Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

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.