Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

FOOTNOTES:

[41] Ursus richardsonii.

[42] One shot at Kenai Mission in 1880 measured nine feet two inches in length.

[43] Perhaps fully half the brown-bear skins taken by the Alaskan natives are retained by them, used as bedding, and hung up as portières over the entrance-holes or doors to their houses; the smaller skins are tanned and then cut into straps and lines to use in sledge-fastenings, snowshoe network bottoms, because this leather does not stretch when moist like deer and moose skin.

[44] The greatest number of different mammals found wild in any one region of Alaska is to be recorded here: bears, brown and black; deer, reindeer and the woodland cariboo; big-horn mountain sheep, a long-haired variety. These animals are all shot. The trapped varieties are: beaver, land-otter, porcupines, whistling marmot or woodchuck, large gray wolves, lynx, wolverine, marten, mink, ermine, weasels, and muskrats. Wild-fowl: grouse both white and ruffled, geese, ducks, sandhill cranes, and the great northern swan. Berries: whortleberries, salmonberries, gooseberries, and cranberries; all gathered in season and mixed with the everlasting rancid oil used by every native in every section of Alaska.

[45] Oncorhynchus chouicha—examples of this species have a recorded weight of one hundred pounds each, and six feet in length; it is also abundant in the Yukon and Kuskokvim Rivers.

[46] Dr. T. H. Bean, who, as a trained ichthyologist, passed the season of 1880 investigating the fish of Alaska by cruising throughout its waters, says:

“The greatest fish-wealth of Alaska, so far as the shore fisheries are concerned, lies in the abundance of salmon of the genus Oncorhynchus, which is represented by five species—chouicha, keta, kisutch, nerka, and gorbuscha. The first three of these are the largest, the whole series being named in the order of their size. O. chouicha is the giant of the group, and is the most important commercially; it attains to its greatest size in the large rivers, which it ascends long distances in its spawning season. In Alaska it is known to extend as far north as Bering Strait, and it is especially abundant in Cook’s Inlet and in the Yukon. Individuals weighing nearly one hundred pounds are occasionally reported from these waters, and even in the Columbia. The finest product of this salmon is the salted bellies, which are prepared principally on the Kenai, Kassilov, and Yukon Rivers; the fame of this luxury once extended to the centre of government in Russia, The well-known ‘quinnat salmon’ is the same species; its importance, as evidenced by the efforts of the United States Fish Commission and other commissions toward its propagation and distribution, is too well understood to require additional mention. The great bulk of the salted salmon exported from Alaska are the small ‘red fish,’ O. nerka; and this species is sought after simply on account of the beautiful color of the flesh and not for its intrinsic value, which is far below that of most of the other species. All the salmon extend northward to Bering Strait, but only one, gorbuscha, is reported as occurring north of the Arctic Circle; gorbuscha is said by trustworthy parties to reach the Colville River. In the early part of its run the flesh of this little ‘humpback’ seems to me to be particularly good. Other members of the family of Salmonidæ, and very important ones, are the species of Salmo (purpuratus and gairdneri) and Salvelinus malma, two of which reach a large size in Alaska. The first two are not known to exist much to the northward of Unalashka, while malma is believed to extend to the Colville. S. gairdneri resembles the Atlantic salmon in size and shape, but its habits are different; it is found filled with mature eggs in June. I have not seen any very large examples of S. purpuratus from the Territory, but the species is extremely abundant and valuable for food. The red-spotted char, S. malma, is everywhere plentiful and is highly esteemed as a food-fish; it grows much larger in Northern Alaska than in California, and has some commercial value as an export in its sea-run condition under the name of ‘salmon trout.’ Natives of Alaska make water-proof clothing from the skins of this fish.”

CHAPTER VI.
THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK.

Kadiak the Geographical and Commercial Centre of Alaska.—Site of the First Grand Depot of the Old Russian Company.—Shellikov and his Remarkable History, 1784.—His Subjection of the Kaniags.—Bloody Struggle.—He Founds the First Church and School in Alaska at Three Saints Bay, 1786, One Hundred Years ago.—Kadiak, a Large and Rugged Island.—The Timber Line drawn upon it.—Luxuriant Growth of Annual and Biennial Flowering Plants.—Reason why Kadiak was Abandoned for Sitka.—The Depot of the Mysterious San Francisco Ice Company on Wood Island.—Only Road and Horses in Alaska there.—Creole Ship and Boat Yard.—Tough Siberian Cattle.—Pretty Greek Chapel at Yealovnie.—Afognak, the Largest Village of “Old Colonial Citizens.”—Picturesque and Substantial Village.—Largest Crops of Potatoes raised here.—No Ploughing done; Earth Prepared with Spades.—Domestic Fowls.—Failure of Our People to Raise Sheep at Kolma.—What a “Creole” is.—The Kaniags or Natives of Kadiak; their Salient Characteristics.—Great Diminution of their Numbers.—Neglect of Laws of Health by Natives.—Apathy and Indifference to Death.—Consumption and Scrofula the Scourge of Natives in Alaska; Measles equally deadly.—Kaniags are Sea-otter Hunters.—The Penal Station of Ookamok, the Botany Bay of Alaska.—The Wild Coast of the Peninsula.—Water-terraces on the Mountains.—Belcovsky, the Rich and Profligate Settlement.—Kvass Orgies.—Oonga, Cod-fishing Rendezvous.—The Burial of Shoomagin here, 1741.—The Coal Mines here Worthless.

The boldest and the most striking cape in this wilderness of bluffy headlands and jutting promontories is that point which marks the dividing line between the Kadiak region and Cook’s Inlet—Cape Douglas. It is a lofty alpine ridge or spur, abruptly thrust out at a right angle to the coast, and into and over the sea for a distance of three miles, where it drops suddenly with a sheer precipitous fall of over one thousand feet into the waves that thunder on its everlasting foundations. Baffling winds here, and turbulent tide-rips distress that navigator who, coming down from the inlet, seeks the harbor of St. Paul’s village. He hardly regards this seared and rugged headland with that admiration which the geologist and the artist always will. The “woollies,” which blow fiercely off from it, worry him and challenge all his nautical skill.

Kadiak Island is the centre, geographical and commercial, of a most interesting and wide-extended district, perhaps the most so, of the Alaskan Territory, and Kadiak village, or Saint Paul Harbor is, in turn, the central and all-important settlement of this district.[47] It was the site of the first grand depot of the old Russian American Company, and also the location of the first missionary establishment and day-school ever founded on the northwest coast of the continent. From the quiet moorings of this beautiful Kadiak bay hundreds of shallops and vessels bearing courageous monks and priests have set out in every direction over all Alaska, carrying scores of them to preach the gospel among its savage inhabitants, who then were savage indeed to all intents and purposes.

The first visit ever made by white men to the great Island of Kadiak was the landing here in the autumn of 1763, at Alikitak Bay, of Stepan Glottov, a Russian sea-otter trader, who went into winter-quarters at the southeastern extremity of the island, on a spot now called Kahgooak settlement. The natives were ugly, hostile, refused all intercourse, and kept the Russians in a chronic state of fear. Scurvy broke out in their camp and nearly destroyed the invaders, leaving less than one-third of them alive in the spring. They managed then, with the greatest effort, to launch their vessel and get away, the savages meanwhile constantly attempting to finish that destruction which bodily disease had so well-nigh effected.

