"Gu Gu!...Gu Du! Ah wu!..."
“It’s delicious!…It’s so delicious! It’s so delicious!…”
"Haha! Brother Jiaoren, please eat slowly. If it's not enough, there will be more!"
As night falls, the cold wind becomes more and more biting, and the bonfires on the coast become warmer and brighter. Exploration captain Zuvalo smiled and looked at the two Itelmen hunters, holding leather helmets filled with whale meat and kelp soup, eating large chunks of meat and drinking soup like extremely hungry beasts. The two of them ate four leather helmets in one go, until the spicy and fragrant broth warmed their whole bodies down. They were satisfied and exhaled a few mouthfuls of white hot breath in the cold wind.
"Phew! Ancestors with spirits! What kind of meat is in this broth? It tastes very strong, thicker than venison, stronger than fish, and it has so much salt added! ...Huh? This light and warm feeling?" I’m so hot that I’m sweating?…”
The hunting captain's dog stuck out his tongue and panted like a hound. As the first North Asian tribe to eat chili pepper, his face turned red and his tongue was spicy. He couldn't describe this wonderful feeling at all! But he could clearly feel that his body was getting hot. In this cold northern land, this precious warmth can save lives!
"Ah, Captain! The food here in the island is so good! So much meat, so much salt, and such hot firewood, it's so comfortable! ... Burp! ..."
Hunter Mulu was breathing heavily from the spicy food while stroking his swollen belly. His eyes never left the fragrant big clay pot, but his stomach really couldn't eat any more. After a while, he burped helplessly and whispered to Mu Dog.
"Captain, they don't seem to be the island tribe in the south...those long-haired and bow-backed islanders, it's not like we haven't beaten their tribe before...They have always been very poor, how can they have so much precious salt? They are not so big. The ship doesn’t have any decent equipment, so how can it be friendly to us?…”
"Um…"
Hunting Captain Mu Quan rubbed his fat face, his mind once again filled with confusion. His expression softened slightly, and he carefully looked at the smiling exploration captain Zuvalo, who also looked at him with a smile.
"Witnessed by the spirit ancestors! Where do you, the tribe with the long boats, come from? Winter is coming. What do you want to do when you come to our mountain territory?"
"God bless you! Brother Jiaomen by the sea, where does your tribe live? We come from the far east with good intentions and want to visit your leader or priest..."
The bright moon rises, illuminating a vast expanse of white on the snowfields in the north. The bonfire swayed, reflecting the smiling faces of the warriors, sailors and hunters who had eaten and drank well. The two captains talked for a long time, then looked at each other and realized a very serious problem, that is, there was a language barrier and they couldn't understand what the other party was saying at all!
"Uh... God bless you!"
Exploration captain Zuvalo frowned slightly, pondered for a while, and looked at the surrounding crew members. He said hello in Unanga, which he was not proficient in.
"Xiong Da! You are from Mother Island, the westernmost part of the island chain. Come talk to him!..."
Hearing this, Unanga hunter Xiong Da simply nodded and came to the hunting captain Mu Quan. This tall Unanga man is 1.9 meters tall, which is more than a head taller than the Itelmen hunter who is 1.7 meters tall.
"Ancestors witness! Great Chief, let us come here. To the west, at the mausoleum, look for four-legged beasts. Food that can be eaten, grass!..."
"Huh? Ancestor? Grandmother? Grandmother of the tribe?... West?...Dead? Who died?...Looking for? What are you looking for?..."
Hunting captain Mu Quan raised his head and tried hard to listen to the words of the Unanga hunter. As he listened, the confusion on his face became deeper and deeper. He could vaguely understand some specious words, but he couldn't understand connected sentences. And the other person's accent always gave him an inexplicable sense of familiarity, as if he had heard it somewhere before!
