us
a mysterious instrument which enabled a man to be in two different
places at the same time, we should understand the sensations of a
Chukchi in looking through a field-glass.

Soon after this I happened to be encamped one night on a great plain
near Anadyrsk, with a party of these same natives; and having received
a note from Dodd by a special messenger, I was engaged in reading it
by the camp-fire. At several humorous passages I burst into a loud
laugh; whereupon the natives nudged one another with their elbows and
pointed significantly at me, as much as to say, "Just look at the
crazy American! What's the matter with him now?" Finally one of them,
an old grey-haired man, asked me what I was laughing at. "Why," said
I, "I am laughing at this," and pointed to the piece of paper. The old
man thought about it for a moment, compared notes with the others, and
they all thought about it; but no one seemed to succeed in getting
any light as to the cause of my incomprehensible laughter. In a few
moments the old man picked up a half-burned stick which was lying by
the fire and said: "Now suppose I should look at this stick for a
minute and then laugh; what would you think?" "Why," said I candidly,
"I should think you were a fool." "Well," he rejoined with grave
satisfaction, "that's just exactly what I think of you!" He seemed to
be very much pleased to find that our several opinions of such insane
conduct so exactly coincided. Looking at a stick and laughing, and
looking at a piece of paper and laughing, seemed to him equally
absurd. The languages of the Chukchis and Koraks have never-been
reduced to writing; nor, so far as I know, do either of those tribes
ever attempt to express ideas by signs or pictures. Written thought is
to many of them an impossible conception. It can be imagined, perhaps,
with what wonder and baffled curiosity they pore over the illustrated
newspapers which are occasionally given to them by the sailors of
whaling vessels which visit the coast. Some of the pictures they
recognise as representations of things with which they are acquainted;
but by far the greater number are as incomprehensible as the
hieroglyphics of the Aztecs. I remember that a Korak once brought to
me an old tattered fashion-plate from _Frank Leslie's Illustrated
Newspaper_ containing three or four full-length figures of imaginary
ladies, in the widest expansion of crinoline which fashion at that
time prescribed. The poor Korak s