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[Illustration: SITKA SOUND

Viewed from the Castle, looking South. June 9, 1874]




  _LIBRARY OF CONTEMPORARY EXPLORATION
  AND ADVENTURE_

  OUR
  ARCTIC PROVINCE

  ALASKA AND THE SEAL ISLANDS

  BY
  HENRY W. ELLIOTT

  [Illustration: Decoration]

  _ILLUSTRATED BY MANY DRAWINGS FROM NATURE
  AND MAPS_

  NEW YORK
  CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
  1906




  COPYRIGHT, 1886, BY
  CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS


  TROW’S
  PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY.
  NEW YORK.




INTRODUCTION.


If the writer could materialize in the reader’s mind that large
aggregate of printed matter now stacked on book-shelves and filed
in newspaper columns, which has been published to the world during
the last eighty years upon Alaska, the effect would certainly be
startling.

Scores of weighty volumes, hundreds of pamphlets and magazine
articles, and a thousand newspaper letters, have been devoted to
the subject of Alaskan life, scenery, and value. In contemplation
of this, viewed from the author’s standpoint of extended personal
experience, he announces his determination to divest himself of all
individuality in the following chapters, to portray in word, and by
brush and pencil, the life and country of Alaska as it is, so clearly
and so truthfully, that the reader may draw his or her own inference,
just as though he or she stood upon the ground itself.

How differently a number of us are impressed in the viewing of any
one subject, by which observation we utterly fail to agree as to its
character and worth! This variance is handsomely illustrated by the
diverse opinion of Alaskan travellers.

  SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION,
  _February 26, 1886_.




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER I.

  DISCOVERY, OCCUPATION, AND TRANSFER                         pp. 1-12

  The Legend of Bering’s Voyage.—The Discovery of Russian America,
  or Alaska, in July, 1741.—The Return Voyage and Shipwreck of the
  Discoverer.—The Escape of the Survivors.—They Tell of the Furs
  and Ivory of Alaska.—The Rush of Russian Traders.—Their Hardy
  Exploration of the Aleutian Chain, Kadiak, and the Mainland, 1760-80,
  inclusive.—Fierce Competition of the Promyshlineks finally Leads
  to the Organization and Domination of the Russian American Company
  over all Alaska, 1799.—Its Remarkable Success under Baranov’s
  Administration, 1800-18, inclusive.—Its Rapid Decadence after
  Baranov’s Removal.—Causes in 1862-64 which Led to the Refusal of
  the Russian Government to Renew the Charter of the Russian American
  Company.—Steps which Led to the Negotiations of Seward and Final
  Acquisition of Alaska by the U. S. Government, 1867.


  CHAPTER II.

  FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION                              pp. 13-35

  The Vast Area of Alaska.—Difficulty of Comparison, and Access
  to her Shores save in the Small Area of the Sitkan Region.—Many
  Americans as Officers of the Government, Merchants, Traders, Miners,
  etc., who have Visited Alaska during the last Eighteen Years.—Full
  Understanding of Alaskan Life and Resources now on Record.—Beautiful
  and Extraordinary Features of the Sitkan Archipelago.—The Decaying
  Town of Wrangel.—The Wonderful Glaciers of this Region.—The Tides,
  Currents, and Winds.—The Forests and Vegetation Omnipresent in this
  Land-locked Archipelago.—Indigenous Berries.—Gloomy Grandeur of
  the Cañons.—The Sitkan Climate.—Neither Cold nor Warm.—Excessive
  Humidity.—Stickeen Gold Excitement of 1862 and 1875.—The Decay of
  Cassiar.—The Picturesque Bay of Sitka.—The Romance and Terror of
  Baranov’s Establishment there in 1800-1805.— The Russian Life and
  Industries at Sitka.—The Contrast between Russian Sitka and American
  Sitka a Striking One.


  CHAPTER III.

  ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS                             pp. 36-66

  The White Man and the Indian Trading.—The Shrewdness and Avarice of
  the Savage.—Small Value of the entire Land Fur Trade of Alaska.—The
  Futile Effort of the Greek Catholic Church to Influence the Sitkan
  Indians.—The Reason why Missionary Work in Alaska has been and is
  Impotent.—The Difference between the Fish-eating Indian of Alaska and
  the Meat-eating Savage of the Plains.—Simply One of Physique.—The
  Haidahs the Best Indians of Alaska.—Deep Chests and Bandy Legs
  from Canoe-travel.—Living in Fixed Settlements because Obliged
  To.—Large “Rancheries” or Houses Built by the Haidahs.—Communistic
  Families.—Great Gamblers.—Indian “House-Raising Bees.”—Grotesque
  Totem Posts.—Indian Doctors “Kill or Cure.”—Dismal Interior of an
  Indian “Rancherie.”—The Toilet and Dress of Alaskan Siwashes.—The
  Unwritten Law of the Indian Village.—What Constitutes a Chief.—The
  Tribal Boundaries and their Scrupulous Regard.—Fish the Main
  Support of Sitkan Indians.—The Running of the Salmon.—Indians Eat
  Everything.—Their Salads and Sauces.—Their Wooden Dishes and Cups,
  and Spoons of Horn.—The Family Chests.—The Indian Woman a Household
  Drudge.—She has no Washing to Do, However.—Sitkan Indians not Great
  Hunters.—They are Unrivalled Canoe-builders.—Small-pox and Measles
  have Reduced the Indians of the Sitkan Archipelago to a Scanty
  Number.—Abandoned Settlements of these Savages Common.—The Debauchery
  of Rum among these People.—The White Man to Blame for This.


  CHAPTER IV.

  THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS                         pp. 67-81

  The Hot Spring Oasis and the Humming-bird near Sitka.—The Value and
  Pleasure of Warm Springs in Alaska.—The Old “Redoubt” or Russian
  Jail.—The Tread well Mine.—Futility of Predicting what may, or what
  will not Happen in Mining Discovery.—Coal of Alaska not fit for
  Steaming Purposes.—Salmon Canneries.—The Great “Whaling Ground”
  of Fairweather.—Superb and Lofty Peaks seen at Sea One Hundred
  and Thirty-five Miles Distant.—Mount Fairweather so named as the
  Whalemen’s Barometer.—The Storm here in 1741 which Separated Bering
  and his Lieutenant.—The Grandeur of Mount St. Elias, Nineteen
  Thousand Five Hundred Feet.—A Tempestuous and Forbidding Coast to the
  Mariner.—The Brawling Copper River.—Mount Wrangel, Twenty Thousand
  Feet, the Loftiest Peak on the North American Continent.—In the Forks
  of this Stream.—Exaggerated Fables of the Number and Ferocity of the
  Natives.—Frigid, Gloomy Grandeur of the Scenery in Prince William
  Sound.—The First Vessel ever built by White Men on the Northwest
  Coast, Constructed here in 1794.—The Brig _Phœnix_, One Hundred and
  Eighty Tons, No Paint or Tar—Covered with a Coat of Spruce-Gum,
  Ochre, and Whale-oil, Wrecked in 1799 with Twenty Priests and Deacons
  of the Greek Church on Board.—Every Soul Lost.—Love of the Natives
  for their Rugged, Storm-beaten Homes.


  CHAPTER V.

  COOK’S INLET AND ITS PEOPLE                                pp. 82-97

  Cooks “Great River.”—The Tide-rips, and their Power in Cook’s
  Inlet.—The Impressive Mountains of the Inlet.—The Glaciers of
  Turnagain Canal.—Old Russian Settlements.—Kenai Shore of the Inlet,
  the Garden-spot of Alaska.—Its Climate best Suited to Civilized
  Settlement.—The Old “Colonial Citizens” of the Russian Company.—Small
  Shaggy Siberian Cattle.—Burning Volcano of Ilyamna.—The Kenaitze
  Indians.—Their Primitive, Simple Lives.—They are the Only Native
  Land-animal Hunters of Alaska.—Bears and Bear Roads.—Wild Animals
  seek Shelter in Volcanic Districts.—Natives Afraid to Follow
  Them.—Kenaitze Architecture.—Sunshine in Cook’s Inlet.—Splendid
  Salmon.—Waste of Fish as Food by Natives.—The Pious Fishermen
  of Neelshik.—Russian Gold mining Enterprise on the Kaknoo,
  1848-55.—Failure of our Miners to Discover Paying Mines in this
  Section.


  CHAPTER VI.

  THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK                                pp. 98-126

  Kadiak the Geographical and Commercial Centre of Alaska.—Site of
  the First Grand Depot of the Old Russian Company.—Shellikov and his
  Remarkable History, 1784.—His Subjection of the Kaniags.—Bloody
  Struggle.—He Founds the First Church and School in Alaska at Three
  Saints Bay, 1786, One Hundred Years ago.—Kadiak, a Large and Rugged
  Island.—The Timber Line drawn upon it.—Luxuriant Growth of Annual
  and Biennial Flowering Plants.—Reason why Kadiak was Abandoned
  for Sitka.—The Depot of the Mysterious San Francisco Ice Company
  on Wood Island.—Only Road and Horses in Alaska there.—Creole
  Ship and Boat Yard.—Tough Siberian Cattle.—Pretty Greek Chapel
  at Yealovnie.—Afognak, the Largest Village of “Old Colonial
  Citizens.”—Picturesque and Substantial Village.—Largest Crops
  of Potatoes raised here.—No Ploughing done; Earth Prepared with
  Spades.—Domestic Fowls.—Failure of Our People to Raise Sheep at
  Kolma.—What a “Creole” is.—The Kaniags or Natives of Kadiak; their
  Salient Characteristics.—Great Diminution of their Numbers.—Neglect
  of Laws of Health by Natives.—Apathy and Indifference to
  Death.—Consumption and Scrofula the Scourge of Natives in Alaska;
  Measles equally deadly.—Kaniags are Sea-otter Hunters.—The Penal
  Station of Ookamok, the Botany Bay of Alaska.—The Wild Coast of
  the Peninsula.—Water-terraces on the Mountains.—Belcovsky, the
  Rich and Profligate Settlement.—Kvass Orgies.—Oonga, Cod-fishing
  Rendezvous.—The Burial of Shoomagin here, 1741.—The Coal Mines here
  Worthless.


  CHAPTER VII.

  THE QUEST OF THE OTTER                                   pp. 127-144

  Searching for the Otter.—Exposure and Danger in Hunting
  Sea-otters.—The Fortitude, Patience, and Skill of the Captor.—Altasov
  and his Band of Cruel Cossacks.—Feverish Energy of the Early
  Russian Sea-otter Traders.—Their Shameful Excesses.—Greed for
  Sea-otter Skins Leads the Russians to Explore the Entire Alaskan
  Coast, 1760-1780.—Great Numbers of Sea-otters when they were First
  Discovered in Alaska.—Their Partial Extermination in 1836-40.—More
  Secured during the Last Five Years than in all the Twenty Years
  Preceding.—What is an Otter?—A Description of its Strange Life.—Its
  Single Skin sometimes Worth $500.—The Typical Sea-otter Hunter.—A
  Description of Him and his Family.—Hunting the Sea-otter the Sole
  Remunerative Industry of the Aleutians.—Gloomy, Storm-beaten Haunts
  of the Otter.—Saanak, the Grand Rendezvous of the Hunters.—The
  “Surround” of the Otter.—“Clubbing” the Otter.—“Netting” the
  Otter.—“Surf-shooting” Them.


  CHAPTER VIII.

  THE GREAT ALEUTIAN CHAIN                                 pp. 145-187

  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.—Atto, 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.


  CHAPTER IX.

  WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS                                   pp. 188-253

  The Fur-seal Millions of the Pribylov Islands.—Marvellous Exhibition
  of Massed Animal-life in a State of Nature.—Story of the Discovery of
  these Remarkable Rookeries, July, 1786.—Previous Knowledge of them
  Unknown to Man.—Sketch of the Pribylov Islands.—Their Character,
  Climate, and Human Inhabitants.—A Realm of Summer-fog.—The Seal-life
  here Overshadows Everything, though the Bird Rookeries of Saint
  George are Wonderful.—No Harbors.—The Roadsteads.—The Attractive
  Flora.—Only Islands in Alaska where the Curse of Mosquitoes is
  Removed.—Natives Gathering Eggs on Walrus Islet.—A Scene of Confusion
  and Uproar.—Contrast very Great between Saint Paul and Saint
  George.—Good Reason of the Seals in Resorting to these Islands to the
  Exclusion of all other Land in Alaska.—Old-time Manners and Methods
  of the Russians Contrasted with Our Present Control.—Vast Gain and
  Improvement for Seals and Natives.—The Character of the Present
  Residents.—Their Attachment to the Islands.—The History of the
  Alaska Commercial Company.—The Wise Action of Congress.—The Perfect
  Supervision of the Agents of the Government.—Seals are more Numerous
  now than at First.—The Methods of the Company, the Government, and
  the Natives in Taking the Seals.


  CHAPTER X.

  AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS                                       pp. 254-353

  Difference between a Hair-seal and a Fur-seal—The Fur-seal the most
  Intelligent of all Amphibians.—Its singularly Free Progression on
  Land.—Its Power in the Water.—The Old Males the First Arrivals in
  the Spring.—Their Desperate Battles one with Another for Position on
  the Breeding Grounds.—Subsequent Arrival of the Females.—Followed
  by the “Bachelors.”—Wonderful Strength and Desperate Courage of
  the Old Males.—Indifference of the Females.—Noise of the Rookeries
  Sounds like the Roar of Niagara.—Old Males fast from May to August,
  inclusive; neither Eat nor Drink, nor Leave their Stations in all
  that Time.—Graceful Females.—Frolicsome “Pups.”—They have to Learn to
  Swim!—How they Learn.—Astonishing Vitality of the Fur-seal.—“Podding”
  of the Pups.—Beautiful Eyes of the Fur-seal.—How the “Holluschickie,”
  or Bachelor Seals, Pass the Time.—They are the only ones Killed for
  Fur.—They Herd alone by Themselves in spite of their Inclination;
  Obliged to.—They are the Champion Swimmers of the Sea.—A Review of
  the Vast Breeding Rookeries.—Natives Gathering a Drove.—Driving
  the Seals to the Slaughtering Fields.—No Chasing.—no Hunting of
  Seals.—The Killing Gang at Work: Skinning, Salting, and Shipping the
  Pelts.—All Sent Direct to London.—Reasons Why.—How the Skins are
  Prepared for Sacks, Muffs, etc.


  CHAPTER XI.

  THE ALASKAN SEA-LION                                     pp. 354-373

  A Pelagic Monarch.—Marked Difference between the Sea-lion and
  the Fur-seal.—The Imposing Presence and Sonorous Voice of the
  “Sea-king.”—Terrible Combats between old Sea-lion Bulls.—Cowardly in
  the Presence of Man, however.—Sea-lions Sporting in the Fury of Ocean
  Surf.—It has no Fur on its Huge Hide.—Valuable only to the Natives,
  who Cover their “Bidarrah” with its Skin.—Its Sweet Flesh and
  Inodorous Fat.—Not such Extensive Travellers as the Fur-seals.—The
  Difficulty of Capturing Sea-lions.—How the Natives Corral them.—The
  Sea-lion “Pen” at Northeast Point.—The Drive of Sea-lions.—Curious
  Behavior of the Animals.—Arrival of the Drove at the Village.—A
  Thirteen-mile Jaunt with the Clumsy Drove.—Shooting the old
  Males.—The Bloody “Death-whirl.”—The Extensive Economic Use made of
  the Carcass by the Natives.—Chinese Opium Pipes Picked with Sea-lion
  Mustache bristles.


  CHAPTER XII.

  INNUIT LIFE AND LAND                                     pp. 374-411

  “Nooshagak;” Wide Application of an Innuit Name.—The Post and
  River.—Countless Pools, Ponds, and Lakes of this District
  bordering Bristol Bay.—The Eskimo Inhabitants of the Coast.—The
  Features and Form of Alaskan Innuits.—Light-hearted, Inconstant,
  and Independent.—Their Dress, Manners, and Rude Dwellings.—Their
  Routine of Life.—Large and Varied Natural Food-supplies.—Indifferent
  Land Hunters, but Mighty Fishermen.—Limited Needs from Traders’
  Stores.—Skilful Carvers in Ivory.—Their Town Hall, or “Kashga.”—They
  Build and Support no Churches here.—Not of a real Religious Cast,
  as the Aleutians are.—The Dogs and Sleds; Importance of Them
  here.—Great Interest of the Innuit in Savage Ceremonies.—The Wild
  Alaskan Interior.—Its Repellent Features alike Avoided by Savage
  and Civilized Man.—The Indescribable Misery of Mosquitoes.—The
  Desolation of Winter in this Region.—The Reindeer Slaughter-pen on
  the Kvichak River.—Amazing Improvidence of the Innuit.—The Tragic
  Death of Father Juvenals, on the Banks of the Great Ilyamna Lake,
  1796.—The Queer Innuits of Togiak.—Immense Muskrat Catch.—The
  Togiaks are the Quakers of Alaska.—The Kuskokvim Mouth a Vast
  Salmon-trap.—The Ichthyophagi of Alaska.—Dense Population.—Daily Life
  of the Fish-eaters.—Infernal Mosquitoes of Kuskokvim; the Worst in
  Alaska.—Kolmakovsky; its History.