The beginning of the eighth decade of the eighteenth century is a true date of the real epoch of Russian domination in Alaska. All history of white exploration in this country prior to that is simply the cruel legend of an eager, heartless band of outraging Muscovites, doing everything just for the gain of the present moment, sowing so badly that they dared not remain and reap. One of those big-brained, cool, and indomitable Russians, who gave then as they give now, the stamp of high character to the race, was for several years prior to 1780 prominently engaged in the American fur trade. Grigor Ivan Shellikov was this man. He was a citizen of the Siberian town of Roolsk. He resolved to survey in person those scenes of rapid demoralization and ruin to the profitable prosecution of his Alaskan business, and, if possible, to attempt a change for the better. An evident decrease in furs, together with the hostile attitude of the natives, provoked altogether by their inhuman treatment at the hands of the “promishlyniks,” called for reform in the most emphatic manner. After a carefully deliberated plan of action had been determined upon between himself and his partners, the brothers Gollikov, he at once proceeded to the Okotsk Sea and fitted out three small vessels for his expedition.[48] He did not reach Kadiak until 1784, two years after starting out, when two of his vessels came to anchor in the harbor now known, as it was then christened by him, Three Saints Bay. Shellikov was a ready and willing correspondent. His numerous letters to his Siberian partners and his own published “Journeys” give us a clear idea of the hardihood of his enterprise, and they have a rare ethnographic value. From them we learn of the great liking which Shellikov’s party took to the Island of Kadiak, and how they resolved, soon after making a short reconnoissance, to establish themselves permanently if they could gain the confidence of its savage inhabitants.

Shellikov sent out a scouting party and captured a Kaniag, brought him into camp, and loaded the bewildered native with presents and kindness, then sent him back to his people; but the native, though won wholly over himself,[49] could not prevail upon his hostile countrymen, who soon gave the Russians ample evidence of their enmity. A party of the latter in two of the ships’ boats were exploring and hunting, when they were disturbed by the appearance of a “perfect cloud” of natives that were encamped on rough and precipitous uplands of Oogak Island, a short distance from the main island itself. Shellikov resolved to proceed himself to the spot and endeavor to win them over to amity and trade. He exhausted every art of pacification that his ready wit could suggest without making the slightest favorable impression upon these men, who treasured up in the liveliest recollection those outrages and indignities which they had hitherto suffered from the arms and vices of Shellikov’s Muscovitic predecessors. The only answer that they made to the trader now was that he at once embark and leave the island, and a few arrows and bird-spears were discharged and thrown at him by way of clinching the argument. The Russians retired to their camp, and wisely erected over day a rude stockade—none too quick, for these Kaniags approached the harbor in the middle of the night, unobserved, and threw themselves with frenzied fury upon the slightly fortified Russians. The battle lasted until daylight. The necessity and instinct of self-preservation caused the whites to fight with desperate coolness and intrepidity. The slaughter was great among the natives, and, considering the vastly inferior numbers of the Russians, their loss, too, was heavy. In spite of the bravery of the whites in this terrible midnight struggle, they would have been overpowered and exterminated ere the dawning, had it not been for the consternation which the reports of their small iron two-pounders created in the assailing ranks of those dusky hosts.

Recognizing the fact that now the only hope of peace and commercial intercourse with these natives lay in their complete subjugation, Shellikov, immediately after the sullen retreat of the hostiles, armed one of his vessels and followed them up to their rocky fortresses in Oogak, where they had taken up a position that was well-nigh impregnable, and to which savage reinforcements were rapidly flocking from the main islands. Unable to reach the entrenched camp of those defiant natives with the small ship’s-cannon, Shellikov picked a party of sixty men out of his company, went ashore with them, and, with his little iron two-pounders, he stormed the enemy with such impetuosity that the rapid discharges of these guns and small firearms of the charging Russians utterly demoralized an immensely superior force of the savages, who became panic-stricken, and actually jumped by scores off the high bluffs of Oogak into the sea, hundreds of feet below; the rest of them, more than a thousand souls, surrendered to the Russians, who took and located them on a rocky islet, several miles from the harbor of Three Saints, and temporarily provided them with provisions; and then, with hunting-gear, they were set to work and liberally paid for their peltries. Twenty or thirty of their leaders were kept as hostages on the vessels, and the result was entire submission everywhere afterward to the Russians in this region. Occasional attacks and massacres would now and then be made upon far-distant hunting parties of the Russians, it is true, but the moral effect of the Oogak victory and slaughter was such among the Kadiakers that no further combined organized resistance or opposition was ever given again.

Shellikov soon realized that he was in no further danger from savage attacks. He began a most extensive and thorough exploration of the great island, and organizations of trading-posts at every eligible point. He sent a large party around to the north side and located it at Karlook, where we now find quite a salmon-canning establishment. Here, during the winter of 1785-86 fifty-two Russians and as many natives ranged all over the water of Shellikov Straits in eager search of the sea-otter; in the meantime the whites under Shellikov’s immediate command were actively examining the recesses and fiörds which are so numerous and deep on the south side of Kadiak. So well and so thoroughly was this work carried out, that by the beginning of 1786 Shellikov had made himself well acquainted with the whole region—had established his trading-posts at every point between Shooak, in the north, and Trinity Islands, at the extreme south; and had even made himself tolerably familiar with the coast of Cook’s Inlet, having chastised the ugly Kenaitze in a most summary manner.

Again, this remarkable man is distinguished by the successful and sensible effort which he made in substituting for the orgies of Kadiak demonology the practices of the Greek Church, which, he wisely foresaw, if effected, would bind the natives closer to the Russians than any other power. He was aided in this by the personal labors and example of his wife, who accompanied him at the outset. She instructed the girls and women in needle-work, and acquired an influence over them that was very great. Feeling certain that he had established his trade on a secure foundation, Shellikov and his wife sailed for home on May 22, 1786, in the same vessel which brought them out, leaving an impress of enduring character upon Alaska of the greatest good and worth.

During the first years of the existence of the Shellikov Company, thus established here in Kadiak, it enjoyed the partial protection of the Crown and many exclusive privileges, by which advantages nearly all the smaller trading companies had been fairly crowded out of the country. But it was not always the power conferred upon a great firm by its favor at Court and larger capital that gained supremacy in Alaska during those early days—it frequently occurred that the employés of one association resorted to physical force of arms in dispossessing those of another, and then, this order initiated, the strongest organization was sure to eventually dominate the coveted region. This commercial anarchy led to the autocratic monopoly of the Russian American Company in a very few years—it was the best thing that could then have transpired for Alaska and its people.

The approach to Kadiak from the ocean is striking, because it and the numerous islets and islands that join it closely are mountainous and hilly, with many lofty peaks that have plateaux and ravines full of eternal snow. It is not often seen clearly, however, along its full extent of wild topography, on account of clouds, fog and boisterous weather, which terrifies the navigator, driving him from its vision. It is, however, an island that affords the greatest number of safe and snug harbors, and has no rival as the most enjoyable place for the traveller to visit. It so justifies us in our mind to-day, just as it warranted the Russians in expressing their preference for it a full hundred years ago.

