To exchange for furs collected, either directly by natives or by independent traders, the Alaska Commercial Company has a large assortment of stores, provisions, and goods, worthy of a large country-store, or a Macy's in miniature, which are sold to the natives for money or in exchange for the furs they bring to the company. And just here can be seen the commercial aspects of civilization: as the natives become used to the luxuries and comforts of a civilized and semi-civilized state of life, their wants and their purchases increase and the securing of one otter-skin will not, as in times past, satisfy their wants or the requirements of their wives and families. Hence they become both greater producers and consumers, more otters are hunted for, and the Company is the gainer.
The houses in which the Aleuts and Creoles reside at Ounalaska were found to be well built of frame, sufficiently large and fairly clean. The old houses of earth and sod standing near by show the great improvement that has been made of late years in the method of living.
Upon the 22d of June the Revenue Steamer Bear came in to the anchorage, and the Thetis and the Bear, once companion ships in the Greely Relief Expedition, met again in the far north.
Upon conference with the commanding officer of the Bear, Captain M. A. Healy, it was found that he did not consider it desirable to break the bulk of his cargo and share the stores for the refuge-station with us; hence, being free to pursue our course, we left on the 24th of June for the island of St. Paul, one of the Seal (or Pribyloff) islands.
We arrived at these islands on the evening of the 25th of June, after groping around in the heavy and almost constant fog and mist that envelop them. During our short stay at St. Paul we were able to see a drive of seals from a rookery and the killing, skinning, and packing, which followed; but what we found to be the most interesting was the visit to the rookeries, both from the inshore side and from boats along the sea front. The systematic partition of the grounds, the formation of the harems, the exclusion of the young males, and the aggressive conduct of the older ones, all proved most interesting and novel. This, however, has been described so often that I will not here repeat it.
Leaving these islands, so unlike any others in the world, we proceeded to the north and west to St. Mathew Island, a large and uninhabited island in the middle of Bering sea. The object in visiting this island was twofold, the first being to ascertain if there were any shipwrecked persons upon the island, the other being to verify the statement made upon the chart we possessed that the island was infested with polar bears. Upon our arrival and landing upon the island we found plenty of old tracks but no recent evidences of the existence of polar bears. This was ascertained after honest and fatiguing endeavor to find them by parties of officers and men from the ship, who scoured the eastern part of the island, both upon the hills and upon the low tundra, but without success.
St. Mathew island is probably the southern limit of the solid ice in winter in this part of Bering sea, the ice below it to the southward and toward the Aleutian chain being made up of newer ice and detached floes of well broken ice. It is surrounded by the ice during seven months of the year, and generally enveloped with fog during the remaining five months. Winds and rains sweep over it during the summer, the low land being composed of wet, grassy tundra, while the higher elevations are formed of scoriæ and volcanic rock.
A large quantity of drift-wood found piled up upon the steep shingle beaches probably came down the Yukon river from the interior of Alaska, there being no growth of trees upon this desolate land.
After leaving St. Mathew island we stood over to the Siberian side of Bering sea, in order to ascertain the whereabouts of the whaling fleet, and, if possible, to gather some news concerning the fate of the whaling bark "Little Ohio," a vessel that had been missing since the previous autumn.
Plover bay, Cape Tchaplin and St. Lawrence bay, upon the Siberian side, were all visited in turn, but without success, and I then determined to pass through Bering strait and enter the Arctic ocean. This was done upon the 3d of July, after a heavy snow-storm in the morning, followed, later in the day, by a fog so dense that we passed through the straits without seeing land on either side, or the Diomede islands, in the middle.