The Tchuktche are an enterprising people, and fond of independence. Unlike their neighbours, the Koriaks, they have always maintained their freedom against the encroachments of Russia. They are active and spirited traders. In skin-covered boats they cross Behring Straits, and barter furs and walrus-teeth with the natives of America. In long caravans, their sledges drawn by reindeer, they repair to the great fair of Ostrownoje, and carry on a vigorous commerce with the Russian merchants. In their train follow sledges laden with supplies of lichen and moss for the reindeer, as in their wanderings, however circuitous these may be, they are compelled to traverse broad spaces of stony desert, where even these abstemious animals can obtain no food. As their movements are regulated by the necessities of their herds, they occupy five or six months in a journey which, in a straight line, would not exceed a thousand versts in length; they are almost always migrating from place to place, yet, as they invariably carry their dwellings with them, they never leave home. A caravan generally consists of fifty or sixty families; and as soon as one fair is at an end, they depart to make their preparations for the next. The great staple of the trade at Ostrownoje is tobacco. To secure a small supply of the narcotic which forms the sole luxury of their dreary lives, the Eskimos of North America, extending from the Icy Cape to Bristol Bay, send their articles of barter from hand to hand as far as the Gwosdus Islands in Behring Strait, where the Tchuktche purchase them with tobacco bought at Ostrownoje. Thus, in the icy regions of the extreme north, tobacco is the source and support of considerable commerce; and the narcotic weed which Raleigh and his contemporaries introduced from America into Europe, and which from Europe made its way into Asia, is exported from Asia for the use of American tribes. The balance of trade, however, seems entirely against the latter. We are told that the skins which a Tchuktche purchases of an Eskimo for half a pood (eighteen pounds) of tobaccoleaves, he sells to the Russian for two poods (seventy-two pounds); and these skins, costing the Russian about one hundred and sixty roubles, the latter sells at Jakutsk for two hundred and sixty, and at St. Petersburg for upwards of five hundred roubles. The furs sold at Ostrownoje are chiefly those of stone foxes, black and silver-gray foxes, gluttons, lynxes, otters, beavers, and martens. Other products brought thither by the Tchuktche are bear-skins, walrus-teeth, and thongs, sledge-runners (made of whale ribs), and dresses of reindeer-skin. The Russians, besides tobacco, dispose of kettles, axes, knives, guns, tea, and sugar. * * * * * A visit to the family of a Tchuktche chief is thus described by one of Admiral Wrangell’s companions:--