Nature has drawn across Kadiak in a firm line, the ultimate limit of timber growth to the westward. It seems to be as arbitrary and capricious as if traced there by the humor of a human ruler. Only one-third of the island itself, its northern extremity, is covered with spruce-forest; the invisible barrier to the west seems to be a perfectly straight line over from the heads of Orlova Bay on the south side to that of Ooganok on the north coast. Here the change from a vigorous growth of spruce-forest to bare hills and grassy tundra is most abrupt and astonishingly sharp in definition; you pass from the jungle of the woods, at a single step, into heather of the moor. This line, with a slight curve to the westward only, strikes the same definition over on the mainland of the peninsula opposite, and runs right up north to Bering’s Straits’ latitude, avoiding the coast everywhere except at Cape Denbigh, Norton’s Sound.

There is scarcely any lowland, indeed none at all, on the large island itself; it is everywhere mountainous and abruptly rolling, with spaces here and there in which the grasses flourish to a great extent. A legion of small streams rush down to the bays from their mountain sources, but none of them are navigable—they are mere rapids and cascades in their entire length. A growth of the characteristic circumpolar annuals and biennials on the slopes of these hills of Kadiak is of exotic luxuriance, and of the most varied beauty of floral display in June, July, and August. Willows and alders fringe the borders of the streams in their range throughout the woodless area, while stunted birch and green grasses reach to the very summits of the hilly ridges of the interior.

Although Shellikov had established the headquarters of his Russian Company on Three Saints Bay with good reason at the time, yet when the entire Alaskan region went into the control of a single organization, it became necessary to have a grand central depot of supplies. Therefore Baranov promptly removed to the site of the present village of Kadiak. Upon that wooded island in the offing he procured the lumber and timbers necessary for the erection of those huge warehouses and numerous dwellings of many sizes required to house the merchandise, furs, and his employés. The harbor, too, is ample, and so situated that sailing-craft can come and go in all winds. Sadly, indeed, did the Russians, a few years later, abandon Kadiak for Sitka, as the numerous letters and protests still on file show; but the menacing encroachments of foreign traders in the far-distant Alexander archipelago were too grave in their portents of loss and usurpation of vested rights to allow of any other action.

To-day many of the ancient Russian structures are still pointed out in the village here which commands the harbor of Saint Paul, and in which some three hundred Creoles are living in well-built log and frame houses. Everything is clean[50] and orderly, but very, very quiet, inasmuch as no commerce, no monthly steamer, no tramping miners invade the solitude of its location. It supports a large Greek church and the priest attendant. Its people, as a rule, are wholly engaged in the business of trading fur and hunting sea-otters. Small codfish schooners often rendezvous here, and the natives also cut considerable cord-wood, for the use of such fur-traders who ply to the treeless districts westward, and fuel for fishing canneries at Karlook and Kassilov. Several little mountain rivulets flow through the limits of this settlement, which is everywhere well drained, and therefore dry in the streets by reason of its position on the rising slopes of the lofty hills which make a bold background, when the picture is viewed from the ship’s deck as you sail up to the anchorage. The presence here of some thirty white men, pure Russian Creoles, and several of our own people who have really settled in the country, many of them married, and who call the place home, makes Kadiak unique in this respect. Elsewhere, if we find a white man living at the trading-posts, or plying his vocation as a cod-salmon fisherman, or miner, he always draws himself up and emphatically denies any idea of permanent residence in Alaska.

Looking down the bay, we observe a thickly timbered and a somewhat more level island than usual—it is the famous Wood Island, where the largest spruce-trees in all this section grow; upon it is a small village of one hundred and fifty-six souls, living in thirteen log houses, thickly clustered together; they are all sea-otter hunters during the summer. This village is also the depot of that mysterious San Francisco corporation which has regularly cut up and stored tons of ice here every winter since 1856, and never has shipped a pound of it away! and when the bright, hearty agent of this corporation asks you to come out with him to the stable and advises you to mount one of the three or four horses sheltered therein, so that you can gallop round the island with him, your astonishment is perfect.

Sure enough, there is a road, incredible as it first seemed; for, in order that the horses might be exercised, a good track has been made upon the entire tide-level circuit of the island, about twelve miles in length, over which the ice company’s stock is trotted every summer at frequent intervals; in the winter these unwonted animals are busy hauling ice. You may well improve this opportunity, for it will not occur again as you travel in Alaska—you will not be able to ride elsewhere on a road worthy of the name.

A number of small trading-sloops and schooners have been built here in a boatyard, fashioned by the skill of some Creole ship-carpenters, who were trained in the yards at Sitka when Russian authority was dominant, and who have taken up their permanent abode in this “Leesnoi” settlement. A few small, tough Siberian cattle, such as we saw at Neelshik, Cook’s Inlet, are roaming about here, cared for by the natives who prize milk; also several of these same bovines are to be seen at Kadiak, where they are limited also to a few head, on account of the trouble of winter attendance and loss from bears in the summer pasturage.

An odd, weather-beaten faded little building is pointed out by the natives with pride and animation, as the house in which a “soul-like man”—a Russian monk made his abode for thirty consecutive years, teaching the children of the village and those of the neighboring towns, who flocked here in great numbers to be instructed. He taught the Russian alphabet, so that the church service might be intelligible; also rudimentary art-principles, gardening and divers useful habits for such youth. This unique shrine is in the heart of the next village closely adjoining, and which is located on Spruce Island, or “Yealovnie,” as the seventy odd Russian Creoles who live there call it. It is a little hamlet of only fifteen small log houses, very neat and clean; and the prettiest of flower-pots within the scant windows give you a far-away thought as you observe them. Here is also one of the tiniest of Greek chapels, in which the natives are regularly joined by the small number of those of Oozinkie village (a little way off) and just across the straits; these people, who have no church, are also pure Creoles, and unite in perfect accord with those of Spruce town.

Near by, on the southern shore of Afognak Island, is the largest settlement of the “old colonial citizens” in the Territory; three hundred and thirty of these people are living here in a very picturesque and substantial village; a large chapel, which is also used as a school-house, is the distinguishing architectural feature, while a number of newly-built row-boats for fishermen, on the stocks, in a miniature shipyard, point to an industry worthy of attention. The town is spread over a large landed extent, which in many places between the dwellings is devoted to vegetable gardens. More land is under cultivation here than all the rest so treated in Alaska to-day; the crops of potatoes, cabbages, turnips, and garden-salads, like radishes, etc., seldom fail except in very backward years. No ploughing[51] is done; the earth prepared for potatoes is thrown with spades, picks, and hoes up as small ridges or tumuli, into the surface of which the seed is planted. A few of those shaggy little bulls and cows, which we have noticed before at Wood Island and Kadiak, are also roaming about, and a great many domestic fowls, such as chickens and ducks, are raised by the women and children, who take the poultry into the attics or lofts above their living rooms during the inclemencies of winter.

