The 14th saw us make Nulato, quite an historical place on the river. It was the furthest inland trading station of the old Russian-American Fur Company at the time of our purchase of Alaska, and had been used as such by them, under different names, for nearly a quarter of a century. It was occupied by the traders of the Alaska Company until a year or two before my arrival, as well as by traders of the "opposition," when the killing of one of the latter led to trouble with the Indians, so that both companies withdrew.
Many years ago, one cold winter night, the Russians of the station were massacred, along with a number of friendly Indians who had assembled around the station. In this disaster fell an English naval officer, Lieutenant Barnard by name, who was looking for traces of Sir John Franklin, even in this out-of-the-way corner of the earth. A respectable head-board marks his grave, but the high grass and willows have buried it almost out of sight.
Here also lies buried a locally noted Russian character of hard reputation, Kerchinikoff by name, whose story was told me by more than one of the traders, who had known him and heard of his doings in his adventurous career. It was romancingly said by way of illustrating his prowess among the native tribes, that if the skulls of his Indian victims had been heaped together in his grave they would not only fill it but enough would have remained to erect a high monument to his memory. He died at a great age, having been from his very youth a terror to all the tribes on the lower river, but wholly in the interests, as he interpreted them, of the great iron monopoly to which he belonged. Many years ago the few Russian traders of the Andreavsky station had been massacred by the Indians. Kerchinikoff asked for protection and a sufficient force to punish the murderers, and those at Nulato transmitted his request to the headquarters of the Russian Fur Company at far-off Sitka, but did not receive even the courtesy of an answer. With one or two companions he put a couple of old rusty Russian carronades in the prow of his trading boat,—the identical one on which we were drifting down the river, and which he himself had built—and in lieu of proper ammunition, which he was unable to get, he loaded his guns with spikes, hinges and whatever scraps of iron and lead he could pick up around Michaeloffski, and appearing suddenly before the Indian village, demanded the surrender of the murderers. The natives gathered in a great crowd on the shore of the river, laughing derisively at his apparently absurd demands, having never even heard of such a thing as a cannon. Spears were hurled and arrows shot at the boat, which thereupon slowly approached, having its cannon pointed at the dense crowd. When an arrow buried itself in the prow, the terrible report of the two carronades made answer, and about a score of Indians were stretched upon the beach, while the wounded and panic-stricken fled in great numbers to the woods for protection. From that day not a single drop of white man's blood was ever shed by any savages upon the lower river, until Kerchinikoff himself, while lying on his sledge in a drunken stupor, was stabbed to death almost within a stone's throw of the graves of those whom he had avenged.
We landed at Upper Nulato (the "opposition" store), and here encountered a half-breed who spoke tolerable English, and who pointed out the places just mentioned.
"Hello, where you come?" was his first question, to which we briefly replied, one of the members of the party remarking it was quite windy hereabouts, referring to the three or four days' gale we had had.
"Allee time like that now," was his cheerful answer. This neatly-dressed young fellow took me down to his cache, and seemed especially delighted in showing me his new "parka," or reindeer coat, for winter wear. It was one of the highly-prized "spotted" parkas. The spotted reindeer are bred only in Asia, and their hides—for the tribe owning them will never allow the live animals to be taken away—find their way into Alaska by way of Bering's Straits by means of intertribal barter, while numbers are brought by the Alaska Company from Russian ports on that side, and are used as trading material with such tribes as wear reindeer clothing. I offered a good price for this particular "parka," but the owner would not part with it, as they are especially valuable and tolerably rare at this distance up the river, and only the wealthiest Indians can afford to buy them. He told me this was the only one at Nulato at the time, but I did not know how much faith might be put in the statement. Bad as the weather was, we got a good series of observations on the sun, while at Nulato, on the afternoon of the 14th.
On the 15th the old familiar gale from ahead put in its appearance as we started in the morning, but to every body's great surprise it hauled to the rear in the middle of the afternoon, and when we camped at 8:20 P.M., having used our jib in sailing, an Indian from a village near by told us the place was called Kaltag; so that we had made an extraordinary run under all the circumstances. Indian villages were quite numerous during the day. About Kaltag occurs the last point on the river at which high ground comes down to the water's edge on the left side, and for the rest of the voyage, a distance of some five hundred miles, precipitous banks only are found on the right side, while the country to the left resembles the flat-lands seen further back, but the horizon is much more limited than that of the flat-lands, hills appearing in the background, which finally become isolated peaks, or short broken ranges.
The morning of the 16th ushered in a heavy gale from ahead, accompanied by a deluge of showers, and as the camp, 57, was fortunately situated at a point where all the channels were united, so that the river steamer could not pass unnoticed, I determined to remain over.
It would be as tiresome to my readers as it was aggravating to us, to repeat in detail the old story of our starting with a fair wind, its change to a gale that kept us against the banks, and of our passing a few Indian towns.