[51] On Wood Island, however, a small field of rye, oats, or barley, is planted every year for the use of the horses kept there; here a plough is employed. These cereals never ripen, but are cut green, and fed as fodder. Corn is a total failure everywhere, even as fodder. No cereals have been ripened in Alaska; the attempt, however, has been made a thousand times.
[52] The first cattle brought into Alaska were taken to Kadiak in 1795, and from this central station the stock was distributed—so that by 1833 it had increased to a herd of over two hundred and twenty. At the present writing it is very doubtful whether there are sixty head in the whole region. Every season it is the habit of traders and others to send upon steamers as they go, a few head of beef-steers, which are turned out at Sitka, Kadiak, and Oonalashka to fatten during the summer, and then are slaughtered when winter ensues. Pigs thrive here, but live too much on the sea-refuse for the good of their flesh. So they are not favored.
[53] The church records show that the people of the Kadiak district have decreased as follows: 1796—6,510; 1818—3,430; 1819—3,252; 1822—2,819; 1863—2,217; 1880—1,813. Small-pox, measles, and other imported diseases have caused this.
[54] The little girls, as a rule, receive the earliest garments, generally nothing but a cotton shift and a torn blanket.
[55] La Pérouse, who touched on this coast in 1786 at Litooya Bay, under the flanks of Mount Fairweather, declares that he saw marks of the small-pox on the savages who were there then; most likely what he saw was the scar of scrofulous sores. In 1843-44 another small-pox outbreak on the Aleutian Islands took place, but the people had been vaccinated in the meantime, and nothing serious came of it.
[56] Grigoria Shellikova Stransvovania, or Shellikov’s Journeys, from 1783 to 1787. Published, St. Petersburg, 1792-93. 12mo. 2 vols.
[57] Oncorynchus nerka. The fishing is done entirely with seines, floating across the river twenty to twenty-five fathoms in length, three fathoms in depth, with a three-and-a-half-inch mesh. The whole native population is also employed in this fishery during the summer.
[58] The true reason for this hegira of the convicts is a most amusing one. It is as follows: Shortly after the transfer, in 1869, General Thomas made an extended inspection of the Alaskan posts on a steamer detailed for that work. He was accompanied by a certain representative of a Protestant Board of Missions. The vessel accidentally ran across Ookamok Island when making her way to the westward from Kadiak and touched there, where, ignorant of the fact that the people were convicts and their descendants, moved by their pitiful tales of privation, a large amount of ship’s stores were landed upon the beach to satisfy the “suffering” natives: they ate, drank, and were merry, and lived sumptuously for several months afterward. But an end to these good things came at last; the reaction in the settlement was terrible. So, urged by its pangs, the penal colony determined to pack up and move to the nearest point possible, where, when living, they could again meet, and often too, their kind benefactors! Hence that startling journey to find those generous Americans. Lately, however, the traders at Kadiak have taken many of these people back to Ookamok, where they begged to be allowed to go and end their lives. This is the most desolate island, perhaps, in all the range of that vast Aleutian archipelago.
[59] Literally “beaver.” The Russians always called this animal the “sea-beaver,” but shortened from “morskie-bobear” to the simple name.
[60] This church was finished in 1882—begun in 1880, it cost $7,000, every cent being freely contributed by the natives.