The desire of the Russians to have beef, milk, and butter, led to a very general importation of Siberian cattle from Petropaulovsk so that every post in Alaska, at one time, had at least a pair of these useful animals to start with. The greatest care was given to them at first, everywhere; they were especially fostered at Sitka, where the demand for their flesh and milk was most urgent, but at Kadiak and the Kenai mission on Cook’s Inlet, the only partial success in causing an increase to the stock was achieved. Impressed with an idea that certain sections of the Kadiak region would serve admirably for sheep-husbandry, a San Francisco merchant-firm shipped a flock of rams and ewes—one hundred and fifty of them—sheep of the hardiest breed, to Kolma, a spot not far from St. Paul’s Harbor, Kadiak. They were in charge of a trained Scotch shepherd; but while the flock did remarkably well in the summer, yet most of them perished during the following winter, not from exposure nor want of food, but the long-continued and frequent intervals when the sheep are obliged to be shut up tightly from the fury of wintry gales laden with sleet and rain and snow, causes their wool to “sweat” and fall from the skin in large patches, producing an emaciation and debility which the animal seldom fully recovers from. Also, the general dampness everywhere under foot during the summer season in many good grazing sections of Alaska, is such as to cause an abnormal increase of the hoofs, so that the horny toes turn and grow upward, destroying the peace and comfort of a sheep and literally confine its movements and destroy its thrifty life.[52]

Since these little villages of Kadiak, Leesnoi, Yealova, and Afognak embrace within their limits a large majority of the sixteen or seventeen hundred Creoles who are residents and natives of Alaska, it may be interesting if a sketch be given of the physical and mental characteristics which distinguish them broadly from the aboriginal types. The original Creole was the offspring of a Russian father and an Aleutian or Kaniag mother. He inherited the strong thickset frame and bushy, curly beard and brown hair of his father; in many cases his eyes were as blue (and his hair sometimes red), his skin as white, and his bearing just as good as was his Russian progenitors’. The aggressive energy, however, of the sire seldom was transmitted, the Creole being indolent and very pacific in disposition. If this original Creole, in his time and turn, married a full-blooded Aleutian or Kaniag girl, then the offspring would show a marked dominance of the mother’s race—indeed, the child would be as much like other Aleutian babies as they are related in looks among themselves; but if this original Creole marries an original Creole girl, sired like himself, then we have a type which cannot be distinguished at all from the full-blooded Slavonian, only much less demonstrative, alert, and pugnacious. Most of these old colonial citizens of this district of Kadiak are therefore full-blooded Russian quadroons and octoroons, and in every physical aspect are as much like Russians as if of pure origin. Those early Creoles, male and female, who mated, as they matured, with the native males and females, in so doing caused all their offspring, long ago, to revert to the savage types, and we cannot distinguish them to-day.

CREOLES AND ALEUTES

Pencil Portraits of typical Alaskan faces, selected from the Author’s Portfolio

1.	Luka Mandriggan, an Aleute,		49	years of age	11.	Deemietri Veatkin,a Creole,	48	years of age
9.	Philip Vollkov, a Creole,		50	” ”	6.	Aggie Kooshing, ” boy,	18	” ”
8.	Matroona Vollkov, ”	girl,	15	” ”	3.	Ivan, an Aleute boy,	7	” ”
10.	Anoorka Meeseekin, ”	”	11	” ”	5.	Domian, ” ”	12	” ”
7.	Fevronia Eevanov, ”	”	9	” ”	2.	Paraskeeva, ” girl,	13	” ”
4. Natalia, an Aleute girl, 12 years of age

Some of the Creole girls and women whom we observe in these settlements are exceedingly handsome, modest, and the only fault we can find with them is their absolute speechlessness—they cannot be induced to chat with us, though they seem to enjoy our presence. Most of them live in scrupulously clean houses, the floors scrubbed and sanded like a well holystoned ship’s deck, walls papered and decorated with pictures of saints and other pious subjects; old Russian furniture, chairs, settees, bureaus, and clocks of our own make; the bright, omnipresent “samovar” in which the boiling water for tea is never allowed to get cool; little curtains over the small windows, and big curtains puckered around the beds—everything is usually clean, tidy, and quiet within the Creole’s home.

The wants of the Creole are very few outside of what the country in which he lives affords him. He manages to so deal in sea-otter, and fox and bear skins as to get from the trader’s store what tea, sugar, flour, and cloth are required for his family. Beyond this exertion and that displayed in his gardening he rests wholly at peace with himself and all the rest of the world.

The Kaniags or Kadiakers, who are the natives of this island and contiguous islands, are in much greater numbers, and are to be found everywhere here in small hamlets that nestle in the deep fiörds and bays of Kadiak. They resemble the Aleutes so closely in outward form and characteristics that the full description given in a following chapter of those people will cover the whole ground of this inquiry, only let it be remembered that the Kaniag is a trifle taller than his Aleutian cousin, has a fairer skin, a somewhat broader face, and is considerably more muscular. Like the Aleutes, he has small feet and hands, small black eyes set in deep sockets, little or no beard, and an abundance of coarse, straight, black hair, which he cuts off roughly just above his shoulders; he has a trifle more beard and a better mustache, but this is a very fine distinction. He is lighter-hearted, freer, and more jovial, but has less patience during seasons of privation or epidemic disease.

When the Kaniags gather together they are exceedingly talkative, abounding in jokes, in the recitation of funny legends, and stories of every imaginable nature associated with their simple lives. As they paddle their bidarkas and bidarrahs in making long journeys, they enliven the labor by continuous songs, snatches from church tunes, or lively airs taught them by the Russians and later by our soldiers and traders. They are in every respect much more susceptible of emotional impulses than are the Aleutes. This greater sociability is well exhibited by the invariable erection, in every settlement, of a “kashima,” or public dance and work-house, or, in fact, a town-hall as we have it:—the Aleutes have nothing of the sort. They pass a good deal of their time on the land, traversing mountain trails in quest of bears, wolves, foxes, the land-otter, and the marmot, or “yeavrashkie,” which is made into that famous skin coat called the “parkie” all over this Alaskan country outside of the Sitkan archipelago.

As these natives exist to-day there are only eighteen hundred, a few more or less, of them, which is an immense shrinkage from the Russian enumeration of six thousand five hundred made by actual count of Baranov. They seem to be declining even now, year by year, even as the Koloshians of the Sitkan region do, so that the native population of the Kadiak district, if decreased[53] in the next two decades as it has in the last, will hardly have a living representative. No one can well avoid a train of fast-crowding thought when he stops in contemplation of sickness and death as it appears and is treated in savage settlements—the only medical counsel that they ever have is their own individual instinct. Ignorant as they are of the simplest anatomical details of their structure, it is not surprising that they should surrender to disorders and disease with that remarkable passive apathy which is so distinctive of the sick everywhere in such communities.

