To return to the Kamchatkans: travellers praise their good-nature, their hospitality, and their natural wit. Of a sanguine disposition, they are happy and content in their poverty, and have no cares for the morrow. Being extremely indolent, they never work unless when compelled. They readily adopt strange manners, and no doubt education might produce valuable results in so pliable and sharp-witted a race. Unfortunately the Russians and Cossacks who have settled among them do not afford them the best examples. They have long since been converted to the Greek Church, but it is supposed that baptism has not fully effaced all traces of Shamanism. Formerly they had many gods, the chief of whom was Kutka, the creator of heaven and earth. But far from honoring Kutka, they continually ridiculed him, and made him the constant butt of their satire. Kutka, however, had a wife, Chachy, who was endowed with all the intelligence in which her spouse was supposed to be deficient, and who, as is the case in many mortal housekeepings, was constantly exerting her ingenuity in repairing the blunders of her lord and master. [Illustration: 95. FRAME-WORK OF TCHUKTCHI HOUSE.] CHAPTER XXIV. THE TCHUKTCHI. The Land of the Tchuktchi.--Their independent Spirit and commercial Enterprise.--Perpetual Migrations.--The Fair of Ostrownoje.-- Visit in a Tchuktch Polog.--Races.--Tchuktch Bayaderes.--The Tennygk, or Reindeer Tchuktchi.--The Onkilon, or Sedentary Tchuktchi.--Their Mode of Life.