[64] The Cossacks who came with Altasov were rough-looking fellows of small size, lean and wiry, with large, thin-lipped mouths and very dark skins. Most of them were the offspring of Creole Russian Tartars and women from the native tribes of Siberia. They were filthy in their habits. Naturally cruel, they placed no restraint upon their actions when facing the docile Aleutes, and indulged in beastly excesses at frequent intervals. The custom of the Cossack hunters after establishing on an island, was to divide the command into small parties, each of which was stationed in or close by a native settlement. The chief or head Aleut was induced by presents to assist in compelling and urging his people to hunt. When they returned, their catch was taken and a few trifling presents made, such as beads and tobacco-leaf.
[65] In 1804 Baranov (the Colonial Governor) went from Sitka to the Okotsk with fifteen thousand sea-otter skins, that were worth as much then as they are now, viz., fully $1,000,000. Last year the returns from Alaska and the northwest coast scarcely foot up four thousand skins; but they yielded at least $200,000 directly to the native hunters, being ten times better pay than they ever brought under Russian rule to these people.
[66] It is a fact, coincident with the diminution of the sea-otter life under the pressure of Russian greed, that the population of the Aleutian Islands fell off at the same time and in the same ratio. The Slavonians regarded the lives of these people as they did those of dogs, and treated them accordingly. They impressed and took, under Baranov’s orders, in 1790-1806, and his subordinates, hunting-parties of five hundred to one thousand picked Aleutes, eleven or twelve hundred miles to the eastward from their homes at Oonalashka, Oomnak, Akoon, and Akootan. This terrible sea-journey was made by these natives in skin “baidars” and bidarkies, traversing one of the wildest and roughest of coasts. They were used not only for the drudgery of otter-hunting in Cook’s Inlet and the Sitkan archipelago, but forced to fight the Koloshians and other savages all the way up and down those inhospitable coasts. That soon destroyed them—very few ever got back to the Aleutian Islands alive.
[67] The “bidarka” is a light framework of wooden timbers and withes very tightly lashed together with sinews in the form indicated by my illustrations. It is covered with untanned sea-lion skins, which are sewed on over it while they are wet and soft. When the skins dry out they contract, and bind the frame, and are as taut as the parchment of a well-strung bass-drum. Then the native smears the whole over with thick seal-oil, which keeps the water out of the pores of the skin for quite a long period and prevents the slackening of the taut binding of the little vessel for twenty-four to thirty hours at a single time. Then the bidarka must be hauled out and allowed to dry off in the wind, when it again becomes hard and tight. Most of them are made with two man-holes, some have three, and a great many have but one. The otter-hunters always go in pairs, or, in other words, use two-holed bidarkies.
[68] Sixteen to 18 feet long, 6 to 10 feet wide, with coarse meshes; made nowadays of twine, but formerly of seal and sea-lion sinews.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GREAT ALEUTIAN CHAIN.
The Aleutian Islands.—A Great Volcanic Chain.—Symmetrical Beauty of Shishaldin Cone.—The Banked Fires in Oonimak.—Once most Densely Populated of all the Aleutians; now Without a Single Inhabitant.—Sharp Contrast in the Scenery of the Aleutian and Sitkan Archipelagoes.—Fog, Fog, Fog, Everywhere Veiling and Unveiling the Chain Incessantly.—Schools of Hump-back Whales.—The Aleutian Whalers.—Odd and Reckless Chase.—The Whale-backed Volcano of Akootan.—Striking Outlines of Kahlecta Point and the “Bishop.”—Lovely Bay of Oonalashka.—No Wolf e’er Howled from its Shore.—Illoolook Village.—The “Curved Beach.”—The Landscape a Fascinating Picture to the Ship-weary Traveller.—Flurries of Snow in August—Winds that Riot over this Aleutian Chain.—The Massacre of Drooshinnin and One Hundred and Fifty of his Siberian Hunters here in 1762-63.—This the Only Desperate and Fatal Blow ever Struck by the Docile Aleutes.—The Rugged Crown and Noisy Crater of Makooshin.—The Village at its Feet.—The Aleutian People the Best Natives of Alaska.—All Christians.—Quiet and Respectful.—Fashions and Manners among Them.—The “Barrabkie.”—Quaint Exterior and Interior.—These Natives Love Music and Dancing.—Women on the Wood and Water Trails.—Simple Cuisine.—Their Remarkable Willingness to be Christians.—A Greek Church or Chapel in every Settlement.—General Intelligence.—Keeping Accounts with the Trader’s Store.—They are thus Proved to be Honest at Heart.—The Festivals, or “Prazniks.”—The Phenomena of Borka Village.—It is Clean.—Little Cemeteries.—Faded Pictures of the Saints.—Attoo, the Extreme Western Settlement of the North American Continent.—Three Thousand Miles West of San Francisco!—The Mummies of the “Cheetiery Sopochnie.”—The Birth of a New Island.—The Rising of Boga Slov.
After “lying-to” in a fierce southwester for three whole days and nights, in which time the fury of the gale never abated for an hour, our captain had so husbanded his resources that, when the weather moderated, he was able to clap on sail and get under swift headway; then we quickly left the watery area of our detention and soon opened up a splendid vista of Oonimak Island, in the early dawning of a clear June day. This is the largest one of that longextended archipelago which stretches as an outreaching arm for Asia from America; it presents to our delighted gaze a sweep of richly-colored, rolling uplands, which either slope down gently to the coast at intervals, or else terminate in chocolate-brown and reddish cliffs abruptly stopped to face the sea breaking at their feet. Very high ridges, with summits entirely bare of vegetation, traverse the centre of the island from east to west, while the towering snowy cone of Shishaldin and the lower, yet lofty, head of Pogromnia—two volcanoes—rear themselves over all in turn.
There are a multitude of huge and cloud-compelling mountains in Alaska, but it is wholly safe to say that Shishaldin is the most beautiful peak of vast altitude known upon the North American continent; it rears its perfectly symmetrical apex over eight thousand feet in sheer height above those breakers which thunder and incessantly roll against its flanks, as these precipitous slopes fall into the great Pacific Ocean on the south, and Bering Sea to the north. A steamy jet of vapor curls up lazily from its extreme summit, but it has not been eruptive or noisy at any time within the memory of the Russians. No foothills, that crowd up against and dwarf the presence of most high mountains, embarrass your view of Shishaldin; from every point of the compass it presents the same perfect cone-shape; rising directly from the water and lowlands of Oonimak, it holds and continues long to charm your senses with its rare magnificence; the distance of our vessel, ten or twelve miles away, serves to soften down its lines of numerous seared and blackened paths of prehistoric lava overflow, so that they now softly blend their purplish tones into those of the rich-hued mantle of golden-green mosses and sphagnum which cover the rolling lower lands.
