CHAPTER IX.
ST. MICHAEL'S AND SAN FRANCISCO.
St. Michael's is the usual port for the Yukon, though seventy miles from its mouth. The Russians had a fort and garrison at this place before they sold the territory to the United States, and since then the commercial companies have had posts here. The chief part of the population, however, consists of Eskimos.
These people are very expert in carving. From stone they make axes, lamps, skin-scrapers and many other implements; and from bone, and especially from the walrus and mammoth ivory, they carve many things, among them polished pipes. These pipes are evidently modelled after the opium pipes of the East, with a peculiar shaped bowl having only a very small cavity in it, and a long stem. They are ornamented with many figures scratched on the ivory with a sharp knife, and then colored by having charcoal and grease rubbed into the scratches; these figures, of which there may be several hundred on a single pipe, represent the Eskimo in his daily occupations, especially his hunting of deer, wolf, and whale, his dancing in the kashim, or his travelling in his kayak.
Eskimo Houses at St. Michael's.
A Native Doorway.
Strolling around the village, and peering into the barabarras, or private houses, I ran across an old savage who was handling an object which immediately attracted my attention; when he saw my curiosity he explained by signs that it was an apparatus for making fire, and at my request he actually performed the feat. It was the old plan of rubbing two sticks of wood together, such as we have often read that savages do; yet I had never known any one who knew exactly how it was done, although as a boy I had often worn myself out in vain endeavors to make fire in this way. So far as I know, no one had ever satisfactorily explained how the Alaskan natives get their fire, one writer having even supposed that they brought it from volcanoes in the first place; and from the extraordinary care which they take in preserving hot coals and often in carrying them considerable distances, one does not often see them in the process of obtaining a new supply.