The furs of the Tchuktchi principally consist of black and silver-gray foxes, stone-foxes, gluttons, lynxes, otters, beavers, and a fine species of marten which does not occur in Siberia, and approaches the sable in value. They also bring to the fair bear-skins, walrus-thongs and teeth, sledge-runners of whale-ribs, and ready-made clothes of reindeer skin. The American furs are generally packed in sacks of seal skin, which are made in an ingenious manner by extracting the bones and flesh through a small opening made in the abdomen. The Russian traders on their part bring to the fair, besides tobacco, ironware--particularly kettles and knives--for the Tchuktchi, and tea, sugar, and various stuffs for their countrymen who have settled along the Kolyma. But Ostrownoje attracts not only Tchuktchi and Russians; a great number of the Siberian tribes from a vast circuit of 1000 or 1500 versts--Jukahires, Lamutes, Tungusi, Tschuwanzi, Koriaks--also come flocking in their sledges, drawn partly by dogs, partly by horses, for the purpose of bartering their commodities against the goods of the Tchuktchi. Fancy this barbarous assembly meeting every year during the intense cold and short days of the beginning of March. Picture to yourself the fantastic illumination of their red watch-fires blazing under the starry firmament, or mingling their ruddy glare with the Aurora flickering through the skies, and add to the strange sight the hollow sound of the Shaman’s drum, and the howling of several hundreds of hungry dogs, and you will surely confess that no fair has a more original character than that of Ostrownoje. A government commissary, assisted by some Cossacks, superintends the fair, and receives the inconsiderable market-tax which the Tchuktchi pay to the Emperor.