GREEK CHURCH, KILLISNOO.
Passing Cross strait we go down Chatham strait. Our next stop is Killisnoo, a small fishing hamlet on Admiralty island. The largest cod liver oil factory in the world is located here. The Northwest Trading Company established a fishing post here in 1880. Chatham strait is full of cod. The fish are artificially dried. The natives receive two cents apiece for a five-pound fish. Many fish are packed in salt. Our steamer took on many hundred pounds of dried and packed fish. Cod liver oil is made in the factory. Each barrel of fish when pressed yields three quarts of oil valued at twenty-five cents to thirty-five cents per gallon. The refuse of fifty barrels of fish when dried and powdered yields one ton of guano worth thirty dollars. This is shipped to the fruit ranches of California and the sugar plantations of the Hawaiian islands. Great vats of oil stand in rows under the shed of the factory.
There is a little fish here called the candle fish. It is almost all oil. For a light the natives impale this fish on a stick and light the fish. It burns with a sizzle and sputter but makes a good light.
This is a beautiful island. The gardens are now at their best. Everything grows luxuriantly. Fine strawberries, currants and gooseberries are grown. Beds of royal purple and golden pansies in dewy splendor adorn the yards and gardens, great broad faced beauties measuring from two to two and a half inches across.
Here we met our first Alaskan mosquito. He is about the size of our glow flies. His bite is something to remember. It leaves a miniature snow capped mountain on your face.
The Indians say that once upon a time, many thousand of snows ago, he was a giant spider, but a wicked manitou tossed him into the fire one day where he shriveled up to his present size. The bad manitou thought him dead but when the fire burned low he escaped and flew away with a live coal in his mouth which he carries to this day. Since he could not be revenged on the manitou he takes his vengeance out on man.
Arachne, fair mortal, at Minerva’s fateful touch shrank and shriveled into a spider.
The student of Indian myths will be impressed before he carries his researches very far, with the likeness of many of these legends to the mythologies of the old world.
KITCHNATTI.