Indians, and these Aleutes and Kaniags, as they grow up, have no parental supervision whatever as to details of diet, of warm or cool clothing, or of any of those many attentions which our children receive from their parents. For the first ten or twelve years of their lives they literally run wild, and are semi-naked or wholly so, both male and female;[54] this is their condition, then, at all seasons of the year. Exposed as they are, in their manner of living, to draughts, to insufficient covering, and damp, cold nooks for slumber, in which the air reeks with odors too vile for the power of language to express, naturally they lay a foundation, at the very outset of their existence, for pulmonic troubles in all the varied degrees of that dread disease. Consumption is, therefore, the simple and broad term for that single ailment which alone destroys the greatest number of these people, every season, in Alaska; all the natives, the Eskimo, the Aleut, the Kaniag, and the Indians suffer from it alike, and they all exhibit that same stolid indifference to its stealthy but fatal advancement—no extra care, no attempt to shelter, to protect or to ward off in the slightest manner this trouble, until the very moment of supreme dissolution calls in a shaman and the sorrowing relatives.

After lung diseases, the next destroying factor of greatest power is embodied in the virulence of scrofulous affections, which take the form of malignant ulcers that eat into the vitals and slough away the walls of the large arteries. This most loathsome blood-poisoning renders a few settlements entirely leprous, especially so to our startled eyes when we visit them. And in this regard it is hard to find a village in the whole Alaskan boundary where at least one or more of the families therein has not got upon some one of its members the singularly prominent scars that attest this disease. Often a comely young girl or man will, in turning suddenly, reveal under the jaws or on the neck and throat, a disgusting, livid eruption which a scrofulous ancestry has cursed the youth with. Since most of this complaint is on the surface, as it were, we naturally would look for some care on the part of the afflicted native, even if for no other end than self-contentment and the ready alleviation of this cutaneous misery; but we will look in vain, the patient never gives it. On the contrary, it is utterly neglected, and by reason of the filthy habit of these people, it is immensely aggravated and made infinitely more violent. In regard to consumption this apathy on the part of the victim is not, in contrast, so very remarkable, since it is more concealed and not near so disagreeable both to the native and his associates.

Though consumption and scrofula are the two great indigenous sources of disease and death among the natives, yet there is still a list—quite a long one—of other ills, such as paralysis, inflammatory rheumatism and peritonitis, fits, and an abrupt ending of life in the middle-aged, called most graphically “general debility.” As might be inferred from the method and exigencies of aboriginal life in Alaska, these natives do not survive to any great age; rarely, indeed, will an authenticated case of the full limit of sixty years be recorded or observed—an overwhelming majority of them are old at thirty-five and forty. When a man or a woman in a settlement rounds the fiftieth year of his or her life, a noted example of the tribe is afforded; but should this age be attained, and the man then be free from rheumatic troubles or the death-grasp of scrofulous or pulmonic disease, he is sure to be afflicted with injured and defective vision, if not totally blind; the glint of snow and the intensely smoky interiors of every style of native dwelling so affect the eyes of these people that those organs of sight, in the middle-aged, are seldom without signs of decay—showing some one of the various stages of granular ophthalmia, as a rule.

Snow-blindness can be remedied and its pain abated by the use of peculiar goggles, which the savages know well how to make and use, but the greater evil of smoke-poison to the optic nerve is not obviated at all by any action on their part, though it would be easy so to do. They actually seem determined to live on so as to live as wretchedly in the future as they have in the past.

Another singular characteristic of these Alaskan savages is the fact that none of the many tribes have any medicine whatever; nor have they any knowledge, so far as we can find out, of any medicinal herb or mineral, and this again is the most extraordinary item of it all. Every less or great indisposition is treated by a universal resort to the sweat-bath; this is the sole specific, and this is the only relief, except when the shaman is called in to worry the last hours of the unhappy patient to death, or, perhaps, in rare cases, to prolong his wretched existence for a longer period, by stimulating an undue or extra nervous tension, which then causes, at times, the usually languid and resigned sufferer to rally, as it were, before the flame flickers out. Truly these people are predestinarians; they are wonderful in their patience when suffering long and acutely, as they lie stretched out or squatted in their gloomy, noisome hovels.

All the traders, and every vessel that sails in Alaskan waters, have medicine-chests, and to their credit be it said that, as far as they can, they do everything in their power to aid the natives when sick; but the aborigines have not the right idea of taking physic, since they appreciate nothing but forcible treatment—large doses of something that acts immediately, or nothing at all. For instance, if the trader gives an Indian a dose of Epsom-salts, the amount given must be at least four or five times as much as would do for himself, or there will be no effect on the patient whatever. Consequently, the simplest remedies known are the only ones which the white man dare give to these people, and they have, as a matter of course, very little power to relieve them. During the last six or seven years a violent form of typhoid-pneumonia has been wasting whole settlements on the Kadiak and Aleutian coasts; the Creoles and the natives alike yield at once to the disease, making scarcely an effort to save themselves. The traders everywhere became seriously alarmed, as the force of sea-otter hunters was rapidly decreasing, and exerted themselves to their utmost in staying the epidemic, which seemed to be carried from one village to the other in vessels and by canoes. But the only medicines which can be used in the safe and successful treatment of this complaint were regarded as unworthy of notice by the suffering natives, who, not feeling immediately relieved after taking them, would then totally ignore their further use.

Bad enough are the indigenous ills of the savages in Alaska. They were, however, nothing to the horrors which followed the importation of small-pox by the Russians in 1838-39. This terrible scourge swept like wildfire up from its initial point at Sitka, over the whole length of the Alaskan mainland and island coast, until it faded out in the far north where it had nothing to prey upon. It actually carried in its grim grasp one-half of the whole population then living in that large area to an abrupt and violent death—several districts were so afflicted that not a soul escaped—every human being was exterminated; it was exceedingly fatal and virulent in the Sitkan archipelago. We, knowing the filth and exposure of the lives of these people, can readily understand how they fell down and were crushed under the march of this disease.[55] As might be supposed the Russians lost no time in thoroughly vaccinating the survivors; and they have been faithfully followed, in this duty, by our own sailors and traders who now live in the country.

Another imported evil, the measles, is almost as deadly up here among the natives as small-pox. While it is a simple trouble arousing no especial anxiety with us, yet in this climate, together with the careless methods of life, it assumes a black form and becomes malignant and fatal. The last extended attack took place principally in the villages of the Kadiak district in the winter of 1874-75, where it so alarmed and impressed the sojourning members of an Icelandic Commission as to shake their desire to emigrate to that region—at least, when they returned to their country, they were never heard from in favor of Alaska.

A very natural question arises in this connection as to whether or no the savages of Alaska will ever increase in numbers or diminish to actual extermination as time advances. It appears very plain, however, that the inhabitants of the Aleutian chain, the Peninsula, and Cook’s Inlet are nearly as numerous to-day as they have been ever since the small-pox decimation of 1838-39. But all authorities agree in declaring that these people have never regained their numerical force represented in the settlement prior to the advent of the scourge which depopulated them. As to the Eskimo of the Bering Sea coasts and the Koloshians of the Sitkan region, it seems well established, from what we can learn, that they have regained their former strength in part, and were they only provident they might live by hundreds where they now exist in tens. Indifferent, wholly indifferent when living, they are as apathetic when they face death.