  CHAPTER XIII.

  LONELY NORTHERN WASTES                                   pp. 412-435

  The Mississippi of Alaska: the Yukon River, and its Thorough
  Exploration.—Its vast Deltoid Mouth.—Cannot be Entered by Sea-going
  Vessels. Its Valley, and its Tributaries.—Dividing Line between the
  Eskimo and the Indian on its Banks.—The Trader’s Steamer; its Whistle
  in this Lone Waste of the Yukon.—Michaelovsky, the Trading Centre
  for this Extensive Circumpolar Area.—The Characteristic Beauties of
  an Arctic Landscape in Summer.—Thunder-storms on the Upper Yukon;
  never Experienced on the Coast and at its Mouth.—Gorgeous Arches of
  Auroral Light; Beautiful Spectacular Fires in the Heavens.—Unhappy
  Climate. Saint Michael’s to the Northward.—Zagoskin, the Intrepid
  Young Russian Explorer, 1842.—Snow Blizzards.—Golovin Bay; our
  People Prospecting there for Lead and Silver.—Drift-wood from the
  Yukon Strews the Beaches of Bering Sea.—Ookivok, and its Cliff-cave
  Houses.—Hardy Walrus-hunters. —Grantley Harbor; a Reminder of
  a Costly American Enterprise and its Failure.—Cape Prince of
  Wales—facing Asia, thirty-six miles away.—Simeon Deschnev, the
  first White Man to see Alaska, 1648. —His Bold Journey.—The Diomede
  Islands; Stepping-stones between Asia and America in Bering Straits.
  —Kotzebue Sound; the Rendezvous for Arctic Traders; the Last Northern
  Station Visited by Salmon. Interesting Features of the Place.


  CHAPTER XIV.

  MORSE AND MAHLEMOÖT                                      pp. 436-465

  The Monotonous Desolation of the Alaskan Arctic Coast.—Dreary
  Expanse of Low Moorlands.—Diversified by Saddle-backed Hills of
  Gray and Bronze Tints.—The Coal of Cape Beaufort in the Arctic.—A
  Narrow Vein. Pure Carboniferous Formation.—Doubtful if these
  Alaskan “Black Diamonds” can be Successfully Used.—Icy Cape, a
  Sand- and Gravel-spit.—Remarkable Land-locked Lagoons on the
  Beach.—The Arctic Innuits.—Point Barrow, Our Extreme Northern Land,
  a Low Gravel-spit.—The Buttercup and the Dandelion Bloom here,
  however, as at Home.—Back to Bering Sea.—The Interesting Island
  and Natives of St. Lawrence.—The Sea-horse.—Its Uncouth Form and
  Clumsy Life.—Its Huge Bulk and Impotency on Land.—Lives entirely
  by Clam-digging.—Bank Flavor of its Flesh.—The Walrus is to the
  Innuit just as the Cocoa-palm is to the South Sea Islander.—Hunting
  the Morse.—The Jagged, Straggling Island of St. Matthew.—The Polar
  Bears’ Carnival.—Hundreds of them here.—Their Fear of Man.—“Over the
  Hills and Far Away,” whenever Approached.—Completion of the Alaskan
  Circuit.




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


  _FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS._

  SITKA SOUND,                                         _Frontispiece_.

  SEA-COW,                                          _Facing Page_    4

  GRAND GLACIER, ICY BAY,      ”                                    19

  KOOTZNAHOO INLET,      ”                                          23

  GLIMPSE OF SITKA,      ”                                          32

  STICKEEN SQUAW BOILING BERRIES AND OIL,      ”                    58

  MOUNT ST. ELIAS, 19,500 FEET,      ”                              73

  MOUNT WRANGEL, 20,000 FEET,      ”                                77

  VALDES GLACIER, PRINCE WILLIAM’S SOUND,      ”                    78

  MOUNT ILYAMNA, 12,060 FEET,      ”                                87

  KENAITZE SALMON TRAP, COOK’S INLET,      ”                        95

  CREOLES AND ALEUTES, PENCIL PORTRAITS,      ”                    108

  BELCOVSKY, VILLAGE OF,      ”                                    120

  SEA-OTTER SURROUND,      ”                                       140

  CLUBBING SEA-OTTERS,      ”                                      143

  A GLIMPSE OF SHISHALDIN,      ”                                  146

  ALEUTES WHALING,      ”                                          152

  VILLAGE OF OONALASHKA,      ”                                    156

  VOLCANO OF MAKOOSHIN, 5,475 FEET,      ”                         160

  OONALASHKAN NATIVES COD-FISHING,      ”                          168

  VILLAGE AND HARBOR OF ATTOO,      ”                              179

  NORTH SHORE OF ST. GEORGE ISLAND,      ”                         200

  NETTING CHOOCHKIES,      ”                                       209

  APPROACH TO ST. GEORGE ISLAND,      ”                            227

  HAIR-SEALS, GROUP OF,      ”                                     255

  FUR-SEALS,      ”                                                258

  “OLD JOHN,” PORTRAIT OF AN AGED FUR-SEAL,      ”                 262

  OLD FUR-SEAL BULLS FIGHTING,      ”                              266

  SUNDRY SEAL SKETCHES, FROM AUTHOR’S PORTFOLIO,      ”            277

  ARRIVAL OF THE FUR-SEAL MILLIONS,      ”                         296

  NATIVES GATHERING A DRIVE,      ”                                333

  NATIVES DRIVING FUR-SEALS,      ”                                336

  KILLING GANG AT WORK,      ”                                     339

  GROUP OF SEA-LIONS,      ”                                       354

  SEA-LION ROOKERY AT TOLSTOI,      ”                              358

  NATIVES CREEPING UPON SEA-LIONS,      ”                          364

  THE SEA-LION PEN AT NOVASTOSHNAH,      ”                         365

  SPRINGING THE ALARM,      ”                                      366

  NOOSHAGAK,      ”                                                374

  PORTRAIT OF “CHAMI,” AND THE FAVORITE POSITION
  OF INNUITS,      ”                                               378

  PORTRAITS OF A JESTING INNUIT MOTHER AND THE
  SON OF AHGAAN,      ”                                            395

  THE SADDLE-BACKED HAIR-SEAL, _Histriophoca_,      ”              400

  THE KUSKOKVIM RIVER BELOW KOLMAKOVSKY,      ”                    403

  KOLMAKOVSKY,      ”                                              406

  TOMB OF INNUITS,      ”                                          410

  CAPE PRINCE OF WALES,      ”                                     429

  POONOOK WINTER VILLAGE,      ”                                   443

  GROUP OF WALRUS,      ”                                          447

  PINNACLE ISLET, NEAR ST. MATTHEW ISLAND,      ”                  461


  _ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT._

                                                                  PAGE

  VIGNETTE: HAIDAHS HUNTING HAIR-SEALS,                        _Title_

  LODGES IN A VAST WILDERNESS,                                      16

  BARANOV’S CASTLE (1817-26),                                       30

  SITKAN CHIMES,                                                    39

  OLD INDIAN CHAPEL, SITKA,                                         41

  HAIDAH RANCHERIE,                                                 46

  SECTION SHOWING INTERIOR,                                         48

  RAKING OOLOCHANS, STICKEEN RIVER,                                 57

  KENAITZE CHIEF,                                                   88

  BEAR ROADS, OONIMAK ISLAND,                                       90

  KENAITZE RANCHERIE, COOK’S INLET,                                 92

  OOGASHIK, VILLAGE OF,                                            119

  SEA-OTTER,                                                       131

  BARRABKIE, OR ALEUTIAN HUT,                                      135

  ALEUTIAN MUMMY,                                                  185

  ALEUTES CATCHING HALIBUT,                                        212

  BOBROVIA, OR OTTER ISLAND,                                       219

  FUR-SEALS SCRATCHING,                                            271

  FUR-SEALS RISING TO BREATHE AND SURVEY,                          300

  PORTRAIT OF A PREBYLOV SEALER,                                   338

  A SKINNED CARCASS, AND SKIN THEREFROM,                           342

  INTERIOR OF A FUR-SEAL SALT-HOUSE,                               345

  NATIVES DRIVING SEA-LIONS,                                       368

  SEA-LION BIDARRAH,                                               371

  INNUIT WOMAN,                                                    377

  INNUIT HOME ON THE KUSKOKVIM,                                    379

  THE BIG MAHKLOK, OR _Erignathus_,                                383

  THE INNUIT KASHGA,                                               385

  SECTION OF THE KASHGA,                                           386

  INNUIT DOG, “TATLAH,”                                            388

  “BRULÉ,” OR BURNT DISTRICTS,                                     409

  STEAMER ON THE YUKON,                                            414

  MICHAELOVSKY,                                                    419

  OOKIVOK, OR KING’S ISLAND,                                       426

  THE DIOMEDES,                                                    430

  INNUIT WHALING CAMP,                                             439

  RINGED SEAL, _Phoca fœtida_,                                     441

  WALRUS-HUNTER,                                                   444

  SECTION OF INNUIT WINTER HOUSE AT POONOOK,                       446

  NEWACK’S BROTHER,                                                455

  NEWACK AND OOGACK, PEN PORTRAITS OF,                             457

  NATIVES GIVING THE WALRUS A DEATH-STROKE,                        459

  “DOUBLE PURCHASE” OF THE INNUITS,                                461


  _MAPS._

  SPECIAL MAP OF ST. PAUL ISLAND,                  _Facing page_   215

  SPECIAL MAP OF ST. GEORGE ISLAND,      ”                         226

  SPECIAL MAP OF NOVASTOSHNAH ROOKERY,      ”                      314

  SPECIAL MAP OF LAGOON ROOKERY,      ”                            315

  GENERAL MAP OF ALASKA,                           _At end of Volume_.




OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.




CHAPTER I.

DISCOVERY, OCCUPATION, AND TRANSFER.

  The Legend of Bering’s Voyage.—The Discovery of Russian America,
  or Alaska, in July, 1741.—The Return Voyage and Shipwreck of the
  Discoverer.—The Escape of the Survivors.—They Tell of the Furs
  and Ivory of Alaska.—The Rush of Russian Traders.—Their Hardy
  Exploration of the Aleutian Chain, Kadiak, and the Mainland,
  1760-80, inclusive.—Fierce Competition of the Promyshlineks finally
  Leads to the Organization and Domination of the Russian American
  Company over all Alaska, 1799.—Its Remarkable Success under
  Baranov’s Administration, 1800-18, inclusive.—Its Rapid Decadence
  after Baranov’s Removal.—Causes in 1862-64 which Led to the Refusal
  of the Russian Government to Renew the Charter of the Russian
  American Company.—Steps which Led to the Negotiations of Seward and
  Final Acquisition of Alaska by the U. S. Government, 1867.


The stolid, calm intrepidity of the Russian is not even yet well
understood or recognized by Americans. No better presentation of this
character of those Slavic discoverers of Alaska can be made than
is the one descriptive of Veit Bering’s voyage of Russian-American
fame, in which shipwreck and death robbed him of the glory of his
expedition. No legend of the sea, however fanciful or horrid,
surpasses the simple truth of the terror and privation which went
hand-in-hand with Bering and his crew.

Flushed with the outspoken favor of his sovereign, Bering and his
lieutenant, Tschericov, sailed east from Petropaulovsky, Kamchatka,
June 4, 1741; the expedition consisted of two small sail-vessels,
the _St. Peter_ and the _St. Paul_. They set their course S. S. E.,
as low as the 50th degree of north latitude, then they decided to
steer directly east for the reported American continent. A few days
later a violent storm arose, it separated the rude ships, and the two
commanders never met in life again.

While groping in fog and tempest on the high seas, Bering drifted
one Sunday (July 18th) upon or about the Alaskan mainland coast; he
disembarked at the foot of some low, desolate bluffs that face the
sea near the spot now known to us as Kayak Island, and in plain view
of those towering peaks of the St. Elias Alps. He passed full six
weeks in this neighborhood, while the crew were busy getting fresh
food-supplies, water, etc., when, on the 3d of September, a storm of
unwonted vigor burst upon them, lasted seven days, and drove them
out to sea and before it, down as far as 48° 8´ north latitude, and
into the lonely wastes of the vast Pacific. Scurvy began to appear
on board the _St. Peter_; hardly a day passed without recording
the death of some one of the ship’s company, and soon men enough
in health or strength sufficient to work the vessel could not be
mustered. A return to Kamchatka was resolved upon.

Bering became surly and morose, and seldom appeared on deck, and
so the second in command, “Stoorman” Vachtel, directed the dreary
cruise. After regaining the land, and burying a sailor named
Shoomagin on one of a group of Alaskan islets that bear his name
to-day, and making several additional capes and landfalls, they saw
two islands which, by a most unfortunate blunder, they took to be of
the Kurile chain, and adjacent to Kamchatka. Thus they erred sadly in
their reckoning, and sailed out upon a false point of departure.

In vain they craned their necks for the land, and strained their
feeble eyes; the shore of Kamchatka refused to rise, and it finally
dawned upon them that they were lost—that there was no hope of making
a port in that goal so late in the year. The wonderful discipline
of the Russian sailors was strikingly exhibited at this stage of
the luckless voyage: in spite of their debilitated and emaciated
condition, they still obeyed orders, though suffering frightfully
in the cold and wet; the ravages of scurvy had made such progress
that the steersman was conducted to the helm by two other invalids
who happened to have the use of their legs, and who supported him
under the arms! When he could no longer steer from suffering, then
he was succeeded by another no better able to execute the labor
than himself. Thus did the unhappy crew waste away into death and
impotency. They were obliged to carry few sails, for they were
helpless to reef or hoist them, and such as they had were nearly
worn out; and even in this case they were unable to renew them by
replacing from the stores, since there were no seamen strong enough
on the ship to bend new ones to the yards and booms.

Soon rain was followed by snow, the nights grew longer and darker,
and they now lived in dreadful anticipation of shipwreck; the fresh
water diminished, and the labor of working the vessel became too
severe for the few who were able to be about. From the 1st to the
4th of November the ship had lain as a log on the ocean, helpless
and drifting, at the sport of the wind and the waves. Then again, in
desperation, they managed to control her, and set her course anew to
the westward, without knowing absolutely anything as to where they
were. In a few hours after, the joy of the distressed crew can be
better imagined than described, for, looming up on the gray, gloomy
horizon, they saw the snow-covered tops of high hills, still distant
however, ahead. As they drew nearer, night came upon them, and
they judged best, therefore, to keep out at sea “off and on” until
daybreak, so as to avoid the risk of wrecking themselves in the deep
darkness. When the gray light of early morning dawned, they found
that the rigging on the starboard side of the vessel was giving way,
and that their craft could not be much longer managed; that the fresh
water was very low, and that sickness was increasing frightfully. The
raw humidity of the climate was now succeeded by dry, intense cold;
life was well-nigh insupportable on shipboard then, so, after a brief
consultation, they determined to make for the land, save their lives,
and, if possible, safely beach the _St. Peter_.

The small sails were alone set; the wind was north; thirty-six
fathoms of water over a sand bottom; two hours after they decreased
it to twelve; they now contrived to get over an anchor and run it
out at three-quarters of a cable’s length; at six in the evening
this hawser parted; tremendous waves bore the helpless boat on in
toward the land through the darkness and the storm, where soon she
struck twice upon a rocky reef. Yet, in a moment after, they had
five fathoms of water; a second anchor was thrown out, and again the
tackle parted; and while, in the energy of wild despair, prostrated
by sheets of salty spray that swept over them in bursts of fury, they
were preparing a third bower, a huge combing wave lifted that ark of
misery—that band of superlative human suffering—safely and sheer over
the reef, where in an instant the tempest-tossed ship rested in calm
water; the last anchor was dropped, and thus this luckless voyage of
Alaskan discovery came to an end.

Bering died here, on one of the Commander Islands,[1] where he had
been wrecked as above related; the survivors, forty-five souls in
number, lived through the winter on the flesh of sea-lions, the
sea-cow,[2] or manatee, and thus saved their scanty stock of flour;
they managed to build a little shallop out of the remains of the _St.
Peter_, in which they left Bering Island—departed from this scene of
a most extraordinary shipwreck and deliverance—on August 16, 1742,
and soon reached Petropaulovsky in safety the 27th following. In
addition to an authentic knowledge of the location of a great land to
the eastward, the survivors carried from their camp at Bering Island
a large number of valuable sea-otter, blue-fox, and other peltries,
which stimulated, as no other inducement could have done, the prompt
fitting out and venture of many new expeditions for the freshly
discovered land and islands of Alaska.

