The village, or "Samoyed town" as the walrus-hunters grandiosely call it, consists, like other great towns, of two portions, the town of the rich--some cabins built of wood, with flat turf-covered roofs--and the quarter of the common people, a collection of dirty Samoyed tents. There is, besides, a little church, where, as at several places along the shore, votive crosses have been erected. The church is a wooden building, divided by a partition wall into two parts, of which the inner, the church proper, is little more than two and a half metres in height and about five metres square. On the eastern wall during the time the region is inhabited, there is a large number of sacred pictures placed there for the occasion by the hunters. One of them, which represented St. Nicholas, was very valuable, the material being embossed silver gilt. Before the lamps hung large dinted old copper lamps or rather light-holders, resembling inverted Byzantine cupolas, suspended by three chains. [Illustration: CHURCH OF CHABAROVA. After a photograph by L. Palander. ] They were set full of numerous small, and some few thick wax lights which were lighted on the occasion of our visit. Right above our landing-place there were lying a number of sledges laden with goods which the Russian merchants had procured by barter, and which were to be conveyed to Pustosersk the following autumn. The goods consisted mainly of train oil and the skins of the mountain fox, common fox, Polar bear, glutton, reindeer, and seal. The bears' skins had often a very close, white winter coat, but they were spoiled by the head and paws having been cut off. Some of the wolf skins which they showed us were very close and fine. The merchants had besides collected a considerable stock of goose quills, feathers, down, and ptarmigans' wings. For what purpose these last are used I could not learn. I was merely informed that they would be sold in Archangel. Perhaps they go thence to the dealers in fashions in Western Europe, to be afterwards used as ornaments on our ladies' hats. Ptarmigans' wings were bought as long ago as 1611 at Pustosersk by Englishmen.[53] At the same time I saw, among the stocks of the merchants, walrus tusks and lines of walrus hide. It is noteworthy that these wares are already mentioned in Othere's narrative. As I was not myself sufficiently master of the Russian language, I requested Mr. Serebrenikoff to make inquiries on the spot, regarding the mode of life and domestic economy of the Russians in the neighbourhood, and I have received from him the following communication on the subject:--