After reading the quaint yet strong narrative of the ferocity and strength of the Kaniags which Shellikov[56] has given us, it is hard, indeed, to realize that bold pioneer’s feeling as we now look in upon the steep slopes of Three Saints Bay, where, at the head of it, within the sweep of a sand-spit, he erected the first permanent white habitation ever planted on Kadiak with the aid of the one hundred and fifty or sixty Russians who formed his company. Here, to-day, we see a cluster of sod-walled barraboras and two small, frame trading-houses, in which live one hundred and ninety of the descendants of those hardy savages who terrified and nearly annihilated the party of Shellikov one hundred years ago in this very spot. Nothing else is left, for Baranov in 1796 removed the post itself to the present site of Kadiak village. As we scan the settlement of Three Saints we notice that the most prominent object is the rough-hewn walls and thatched roof of an old Greek chapel, in front of which is a rude trestle; from the upper frame of this a bell hangs. Now a stooping figure emerges from the church door; he seizes the clapper, or bell tongue, with both hands and swings it vigorously. Promptly the villagers emerge from their huts; trotting and shambling in single file, they all troop into the chapel. Meanwhile the dusky sub-deacon still tolls and chimes away long after every inhabitant has been gathered in. These men and women who, with bowed heads and fervent crossings, bend and kneel as they enter that place of worship, are the children of the “blood-thirsty and implacable” Kaniags of whom Shellikov gave so vivid a picture to the Empress of all the Russias just a century ago.

They are hunting sea-otters, however, just as they did then, and living in precisely the same manner, save the variations of outward demeanor and intercourse due to the teachings of the Greek Church. But if you go among them and strive to have them tell you of the heroic battle made by their ancestors on the Oogak “kekour,” you will be rewarded by either a stupid stare of vacancy or a muttered “Bogue ezniet” (God knows)!

The deep recess of Eagle Harbor, which lies between this point of earliest Russian occupation and Kadiak village, affords the location of another large native village, and its region is called the best grazing ground in all Alaska. On the surf-beaten islets at the mouth of the inlet a great many sea-lions are always found, and thus yield to these hunters of Orlova a rich return in hides and sinews so essential for the construction of the “bidarka.” A few families of Creoles also reside here, who attend to a small herd of cattle, keep fowls, and generally look after their commissions as middlemen in the sea-otter revenues.

From the earliest colonial time to the present the little village of Karlook, on the north side of the island, has been the busiest spot in the country. Here is a salmon-fishing settlement right on the coast at the mouth of a small river, where from the ancient date of Russian occupation there has been a salt house and packing establishment, in which the salt and dried fish used throughout the entire Alaskan region was annually secured and prepared. To-day we find two large canning establishments set up and sustained by San Francisco merchants. The run of salmon into this river of Karlook at the height of the season is so great that it interferes with the free movement of canoes in crossing the stream; while the fishermen of long experience in such matters say that twenty thousand barrels of the red-meated flesh could be easily secured and packed away at Karlook every summer and autumn. This salmon,[57] so abundant here, is much smaller in average size than is the one common in Cook’s Inlet—it does not average ten pounds in weight. But the rich red color of its flesh is an object of the canner, who soon finds out what public taste prefers.

The rough, rocky islands of Trinity, which constitute the extreme southern limit of the Kadiak influence, are the chosen resort of sea-lions and many of the rare sea-otter. Their capture lures a few hardy natives to live in close juxtaposition to the favored haunts of these much-prized animals, and they have a most extended hunting range, reaching far away down to the westward and southward as low as that remarkable barren island of Ookamok, where the celebrated “Botany Bay,” of the old Russian régime, was established. That lonely, isolated, desolate spot was the point where the old-time criminals who were guilty of murder, arson, and other capital offences, were always shipped, and left largely to their own devices for a livelihood. They were literally entombed alive on this islet, where nothing but moss and lichens and scant sphagnum could exist upon the rough, rocky surfaces, where the soil was barely appreciable—elsewhere there was none. But, strange to say, upon this island great numbers of that lively little ground squirrel, Parry’s marmot, were found, and still continue to be found, which were characterized then as now by a peculiar bluish ground-tint to their fur. This color is most popular and the one so highly prized in those universal coats or cloaks used by the natives, and called “parkies” by them.

Therefore the convicts were obliged, in order to get food of their liking and many small luxuries, to diligently hunt these little animals, which they did, not only for this reason alone, but in self-defence to kill time as well.

In 1870 the descendants of the original convicts, and survivors of recent transportation by Russian order, learned in some way or other that they might lead a free life; so they then actually removed en masse in two large skin bidarrahs, loaded to the gunwales, and made in safety that long sea-voyage which intervenes between Ookamok and Kadiak Island. They had about one chance in a hundred of getting over the route alive, for the least of those chronic gales and storms that prevail here would have swept them to the bottom of the ocean had it arisen in the time of their passage.[58]

A great expanse of tide-troubled and wind-tossed water is bound between the northern coast of Kadiak and the volcanic ridges of the mainland opposite. The Straits of Shellikov are fair to see on the chart, but the mariner who has once sailed into them, lured there by the false promise of a sheltered passage, never fails to avoid the track afterward—he gladly makes the open detour of the broad Pacific. That same precipitous mountain range which we have gazed upon as it rose in sullen grandeur from the waters of Cook’s Inlet, still fronts us, just as boldly, as it sweeps down the entire three hundred miles of the peninsula, forming the southern coast of that land. The sombre green and blue timber-cloak, so characteristic of its northern range, is here replaced by the russet-grays and brownish-yellows of that sphagnum and moss which now supplant the coniferous forests of Cook’s Inlet, giving to the picture a much richer tone. Several of these peaks in this chain of mountains thus extended down the south coast of the peninsula are five and seven thousand feet in altitude, their summits much eroded and broken. They hold in their lofty solitudes a great many little glaciers, that, however, never come down to the sea as they habitually do in the Choogatch and Elias Alps. The feet of these peninsular mountains are washed by the direct roll of the ocean waves, which dash into innumerable fiörds and coves, studded with small, rocky islets and reefs awash. A beautiful geological demonstration of the effect which surf-beating waves of the ocean have made upon these mountains ages ago, is shown by the plainly evident lines traced on their flanks fully one thousand feet above the present level of the tide; and again, another terrace is sculptured in parallel relief just above it, some five hundred feet higher—a silent, but conclusive showing of the truth that the entire Aleutian chain has been lifted out, at two successive periods, and up from the sea.

This range of the peninsula is in itself quite peculiar from the others which we have hitherto noticed thus far. It differs from their physiognomy in one respect—the mountains and ridges themselves are interrupted in one continuity down the line of their extension by abrupt depressions. These passes, as they appear to be, are not so in fact, but are either low or elevated marshy plains, which extend clear across the peninsula; they create an impression in the mind of the observer that at a not very remote period, geologically speaking, the peaks of this peninsula range were then islands, and the marshy portages, now elevated, were the bottoms of the straits then between them. The natives are continually going to and fro between the waters of Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean over these areas of swampy level, engaged in hunting reindeer, bear, or in friendly intercourse with the settlements. The most signal mountain groups on the peninsula are those of Morshovie, of Belcovsky, and the Pavlosk volcanic cluster—all joined by low, wet isthmian swales. The Shoomagin volcano of Veniaminov is also a noteworthy peak. The peninsula is almost bisected between Moller and Zakharov Bays, where the natives cross from water to water in a half-day’s portage, and again at Pavlov Harbor. All these isolated or nearly detached mountain sections have a striking resemblance in every respect to the first large island, Oonimak, that is separated from the mainland by the narrow and unnavigable Krenitzin Straits.