[Illustration: THE RHYTINA, OR SEA-COW (Extinct)

The flesh of this animal constituted the chief food supply of
Bering’s shipwrecked crew, 1741-’42]

So, in 1745, Michael Novodiskov first, of all white men, pushed over
in a rude open wooden shallop from Kamchatka, and landed on Attoo,
that extreme western islet of the great Aleutain chain which forms
upon the map a remarkable southern wall to the green waters of Bering
Sea. No object of geographical search was in this hardy fur-hunter’s
mind as he perilled his life in that adventure—far from it; he was
after the precious pelage of the sea-otter, and like unto him
were all of the long list of Russian explorers of Alaskan coasts
and waters. These rough, indomitable men ventured out from their
headquarters at Kamchatka and the Okotsk Sea in rapid succession as
years rolled on, until by the end of 1768-69 a large area of Russian
America was well determined and rudely charted by them.[3]

The history of this early exploration of Russian America is the
stereotyped story of wrongs inflicted upon simple natives by
ruthless, fearless adventurers—year in and year out—the eager,
persistent examination of the then unknown shores and interior of
Alaska by tireless Cossacks and Muscovites, who were busy in robbing
the aborigines and quarrelling among themselves. The success of the
earliest fur-hunters had been so great, and heralded so loudly in the
Russian possessions, that soon every Siberian merchant who had a few
thousand rubles at his order managed to associate himself with some
others, so that they might together fit out a slovenly craft or two
and engage in the same remunerative business. The records show that,
prior to the autocratic control of the old Russian American Company
over all Alaska in 1799, more than sixty distinct Russian trading
companies were organized and plying their vocation in these waters
and landings of Alaska.

They all carried on their operations in essentially the same manner:
the owner or owners of the shallop, or sloop, or schooner, as it
might be, engaged a crew on shares; the cargo of furs brought back by
this vessel was invariably divided into two equal subdivisions—one
of these always claimed by the owners who had furnished the means,
and the other half divided in such a manner as the navigator, the
trader, and the crew could agree upon between themselves. Then,
after this division had been made, each participant was to give
one-tenth part of his portion, as received above, to the Government
at St. Petersburg, which, stimulated by such generous swelling of its
treasury, never failed to keep an affectionate eye upon its subjects
over here, and encouraged them to the utmost limit of exertion.

This Imperial impetus undoubtedly was the spur which caused most
of that cruel domination of the Russians over a simple people whom
they found at first in possession of their new fur-bearing land; the
thrifty traders managed to do their business with an exceedingly
small stock of goods, and, where no opposition was offered, these
unscrupulous commercial travellers ordered the natives out to hunt
and turn over all their booty, not even condescending to pay them,
except a few beads or strips of tobacco, “in return for their
good behavior and submission to the crown!” Naturally enough, the
treacherous Koloshes of Sitka, the dogged Kadiakers, the vivacious
Eskimo or Innuits, and even the docile Aleutes, would every now and
then arise and slaughter in their rage and despair a whole trading
post or ship’s crew of Russians; but these outbreaks were not of
preconcerted plan or strength, and never seriously interrupted the
iron rule of Slavonian oppression.

The rapidly increasing number of competitors in the fur trade,
however, soon began to create a scarcity of the raw material, and
then the jealousies and rivalries of the trading companies began
in turn to vent themselves in armed struggles against each other
for possession and gain. This order of affairs quickly threw the
whole region into a reign of anarchy which threatened to destroy the
very existence of the Russians themselves. Facing this deplorable
condition, one of the leading promoters of the fur-trading industry
in Alaska saw that, unless a bold man was placed at the head of the
conduct of his business, it would soon be ruined. This man he picked
out at Kargopol, Siberia, and on August 18, 1790, he concluded a
contract with Alexander Baranov, who sailed that day from the Okotsk,
and who finally established that enduring basis of trade and Russian
domination in Alaska which held till our purchase in 1867 of all its
vested rights and title.

The wild savage life which the Russians led in these early days of
their possession of this new land—their bitter personal antagonisms
and their brutal orgies—actually beggar description, and seem
well-nigh incredible to the trader or traveller who sojourns in
Alaska to-day. It is commonly regarded as a rude order of existence
up there among ourselves now; and when we come to think back, and
contrast the stormy past with the calm present, it is difficult to
comprehend it; yet it is not so strange if it be remembered that they
were practically beyond all reach of authority, and lived for many
consecutive years in absolute non-restraint.

It is easy to trace the several steps and understand the motives
which led to our purchase of Alaska. There was no subtle statecraft
involved, and no significance implied. The Russian Government simply
grew weary of looking after the American territory, which was an
element of annually increasing cost to the Imperial treasury, and
was a source of anxiety and weakness in all European difficulties.
It became apparent to the minds of the governing council at St.
Petersburg that Russians could not, or at least, would not settle
in Russian America to build up a state or province, or do anything
else there which would redound to the national honor and strength.
This view they were well grounded in, after the ripe experience of a
century’s control and ownership.

One period in that history of Russian rule afforded to the
authorities much rosy anticipation. This interval was that
season in the affairs of the Russian American Company which was
known as Baranov’s administration, in which time the revenues to
the crown were rich, and annually increasing. But Baranov was
a practical business man, while every one of his successors,
although distinguished men in the naval and army circles of the
home government, was not. Comment is unnecessary. The change
became marked; the revenues rapidly declined, and the conduct of
the operations of the company soon became a matter of loss and
not of gain to the stockholders and to the Imperial treasury. The
history, however, of the rise and fall of this great Russian trading
association is a most interesting one; much more so even than that of
its ancient though still surviving, but decrepit rival, the Hudson’s
Bay Company.

Those murderous factional quarrels of the competing Russian traders
throughout Alaska in 1790-98 finally compelled the Emperor Paul to
grant, in 1799, much against his will, a charter to a consolidation
of the leading companies engaged in American fur-hunting, which was
named the Russian American Company. It also embraced the Eastern
Siberian and Kamchatkan colonies. That charter gave to this company
the exclusive right to all the territory in Alaska, Kamchatka,
and the Siberian Okotsk, and Kurile districts, and the privileges
conferred by this charter were very great and of the most autocratic
nature; but at the same time the company was shrewdly burdened with
deftly framed obligations, being compelled to maintain, at its own
expense, the new government of the country, a church establishment,
a military force, and, at various points in the territory, ample
magazines of provisions and stores to be used by the Imperial
Government for its naval vessels or land troops whenever ordered.
At a time when all such stores had to be transported on land trails
over the desolate wastes of Siberia from Russia to the Okotsk, this
clause in the franchise was most burdensome, and really fatal to the
financial success of the company.

The finesse of the Russian authorities is strikingly manifested
in that charter, which ostensibly granted to the Russian American
Company all these rights of exclusive jurisdiction to a vast domain
without selfishly exacting a single tax for the home treasury; but
in fact it did pay an immense sum annually into the royal coffers
in this way. The entire fur trade in those days was with China,
and all the furs of Alaska were bartered by the Russians with the
Mongols for teas, which were sold in Russia and Europe. The records
of the Imperial treasury show that the duties paid into it by this
company upon these teas often exceeded two millions of silver rubles
annually.[4]

The company was also obliged, by the terms of their charter, to make
experiments in the establishment of agricultural settlements wherever
the soil and climate of Alaska would permit. The natives of Alaska
were freed from all taxes in skins or money, but were obliged to
furnish to the company’s order certain quotas of sea-otter hunters
every season, all men between the ages of eighteen and fifty being
liable to this draft, though not more than one-half of any number
thus subject could be enlisted and called out at any one time.

The management of this great organization was vested in an
administrative council, composed of its stockholders in St.
Petersburg, with a head general office at Irkutsk, Siberia—a chief
manager, who was to reside in Alaska, and was styled “The Governor,”
and whose selection was ordered from the officers of the Imperial
navy not lower in rank than post-captain. That high official and
Alaskan autocrat had an assistant, also a naval officer, and each
received pay from the Russian Company, in addition to their regular
governmental salaries, which were continued to them by the Crown.

In cases of mutiny or revolt the powers of the governor were
absolute. He had also the fullest jurisdiction at all times over
offenders and criminals, with the nominal exception of capital
crimes. Such culprits were supposed to have a preliminary trial, then
were to be forwarded to the nearest court of justice in Siberia.
Something usually “happened” to save them the tedious journey,
however. The Russian servants of the company—its numerous retinue
of post-traders, factors, and traders, and laborers of every class
around the posts—were engaged for a certain term of years, duly
indentured. When the time expired the company was bound to furnish
them free transportation back to their homes, unless the unfortunate
individuals were indebted to it; then they could be retained by the
employer until the debt was paid. It is needless to state in this
connection that an incredibly small number of Russians were ever
homeward bound from Alaska during these long years of Muscovitic
control and operation. This provision of debtor _vs._ creditor was
one which enabled the creditor company to retain in its service any
and all men among the humbler classes whose services were desirable,
because the scanty remuneration, the wretched pittance in lieu of
wages, allowed them, made it a matter of utter impossibility to keep
out of debt to the company’s store. Even among the higher officials
it is surprising to scan the long list of those who, after serving
one period of seven years after another, never seemed to succeed in
clearing themselves from the iron grasp of indebtedness to the great
corporation which employed them.

As long as the Russian Company maintained a military or naval force
in the Alaskan territory, at its own expense, these forces were
entirely at the disposal of its governor, who passed most of his
time in elegant leisure at Sitka, where the finest which the markets
and the vineyards of the world afforded were regularly drawn upon
to supply his table. No set of men ever lived in more epicurean
comfort and abundance than did those courtly chief magistrates of
Alaska who succeeded the plain Baranov in 1818, and who established
and maintained the vice-regal comfort of their physical existence
uninterruptedly until it was surrendered, with the cession of their
calling, in 1867.

The charter of the Russian American Company was first granted for a
period of twenty years, dating at the outset from January 1, 1799. It
also had the right to hoist its own colors, to employ naval officers
to command its vessels, and to subscribe itself, in its proclamation
or petition, “Under the highest protection of his Imperial Majesty,
the Russian American Company.” It began at once to attract much
attention in Russia, especially among moneyed men in St. Petersburg
and Moscow. Nobles and high officials of the Government eagerly
sought shares of its stock, and even the Emperor and members of his
family invested in them, the latter making their advances in this
direction under the pretext of donating their portions to schools and
to charitable institutions. It was the first enterprise of the kind
which had ever originated in the Russian Empire, and, favored in this
manner by the Crown, it rose rapidly into public confidence. A future
of the most glowing prosperity and stability was prophesied for it by
its supporters—a prosperity and power as great as ever that of the
British East India Company—while many indulged dreams of Japanese
annexation and portions of China, together with the whole American
coast, including California.

But that clause in the charter of the company, which ordered that the
chief manager of its affairs in Alaska should be selected from the
officers of the Imperial navy, had a most unfortunate effect upon the
successful conduct of the business, as it was prosecuted throughout
Russian America. After Baranov’s suspension and departure, in the
autumn of 1818, not a single practical merchant or business man
succeeded him. The rigid personal scrutiny and keen trading instinct
which were so characteristic of him, were followed immediately by
the very reverse; hence the dividends began to diminish every year,
while the official writing, on the other hand, became suddenly more
voluminous, graphic, and declared a steady increase of prosperity.
Each succeeding chief manager, or governor, vied with the reports of
his predecessors in making a record of great display in the line of
continued explorations, erection of buildings, construction of ships
of all sizes, and the establishment of divers new industries and
manufactories, agriculture, etc.

The second term of the Russian American Company’s charter expired in
1841, and the directors and shareholders labored most industriously
for another renewal; the Crown took much time in consideration,
but in 1844 the new grant was confirmed, and rather increased the
rights and privileges of the company, if anything; still matters
did not mend financially, the affairs of the large corporation were
continued in the same reckless management by one governor after
the other—with the same extravagant vice-regal display and costly
living—with useless and abortive experiments in agriculture, in
mining and in ship-building, so that by the approach of the lapsing
of the third term of twenty years’ control, in 1864, the company was
deeply in debt, and though desirous of continuing the business, it
now endeavored to transfer the cost of maintaining its authority in
Alaska to the home Government; to this the Imperial Cabinet was both
unwilling and unable to accede, for Russia had just emerged from a
disastrous and expensive war, and was in no state of mind to incur
a single extra ruble of indebtedness which she could avoid. In the
meantime, pending these domestic difficulties between the Crown and
the company, the charter expired; the Government refused to renew it,
and sought, by sending out commissioners to Sitka, for a solution of
the vexed problem.

Now, if the reader will mark it, right at this time and at this
juncture, arose the opportunity which was quickly used by Seward,
as Secretary of State, to the ultimate and speedy acquisition of
Russian America by the American Union. Those difficulties which the
situation revealed in respect to the affairs of the Russian Company
conflicting with the desire of the Imperial Government, made much
stir in all interested financial circles. A small number of San
Francisco capitalists had been for many years passive stockholders
in what was termed by courtesy the American Russian Ice Company—it
being nothing more than a name really, inasmuch as very little ever
was or has been done in the way of shipping ice to California from
Alaska. Nevertheless these gentlemen quickly conceived the idea of
taking the charter of the Russian Company themselves, and offered a
sum far in excess of what had accrued to the Imperial treasury at
any time during the last forty years’ tenure of the old contract.
The negotiations were briskly proceeding, and were in a fair way to
a successful ending, when it informally became known to Secretary
Seward, who at once had his interest excited in the subject, and
speedily arrived at the conclusion that if it was worth paying
$5,000,000 by a handful of American merchants for a twenty years’
lease of Alaska, it was well worthy the cost of buying it out and
out in behalf of the United States; inasmuch as leasing it, as the
Russians intended to, was a virtual surrender of it absolutely for
the period named. In this spirit the politic Seward approached the
Russian Government, and the final consummation of Alaska’s purchase
was easily effected,[5] May, 1867, and formally transferred to our
flag on the 18th of October following.

If the Russian Government had not been in an exceedingly friendly
state of mind with regard to the American Union, this somewhat abrupt
determination on its part to make such a virtual gift of its vast
Alaskan domain would never have been thought of in St. Petersburg for
a moment. Still, it should be well understood from the Muscovitic
view, that in presenting Russian America to us, no loss to the
glory or the power of the Czar’s Crown resulted; no surrender of
smiling hamlets, towns or cities, no mines or mining, no fish or
fishing, no mills, factories or commerce—nothing but her good will
and title to a few thousand poor and simple natives, and a large
wilderness of mountain, tundra-moor and island-archipelago wholly
untouched, unreclaimed by the hand of civilized man. Russia then, as
now, suffered and still suffers, from an embarrassment of just such
natural wealth as that which we so hopefully claim as our own Alaska.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Bering’s Island—he was wrecked on the east coast, at a point
under steep bluffs now known as “Kommandor.” Scarcely a vestige of
this shipwreck now remains there.

[2] That curious creature is extinct. It formerly inhabited the
sea-shores of these two small islands. The German naturalist Steller,
who was the surgeon of Bering’s ship, has given us the only account
we have of this animal’s appearance and habits; it was the largest
of all the Sirenians; attained a length sometimes of thirty feet.
When first discovered it was extremely abundant, and formed the main
source of food-supply for the shipwrecked crew of Bering’s vessel.
Twenty-seven years afterward it became extinct, due to the merciless
hunting and slaughter of it by the Russians, who, on their way
over to Alaska from Kamchatka, always made it an object to stop at
Bering or Copper Island and fill up large casks with the flesh of
this sea-cow. Its large size, inactive habits, and clumsy progress
in the water, together with its utter fearlessness of man, made its
extinction rapid and feasible.

I make the restoration from a careful study of the details of
Steller’s description.

[3] The order of this search and voyaging has been faithfully
recorded by Ivan Petroff in his admirable compendium of the subject.
(See Tenth Census U. S. A., Vol. VIII.) While this narrative may be
interesting to a historian, yet I deem it best not to inflict it upon
the general reader. Also in “Bancroft’s History of Alaska,” recently
published at San Francisco, it is graphically and laboriously
described.

[4] The Russian currency is always expressed in kopecks and in
rubles. Gold coinage there is seldom ever seen, and was never used in
Alaska. The following table explains itself:

    1 copper kopeck  = 1 silver kopeck.
    2 copper kopecks = 1 grösh.
    3 copper kopecks = 1 alteen.
    5 copper kopecks = 1 peetak.
    5 silver kopecks = 1 peetak.
   10 silver kopecks = 1 greevnah.
   15 silver kopecks = 1 peteealtin.
   20 silver kopecks = 1 dvoogreevenik.
   25 silver kopecks = 1 chetvertak.
   50 silver kopecks = 1 polteenah.
  100 silver kopecks = 1 ruble.

The silver ruble is nearly equal to seventy-five cents in our coin.
The paper ruble fluctuates in Russia from forty to fifty cents,
specie value; in Alaska it was rated at twenty cents, silver. Much
of the “paper” currency in Alaska during Russian rule was stamped on
little squares of walrus hide.

A still smaller coin, called the “_polooshka_” worth ¼ kopeck, has
been used in Russia. It takes its name from a hare-skin, “_ooshka_,”
or “little ears,” which, before the use of money by the Slavs, was
one of the lowest articles of exchange, _pol_ signifying _half_,
and _polooshka_, _half a hare’s skin_. From another small coin, the
“_deinga_” (equal to ½ kopeck in value), is derived the Russian word
for money, _deingah_ or _deingie_.

[5] $7,200,000 gold was paid by the United States into the Imperial
treasury of Russia for the Territory of Alaska; it is said that
most of this was used in St. Petersburg to satisfy old debts and
obligations incurred by Alaskan enterprises, attorneys’ fees, etc.
So, in short, Russia really gave her American possessions to the
American people, reaping no direct emolument or profit whatsoever
from the transfer.




CHAPTER II.

FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION.

