that there was no use in sending out people to look for the crews of those ships, for they were all dead. Joe also said that it was no use going, and that he was afraid to venture so far for fear he would never get back. The snow, he objected, was too soft at this time of year, and many rivers hard to cross were hi the way, and he did not like to leave his family. But after we had promised to pay him well, whether our lost friends were found or not, he consented to go, and when he went ashore to get ready we went with him.
The settlement consisted of only two habitations with twenty-five or thirty persons, located back three quarters of a mile from the coast. On reaching home Joe quickly vanished. His hut was about twenty-five feet in diameter, and was made of poles bent down at the top, where they all met to form a hemisphere. This frame was covered with skins of seal, sea-lion, and walrus, chiefly the latter. . . . Since much of the flesh on which the Chukchis subsist is eaten raw, only very small fires are made, and the huts are cold. The ground inside of this one was wet and muddy as a California corral in the rainy season, and seemed almost as large. But around the sides of this cold, squalid shell, little more than a wind-breaand partial shelter from rain and snow, there