The Bering Sea coast line of the great Alaskan Peninsula presents a most radical contrast to that of the Pacific—the unbroken, rocky abruptness and roughness there is here suddenly transformed right at the very turn in the Straits of Krenitzin, to low, sandy reaches and slightly elevated moorland tundra, which cover a wide interval between the mountains and the waters of Bristol Bay and Bering Sea. The huge masses of lava, of breccia and conglomerate tufa, that everywhere rear their black-ebony shoulders above the Pacific surf, disappear entirely and suddenly here. At Oogashik, where we find a small settlement of Aleutes from Oonalashka, hunting walrus and sea-lions, reindeer and bears, the first rocks of granite and quartz-porphyries appear, every evidence of that character to the westward being purely and essentially igneous.

The Walrus-hunting Village of Oogashik.

Belcovsky is the metropolis of the Alaskan Peninsula. It is the chief settlement of the sea-otter hunters, and the seat of the greatest rivalry and traffic in that fur-trade, based wholly upon the costly skins of the “bobear,”[59] and which constitutes the only traffic worthy of mention in which the inhabitants of the entire Aleutian and Kadiak districts can engage. Here we observe from our anchorage a little town perched upon the summit of a bluff and clinging to the flanks of a precipitous mountain that looms up behind it, usually so wreathed in fog that its summit is seldom seen. Some two hundred and sixty or seventy Aleutian sea-otter hunters and their families are living here in an oddly contrasted hamlet of frame houses and earthen barraboras; the freshly painted red roof and yellow walls of a large, new church, in the tower of which a pleasing chime of bells (but rudely struck, however), arrests the ear and the eye as the most attractive single object within the limits of the place.[60] The rival traders have run up their flags very smartly on the poles that are erected before their doors as we swing to anchor in the offing, and a great bustle is evident among the inhabitants when our boat pulls away for the landing, which is a sheltered surf-eddy right under the blackest and most forbidding of bluffs. Two rival trading-firms have each erected a landing warehouse for the reception of their stores upon the rocky beach where we step ashore. The ascent to the village above is steep, but over a sloping slide of mossy earth and rocks. A clear, brawling brook runs down through the town, and we cross it by a little foot-bridge on our way. We observe cord-wood piled upon the beach, which the traders have brought from Kadiak, and several heaps of coal that had been brought up as ballast from Vancouver’s Island. This fuel is regularly sold to the natives here, who have none, unless it be a stray stick of drift-wood or the “chicksa”[61] vines, which the women gather on the hill-sides.

Sea-otter hunting is the sole industry and topic of conversation, for within a radius of fifty miles from the site of Belcovsky fully one-half of the entire Alaskan catch of these valuable peltries is secured. Were they not hopelessly improvident, shiftless and extravagant, they would be a really wealthy community; but the notoriety of the debauches here has become a by-word and a reproach over the whole region between Cook’s Inlet and Attoo. Every dollar of their surplus earnings is squandered in orgies, stimulated by the vile “quass” or beer which they make. They dress, however, in suits of every-day clothing, such as we wear ourselves, when lounging about the village, and their women wear cloth garments and hats cut after a fashion not very remote in San Francisco.

BELCOVSKY

Village of Aleutian Sea-otter Hunters, on the South Shore of the Alaskan Peninsula. Viewed from the Schooner’s Anchorage

The neatness of the villages which we have just visited at Kadiak and Cook’s Inlet has no counterpart in Belcovsky, where, in spite of its much greater trade and wealth, the filth and neglect everywhere manifested among the barraboras and their interiors, are in harsh and disagreeable contrast, while the taciturn, swelled heads of the inmates speak volumes for the strength of that carousal during the night prior to your arrival. A small frame house is pointed out as the school, where it seems that those natives actually sustain a teacher and send a large percentage of their children. It declares that these people are not vicious at heart, though they cannot resist intemperance. They read and write, however, principally in the Aleutian dialect, using an alphabet prepared for their race by the Greek Catholic missionaries in 1810-25. But, while the large capture of sea-otters and consequent flow of the traders’ money and supplies into this settlement brings these people greater wealth than that showered elsewhere, yet the real physical misery of those natives of Belcovsky proves the truth and points the moral of a very old saying which declares that riches alone do not bring contentment to the human mind, be it ever so high or ever so low.

A strong south wind is springing up, and you are told by the skipper that you must get aboard as quickly as possible, for it is sure destruction to his vessel if she lies long at anchor in the offing, since the sunken rocks and open roadstead are dangerous. The little schooner is rapidly put under way, “beating out” in the freshening gale and headed for Oonga, which is the next settlement in importance, about fifty miles east. Sailing-vessels never come into Belcovsky, except those of rival traders, because it is the most risky port that the mariner has to make in all these waters of Alaska.

Before leaving the sea-otter emporium it is well to call attention to the fact that at a small indentation of this same peninsula, twenty-nine miles to the northward, is a settlement made up entirely of the poor relatives of these Belcovsky people, some forty or fifty souls, who, however, take a great pride in their superior health and morality. They have a little chapel, and enjoy much better opportunities for hunting bear and reindeer. These animals, the reindeer leading, always followed by the bears, come down at regular intervals in large herds from a great moorland to the northeast, travelling on a well-beaten “road” or track, which leads clear to the westernmost end of the peninsula, where those bovine road-makers plunge into and cross the narrow Krenitzin Straits to renew their land march and scatter all over the rugged and extended tundra and mountain sides of Oonimak Island.

With a line of dissipation and general misery which the rich commerce of Belcovsky causes in that settlement, we ought not to fail to include the Protassov or Morserovie village which is located on the far end of the peninsula—the extreme west end, where a much smaller community exists, though equally opulent and just as dissolute. Here is a settlement of nearly a hundred natives, who have an annual average income of about $1,000 to each family. Yet, in spite of this small fortune in such a region, when visited by an agent of the Government in 1880, they shocked him by their aspect of abject physical misery and that excessive debauchery which had stamped them more wretchedly than it had even their cousins of Belcovsky. These people, in addition to their fine natural advantages of position for hunting sea-otters, enjoy a location in close juxtaposition to walrus-banks and sea-lion spits and islands elsewhere on the Bering shore, where they find these pinnipeds in great numbers at certain seasons of the year. The flesh, skins, blubber, and sinews are both articles of essential use and of luxury to them. Also, the same reindeer and brown-bear road, which we have just noticed, passes close by the village, so that those desiderata of food-supply and trade are very accessible.

Near by the village, less than half a mile, as if planned especially by a merciful providence, there are a number of hot sulphur-springs which would afford the diseased and sickly natives infinite relief, if they could only be induced to make the necessary exertion to go to them and bathe therein. Yet this officer of the Government declares that not one of them could be induced by him to try the efficacy of the healing waters—“It was too far to walk!”

