One became an excellent navigator, and made charts which were followed by other voyagers for many years. Others worked skilfully in ivory, and the dark-eyed women wove their dreams into the most precious basketry of the world.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
We sailed into the lovely bay of Unalaska on the fourth day of July. The entire village, native and white, had gone on a picnic to the hills.
We spent the afternoon loitering about the deserted streets and the green and flowery hills. One could sit contentedly for a week upon the hills,—as the natives used to sit upon the roofs of their barabaras,—doing nothing but looking down upon the idyllic loveliness shimmering in every direction.
In the centre of the town rises the Greek-Russian church, green-roofed and bulbous-domed, adding the final touch of mysticism and poetry to this already enchanting scene.
At sunset the mists gathered, slowly, delicately, beautifully. They moved in softly through the same strait by which we had entered—little rose-colored masses that drifted up to meet the violet-tinted ones from the other end of the bay. In the centre of the water valley they met and mixed together, and, in their new and more marvellous coloring, pushed up about the town and the lower slopes. Out of them lifted and shone the green roof and domes of the church; more brilliantly above them, napped thick and soft as velvet, glowed the hills; and more lustrously against the saffron sky flashed the pearl of the higher peaks.
There was a gay dinner party aboard the Dora that night. Afterward, we all attended a dance. There was only one white woman in the hall besides my friend and myself; and we three were belles! We danced with every man who asked us to dance, to the most wonderful music I have ever heard. One of the musicians played a violin with his hands and a French harp with his mouth, both at the same time—besides making quite as much noise with one foot as he did with both of the instruments together.