  The Vast Area of Alaska.—Difficulty of Comparison, and Access
  to her Shores save in the Small Area of the Sitkan Region.—Many
  Americans as Officers of the Government, Merchants, Traders,
  Miners, etc., who have Visited Alaska daring the last Eighteen
  Years.—Full Understanding of Alaskan Life and Resources now
  on Record.—Beautiful and Extraordinary Features of the Sitkan
  Archipelago.—The Decaying Town of Wrangel.—The Wonderful Glaciers
  of this Region.—The Tides, Currents and Winds.—The Forests and
  Vegetation Omnipresent in this Land-locked Archipelago.—Indigenous
  Berries.—Gloomy Grandeur of the Cañons.—The Sitkan Climate.—Neither
  Cold nor Warm.—Excessive Humidity.—Stickeen Gold Excitement of
  1862 and 1875.—The Decay of Cassiar.—The Picturesque Bay of
  Sitka.—The Romance and Terror of Baranov’s Establishment there in
  1800-1805.—The Russian Life and Industries at Sitka.—The Contrast
  between Russian Sitka and American Sitka a Striking One.

    “For hot, cold, moist and dry, four champions fierce
    Strive here for mastery.”—MILTON.


The general contour of Alaska is correctly rendered on any and all
charts published to-day; but it is usually drawn to a very much
reduced scale and tucked away into a corner of a large conventional
map of the United States and Territories, so that it fails, in this
manner, to give an adequate idea of its real proportion—and does not
commonly impress the eye and mind, as it ought to, at first sight.
But a moment’s thoughtful observation shows the vast landed extent
between that extreme western point of Attoo Island in the occident,
and the boundary near Fort Simpson in the orient, to be over 2,000
miles; while from this Alaskan initial post at Simpson to Point
Barrow, in the arctic, it covers the limit of 1,200 geographical
miles.[6] The superficial magnitude of this region is at once well
appreciated when the largest States or Territories are each held up
in contrast.

The bewildering indentation and endless length of the coast, the
thousands of islands and islets, the numerous volcanoes and towering
peaks, and the maze of large and small rivers, make a comparison of
Alaska, in any other respect than that of mere superficial area,
wholly futile when brought into contrast with the rest of the North
American continent. Barred out as she is from close communion
with her new relationship and sisterhood in the American Union
by her remote situation, and still more so by the unhappiness of
her climate, she is not going to be inspected from the platforms
of flying express trains; and, save the little sheltered jaunt
by steamer from Puget Sound to Sitka and immediate vicinity, no
ocean-tourists are at all likely to pry into the lonely nooks and
harbors of her extended coasts, surf-beaten and tempest-swept as they
are every month in the year.

But, in the discharge of official duty, in the search for precious
metals, coal and copper, in the desire to locate profitable fishing
ventures, and in the interests of natural science, hundreds of
energetic, quick-witted Americans have been giving Alaska a very
keen examination during the last eighteen years. The sum of their
knowledge throws full understanding over the subject of Alaskan life
and resources, as viewed and appreciated from the American basis;
there is no difficulty in now making a fair picture of any section,
no matter how remote, or of conducting the reader into the very
presence of Alaska’s unique inhabitants, anywhere they may be sought,
and just as they live between Point Barrow and Cape Fox, or Attoo and
the Kinik mouth.

In going to Alaska to-day, the traveller is invariably taken into
the Sitkan district, and no farther; naturally he goes there and
nowhere beyond, for the best of all reasons: he can find no means
of transportation at all proper as regards his safety and comfort
which will convey him outside of the Alexander archipelago. To this
southeastern region of Alaska, however, one may journey every month
in the year from the waters of the Columbia River and Puget Sound,
in positive pleasure, on a seaworthy steamer fitted with every
marine adjunct conducive to the passenger’s comfortable existence
in transit; it is a land-locked sea-trip of over eighteen hundred
miles, made often to and from Sitka without tremor enough on the
part of the vessel even to spill a brimming glass of water upon the
cabin table. If fortunate enough to make this trip of eight or nine
hundred miles up, and then down again, when the fog is not omnipotent
and rain not incessant, the tourist will record a vision of earthly
scenery grander than the most vivid imagination can devise, and the
recollection of its glories will never fade from his delighted mind.

If, however, you desire to visit that great country to the
westward and the northwest, no approach can be made via Sitka—no
communication between that region and this portion of Alaska ever
takes place, except accidentally; the traveller starts from San
Francisco either in a codfishing schooner, a fur-trader’s sloop,
or steamer, and sails out into the vast Pacific on a bee-line for
Kadiak or Oonalashka; and, from these two chief ports of arrival
and departure, he laboriously works his way, if bent upon seeing
the country, constantly interrupted and continually beset with all
manner of hindrances to the progress of his journey by land and sea.
These physical obstructions in the path of travel to all points of
interest in Alaska, save those embraced in the Sitkan district,
will bar out and deprive thousands from ever beholding the striking
natural characteristics of a wonderful volcanic region in Cook’s
Inlet and the Aleutian chain of islands. When that time shall arrive
in the dim future which will order and sustain the sailing of
steamers in regular rotation of transit throughout the waters of this
most interesting section, then, indeed, will a source of infinite
satisfaction be afforded to those who love to contemplate the weird
and the sublime in nature; meanwhile, visits to that region in small
sailing-craft are highly risky and unpleasant—boisterous winds are
chronic and howling gales are frequent.

The beautiful and extraordinary features of preliminary travel up
the British Columbia coast will have prepared the mind for a full
enjoyment and comprehension of your first sight of Alaska. If you
are alert, you will be on deck and on good terms with the officer in
charge when the line is crossed on Dixon Sound, and the low wooded
crowns of Zayas and Dundas Islands, now close at hand, are speedily
left in the wake as the last landmarks of foreign soil. To the left,
as the steamer enters the beautiful water of Clarence Straits, the
abrupt, irregular, densely wooded shores of Prince of Wales Island
rise as lofty walls of timber and of rock, mossy and sphagnous,
shutting out completely a hasty glimpse of the great Pacific rollers
afforded in the Sound; while on the right hand you turn to a
delighted contemplation of those snowy crests of the towering coast
range which, though thirty and fifty miles distant, seem to fairly be
in reach, just over and back of the rugged tree-clad elevations of
mountainous islands that rise abruptly from the sea-canal in every
direction. Not a gentle slope to the water can be seen on either side
of the vessel as you glide rapidly ahead; the passage is often so
narrow that the wavelets from the steamer’s wheel break and echo back
loudly on your ear from the various strips of ringing rocky shingle
at the base of bluffy intersections.

[Illustration: Lodges in a Vast Wilderness.]

If, by happy decree of fate, fog-banks do not shut suddenly down
upon your pleased vision, a rapid succession of islands and myriads
of islets, all springing out boldly from the cold blue-green and
whitish-gray waters which encircle their bases, will soon tend to
confuse and utterly destroy all sense of locality; the steamer’s
path seems to be in a circle, to lead right back to where she
started from, into another equally mysterious labyrinthine opening:
then the curious idiosyncrasy possesses you by which you seem to
see in the scenery just ahead an exact resemblance to the bluffs,
the summits and the cascades which you have just left behind. Your
emphatic expression aloud of this belief will, most likely, arouse
some fellow-passenger who is an old voyageur, and he will take
a guiding oar: he will tell you that the numerous broad smooth
tracks, cut through the densely wooded mountain slopes from the snow
lines above abruptly down to the very sea below, are the paths of
avalanches; that if you will only crane your neck enough so as to
look right aloft to a certain precipice now almost hanging 3,000
feet high and over the deck of the steamer, there you will see a
few small white specks feebly outlined against the grayish-red
background of the rocks—these are mountain goats; he tells you that
those stolid human beings who are squatting in a large dug-out canoe
are “Siwashes,” halibut-fishing—and as these savages stupidly stare
at the big “Boston” vessel swiftly passing, with uplifted paddles
or keeping slight headway, you return their gaze with interest, and
the next turn of the ship’s rudder most likely throws into full
view a “rancherie,” in which these Indians permanently reside; your
kindly guide then eloquently describes the village and descants with
much vehemence upon the frailties and shortcomings of “Siwashes” in
general—at least all old-stagers in this country agree in despising
the aboriginal man. On the steamer forges through the still,
unruffled waters of intricate passages, now almost scraping her
yard-arms on the face of a precipitous headland—then rapidly shooting
out into the heart of a lovely bay, broad and deep enough to float in
room and safety a naval flotilla of the first class, until a long,
unusually low, timbered point seems to run out ahead directly in the
track, when your guide, giving a quick look of recognition, declares
that Wrangel[7] town lies just around it, and you speedily make your
inspection of an Alaskan hamlet.

Owing to the dense forest-covering of the country, sections of those
clays and sands which rest in most of the hollows are seldom seen,
only here and there where the banks of a brook are cut out, or
where an avalanche has stripped a clear track through the jungle,
do you get a chance to see the soil in southeastern Alaska. There
are frequent low points to the islands, composed, where beaten upon
by the sea, of fine rocky shingle, which form a flat of greater or
less width under the bluffs or steep mountain or hill slopes, about
three to six feet above present high-water mark; they become, in most
cases, covered with a certain amount of good soil, upon which a rank
growth of grass and shrubbery exists, and upon which the Indians love
to build their houses, camp out, etc. These small flats, so welcome
and so rare in this pelagic wilderness, have evidently been produced
by the waves acting at different times in opposing directions.

[Illustration: GRAND GLACIER: ICY BAY

View looking across a profile of its sea-wall face, two and a half
miles: ice cliffs from one hundred and fifty to three hundred feet
high above the water; depth of sea from sixty to eighty fathoms where
it is sounded under the steamer’s keel. An October picture, when all
its surface cavities and pinnacles are concealed by snow and smoothed
by frozen sleet]

In all of those channels penetrating the mainland and intervening
between the numerous islands from the head of Glacier Bay and Lynn
Canal down to the north end of Vancouver’s Island, marks, or glacial
scratchings, indicative of the sliding of a great ice-sheet, are
to be found, generally in strict conformity with the trend of the
passages, wherever the rocks were well suited for their preservation;
and it is probable that the ice of the coast range, at one time,
reached out as far west as the outer islands which fringe the
entire Alaskan and British Columbian coast. Many of the boulders on
the beaches are plainly glaciated; and, as they are often bunched
in piles upon the places where found, they seem to have not been
disturbed since they were dropped there. The shores are everywhere
abrupt and the water deep. The entire front of this lofty coast-range
chain, that forms the eastern Alaskan boundary from the summit of Mt.
St. Elias to the mouth of Portland Canal, is glacier-bearing to-day,
and you can scarcely push your way to the head of any cañon, great or
small, without finding an eternal ice-sheet anchored there: careful
estimation places the astonishing aggregate of over 5,000 living
glaciers, of greater or less degree, that are silently but forever
travelling down to the sea, in this region.

Those congealed rivers which take their origin in the flanks of Mt.
Fairweather[8] and Mt. Crillon[9] are simply unrivalled in frigid
grandeur by anything that is lauded in Switzerland or the Himalayas,
though the vast bulk of the Greenland ice-sheets is, of course, not
even feebly approximated by them; the waters of the channels which
lead up from the ocean to the feet of these large glaciers of Cross
Sound and Lynn Canal, are full of bobbing icebergs that have been
detached from the main sheet, in every possible shape and size—a
detachment which is taking place at intervals of every few moments,
giving rise, in so doing, to a noise like parks of artillery; but,
of course, these bergs are very, very small compared with those of
Greenland, and only a few ever escape from the intricate labyrinth
of fiörds which are so characteristic of this Sitkan district. An
ice-sheet comes down the cañon, and as it slides into the water
of the canal or bay, wherever it may be, the pressure exerted by
the buoyancy of the partially submerged mass causes it to crack
off in the wildest lines of cleavage, and rise to the surface in
hundreds and thousands of glittering fragments; or again, it may
slide out over the water on a rocky bed, and, as it advances, break
off and fall down in thundering salvos, that ring and echo in the
gloomy cañons with awe-inspiring repetition. At the head and around
the sides of a large indentation of Cross Sound there are no less
than five immense, complete glaciers, which take their origin
between Fairweather and Crillon Mountains, each one reaching and
discharging into tide-water: here is a vast, a colossal glacier in
full exhibition, and so easy of access that the most delicate woman
could travel to, and view it, since an ocean-steamer can push to its
very sea-walls, without a moment’s serious interruption, where from
her decks may be scanned the singular spectacle of an icy river from
three to eight miles wide, fifty miles long, and varying in depth
from fifty to five hundred feet. Between the west side of this frozen
bay and the water, all the ground, high and low, is covered by a
mantle of ice from one thousand to three thousand feet thick!

Here is an absolute realism of what once took place over the
entire northern continent—a vivid picture of the actual process of
degradation which the earth and its life were subjected to during
that long glacial epoch which bound up in its iron embrace of death
just about half of the globe.[10] This startling exhibition of a
mighty glacier with its cold, multitudinous surroundings in Cross
Sound, is alone well worth the time and cost of the voyage to behold
it, and it alone. There is not room in this narrative for further
dwelling upon that fascinating topic, for a full description of such
a gelid outpouring would in itself constitute a volume.

Throughout this archipelago of the Sitkan district, the strongest
tidal currents prevail: they flow at places like mill-races, and
again they scarcely interfere with the ship or canoe. The flood-tides
usually run northward along the outer coasts, and eastward in Dixon’s
Entrance; the weather, which is generally boisterous on the ocean
side of the islands, and on which the swell of the Pacific never
ceases to break with great fury, is very much subdued inside, and the
best indication of these tidal currents is afforded by the streaming
fronds of kelp that grow abundantly in all of these multitudinous
fiörds, and which are anchored securely in all depths, from a few
feet to that of seventy fathoms: when the tide is running through
some of those narrow passages, especially at ebb, it forms, with the
whip-like stems of sea-weed, a true rapid with much white water,
boiling and seething in its wild rushing; these alternations between
high and low water here are exceedingly variable—the spring-tides at
some places are as great as eighteen feet of rise, and a few miles
beyond, where the coast-expansion is great, it will not be more than
three or four feet.

Those baffling tides and the currents they create, together with
gusty squalls of rain or sleet, and irregular winds, render
the navigation of this inside passage wholly impracticable for
sailing-vessels—they gladly seek the open ocean where they can haul
and fill away to advantage even if it does blow “great guns;” the
high mural walls of the Alexander fiörds on both sides, usually,
of the channels, cause the wind to either blow up them, or down:
it literally funnels through with terrific velocity when the
“southeasters” prevail, and nothing, not even the steamer, braves the
fury of such a storm.

The great growth of trees everywhere here, and the practical
impenetrability of these forests on foot, owing to brush and bushes,
all green and growing in tangled jungle, is caused by the comparative
immunity of this country from the scourge of forest fires: this is
due to a phenomenal dampness of the climate—it rains, rains, and
drizzles here two-thirds of the time. The heaviest rains are local,
usually occurring on the western or ocean slopes of the islands
where the sea-winds, surcharged with moisture, first meet a barrier
to their flow and are thrown up into the cooler regions of the
atmosphere. It will be often noticed, from the steamer, that while
heavy rain is falling on the lofty hills and mountains of Prince of
Wales Island, it is clear and bright directly over the Strait of
Clarence to the eastward, and not far distant. June and July are
the most agreeable seasons of the year in which to visit the Sitkan
district, as a rule.

Many thoughtful observers have questioned the truth of the exuberant
growth of forestry peculiar to this region, as being due to that
incessant rainfall mentioned above; no doubt, it is not wholly
so; but yet, if the ravages of fire ran through the islets of the
archipelago, as it does in the interior slightly to the eastward,
the same order of vegetation here would be soon noted as we note it
there to-day; everywhere that you ascend the inlets of the mainland,
the shores become steep and rocky, with no beach, or very little; the
trees become scrubby in appearance, and are mingled with much dead
wood (_brulé_). Scarcely any soil clothes the slopes, and extensive
patches of bare rock crop out frequently everywhere.

Although the forest is omnipresent up to snow-line in this great
land-locked Sitkan district, yet it differs much in rankness of
growth and consequent value; it nowhere clothes the ridges or the
summits, which are 1,500 to 2,000 feet above tide-level; these peaks
and rocky elevations are usually bare, and show a characteristically
green-gray tint due to the sphagnous mosses and dwarfed brier and
bushes peculiar to this altitude, making an agreeable and sharp
contrast to that sombre and monotonous line of the conifers below.
The variety is limited, being substantially confined to three
evergreens, the spruce (_Abies sitkensis_ and _menziesii_), the
hemlock (_Abies mertensiana_), and the cedar (_Thuja gigantea_). The
last is the most valuable, is found usually growing near the shores,
and never in great quantities at any one place; wherever a sheltered
flat place is found, there these trees seem to grow in the greatest
luxuriance. In the narrower passages, where no seas can enter, the
forest seems almost to root in the beach, and its branches hang
pendent to the tides, and dip therein at high water. Where a narrow
beach, capped with warm sands and soil, occurs in sheltered nooks,
vividly green grass spreads down until it reaches the yellow sea-weed
“tangle” that grows everywhere in such places reached by high tide,
for, owing to the dampness of the climate, a few days exposure
at neap-tides fails to injure this fucoid growth. Ferns, oh! how
beautiful they are!—also grow most luxuriantly and even abundantly
upon the fallen, rotting tree-trunks, and even into the living
arboreal boughs, and green mosses form great club-like masses on the
branches.