In fact, the Eskimo-Aleut language family of the Unanga people and the Chukotka-Kamchatka language family of the Itelmen people diverged about a full four thousand years ago! However, the Chukotka-Kamchatka language family has many loanwords from the Eskimo-Aleut language family, which vaguely indicates some ancient traces. That may be the forced eastward migration of the Aleut tribes, or it may be the conquest and integration of the Kamchatka tribes. As a symbol of the fusion of languages from both sides, the Kamchatka tribe with the most Aleutian languages occupies the Arctic tundra in the far north and the Bering Strait in the east...
"Boss, what he said doesn't seem to be from the southern part of the island! Why does it smell like the deer bark from the northern part of the country?..."
Hunter Mulu was stunned for a moment, stared, and made random guesses out of curiosity.
"The word he said was not death, but the cold place where he was buried after death. It was the same as what Zhang Bu said!... He also mentioned four legs. Isn't that the deer in Zhang Bu?... And what he said about eating, those When people from the Thangbu died, they would eat their relatives and bury them in their stomachs... Ah! They spoke the language of the Thangbu in the north, and they were as tall as the Thangbu people...could it be that they were a group of people sitting on a boat? Accounting Department?!…”
"What! What the Luba thing?! The Zhangbu are already fierce, grazing deer in the wilderness, and plundering the surrounding tribes. If they have such a big ship and can attack along the coast, then the Lubu and us How can we survive?”
The hunting captain Mu Quan gritted his teeth and turned around to scold the hunter Mu Lu, with a faint fear in his heart. The ferocious tribe in their mouths is none other than the Chukotka people in the northernmost part of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Among the tribes in Siberia, they are the only ferocious tribe that successfully resisted the Cossack invasion!
The Chukchi people in the Arctic herd thousands of deer, migrating on the Arctic snowfields where the average winter temperature is minus 30 degrees Celsius. They are a truly bitter and fierce polar tribe! They have no fixed villages, only wandering and migrating camps. They are very difficult to find and capture, and they are also natural raiders. From the northernmost part of the Kamchatka Peninsula to the entire vast Arctic snowfield, this is the territory of their nomadic deer herds. They also crossed the strait and contacted the Inuit tribes in the westernmost snowfields of North America. Their languages mingled with each other and the tribes had ancient marriages. The languages of the Inuit tribes also belong to the Eskimo-Aleut language family...
Therefore, if the exploration fleet ventures north and along the Arctic coast of the Bering Sea, and is lucky enough to encounter the fierce Chukotka tribes, it will be able to communicate with the sailors of the Unanga tribe. As for the Itelmen people in the south, they can only understand a few words.
"Witnesses from our spiritual ancestors! Tribes sitting on long boats! Where did you come from and where are you going?!"
Between the silver galaxy and the white snowfield, the hunting captain Mu Quan looked solemnly and looked at the exploration captain Zuvallo again, posing the ultimate "philosophical" question. He first pointed at himself, then at the mountains to the north, and declared word by word.
"I come from the north, the mountain tribe among the mountains! And you, are you from the tent tribe in the north, or the island tribe in the south?"
Hunting captain Mu Quan looked solemnly, staring at Zuvalo's confused face. If the opponent is the cunning island tribe from the south, then he is the enemy that the tribe has been fighting for a long time. It is hard to believe! And if the opponent comes from the northern branch, although he is extremely fierce and has a reputation of cruelty everywhere, he is not the enemy in front of him, so he can be trusted a little bit...
He thought for a while, kept making gestures with his hands, pointed at Zuwaro, and used a word that Xiong Da could understand, "the tomb of the ancestors."
"Your ancestor's tomb!...Where is it?"
"Mine? Ancestor's tomb? Where is it?"
Exploration Captain Zuvalo was stunned for a moment, looking at Hunting Captain Mu Dog with a serious look on his face, waiting for the answer. He is keenly aware that this issue seems to be very critical and will determine the other party's attitude, whether it is hostile or friendly. He thought for a long time, looked at the other party's gestures, and suddenly had a flash of inspiration and realized it!
"Where are the tombs of our ancestors?...Ah! Where do I come from? Where do we come from?..."
"Witness the Lord God! I understand! ... We come from the east, the east! The sun, the east where the sun rises! ..."
(End of chapter)
