Chukchis and Koraks, and covers that part of Siberia lying between the 160th meridian of east longitude and Bering Strait. It is the only class which has ever made a successful stand against Russian invasion, and embraces without doubt the bravest, most independent savages in all Siberia.
After the conclusion of the ceremony we removed to an adjacent tent, and were surprised, as we came out into the open air, to see three or four Koraks shouting and reeling about in an advanced stage of intoxication celebrating, I suppose, the happy event which had just transpired.
A.S. Bickmore, in the American Journal of Science for May, 1868, notices this curious custom of the Koraks, and says that the chastisement is intended to test the young man's "ability to bear up against the ills of life"; but I would respectfully submit that the ills of life do not generally come in that shape, and that switching a man over the back with willow sprouts is a very singular way of preparing him for future misfortunes of any kind.
After a long conversation with the Koraks who crowded around us as we sat by the fire, we finally became tired and sleepy, and with favourable impressions, upon the whole, of this new and strange people, we crawled into our little polog to sleep.
You can never see one without having the impression that he is dressed in some kind of a regalia or uniform. The men and women resemble each other very much in dress and appearance, and by a stranger cannot be distinguished apart. Like the Chukchis and Koraks, they are reindeer nomads, but differ somewhat from the former in their mode of life.
To this must be added the demoralising influence of American whalers, who have given the settled Koraks rum and cursed them with horrible diseases, which are only aggravated by their diet and mode of life. They have learned from the Russians to lie, cheat, and steal; and from whalers to drink rum and be licentious.
If it were not for the abundance of fish, the whole country would be uninhabited and uninhabitable, except by the Reindeer Koraks. As soon as the fishing season is over, the Kamchadals store away their dried yukala in balagáns and return to their winter quarters to prepare for the fall catch of sables.
Every day eight or ten Koraks, armed with spears and knives, leave the encampment just before dark, walk a mile or two to the place where the deer happen to be pastured, build themselves little huts of trailing pine branches, about three feet in height and two in diameter, and squat in them throughout the long, cold hours of an arctic night, watching for wolves.
We recognised him at once as the ispravnik, or Russian governor. It was a pitiable failure. We could not succeed in looking like anything but Wandering Koraks in reduced circumstances. The ispravnik, however, did not seem to notice anything unusual in our appearance, but rattled away with an incessant fire of quick, nervous questions, such as "When did you leave Petropavlovsk?
A moment brought us to the brow of the hill, and before us in the clear moonlight, stood the conical tents of the Koraks, surrounded by at least four thousand reindeer, whose branching antlers looked like a perfect forest of dry limbs.
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