Large trunks of this timber, overthrown and dead, become here at once
perfect gardens of young trees, moss, and bushes, even though lying
high above the ground and supported on piles of yet earlier windfall.
Similar features characterize the littoral forests of the entire
land-locked region of the northwest coast, from Puget Sound to the
mouth of Lynn Canal.

In addition to these overwhelmingly dominant conifers already
specified, a few cottonwoods and swamp-maples and alders are
scattered in the jungle which borders the many little streams and
the large rivers like the Stickeen, Tahko, and Chilkat. Crab-apples
(_Pyrus rivularis_) form small groves on Prince of Wales Island,
where the beach is low and capped with good soil. Then on the
exposed, almost bare rocks of the western hilltops of the islands of
the archipelago, a scrub pine (_Pinus contorta_) is found; it also
grows in small clumps here and there just below the snow-line on
the mountains generally. Berries abound; the most important being
the sal-lal (_Gaultheria shallow_)—they are eaten fresh in great
quantities, and are also dried for use in winter—and another small
raspberry (_Rubus sp._), a currant (_Ribes sp._), and a large juicy
whortleberry. Of course these berries do not have the flavor or body
which we prize at home in our small fruits of similar character—but
up here they, in the absence of anything better or as good, are eaten
with avidity and relish, even by the white travellers who happen to
be around when the fruit is ripe; wild strawberries appear in
sheltered nooks; a wild gooseberry too is found, but it, like the
crab-apple of Prince of Wales Island, is not a favorite—it is drastic.

[Illustration: KOOTZNAHOO INLET

Characteristic view of scenery in the Sitkan Archipelago. The high
lands and peaks of Admiralty Island in the distance; Indians fishing
for halibut over rocky shoals in the foreground. An October sketch,
looking East from Chatham Straits]

We find in many places throughout this district highland moors,
which constitute the level plateau-summits of ridges and mountain
foothills; these areas are always sparsely timbered, covered by a
thick carpet of sphagnous heather, and literally brilliant in June
and July with the spangled radiance of an extensive variety of
flowering annuals and biennials. In these moorland mantles, which
are usually soaked full of moisture so as to be fairly spongy under
foot, cranberries flourish, of excellent flavor, and quite abundant,
though, compared with our choice Jersey and Cape Cod samples, they
are very small.

Certainly the scenery of this Venetian wilderness of Lower Alaska is
wonderful and unrivalled—the sounds, the gulfs, bays, fiörds, and
river-estuaries are magnificent sheets of water, and the snow-capped
peaks, which spring abruptly from their mirrored depths, give the
scene an ever-changing aspect. At places the ship seems to really be
at sea, then she enters a canal whose lofty walls of syenite, slate,
and granite shut out the light of day, and against which her rigging
scrapes, and the passenger’s hand may almost touch—a hundred thousand
sparkling streams fall in feathery cascades, adown their mural
heights, and impetuous streams beat themselves into white foam as
they leap either into the eternal depths of the Pacific or its deep
arms.

Probably no one point in the Sitkan archipelago is invested by nature
with a grander, gloomier aspect than is that region known as the
eastern shore of Prince Frederick’s Sound, where the mountains of
the mainland drop down abruptly to the seaside; here a spur of the
coast range, opposite Mitgon Islet, presents an unusually dreadful
appearance, for it rises to a vast height with an inclination
toward and over the water: the serrated, jagged summits are loaded
with an immense quantity of ice and snow, which, together with the
overhanging masses of rock, seems to cause its sea-laved base to
fairly totter under that stupendous weight overhead; the passage
beneath it, in the canoe of a traveller, is simply awful in its dread
suggestion, and few can refrain from involuntary shuddering as they
sail by and gaze upward.

A word about the Sitkan climate: you are not going to be very cold
here even in the most severe of winters, nor will you complain of
heat in the most favorable of summers; it maybe best epitomized by
saying in brief that the weather is such that you seldom ever find a
clean cake of ice frozen in the small fresh-water ponds six inches
thick; and you never will experience a summer warm enough to ripen
a head of oats. The first impression usually made upon the visitor
is that it is raining, raining all the time, not a pouring rain or
shower, then clearing up quickly, but a steady “driz-driz-drizzle”;
it rained upon the author in this manner seventeen consecutive
days in October, 1866, accompanied by winds from all points of the
compass. Therefore, by contrast, the relatively clear and dry months
of June and July in the archipelago are really delightful—clear and
pleasant in the sun, and cool enough for fires indoors—then you have
about eighteen hours of sunshine and six hours of twilight.

It is very seldom that the zero-point is ever recorded at tide-level
during winter here, though in January, 1874, it fell to —7° Fah.; the
thermometer at no time in the winter preceding registered lower than
11° above. A late blustering spring and an early, vigorous winter
often join hands over a very backward summer—about once or twice
every five years; these are the backward seasons; then the first
frost in the villages and tidal bottoms occurs about the 28th to 31st
of October, soon followed by the rain turning to snow, being as much
as three feet deep on the level at times. Severe thunderstorms, with
lightning, often take place during these violent snowfalls in the
winter—strange to say they are not heard or seen in the summer! Snow
and rain and sleet continue till the end of April—sometimes as late
as the 10th of May, before giving way to the enjoyable season of June
and July. Then again the mild winters are marked by no frost to speak
of—perhaps the coldest period will have been in November, little or
no snow, six or seven inches at the most, and much clear and bracing
weather.

The average rainfall in the Sitkan district is between eighty-four
and eighty-six inches annually—it is a very steady average, and
makes no heavier showing than that presented by the record kept
on the coast of Oregon and Vancouver’s Island. A pleasant season
in the archipelago will give the observer about one hundred fair
days; the rest of the year will be given over to rain, snow, and
foggy-shrouds, which wet like rain itself.[11] A most careful search
during the last hundred years has failed to disclose in all the
extent of this Sitkan region an arable or bottom-land piece large
enough to represent a hundred-acre farm, save in the valley of the
Tahkoo River, where for forty or fifty miles a low, level plateau
extends, varying in width from a few rods to half a mile, between the
steep mountain walls that compass it about. Red-top and wild timothy
grasses grow here in the most luxuriant style, as they do for that
matter everywhere else in the archipelago on little patches of open
land along the streams and sea-beaches; the humidity of the climate
makes the cost of curing hay, however, very great, and prevents the
profitable ranging of cattle.

We have strayed from the landing which we made at Wrangel, and,
returning to the contemplation of that town, candor compels an
exclamation of disappointment—it is not inviting, for we see nothing
but a straggling group of hastily erected shanties and frame
store-houses, which face a rickety wharf and a dirty trackway just
above the beach-level; a dense forest and tangled jungle spring
up like a forbidding wall at the very rear of the houses, which
are supplemented by a number of Indian rancheries that skirt the
beach just beyond, and hug the point; this place, however, though
now in sad decline, was a place of much life and importance during
1875-79, when the Cassiar gold-excitement in British Columbia, via
the Stickeen River, drew many hundreds of venturesome miners up here,
and through Wrangel _en route_. This forlorn spot was still earlier a
centre of even greater stir and activity, for, in 1831, the Russians,
fearing that they would be forced into war with the Hudson’s Bay
people, made a quick movement, came down here from Sitka, and built
a bastioned log fortress right where the present Siwash rancheries
stand. Lieutenant Zarenbo, who engineered the construction, called
his work “Rédoute Saint Dionys,” and had scarcely got under cover
when he was attacked by several large bateaux, manned by employés
of the great English company; he fired upon them, beat them off, and
held his own so well that the grateful Baron Von Wrangel, who then
was governor-in-chief, bestowed the name of the plucky officer upon
the large, rugged island which overshadows the scene of the conflict,
and which it bears upon every chart to-day.[12]

Again, in 1862, the solitude of Wrangel was broken by the sudden
eruption of over two thousand British Columbia and Californian
miners, who rushed up the Stickeen River on a gold “excitement.”
Quite a fleet of sail and steam-vessels hung about the place for a
brief season, when the flurry died out, and the restless gold-hunters
fled in search of other diggings, taking all their belongings with
them.

The steamer does not tarry long at Wrangel; a few packages fall
upon the shaky wharf, the captain never leaves the bridge, and in
obedience to his tinkling bell, the screw scarce has paused ere it
starts anew, and the vessel soon heads right about and west, out to
the open swell of the great Pacific; but it takes six or seven hours
of swift travel over the glassy surface of Clarence Strait to pass
the rough heads of Kuprianov Island on the right, flanked by the
sombre, densely wooded elevations of Prince of Wales on the left.
The lower, yet sharper spurs of the straggling Kou forests force
our course here directly to the south. It is said that more than
fifteen hundred islands, big and little, stud this archipelago from
Cape Disappointment to Cross Sound. You will not attempt to count
them, but readily prefer to believe it is so. From the great bulk of
Vancouver’s Land to the tiny islet just peeping above water, they are
all covered to the snow-line from the sea-level with an olive-green
coniferous forest—islands right ahead, islands on every side, islands
all behind. You stand on deck and wonder where the egress from the
unruffled inland lake is to be as you enter it; no possible chance to
go ahead much faster, is your constant thought, which keeps following
every sharp turn of the vessel as she rapidly swings right about
here, there, and everywhere, in following the devious path of this
weird course to her destination.

Unless the fog shuts down very thick, the darkness of night does
not impede the steamer’s steady progress, for the pilot sees the
mountain tops loom up darker against the blue-black sky, and with
unerring certainty he guides the helm. When the ship is running
through tide-rapids in the night, the boiling phosphorescence of
the foaming waters, as they rush noisily under our keel, gives a
fresh zest to the novelty of the cruise, and the pilot’s cries of
command ring out in hoarse echoes over the surging tumult below;
meanwhile, the passengers anxiously and nervously watch the unquiet
turns of the trembling vessel—then suddenly the helm is put up, and
the steamer fairly bounds out of still water and the leeward of
Coronation Island, into the rhythmic roll of the vast billows of the
Pacific, which toss her in strange contrast to the even keel that has
characterized our long, land-locked sea-voyage up to this moment. The
wrinkled, rugged nose of Cape Ommaney looms right ahead in the north,
and soon we are well abreast of the mountainous front to the west
coast of Baranov Island, running swiftly into Sitka Sound.[13]

Cape Ommaney is a very remarkable promontory; it is a steep, bluffy
cliff, with a round, high rocky islet, lying close by and under
it. The eastern shore of that cape takes a very sharp northerly
direction, and thus makes this southern extremity of Baranov Island
an exceedingly narrow point of land. An unlucky sailor, Isaac
Wooden, fell overboard from Vancouver’s ship the _Discovery_, when
abreast of it and homeward bound, Sunday, August 24, 1794, and—was
drowned, after having safely passed through all the perils of that
most remarkable voyage, extended as it was over a period of four
consecutive years’ absence from home. The rock bears the odd name
“Wooden” in consequence.

The location of New Archangel, or Sitka village, is now conceded to
be the one of the greatest natural beauty and scenic effect that can
be found in all Alaska. The story of its occupation by the Russians
is a recitation of violent deeds and unflinching courage on the part
of the iron-willed Baranov and his obedient servants: he led the way
down here from Kadiak first, of all white men, in 1799, after hearing
the preliminary report of exploration made two years previously
by his lieutenant, Captain James Shields, an English adventurer
and shipbuilder, who entered the service of the Russian Company in
the Okotsk. Baranov, though small in stature, was possessed of
unusual physical endurance and muscular strength. He was absolutely
fearless; he never allowed any obstacle, no matter how serious,
which the elements or savage men were perpetually raising, to check
his advances. He loved to travel and explore, and possessed rare
executive or governing power over his rude and boisterous followers.
He soon realized that the establishment of the headquarters of the
company at St. Paul, Kadiak Island, was disadvantageous, and quickly
resolved to settle himself permanently in the Bay of Sitka, or
Norfolk Sound, where he could communicate with the vessels of other
nations and purchase supplies of them. Late in the autumn of 1799 he
sailed to this port in the brig _Catherine_, accompanied by a large
fleet of Aleutian and Kadiak sea-otter hunters with their bidarkas,
or skin-canoes. So abundant were sea-otters then, now so rare, that,
with the assistance of these native hunters, he secured over fifteen
hundred prime otter-skins in less than a month; then satisfied with
the trading resources of the locality, Baranov began the construction
of a stockaded post, the site selected for which was on the main
island, about six miles to the northward of the Sitkan town-site of
to-day. During the winter of 1799-1800 he and his whole force were
busily engaged in the erection of substantial log houses and the
surrounding stockade at this location. In the spring, two American
fur-trading vessels made their appearance here, and the owners began
to carry on a brisk traffic with the native Sitkans, right under the
eyes of Baranov. Knowing that this must be stopped, the energetic
Russian hastened back to Kadiak and set the machinery in motion to
that end. But his absence in the meantime from Sitka was improved
upon by the Koloshians, who, acting in preconcerted plan, utterly
destroyed the post. These savages on a certain day, when most of the
garrison was far outside of the stockade, hunting and fishing, rushed
in, several thousand of them, upon a few armed men, surrounded the
block-house, assailed it from all sides at once, and soon forced
an entrance. They massacred the defenders to a man, including the
commander, Medvaidniekov, and carried off more than three thousand
sea-otter pelts from the warehouses.

During this wild and bloody fight an English ship was lying at anchor
far down the harbor, some ten miles from the scene; three Russians
and five Aleutes only, out of the hunting parties absent at the time
of the attack, managed to secrete themselves in the woods, and hide
until they could gain the decks and protection of this vessel, and
thus acquaint her captain, Barber, of the outrage; he contrived to
entice two of the leading Sitkan chiefs on board of his ship, plied
them with drink, and soon had them securely ironed, and then, having
quite a battery of guns, he was able to make his own terms for
their release; this was done after the surrender of eighteen women
(captured outside of the stockade) and 2,000 sea-otter skins was made
to Barber, who at once sailed for Kadiak. Here the British seaman
demanded from Baranov the salvage of 50,000 rubles for rescuing his
men and women and property; with this demand the Russian could not or
would not comply; but, after many days in amicable argument, Captain
Barber received and accepted 10,000 rubles in full settlement.

While the lurid light of the burning wreck of this first Sitkan
post was flashing over the sound, and the Koloshes were howling and
dancing around it in their fiendish exultation, nearly two hundred
Aleutian hunters were surprised and slaughtered at various points
in the vicinity, and a party of over one hundred of these simple
natives perished almost to a man, on the same day, from eating
poisonous mussels which they detached from the rocks in the strait
that separates Baranov Island from Chichagov; that canal still
bears the name commemorative of this dreadful accident—it is called
“Pogeebshie”[14] or “Destruction” Strait.

The enraged Russian manager was unable, by reason of a complicated
flood of troubles with his subordinates elsewhere, to revisit
Sitka until the spring of 1804; he then came down from Kadiak in a
squadron consisting of three small sloops, in all considerably less
than 100 tons burden; these craft he had built and fitted out in
Prince William Sound and Yakootat Bay during the preceding winter.
He had with him forty Russians and three hundred Aleutian sea-otter
hunters. With this small force the indomitable man resolved to attack
and subjugate a body of not less than five or six thousand fierce,
untamed savages, who were flushed with their cruel successes, and
eager to shed more blood. He was unexpectedly strengthened by the
sudden appearance in the bay of the _Neva_, 400 tons, which had
sailed from London to Kadiak, and arrived just after Baranov’s
departure, but Captain Lissiansky, learning of the object of his
trip, determined to assist in rebuilding the Sitkan post and to
punish the Indians, so he sailed at once for the place.

Baranov found the Sitkans all entrenched behind a huge stockade
that was thrown up on the same lofty rocky site of the governor’s
castle in the town to-day. They reviled him and defied him, taunted
him with his misfortunes, and easily succeeded in exciting him to
a ferocious attack, in which, despite his demoniacal bravery, he
was beaten off at first with the loss of eleven white sailors and
hunters, he himself badly wounded, together with Lieutenants Arbuzov
and Povalishin. The darkness of a violent rain and sleet storm, with
night close at hand, caused a cessation, for the time, of further
hostilities, but in the morning the ship and the little sloops
approached the beach and opened upon the startled savages a hot
bombardment—the splintering of their log bastions and the terrible,
unwonted noise accompanying, was too much for their self-control,
and though, during the whole day they refused to fly, yet when night
again came round they abandoned their fortification, and retreated
silently and quickly in canoes to Chatham Strait.

[Illustration: The Castle of Baranov: 1809-1827.

[_Wholly remodelled and rebuilt by his successors._]]

The Russians then took possession of the present town-site of Sitka.
The rocky eminence which the savages had so bravely held was cleared
of their rude barricades, and the foundations were laid then to the
castle that still stands so conspicuous. Around this nucleus the
Russian settlement soon sprang up in a few months, a high stockade
was then erected between the village and the Indian rancheries,
which still stands in part to-day; it was bastioned and fortified
with an armament of three-pounder brass guns. From this time on the
supremacy of the Russians was never questioned by the Indians of the
Sitkan archipelago. The reckless daring of Baranov, evinced by his
personal bearing at the head of a handful of men in repeated attacks
upon the castle-rock encampment was exaggerated by the savages in
repetition among themselves, until his name to them became synonymous
with a charmed life and supreme authority. Baranov himself called
this spot the final headquarters of the Russian American Company,
and henceforth it became so, and it was officially known as New
Archangel; but the tribal name of the savages who lived just outside
the stockade fence was “Seet-kah,” and soon the present designation
was used by all visitors and Russians alike, brevity and euphony
making it “Sitka.”