When our little vessel comes to anchor in Delarov Harbor, Oonga Island, of the Shoomagin group, we see a flag flying from the summit of a grassy knoll which caps an irregular but bluffy headland. The village lies directly over, and under the shelter of that ridge, and it opens quickly on our view as we pull around the point and land with our dingy in a deeply indented cove upon a smooth sand and pebbly beach. The town is just above, in its full extent, but it is a thickly clustered mass of fourteen frame houses, twenty or twenty-one barrabkies, and the ever-present church. It does not make near as much of a spread as does Belcovsky, although it is quite as large. This is the chief codfishing rendezvous for the white fishermen who annually come up to the Shoomagin banks from San Francisco in six or seven small schooners. The location and surroundings of the little hamlet are exceedingly picturesque, but, unfortunately, though in a somewhat less disagreeable extent, the people here are also given over to those Belcovsky orgies, inasmuch as they, too, are great and successful otter-hunters, and have an income of over six hundred dollars for each family, which wealth seems to demoralize far more than it comforts their existence.

The strong southerly and southeast winds that prevail here during the summer season are the most severe, and, strange to say, they are the ones which are the coldest and the chilliest—a north wind is always warmer! These south winds bring to Oonga its foggiest weather, its heaviest rains, and raise such a ground swell in the village harbor that the craft therein are often compelled to go to sea for safety, and it always drives the fishermen from the banks outside. Those cod-banks are best, off the southerly range of the islands, and hence, when a southeaster blows, the schooners are on a most dangerous lee-shore. They seldom ever take the risks of riding out such a gale. Old skippers who have fished for forty years on the Grand Banks and “Georges,” for the Gloucester and Boston markets, declare that the fury of the sea and wind is greater off the Shoomagins in a southeaster than anything of the kind experienced on the Atlantic. These wild gales become stronger, loaded with sleet and snow, as winter approaches, so that by the middle or end of November, until next April, all sailing-craft are practically driven from the fishing grounds.

The same method of catching cod is employed here as practised by our Gloucester men, in only one respect, however: the long, buoyed lines are not set out and regularly under-run, but instead, small boats and dories, with two men in each, are put off from the schooners, and fish with hand-lines, using what is known as “11-inch” and “12-inch” hooks. Halibut, and “squid,” or cuttle-fish, make the best bait. A good, smart man, if he is fortunate, will haul up four hundred codfish in a day’s steady labor, but this is an extraordinary streak of luck. An average of three hundred every fair day is one that gives the highest satisfaction. These fish are taken on board of the schooner, salted, and not touched again until the cargo is broken for re-drying and curing at several points chosen for that purpose in California. At first our people were disposed to hire the natives up here to do this hand-line fishing, and they did so; but a patient trial has demonstrated the fact that it pays to employ our own men instead, even at greatly advanced wages. The Aleutes are docile, and do exceedingly well in spurts, but they do not like to work in steady, well-sustained periods of any great length at a time.

Were it not for the intense physical discomfort of the rapidly recurring fog, sleet, and rain-laden gales, Oonga would undoubtedly be a site well chosen for a neat New England fishing village. Many of those white men now employed up there in the cod-fishery declare that they would bring their wives and children into the country, to permanently settle, if they thought that they could be happy under the conditions of climate which prevail. But they argue that where they themselves cannot peacefully exist the year round, it would be idle to suppose that a civilized settlement could be well established. We will find, however, quite a number of genial, sociable fellows, men of our race, who are well educated, and who have had excellent opportunities, and who to-day are roaming here, there, and everywhere in Alaska, hunting, fishing, and trading, or prospecting. They appear to be entirely happy, not a bit cynical, and never express the slightest desire to return with us to the world which they have left behind them voluntarily. Alaska to them is a perfect Mecca of peace, and they have no desire to see it changed. They unite usually in saying that their wants are few, easily supplied, and they scarcely remember what care was—it does not trouble them now.

The cod-fishermen do not make their working headquarters in this village, but across, over the bay on Popov Islet, at a spot which is called Pirate Cove. They are not annoyed by idle villagers there, and are also somewhat nearer to the fishing-resorts which are just outside. They are most likely not far from that spot where Bering landed, August 30, 1741, to bury one of his seamen named Shoomagin, and to refill his water-casks. The exact locality, or even the precise islet of the many that form this Shoomagin group, on which the then sick and sadly demoralized explorer and his crew interred the remains of their dead comrade, will never be satisfactorily established; the cross of wood set up was immediately pulled down, after his departure, by the natives, who were then decidedly hostile, and who eyed him and his vessel with unaffected dislike and apprehension.[62] When the St. Peter, six days later, hauled off from those islands and turned her prow for Kamchatka, perhaps that gloomy, timid Dane commanding her may have had an astral premonition of the wreck of this vessel, which soon followed—and his own death too, in a self-made sand grave beneath the black shadows of the bluffs at “Kommandor”—this may have caused him to earn that reproach which has been so lavishly laid upon his conduct of a most remarkable and disastrous voyage.

The Shoomagins are all bold and bluffy, with high uplands and lofty ridges; on Oonga the most elevated summits are to be seen. Bare of timber, but covered with sphagnum and mosses and clumps of dwarfed crab-apples and willows, they stand as rock-ribbed break-waters against the full sweep of the mighty uninterrupted roll of a vast ocean. The surf that dashes foaming and booming upon their firm foundations is of unrivalled force, and fear-inspiring.

Oonga Island has also been the base of a very extended and thorough attempt to develop a large vein of coal which is found cropping out on the face of a bluff in a small inlet of its north shore. The oldest coal-mine in the region of Alaska is located in Cook’s Inlet near its mouth, at a spot still indicated on maps as Coal Harbor. Here the Russians, eager to be able to obtain fuel for the use of their steam-vessels, began, in 1852, a most active and systematic series of mining operations; they brought machinery and ran it by steam-power; experienced German miners were engaged to superintend and direct a large force of Muscovitic laborers sent up from Sitka. In 1857 the work had been so energetically pushed that shafts had been sunk, and a drift run into the vein for a distance of one thousand seven hundred feet; during this period, and three following years, two thousand seven hundred tons of coal were mined, the value of which was forty-six thousand rubles, but the result was a net loss. The thickness of the vein was found to vary from nine to twelve feet, and its extent was practically unlimited. But the Russians found out then, as our people at Oonga did afterward, that this Alaskan lignite was utterly unfit for use in the furnaces of the steamers—that it was so highly charged with sulphur as to burn like a flash and eat out, fuse and warp the grate-bars—even melting down the smoke-stacks! Steam-vessels now bring their own coal with them from San Francisco, Puget Sound or Nanaimo, or have it sent up from there by sailing-tenders to depots previously designated.[63]

As we leave the sheltering bluffs of Oonga, our course seems to be laid directly south; so much so, that for once we express our surprise to the skipper, who, feeling sure that he understands our dread of losing time in reaching Oonalashka, spreads out his chart and calls us to the table. A moment’s inspection shows the wisdom of the roundabout course, for a forest of rough, rocky islets studs the ocean directly to the west and many to the south. To sail through the intricate passages of the Chernaboors and the reefs of Saanak would be to invite certain destruction. Therefore, as we make a long detour to clear the path of our progress from all danger, we will give the reader some interesting facts relative to the chase of the sea-otter, which is the sole object of those natives who hunt in this district.