on whose
lower part a lense-formed and perforated block of wood was fixed.
This block served as fly-wheel and weight. Across the wooden pin ran
a perforated cross-bar which was fastened with two sinews to its
upper end. By carrying this cross-bar backwards and forwards the pin
could be turned round with great rapidity. The implement appears to
me the more remarkable as it shows a new way of using the stone or
brick lenses, which are often found in graves or old house-sites
from the Stone Age.

[Illustration: FIRE DRILL. One-eighth of the natural size. ]

Among the Chukches, as among many other wild races, lucifer matches
have obtained the honour of being the first of the inventions of the
civilised races that have been recognised as indisputably superior
to their own. A request for lucifer matches was therefore one of the
most common of those with which our friends at Behring's Straits
tormented us during winter, and they were willing for a single box
to offer things that in comparison were very valuable. Unfortunately
we had no superfluous supply of this necessary article, or perhaps I
ought to say fortunately, for if the Chukches for some years were
able to get a couple of boxes of matches for a walrus tusk, I
believe that with their usual carelessness they would soon
completely forget the use of their own fire-implements.

Among household articles I may further mention the following:--

The _hide-scraper_ (fig. 1, p. 117) is of stone or iron and fastened
to a wooden handle. With this tool the moistened hide is cleaned
very particularly, and is then rubbed, stretched, and kneaded so
carefully that several days go to the preparation of a single
reindeer skin. That this is hard work is also shown by the woman who
is employed at it in the tent dripping with perspiration. While thus
employed she sits on a part of the skin and stretches out the other
part with the united help of the hands and the bare feet. When the
skin has been sufficiently worked, she fills a vessel with her own
urine, mixes this with comminuted willow bark, which has been dried
over the lamp, and rubs the blood-warm liquid into the reindeer
skin. In order to give this a red colour on one side, the bark of a
species of Pinus (?) is mixed with the tanning liquid. The skins are
made very soft by this process, and on the inner side almost
resemble chamois leather. Sometimes too the reindeer skin is tanned
to real chamois of very excellent quality.