It is not probable that the beautiful vistas of this sound influenced
Baranov in the slightest when he selected it for his base of
operations; but there must have been mornings and evenings when
this hardy man looked at them with some responsive pleasure, for
certainly the human being who could remain insensible to their scenic
glories must be one without a drop of warm blood in his veins. Those
high-peaked summits of the Baranov Mountains, which overshadow
the town on the east, destroy, in a great measure, the effects of
sunrise; but the transcendent glow of sundown colors is the glow that
floods the crown and base of Mt. Edgecumb on the western horizon
of the bay, and repeats its radiance in tipping with golden gild
the host of tiny islets which stud the flashing waters, to burn in
lingering brightness on the peaks of Verstova and her sister hills,
when all else is in darkness or its shades around about.

The most characteristic and expressive single view of Sitka is that
one afforded from Japan Island, which is close by and right opposite
the town: the place was in its greatest architectural grandeur prior
to the departure of the Russians, in 1866. The lofty peak which rises
abruptly back of the village is Verstova, to the bald summit of
which a champagne picnic by the Russians was religiously made every
summer. Although the mountain is slightly under three thousand feet
in altitude and seemingly right at hand, yet the journey to its
crest is one that taxes the best physical energies of strong men. The
forest is so dense, so damp, the underbrush so thick and so tangled,
that the walk requires a supreme bodily effort, if the trip be made
up there and back in the same day.

This view from “Yahponskie” gives an exceedingly good idea of the
ultra-mountainous character of Baranov Island, much better than any
power of verbal description can. It also illustrates the futility
of land travel in the Sitkan archipelago, and affords ample reason
for the utter absence of all roads, even footpaths, in that entire
region; it also preserves the somewhat imposing front which the
extensive warehouses and official quarters of the Russian American
Company presented in 1866, before their transfer to us, and the
ravages of fire and that decay which has since well-nigh destroyed
them; it recalls the shipyards and the brass and iron foundries and
machine-shops that have not even a vestige of their existence on that
ground to-day, and it outlines a larger Indian village than the one
we find there now.

For the objects of self-protection and comfort the Russians built
large apartment-houses or flats, and lived in them at Sitka. Several
of these dwellings were 150 feet in length by 50 to 80 feet in depth,
three stories high, with huge roof-attics. They were constructed of
big spruce logs, smoothly trimmed down to 12’ × 12’ timbers. These
were snugly dovetailed at the corners, and the expansive roof covered
with sheet-iron. The exteriors were painted a faint lemon-yellow,
while the iron roof everywhere glistened with red-ochre. The windows
were uniformly small, but fitted very neatly in tasteful casemates,
and usually with double sashes. Within, the floors were laid of
whipsawed planks, tongued and grooved by hand and highly polished.
The inner walls were “ceiled” up on all sides and overhead by light
boards, and usually papered showily. The heavy, unique Russian
furniture was moved in upon rugs of fur and tapestry, and then these
people bade defiance to the elements, no matter how unruly, and led
therein the most enjoyable of physical lives. The united testimony of
all travellers, who were many, and who shared the hospitality of the
Russians at Sitka, is one invariable tribute to the excellence and
the comfort of their indoor living at New Archangel.

[Illustration: A GLIMPSE OF SITKA

View in Sitka Sound, looking up towards the town: Mt. Verstova, in
the middle distance, and the rugged granitic peaks of Indian River on
the horizon. Sitkan Indians running down to Borka Islet for halibut.
June, 1874]

The shipyard of Sitka was as complete as any similar establishment
in the Russian Empire. It was actively employed in boat and
sail-vessel building, being provided with all sorts of workshops and
materials. Experiments were also instituted and prosecuted, to
some extent, in making bricks, so much prized in the construction of
the big conventional Russian “stoves,” the turning of wooden-ware,
the manufacture of woollen stuffs from the crude material brought
up from California; but the great cost of importing skilled labor
from far-distant Russia, and the relative expense of maintaining it
here, caused the financial failure of all these undertakings. Much
money was also wasted in attempting to make iron out of the different
grades of ore found in many sections of the country. The only real
advantage that the company ever reaped from the workshops at Sitka
was that which accrued to it from the manufacture of agricultural
implements, which it sold to the indolent rancheros of California
and Mexico. Thousands of the primitive ploughshares and rude hoes
and rakes used in those countries then were made here; also axes,
hatchets, and knives were turned out by industrious Muscovites for
Alaskan post-trading. The foundry was engaged most of the time in
making the large iron and brazen bells which every church and mission
from Bering’s Straits to Mexico called for. Most of these bells
are still in use or existence, and give ample evidence of skilful
workmanship, and of this early development of a unique industry on
our northern coast.

Naturally enough the contrast of what the Russian Sitka was, with
what the American Sitka is to-day, is a striking one: then a
force of six or eight hundred white men, with wives and families,
busily engaged as above sketched, directed by a retinue of fifty
or sixty subalterns of the governor, lived right under the windows
of his castle and within the stockade; then the Greek-Catholic
Bishop of all Alaska also resided there, with a staff of fifteen
ordained priests and scores of deacons all around him, maintained
regardless of expense, at this time, by the Imperial Government in
that ecclesiastical pomp so peculiar to this Oriental Church—then a
fleet of twelve to fifteen sailing-vessels, from ships in size to
mere sloops, with two ocean-going steamers, made the waters of the
bay their regular rendezvous, their hardy crews assisting to give
life and stir to the town, shore, and streets—all this ordered by
the concentration of the entire trade and commerce of Alaska at New
Archangel.

Now, how different! As you step ashore you scarcely pause to notice
the handful of whites who have assembled on the wharf, but at once
the impression of general decay is made upon your mind; the houses,
mostly the original Russian buildings, are settling here, there,
and everywhere, rotting on their foundations, and scarcely more than
half of them even occupied, while the combined population of some
three hundred souls in number peers at you from every corner. The
great majority of these people are the half-breeds, or “Creoles,”
or the descendants of Indians and Russians; some of them are tall
and well-formed, and a few of them good-looking, but they are nearly
all short-statured, abject, and apathetic. Yet in one respect Sitka
has vastly improved under American supremacy—she has become clean;
for although the Russian officers kept the immediate surroundings
of their residences in good order, still they never looked after
the conduct of the rest of the town. There were, in their time,
no defined streets or sidewalks, and mud and filth were knee-deep
and most noisome. Our military authorities, however, who first
took charge immediately after the transfer, and who are proverbial
for cleanliness and neatness in garrison life, made the sanitary
reformation of Sitka an instant and imperative duty; the slimy walks
were soon planked, the muddy streets were gravelled and curbed, the
main street especially widened, the oldest houses were repainted,
and where dilapidated, repaired, and things put into shape most
thoroughly; they also graded and sauntered over the first wagon-road
ever opened in Alaska, which they constructed, from the steamers’
landing under the castle, back bordering the bay to Indian River,
over a mile in length.

But the pomp and circumstance of the old castle—still the most
striking artificial feature now in all Alaska—will never wake to the
echoes of that proud and lavish hospitality which once reigned within
its walls, and when the flashing light in its lofty cupola carried
joy out over the dark waters of the sound to the hearts of inbound
mariners, who came safely into anchor by its gleaming—the elegant
breakfasts and farewell dinners given to favored guests, where the
glass, the plate, viands, wines and appointments were fit for regal
entertainment itself—all these have vanished, and naught but the
uneven, slowly settling floors, warped doors, and general mouldiness
of the present hour greets the inquiring eye. So heavy are its
timbers, and so faithfully were they keyed together, that in spite
of neglect, the ravages of decay and frequent vandalism, yet, in all
likelihood, an age will elapse ere the structure is removed by these
destroying agencies now so actively at work upon it. Moved by the
desire to preserve the salient features of this historical structure,
the author made, during one clear June day, a pre-Raphaelitic
drawing of it,[15] as his vessel swung at anchor under its shadows;
in it the reader will observe that the rocky eminence which it crowns
is covered to the very foundations and to the promenade cribbing
that surrounds them, with a thick growth of alders, stunted spruces,
and other indigenous vegetation. That walk around the castle, which
was artificially reared thereon, gives a most commanding view
of everything, over all objects in the town and Indian village,
and sweeps the landscape and the sound. Another picture from the
promenade walk under the flagstaff is also given, in order that a
faint effect may be conveyed to the reader of the exceeding beauty of
the island-studded Bay of Sitka. Descending and standing immediately
under the castle on the beach, to the right you have a perfect Alpine
scene as you look east along the pebbly shore to the living green
flanks of Mount Verstova, which carry your gaze up quickly over
rolling purplish curtains of fog to the snowy crest of it, and other
lofty crests _ad infinitum_, over far beyond. The little trading
stores on the left in this view hide the track so well known in Sitka
as the “Governor’s Walk,” for this is the only direction out to the
saw-mill in the middle distance, in which the earth lies smooth and
dry enough in all this archipelago for a clean mile-jaunt. These
still blue and green waters are alive with food-fishes, while the
dense coverts on the mountains harbor grouse and venison in lavish
supply; the oyster and the lobster you have not, but the clam and the
crab are here in overwhelming abundance and excellence. “Ah!” you
exclaim, “if it were not for this eternal rain, this everlasting damp
precipitation, how delightful this place would be to live in!”


FOOTNOTES:

[6] The superficial area of Alaska is 512,000 square miles; or, in
round numbers, just one sixth of the entire extent of the United
States and Territories. Population in 1880: Whites, 430; Creole,
1,756; Eskimo, 17,617; Aleut, 2,145; Athabascan, 3,927; Thlinket,
6,763—total, 33,426.

[7] When the Cassiar mines in British Columbia were prosperous,
Wrangel was a very busy little transfer-station—the busiest spot in
Alaska; then between four and five thousand miners passed through
every spring and fall as they went up to and came down from the
diggings on the Stickeen tributaries above; they left a goodly share,
if not most, of their earnings among the store and saloon keepers
of Wrangel. The fort is now deserted—the town nearly so; the whole
place is rapidly reverting to the Siwashes. Government buildings
erected here by the U. S. military authorities, which cost the public
treasury $150,000, were sold in 1877, when the troops were withdrawn,
for a few hundreds. The main street is choked with decaying logs and
stumps. A recent visitor declares, upon looking at the condition of
this place in the summer of 1883: “Fort Wrangel is a fit introduction
to Alaska. It is most weird and wild of aspect. It is the key-note to
the sublime and lonely scenery of the north. It is situated at the
foot of conical hills, at the head of a gloomy harbor, filled with
gloomy islands. Frowning cliffs, beetling crags, stretch away on all
sides surrounding it. Lofty promontories guard it, backed by range
after range of sharp, volcanic peaks, which in turn are lost against
lines of snowy mountains. It is the home of storms. You see that in
the broken pines on the cliff-sides, in the fine wave-swept rocks, in
the lowering mountains. There is not a bright touch in it—not in its
straggling lines of native huts, each with a demon-like totem beside
it, nor in the fort, for that is dilapidated and fast sinking into
decay.”

[8] 14,708 feet.

[9] 13,400 feet.

[10] I am aware that geologists do not all subscribe to this view,
which was the doctrine of Agassiz.

[11] The chief signal officer of the U. S. Army has had a number of
meteorological observers stationed at half a dozen different posts in
Alaska, and has had this service fully organized up there during the
last ten years; the inquirer can easily gain access to a large amount
of published data touching this subject.

The mean temperature of the year will run throughout the months in
the Sitkan region about as follows—an average, for the time, of 44°
7’ Fah.

  January,   29° 2’
  February,  36° 4’
  March,     37° 8’
  April,     44° 7’
  May,       45° 5’
  June,      55° 3’
  July,      55° 6’
  August,    56° 4’
  September, 51° 9’
  October,   49° 2’
  November,  36° 6’
  December,  30° 2’

[12] Zarenbo Island—it blocks the northern end of Clarence Strait,
and affords many varied vistas of rare scenic beauty.

[13] Sitka port is on the west coast of Baranov Island; north
latitude 57° 02’ 52”; west longitude 135° 17’ 45”.

[14] Not “Peril,” as it is translated by American geographers and
printed on all of our Alaskan maps.

[15] This building, as it stands upon its foundations, is 140 feet in
length by 70 feet in width—two stories with lofts, capped with the
light-house cupola; these foundations rest upon the summit of the
rock, 60 feet above tide-water.




CHAPTER III.

ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS.

  The White Man and the Indian Trading.—The Shrewdness and
  Avarice of the Savage.—Small Value of the entire Land Fur Trade
  of Alaska.—The Futile Effort of the Greek Catholic Church to
  Influence the Sitkan Indians.—The Reason why Missionary Work
  in Alaska has been and is Impotent.—The Difference between the
  Fish-eating Indian of Alaska and the Meat-eating Savage of the
  Plains.—Simply One of Physique.—The Haidahs the Best Indians of
  Alaska.—Deep Chests and Bandy Legs from Canoe-travel.—Living in
  Fixed Settlements because Obliged To.—Large “Rancheries” or Houses
  Built by the Haidahs.—Communistic Families.—Great Gamblers.—Indian
  “House-Raising Bees.”—Grotesque Totem Posts.—Indian Doctors “Kill
  or Cure.”—Dismal Interior of an Indian “Rancherie.”—The Toilet
  and Dress of Alaskan Siwashes.—The Unwritten Law of the Indian
  Village.—What Constitutes a Chief.—The Tribal Boundaries and their
  Scrupulous Regard.—Fish the Main Support of Sitkan Indians.—The
  Running of the Salmon.—Indians Eat Everything.—Their Salads and
  Sauces.—Their Wooden Dishes and Cups, and Spoons of Horn.—The
  Family Chests.—The Indian Woman a Household Drudge.—She has no
  Washing to Do, However.—Sitkan Indians not Great Hunters.—They are
  Unrivalled Canoe-builders.—Small-pox and Measles have Reduced the
  Indians of the Sitkan Archipelago to a Scanty Number.—Abandoned
  Settlements of these Savages Common.—The Debauchery of Rum among
  these People.—The White Man to Blame for This.

    “Think you that yon church steeple
    Will e’er work a change in these wild people?”


Our people living now in the Sitkan district are engaged either in
general trading with the Indians, in prospecting for “mineral,” or
actively mining; and, also, in a small fashion, in canning salmon
and rendering dog-fish and herring oil. Perhaps we can give a fair
idea of the traders by introducing the reader to one of them and
his establishment just as we find him at Sitka. In a small frame
one-story house, not usually touched by paint, the trader shelters
a general assortment of notions and groceries, but principally
tobacco, molasses, blankets of all sizes and colors, cotton prints
and cheap rings, beads, looking-glasses, etc.; he stands behind a
rude counter, with these wares displayed to best advantage on the
rough shelves at his back; a wood-burning stove diffuses a genial
glow, but no chairs or benches are convenient. A “Siwash”[16] and
his squaw deliberately and gravely enter. The Indian slowly looks up
and down the room, and then proceeds to price every object within
his vision, no matter whether he has the least idea of purchasing or
not; this is the prelude and invariable habit of a Sitkan Indian, and
it arouses an immense amount of suppressed profanity on the part of
the outwardly courteous trader. But our savage has come in this time
bent upon buying, and selling also; his female partner has a bundle
carefully done up under her blanket, and which she wholly concealed
when she squatted down on her haunches the moment after entering the
door; she also has a number of small silver coins in her mouth, for,
funny as it may seem, this worthy pair have carefully agreed upon
what they shall spend in the store before coming in; so the woman
has taken out from the leathern purse which hangs on her breast and
under her chemise, the exact amount, and, returning the pouch to the
privacy of her bosom, she places the available coin in her mouth for
safe keeping _ad interim_.

Finally the Indian, in the course of half an hour, or perhaps a whole
half-day in preliminary skirmishing, boldly reaches down for his
bundle in the squaw’s charge; then having, by so doing, given the
trader to fully understand that he has something to sell, as well as
desiring to buy, he reaches out for the groceries, the cloth, the
tobacco, or whatever he may have fully decided to purchase; a long
argument at once ensues as to the bottom cash price, and in every
case of doubt the squaw decides; all the articles are done up in
brown paper and neatly tied with attractive parti-colored twine. Then
the dusky woman arises, with an indescribably vacant stare, bends
over the counter and lets the jingling silver drop upon it, pausing
just a moment until the tired but triumphant trader counts and sweeps
it, still moist, into his till.

