While we have noticed the poverty of the Akootans, yet, as we contemplate the wretched little village on Avatanak, close by and facing the straits, we must call this the most abject human settlement, perhaps, that we shall or can find throughout the archipelago—only nineteen souls living here in the most abandoned squalor and apathy, principally upon the sea-castings of the beach and mussels. Yet this island in olden days was the happy home for a busy little fishing community which then had three settlements on the banks of a beautiful stream that empties its clear waters into the sea on its north side. The most revolting chapter in all the long story of Russian outrage and oppression of Aleutian natives is devoted to a recital of the savage brutality of Solovaiyah and Notoorbin, who lived here during the winter of 1763.
Steam-vessels usually make the jagged headlands and peaks of Tigalda Island as their first land-fall en route from San Francisco to Oonalashka and Bering Sea. They then shape their course into Akootan Straits very easily and safely. The currents and winds, which always cause a variation of the ship’s course, never carry the vessel much to the right of Tigalda, or to the left of Avatanak, so that an experienced Alaskan mariner has but little difficulty—even though dense fog prevails, which only gives him fitful gleams of the rude landscape—in recognizing some one of the characteristic peaks or bluffs of these Krenitzin islands; then, with a known point of departure, he can literally feel his way into Oonalashka Harbor. He almost always has to do so, for seldom indeed does he enjoy as fair a sweep of these coasts of Avatanak and Tigalda as that viewed by the author, who scanned this rocky group in a calm, clear September afternoon of 1876.
To-day, Tigalda is an utterly abandoned island, given over during the summer to the undisturbed possession of foxes and those flocks of “tundra” geese which settle on the uplands to breed and preen in safety. When moulting here, they have the shelter of several lakes, upon which they swim in mocking security, even if crafty, lurking Reynard attempts to capture them. Near the largest lake on this island a settlement once throve. The inhabitants had control of a mine of red and golden-yellow chalk, which formed the base of a pigment highly prized by all Aleutes, far and near, for painting their ancient grass, and wooden hats, and other work of the same materials. On the north side of this island is a singular cluster of needle rocks which rise, as twenty-eight points, abruptly from the sea. On them, in positive security, the big burgomaster gull breeds, and the eagle-like pinions of this bird bear thousands of heavy bodies in stately flight over and around these nesting-places. The shrill, hawk-like screams of those “chikies” can be heard far out at sea, over the noise of the surf.
Oogalgan rock, which stands up boldly, and defies that fury of an ocean in the mouth of Oonalga Straits, is another striking headland which the mariner should be well acquainted with, for in times of arrival, when fog prevails, it is often the first land-fall made after leaving California or Oregon, when bound in for Oonalashka. It is a bleak, tempest-swept islet, presenting to the Pacific a black, reddish front of abrupt precipitous cliffs, without a sign of vegetation in the crevices; but, from the inside passages of Akootan and Oonalga, it exhibits two or three saddle-backed slopes covered with green mosses and lichens. Flocks of those comical shovel-billed sea-parrots breed upon it, and skurry in their rapid, noiseless manner all around.
At last our little schooner “comes about,” to make that “reach” which is to take us into the peace and quiet of a beautiful harbor, and, with every sail drawing hard, she fills away, and we glide swiftly ahead. That richly banded waterfall bluff on our right, and the striking outline of Kahlecta Point, over the “Bishop” rock under it, on our left, are eagerly scanned as we dash through the heavy roll of Akootan Straits and its violent tide-rips, the surf breaking on the “Bishop” and the point beyond it most grandly. A short hour, and the rough water is passed. We have entered Captain’s Harbor, and are “fanning” along over a glassy surface up to our anchorage off from, but close by, the village of Oonalashka.[76]
What San Francisco is to California, so is Oonalashka to all Alaska west of Kadiak. It is the point of all arrivals and all departures for and from this vast area. It is most fitly chosen, and beautifully located. From earliest time, an Aleutian legend never failed in its rendition to the dusky people then living in their yourts and kazarmies to vividly impress upon the native mind a full sense of those pleasures of life and hope at Illoolook; not, however, as expressed so sadly by our own bard, whose inimitable poem declares that the wolf howled long and dismally from this lovely shore of Illoolook.
Cold on his midnight watch the breezes blow
From wastes that slumber in eternal snow,
And waft across the wave’s tumultuous roar
The wolf’s long howl from Ounalaska’s shore.