Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Wandering Chukchis, who visited us in the greatest numbers, were evidently the most powerful tribe in north-eastern Siberia, and impressed us very favourably with their general appearance and behaviour. Except for their dress, they could hardly have been distinguished from North American Indians many of them being as tall, athletic, and vigorous specimens of savage manhood as I had ever seen.
You see you have learned the language, under many disadvantages, among the Koraks, Cossacks, and Chukchis of Kamchatka and the Okhotsk Sea coast, and quite innocently and naturally of course you have picked up a few words and expressions that are not well, not " "Not used in polite society," I suggested. "Hardly so much as that," he replied deprecatingly.
It furnishes almost the only firewood of the Wandering Koraks and Chukchis, and without it many parts of north-eastern Siberia would be absolutely uninhabitable by man.
None of the Vega men understood a word they said, but the Chukchis chattered gaily all the same, and with their hands full of presents tumbled down to their boats again and rowed home. Two days later the Vega was in the midst of ice and fog, and had to be moored to a floe near land. Then came more Chukchis, who pulled the Swedes by the collar and pointed to the skin tents on land.
In area Siberia is larger than the whole of Europe, but the population in this immense country is no greater than that of Greater London, i.e. about seven millions. Of these 60 per cent are Russians, 20 per cent Kirghizes, and the remainder is made up of Buriats, Yakuts, Tunguses, Manchus, Samoyeds, Ostiaks, Tatars, Chukchis, etc.
The middle deck was swept out, all the litter was cleared away, and flags were hung round the walls and ceiling. The Chukchis brought willow bushes from the valleys beyond the mountains to the south, and branches were fastened round a trunk of driftwood. This was the Vega's Christmas tree, and it was decked with strips of coloured paper and small wax candles.
They are not independent, self-reliant, or of a combative disposition like the northern Chukchis and Koraks; they are not avaricious or dishonest, except where those traits are the results of Russian education; they are not suspicious or distrustful, but rather the contrary; and for generosity, hospitality, simple good faith, and easy, equable good-nature under all circumstances, I have never met their equals.
Whether they had starved, or frozen to death on some great desolate plain south of Bering Strait, or been murdered by the Chukchis, we could not conjecture, but their long absence was a proof that they had met with some misfortune.
The Wandering Chukchis had soon found out their situation and frequently visited them on reindeer-sledges, and brought them fresh meat, and blubber which they used for lamp-oil; but these natives, on account of a superstition which I have previously mentioned, refused to sell them any living reindeer, so that all their efforts to procure transportation were unavailing.
Besides this, when we finally reached Anadyr Bay, if we ever did, we should have no means of finding out where the Americans were; and unless we happened to meet a band of Chukchis who had seen them, we might wander over those desolate plains for a month without coming across the stove-pipe, which was the only external sign of their subterranean habitation.
Word Of The Day