Now the Siwash, having bought, proceeds to sell, and he does it in
his own peculiar way. He unrolls his package of furs; he eloquently
discourses as he strokes each pelt out on the counter, in turn
praising its size and its quality; the trader in the meanwhile
sharply keeps one eye on the savage and one eye on the furs, and,
after the story of their capture and quality has been told over the
third or fourth time, he asks, “How much?” The crafty hunter promptly
demands more than they would retail at in London; the trader answers
with great emphasis and a most disgusted head-shake, “no;” he then
offers just half or one-third the sum named, whereupon the Indians,
affecting great contempt, both shout out “klaik!” which sounds like
Poe’s “Raven”—roll up their furs and hustle out in a huff, still
repeating, in sonorous unison, “klaik, klaik”—(no, no). Then they go
to the rival trader’s establishment, and to all of them in turn, even
if there are half a dozen, not leaving one of them unvisited; they
finally finish the rounds in the course of a week or two, and then
quietly march back to that trader who offered the most, and laying
their peltries down in perfect silence on his counter, hold out a
grimy hand for the exact sum he had previously proffered.

In this shrewd and aggravating manner does the simple untutored
savage of the northwest coast deal with white traders—are they
swindled, do you think? From the beginning to the end of any
transaction you may have with an Alaskan Indian you will be met with
the keenest understanding on his part of the full value in dollars
and cents of whatsoever he may do for you or sell. When, however,
the Hudson Bay or the Russian Company held an exclusive franchise
in this district, then the Indian had no alternative but the single
post-trader’s terms; and then the white man’s profits were enormous.
But now, with the keen rivalry of competing stores, the trader barely
makes a living anywhere in Alaska to-day, while the Indian gets
the best of every bargain—vastly better compared with his former
experience.

[Illustration: The Sitkan Chimes.]

The fur trade, however, in the whole Sitkan district is now of small
commercial importance; thirty or forty thousand dollars annually will
more than express its gross value. This great shrinkage is due to
the practical extermination of the sea-otter in these waters, while
the brown and black bears, the mink and marten, the beaver and the
land-otter skins secured in this archipelago and its mainland coast
are not highly valued by furriers, inasmuch as the climate here is
never cold enough to give them that depth and gloss of fur desired
and so characteristic of those animals which are taken, away back
in the interior, where the temperature ranges from 20° to 40° below
zero for months at a time. In early days, the Sitkan savages acted
as middlemen, receiving these choice peltries from the back-country
Indians, who were never permitted by the coast tribes to come down
to the sea—and then trading the stock anew in their own right over
to the Russian and English posts, they reaped a large advance. Now,
however, the independent white trader penetrates to the interior
himself, and the Alaskan Siwashes mourn the loss of those rich
commissions which once accrued to their emolument and consequence.
The irruption, also, of the restless, tireless, wandering miners
throughout Alaska and British Columbia, who, prospecting in every
ravine and cañon, never let an opportunity pass to trade and trap
for good furs, has also contributed to this total stagnation of the
business in the Sitkan region.

The finest structure in Sitka to-day is the Greek church, which alone
did not pass from the custody of its original owners at the time of
the transfer. This building has been kept in repair, so that its trim
and unique architecture never fails to arrest the visitor’s attention
and challenge inspection, especially of the interior. We find the
service of the church rich and profuse in silverware, candelabra,
ornately framed pictures—oil-paintings of the saints—and rich
vestments; two priests officiate, a reader chants rapid automatism,
and a choir of small boys respond in shrill but pleasing orisons;
instrumental music is banished from the services of the Greek Church,
and so are pews, chairs, and hassocks; the Creole congregation, men,
women, and children, stand and kneel and cross themselves, erect
and bowed, for hours and hours at a time during certain festivals,
never moving a step from their positions. The men stand on the right
side of the vestibule, facing the altar, while the women all stand
by themselves, on the left, the children at option as they enter. No
one looks to the one side or the other, but every face is riveted
upon the priest, who says little, and is busily engaged in symbolic
worship.

The Indians do not enter here, nor did they ever; for them the
Russians erected a small chapel, which still stands on the site
of its first location; it is built against the inner side of the
stockade, and, like the old Lutheran church lower down in the town,
it is fast going to ruin; the door is secured by one of those
remarkable Muscovitic padlocks—it is eight or ten inches long, five
or six wide, and three deep; these singular locks must be seen to
be appreciated in all of their clumsy strength. This little faded
place of savage worship was the scene in 1855 of the second and last
stand ever made by the Sitkan Indians in revolt against the Russians.
Those savages, brooding over some petty indignities received from the
whites, became suddenly inflamed with passion, and a swarm of armed
warriors from the adjacent rancheries rushed, one dusky evening, upon
the fortified palisade surrounding the village, and began to cut and
tear it down. The Russians opened their brass batteries of grape and
round-shot upon the infuriated, yelling natives from the several
block-houses which commanded the stockade, but the Siwashes returned
the fire fearlessly with their smoothbore muskets, and succeeded in
getting possession of this chapel, behind the stout logs of which
they were sheltered and able to do deadly execution with their rifles
in picking off the Russian officers and men, as they hurried to and
from the bastions and through the streets of the town. When, however,
one of the company’s vessels hauled off the beach opposite the Indian
village, and trained her guns upon it and its people, the savages
humbly sued for mercy, and have remained in abasement ever since.

[Illustration: Old Indian Chapel at Sitka.

[_Greek Catholic Church, June 9, 1874._]]

Contemplating this Indian church at Sitka, which has stood here
for nearly three quarters of a century, and then glancing over it
and into the savage settlement that nestles in its shadow, it is
impossible to refrain from expressing a few thoughts which arise to
my mind over the subject of the Indian in regard to his conversion to
the faith and practices of our higher civilization. Nearly a whole
century has been expended, here, of unflagging endeavor to better and
to change the inherent nature of these Indians—its full result is
before our eyes. Go down with me through the smoky, reeking, filthy
rancheries and note carefully the attitude and occupation of these
savages, and contrast your observation with that so vividly recorded
of them by Cook, Vancouver, Portlock, and Dixon, and many other early
travellers, and tell me in what manner have they advanced one step
higher than when first seen by white men full a hundred years ago.
You cannot escape the conclusion with this tangible evidence in your
grasp, that in attempting to civilize the Alaskan Indian the result
is much more like extermination, or lingering, deeper degradation
to him than that which you so earnestly desire. The cause of this
failure of the missionary and the priest is easy to analyze: it is
due to the demoralizing precept and example of those depraved whites
who always appear on the field of the Indian mission, sooner or
later; if they could be shut out, and the savage wholly uninfluenced
by their vicious lives, then the story of Alaskan Indian salvage
might be very different. Still, the thought will always come unbidden
and promptly—these savages were created for the wild surrounding
of their existence; expressly for it, and they live happily in it:
change this order of their life, and at once they disappear, as do
the indigenous herbs and game before the cultivation of the soil and
the domestication of animals.

The Indians of Alaska, however, will never call upon the Government
for food and reservations—there is a great abundance on the earth
and in the waters thereof for them; living as they do all down at
tide-water, at the sole source of their subsistence, they are within
the quick reach of a gunboat; the overpowering significance of that
they fully understand and fear. There is a huge wilderness here for
them which the white man is not at all likely to occupy, even in
part, for generations of his kind to come, yet unborn.

Sitka is the seat of that Alaskan civil government[17] which
Congress, after much deliberation, ordered in 1884; but the governor
lives here in much humbler circumstances than did his Slavonian
predecessors. As it would require a small fortune to rehabilitate
the “castle,” the present chief-magistrate resides in one of those
neatly built houses which the military authorities erected shortly
after they took charge in 1867-68; it is not at all commanding, but
has a pleasant vista from its windows over the parade ground, and the
steamers’ landing.

While the most impressive feature of the Sitkan archipelago is
unquestionably that of the awe-inspiring solemnity and grand beauty
of its strange wilderness, yet the most interesting single idea is
the Indian and the life he leads therein; with the single exception
of the substitution of a woollen blanket and a cotton shirt for his
primitive skin garments, he is living here to-day just as he has
lived away back to the time when his legends fail to recite, and
centuries before the bold voyages of Cook and Vancouver, and the
savage sea-otter fleet of Baranov, first discovered him and then made
his existence known to the civilized world. True, some of the young
fellows who have labored upon vessels and in the fish-canneries wear
an every-day workingman’s shirt and trousers, and speak a few words
of English, understanding much more, yet the primeval simplicity of
all Indian life in this district is substantially preserved.

These savages are fish-eaters, and as such they have a common bond
of abrupt contrast in physique with their meat-eating brethren of
the Rocky Mountains and the great plains; but the traits of natural
disposition are the same, the heart and impulse of the Haidah or
the Tongass, are the heart and the impulse of the Sioux or the
Cheyenne—the former moves nowhere except squatted in his shapely
canoe, the other always bestrides a pony or mustang. This wide
divergence in every-day action gives alone to these savages their
strongly marked bodily separation; the fish-eater is stooping as he
stands, and though he has a deep chest and sinewy arms, yet his lower
limbs are bowed, sprung at the knees, and imperfectly muscled; while
the meat-eater is erect and symmetrical, in fine physical outline
from the crown of his head to his heels.

The various divisions or bands of the Indian population of the Sitkan
archipelago and mainland[18] differ but little in their manner of
life and customs, and speak closely related dialects of the same
language. The Haidahs are the best dispositioned and behaved. They
have been from the earliest times constantly in the habit of making
long and incessant canoe voyages; and, taking into account the ease
with which all parts of this region can be reached on water, it is
rather surprising that any marked difference in language should be
found at all; still, when we recall the knowledge which we have of
their fierce inter-tribal wars, it is not so strange; this warfare,
however, was of the same barbarous character as that recognized
in all other American savages—it was the surprise and massacre of
helpless parties, never sparing old women, children or decrepit men.
These internecine family wars have undoubtedly been the sole cause of
the present subdivisions of the savages as we note them to-day.

In drawing the picture, faithfully, of any one Alaskan Indian, I may
say candidly that in so doing I give a truthfully defined image of
them all throughout the archipelago. Physically the several tribes
of this region differ to some extent, but not near so much as our
colored people do among themselves; the margin of distinction up
here between the ten or eleven clans, which ethnologists enumerate,
is so slight that only a practised eye can declare them. The Haidahs
possess the fairest skins, the best temper, and the best physique;
while the ugly Sitkans and Khootznahoos are the darkest and the
worst. But the coarse mouth, the width and prominence of the cheek
bones, and the relatively large size of the head for the body, are
the salient main departures from our ideal symmetry.

The body is also long and large, compared with the legs, brought
about by centuries of constant occupation in canoes and the
consequent infrequent land travel; their hair is black and coarse,
unkempt, and never allowed, by the males, to fall below their
shoulders except in the case of their “shamans,” or doctors. A
scattered, straggling mustache and beard is sometimes allowed to grow
upon the upper lip and chin, generally in the case of the old men
only, who finally grow weary of plucking it out by the roots, which
in youth they always did in sheer vanity.

Once in a while a face is turned upon you from a canoe, or in a
rancherie, which arrests your attention, and commands comment as
good-looking; these instances are, however, rare—very, very rare.
I think the Haidahs give more evidence in average physiognomy
of possessing greater intelligence than that presented in the
countenances of their brethren; while I deem the Sitkas and
Khootznahoos to be the most insensible—if they are as bright they
conceal the fact with astonishing success. Again, the ferocity
and exceptionally savage expression of their faces, which Captain
Cook and Vancouver saw and so graphically recorded, has faded out
completely; but in all other respects they agree to-day perfectly
with those descriptions of these early voyagers. In those days
firearms had not destroyed their faith in elaborate armaments of
spear and bow and body armor-shields of wood and leather, so that
they then appeared in much more elaborate costumes and varied
pigments than they do now.

Each tribe has one or more large “rancheries,” or villages, in which
it lives, and which are always located at the level of the sea,
just above tide and surf, at river-mouths, or on sheltered bays
of the islands, or the mainland; these rancheries, or houses, are
built of solid, heavy timbers in the permanent villages, or thrown
loosely together of lighter material in their temporary or camping
stations. The general type of construction is the same throughout the
archipelago, the most substantial houses being those of the Haidahs,
who give more care to the accurate fitting together and ornamentation
of their edifices than is shown elsewhere. They certainly show a
greater constructive facility and mechanical dexterity, not only in
the better style of house-building but in the greater number of,
greater size of, and excessively elaborate carved totem posts. These
peculiar adjuncts to Alaskan Indian architecture are small and shabby
everywhere else when compared with the Prince of Wales exhibition.

All permanent villages are generally situated with regard to one
great idea—easy access to halibut-fishing banks and such coast
fisheries, which occupy the greater proportion of the natives’ time
in going to and coming from them when not actually engaged in fishing
upon these chosen grounds; therefore it happens that, occasionally, a
village will be located on a rocky coast, bleak and exposed, though
carefully placed at the same time so as to permit of the safe landing
of canoes in rough water. These houses always face seaward, and stand
upon some flat of soil, elevated a few feet above the high-tide mark,
where below there is usually a sandy or gravelly beach upon which the
fleet of canoes is drawn out, or launched from, as the owners come
and go at all hours of the day and night. The houses are arranged
side by side, either in close contact, or else a space of greater or
less width between. A promenade or track is always left between the
fronts of the houses and the edge of the bank, from ten to thirty
feet in width; it constitutes a street, and in which the carved
posts and temporary fish-drying frames, etc., are usually planted.
Also those canoes that are not in daily use, or will not be used for
some time, are invariably hauled up on this street, and carefully
covered by rush-mats or spruce-boughs, so as to protect them from the
weather, by which they might be warped or cracked.

The rancheries are themselves never painted by their rude architects
and builders; they, however, soon assume a uniform, inconspicuous,
gray color, and become yellowish-green in spots, or overgrown with
moss and weeds owing to the dampness of the climate. If it were not
for the cloud of bluish smoke that hovers over these villages in calm
weather, they would never be noticed from any considerable distance.

[Illustration: A Haidah Rancherie.]

In localities where the encroachment of mountain and water make the
village area very scant, two rows of houses are occasionally formed,
but in no instance whatever is any evidence given in these Koloshian
settlements of special arrangement of dwellings, or of any set
position for the house of the chief man of the village: he may live
either in the centre or at the extreme end of the row. Each house
usually shelters several families, in one sense of the term; these
are related to each other and under the tacitly acknowledged control
of some elder, to whom the building is reputed to belong, and who
is a person of greater or less importance in the tribe or village
according to the amount of his property or cunning of his intellect.

Before some of these Siwash mansions a rude porch or platform is
erected, upon which, in fair weather, a miscellaneous group of
natives will squat in assembly, conversing, if squaws, or gambling,
if men. The houses themselves are usually square upon their
foundations, and vary much in size, some of them being a hundred
feet square, while most of them are between fifty and sixty feet,
the smaller rancheries being less than twenty. The gable end, and
the entrance right under its plumb, always faces the street and
beach-view; the roof slopes down at a low pitch or angle on each
side, with a projecting shelter erected right over the hole left in
the roof-centre, intended for the escape of smoke—no chimneys were
ever built. This shelter, or shutter, is movable, and is shifted
by the Indian just as the wind and rain may drive; the floor is
oblong or nearly square, and, in the older and better constructed
examples, is partly sunk in the earth, _i.e._, the ground has been
excavated to a depth of six or eight feet in a square area, directly
in the centre, with one or two large earthen steps or terraces left
running around the sides of the cellar. A small square of bare dirt
is left in the exact centre, again, of this hole, while the rest of
the floor is covered with split planks of cedar; the earthen steps
which environ the lower floor are in turn faced and covered with
cedar-slabs, and these serve not only for sleeping and lounging
places, but also for the stowage, in part, of all sorts of boxes and
packages of property and food belonging to the family; the balance of
these treasures usually hangs suspended, in all manner of ingenious
contrivances, from the heavy beams and roof-poles overhead. The
rancheries which are built to-day by Alaskan Indians nearly all
stand on the surface of the ground without any excavation—a decided
degeneracy.

The pattern of the Koloshian house is maintained with little
variation throughout the archipelago, and has been handed down from
remote antiquity. When, after extended confabulation, a number of
Indians agree to build a house, several months are passed first in
the forest by them, where they are engaged in felling the trees
and dressing the timbers necessary; when these logs and planks are
finally hewn into shape (everything in this line is done with axes
and the little adze-like hatchets so often described), they are
tumbled into the water and towed around to the contemplated site of
the new edifice. The great size of the beams and planks used in a
big Indian rancherie make it imperative that a large number of hands
co-operate in the work. The erection, therefore, of such a structure
in all its stages, the cutting and hewing in the woods, the launching
and towing of the timbers to the foundations, and their subsequent
elevation and fitting, forms the occasion of a regular gathering, or
“bee,” that generally calls in whole detachments from neighboring
villages, which is always the precursor to a grand “potlatch,” or
giving away of the portable property of the savage for whom the labor
is undertaken.

[Illustration: Section Showing Arrangement of Interior of a
Rancherie.]

Some of the larger houses have required the repeated assembling
of a whole tribe, and the lapse of two or three years of time ere
completion in all details, because the Siwash for whom the work
has been done has regularly exhausted his available resources on
each occasion, and has needed this interval, longer or shorter as
it may have been, in which to accumulate a fresh stock of suitable
property, especially blankets, with which to reward a renewed and
continued effort. Dancing and gambling relieve the monotony of the
labor, which, however, seldom ever is suffered to occupy more than
two or three hours of each day, and is conducted in a perfect babel
of guttural talk and noise, and the exultant shouting of the entire
combination of men, women, and children, as the great beams are
placed in position.[19]

In the construction of these dwellings the savage uses no iron
or wooden spikes, he “mortices” and “tenons” rudely but solidly
everything that requires binding firmly; in the lighter and temporary
summer rancheries much use is made of cedar-root and bark-rope
lashings to the same end. Within the last fifteen or twenty years
the common use of small windows has been employed, the glazed sashes
being purchased from the whites either at Victoria or else brought
up to order by the traders; these are inserted in the most irregular
manner, usually on the sides under the eaves.

The oddly-carved totem posts, which appear in every village,
sometimes like a forest of dead trees at distant sight, are, broadly
speaking, divisible into two classes: that is to say, the clan or
family pillars, and those erected as memorials of the dead. There has
been too much written in regard to these grotesque features seeking
to endow them with idolatry, superstitions, and other fancies of
the savage mind. Nothing of the kind, in my opinion, belongs to the
subject; the image posts of the totem order are generally from 30
to 50 feet in height, with a diameter of 3 to 5 feet at the base,
tapering slightly upward. They are often hollowed at the back, after
the fashion of a trough, so that they can be the easier handled and
put into position. Those grotesque figures which cover these posts
from top to bottom, closely grouped together, have little or no
serious significance whatever: they always display the totem of the
owner, and a very marked similarity runs through the carvings of this
character in each village, though they have a wide range of variation
when one settlement is contrasted with another. I am unable to give
any definite explanation, that is worthy of attention, of the real
meaning of all those strange designs—perhaps, in truth, there is
none; they are simply ornamental doorways.

The smaller memorial posts are also generally standing in the
village, upon the narrow border of land running between the houses
and the beach, but in no determinate relation to the buildings.
When a man falls before prostrating illness, his relatives call in
the medicine man, or “shaman,” and also invite the friends of the
family to the house of sickness, usually providing them with tobacco;
soon the rancherie is full of curious friends, of smoke, and of the
abominable noise of the shaman. If the patient dies, the body is not
burned now, as it used to be prior to the advent of the whites, but
is bent double into a sitting posture, and enclosed in a square cedar
box, which has been made for this purpose by the joint labor of the
assembled Indians, or else they have subscribed and purchased it from
some one of their number. This coffin is exactly the same in shape
and size as the box commonly used by every Siwash family here for the
reception of spare food, oil, etc., so that there never is any delay
or difficulty in getting one.

If the dead Koloshian is a man of only ordinary calibre, his body
is put, while still warm, into the wooden crib, and this is at
once carried out and stored away in a little tomb-house, which
is generally a small covered shed right behind the rancherie, or
in the immediate vicinity. This vault is also made by the united
labor of the men of the village, and paid for in the same manner
as that indicated for the purchase of the coffin-box. In it may be
placed but a single body, then again it will contain several—all
relatives, however. But should the deceased savage have been one of
great importance, then the whole rancherie itself is given up to the
reception of the body, which is boxed and placed therein, sitting
thus, in state, perhaps for a year or more, no one removing any of
the things, the members of the family all vacating the premises, and
seeking quarters elsewhere in the village. Now it becomes necessary,
sooner or later, to erect a carved post to the memory of this man.
Again the Indians collect for the purpose, and are repaid by a
distribution of property made by the deceased man’s brother, or that
relative to whom the estate has come down, in order of descent. This
inheriting relative takes possession the moment the body of the dead
has been enclosed in its cedar casket, and not before.[20]

The doorway to the Alaskan house is usually a circular hole through
which the Indian must stoop to half his stature when he enters. It
is generally from four to six feet from the ground, and is gained
by a rude flight of stairs or a notched log leading up to it on the
outside, and in the same manner down to the floor on the inside.
As you enter, the whole interior seems dark—everything, at first,
indistinct, and the only light being directly above and below the
smoke-hole in the roof, for a blanket is dropped as a portière over
the doorway the moment you pass within. In the centre of this gloomy
interior, directly beneath a hole in the roof, is the fireplace,
upon which logs are smouldering or fitfully blazing; kettles of
stewing fish, and oil and berries simmering under the care of some
squatty, grimy squaws who surround it. If this house be a large
one you will find within fifty or sixty Koloshes of both sexes,
all ages, and in all conceivable attitudes, as they stand, sit, or
lounge or sleep around the four sides of the deep terraced room,
some cleaning firearms, others repairing fishing-tackle, or carving
in wood or slate; while others are idly staring into the fire, or,
wrapped in their blankets, are sleeping with reiterated snoring.
Against the walls, pendent from the black, sooty beams overhead,
hang an infinite variety of personal effects peculiar to this life,
such as fish-spears and hooks, canoe paddles, bundles of furs,
cedar-bark lines and ropes, immense wooden skewers of dried salmon
and halibut, while the boxes which contain the real wealth of such
people—blankets,[21] tobacco, and cloths of cotton, and handkerchiefs
of silk, are stowed away in the corners.

But odors that the civilized nose never before scented now rise thick
and fast as you contemplate this interior, and the essential oils
of rancid oolachan grease, decaying fish, and others, in rotation
swift, of many shades of startling disgust, cause you to speedily
turn and gladly seek, with no delay, the outer stairway, even though
a tempest of rain and wind is beating down (with that fury which
seems to be most pronounced in violence here as compared with the
rest of the world, when it does storm in earnest). Here again it is
not pleasant for us to tarry even in fair weather, inasmuch as the
Koloshian has no idea of sewerage or of its need, the refuse—slops,
bones, shells, fish-débris, and a medley of similar and worse
nuisances are lazily thrown out of this doorway on either side
and straight ahead, as they are from the entrance to every other
rancherie in the village. A merciful growth of rank grass and mighty
weeds charitably covers and assimilates much, but yet the atmosphere
hangs heavy around our heads—we move away.

On ordinary occasions a head-covering is usually dispensed with,
unless it be some old hat of our style. The squaws, however, fashion
and often wear grass hats, made as they weave their fine basketware;
they have the form of an obtuse cone, generally ornamented by
conventional designs painted in black, blue, or red. The feet are
almost invariably bare—too wet for moccasins. Painting the face is
a very common practice; vermilion is the favorite pigment, and is
usually rubbed in without the least regard to pattern or effect; blue
and black colors also are used in the same manner, but I have never
seen their limbs or bodies so treated, which is the common method of
meat-eating savages, who always paint themselves with great care as
to exact and symmetrical design. Here the faces of Alaskan Siwashes
are thus daubed for the dance or for mourning; especially hideous are
the mixtures of spruce-gum grease, and charcoal which you observe
smeared over the countenances of the Sitkans, who do so chiefly to
prevent unpleasant effects of the sun when it happens to shine out
upon them as they are fishing or paddling extended journeys in their
canoes, and who also give you an ugly reminder of their being in
mourning by the same application.

Bracelets are beaten-out pieces of copper or brass wire and silver
coins, highly polished, and worn chiefly by the women, who often
carry several upon each arm. When worn upon the ankles they are
forged in round sections, while for the wrist they are made quite
flat. Tattooing once was universal, but is now going out of style;
and, until quite lately, the females all wore labrets in the lower
lips—this disgusting distortion is also being abated. Only among
the very old women can this monstrosity now be found in its original
form. Most of the middle-aged squaws still have a small aperture in
the lower lip, through which a little silver, beaten tube, of the
size of a quill, is thrust, and projects from the face, just above
the chin, about a quarter of an inch. The younger women have not
even this remnant of a most atrocious old custom. The ears are often
pierced, and tiny shell ornaments, backed with thin sheet-silver or
copper, are inserted; and also the septum of the nose is perforated,
of both sexes very generally, for the insertion of a silver ring, or
a pendant of haliotis shell.

Each village has its _lex non scripta_, and is a law unto itself
everywhere within the confines of the Alexander archipelago; or, in
different words, it conducts its affairs wholly without reference to
any other village or savages—it is the largest unit in the Indian
system of government. Living as they do in these settlements, where
they know each other just as well and as familiarly as we know the
individual members of our own private home circles, no matter whether
the village contain a thousand souls or but half a dozen—there are no
strangers in it. Every little daily incident of each other’s simple
life, every move that they make, what they capture in the forest
or hook out from the sea, is regularly recounted in the rancheries
over night. All engaged in precisely the same calling of fishing
and hunting, naturally there is no room among them for the eager
rivalries and passionate enterprises which our living stimulates
and sustains. Therefore the routine of government is almost nothing
in its detail—no laws appear to be necessary, and they are not
acknowledged; but any action tending to the injury of another, in
person or property, lays the offender open to reprisals by the
sufferer—usually atoned for—and the village feud, thus aroused, is
soon satisfied by a payment in blankets, or other valuable property,
to a full settlement. Injuries, thefts and murder, however, which,
inflicted by the people of one village upon another, either close
at hand or remote, have not always been adjusted in this amicable
manner; hence, from time immemorial, the disputants have been at war
with each other in this region, and the result of these wars has been
to divide them into the existing clans as we find them now. Their
internecine warfare was carried on in true savage style. If the cause
was one which concerned the whole village, then the chief of that
settlement could implicitly count upon the services of every male
Indian able to bear arms; and although these savages are fearless
and brave, yet they know no open, fair fight—taught to get his living
by stratagem when fishing or hunting, so the Kolosh advances in
capturing his human enemies, just as all other Indians have done and
do.

Each village has a well-recognized head man, or chief, who, though
possessing much influence, still never has had, and does not now
enjoy, that absolute rule which is attributed to such Indians. He is
really a presiding elder over the several families in the hamlet,
and, without their consent, his decisions are futile or carry no
weight. He has no power to compel other members of the tribe to work,
hunt, or fish for him, and if he builds a house, or a canoe, he has
to hire them to labor by making the customary “potlatch,” just as
any other man of the tribe would do—only he must give a little more.
The social rules which exist among these savages show many strange
features, for though every rancherie has its freely-acknowledged
chief, yet they are divided into as many or more families than
there are houses, each one of which has its own regulations, and a
subordinate authority of its own governing it, and it alone.[22]

The Sitkan Indians trouble themselves very little about the interior
country; but the coast line, and especially the margins of rivers
and streams, are duly divided up among the different families.
These tracts are regarded as strictly private property, just as we
would regard them if fenced in as farms and cattle ranches—and they
are passed from one generation to the other in the line of savage
inheritance; they may be sold, or even rented by one family desiring
to fish, to gather berries, to cut timber, or to hunt on the domain
of another. So settled and so strict are these ideas of proprietary
and vested rights in the soil, that, on some parts of the coast,
corner-stones and stakes may be seen to-day set up there to define
the limits of such properties between savages, by savages; and
furthermore, woe to the disreputable trespassing Siwash who steps
over these boundaries and appropriates anything of value, such,
for instance, as a stranded whale, shark, seal, or otter—berries,
wreckage, or shell-fish.

The woods and the waters are teeming with animal life; the lofty
semi-naked peaks harbor mountain goats in large flocks; the beautiful
grouse of Sabine hides in the forest thickets; the land otter and the
mule-eared deer haunt the countless ravines, valleys, and rivulet
bottoms; salmon in fabulous numbers run up those streams, and big,
brown and glossy black bears come down to fatten upon these spawning
fish. But the Sitkan savage is indolent, and, though all this dietary
abundance and variety is before him, he lives quite exclusively upon
halibut and salmon, the former mostly fresh and the latter air-dried
and smoked in the soot of his rancherie. Halibut he finds all the
year round; salmon briefly run only at widely separated periods.

The halibut fishery is the one systematic regular occupation of the
natives. These fish may be taken in all waters of the archipelago
at almost any season, though on certain banks, well known to the
Indians, they are more numerous at times. When the halibut are most
active and abundant, the Koloshians take them in large quantities,
fishing with a hook and line from their canoes, which are anchored
over the favored spots by stones attached to cedar-bark ropes or
cables. They still employ their own primitive, clumsy-looking hook in
decided preference to using our own make. When the canoe is loaded to
the gunwale by an alert fisherman, these halibut are brought in to
some convenient adjacent point on the shore, where they are handed
over to the women, who are there to take care of them, usually living
in a temporary rancherie. They squat around the pile, rapidly clean
the fish, removing the larger bones, head, fins, and tail, and cut it
into broad, thin flakes. These are then hung on the poles of a wooden
frame trellis, where, without salt, and by the wind and sun alone,
sometimes aided by a slow fire underneath the suspended fish-meat,
the flakes are sufficiently cured and dried; then they are packed
away in those characteristic cedar boxes for future use.

A group of old and young squaws, half-nude, flecked with shining
scales and splashed with blood, as they always are when at work
upon a fine run of halibut or salmon—such a group is to be vividly
remembered ever afterward, if you see it even but once. The little
pappooses, entirely naked, with big heads and bellies, slender
necks and legs, are running hither and thither in infantile glee
and sport, always with a mouthful of raw ova or a handful of stewed
fish from the kettle near by, while the babies, propped up in their
stiff-backed lashings, croon and sleep away the time.

There are no rivers of any size flowing on the islands of the Sitkan
archipelago; but there are rapid rivulets and broad brooks in great
numbers. Many of these are large enough to be known as “salmon
rivers.” The first run of those attractive fish usually takes place
up some of the longest island-streams and the mainland rivers about
July 10th to 20th. A month later a larger species begins to arrive
from the depths of the ocean outside, and this run sometimes lasts,
in a desultory manner, until January. These salmon, when they first
appear, are fat and in superb condition and color; but as they leave
the salt water and take up their persistent, tireless ascent of
fresh-water channels they become hook-jawed, lean, and pale-fleshed.
They ascend very small streams in especially great numbers when these
rivulets are swollen by the heavy rains of October, and, being easily
caught and very large, they constitute the chief harvest of the
Alaskan Indian—his meat and bread, in fact. They are either speared
in the shallow estuaries or trapped in brush and split-stick weirs,
which are planted in the streams. Everyone of the little salmon
brooks has its owner in the Indian law. They are the private property
of the several families or subdivisions of the clans. Those people
always come out of their permanent village houses during the fishing
period, and camp upon the banks of their respective water claims.

It is quite unnecessary to itemize all the species of food-fishes in
the Alexander archipelago, for anything and everything that is at
all abundant in the vicinity of an Indian rancherie is sure to be
eaten; trout, herring, flounders, rock-cod, and the rosy, glittering
_sebastines_ constitute minor details of the savage dietary. Codfish
are taken in these waters, but not in great numbers, nor are they
especially sought for. The spawn of the herring[23] is collected on
spruce boughs, which the Indians carefully place at low-water on the
spawning grounds; then, when taken up, it is smoke-dried and stored
away.

But the “loudest” feast of these savages consists of a box, just
opened, of semi-rotten salmon-roe. Many of the Siwashes have a
custom of collecting the ova, putting it into wooden boxes, and
then burying it below high-water mark on the earthen flats above.
When decomposition has taken place to a great extent, and the mass
has a most penetrating and far-reaching “funk,” then it is ready to
be eaten and made merry over. The box is usually uncovered without
removing it from its buried position; the eager savages all squat
around it, and eat the contents with every indication on their hard
faces of keen gastronomic delight—faugh!

[Illustration: Indians Raking Oolochans and Herring.—Stickeen River.]

The same ill-favored and heartily-hated “dog-fish”[24] of our Cape
Cod fishermen is also very abundant in these far-away waters.
Recently, the demand created for its oil by the tanneries of Oregon
and California has made its capture by the Indians an important
source of revenue to them; the oil rendered from its liver is readily
sold by them to the white traders, who also have established a
fishery for the purpose on Prince of Wales Island. These traders also
are making good use of herring-oil, which is to be secured here in
unfailing, abundant supply, to any quantity required.

The most grateful condiment to the Sitkan palate is rancid fish-oil,
or oolachan “butter”—a semi-solid grease, with a fetid smell and
taste; into this they always dip or rub their flakes of dried fish,
their berries, in fact everything that they eat. A little wooden
trencher or tub, grotesquely carved, always is to be seen (and
smelled), placed alongside of the monotonous kettle of stewed fish,
or pile of dried fish, which constitutes the regular spread for a
full meal. And again, a very curious, soap-like use of this oil is
made by the younger and more comely savages. An Indian never washes
in water up in this wet and watery wilderness. I never have seen an
attempt made to wash the face or hands with water, but they do rub
oil vigorously over, and scrub it off bright and dry with a towel, or
mop, of cedar-bark shreds or dry sedge-grass. The constant presence
of this strong-flavored oil renders it a physical impossibility for
a white man, not long-accustomed to its odor, to enter a rancherie
and eat with the inmates, unless the pangs of starvation make him
ravenous.

Whether from taste itself, or sheer indolence, the culinary art of
these people is confined to the incessant simmering and boiling of
everything which is not eaten raw, or ripe; copper, sheet-iron,
and brass kettles being now universally used, are the only decided
innovation made by contact with ourselves in their aboriginal cooking
outfit, though the introduction of tin and cheap earthenware dishes
is growing more general every day. Most of the Indian household
utensils are made of wood; they are fashioned in several forms or
types, which appear to have been faithfully copied from early time.
The berry and the food-trays are cut out of solid pieces of wood, the
length being about one and one-third times as great as the width,
while the depth is relatively small. In some of the large rancheries
these trays, or troughs, are six to ten feet long; the outer ends of
those receptacles are generally carved richly in all sorts of fancy
relief; and, sometimes, the sides are grotesquely painted. A common
form, and smaller in size, and a great favorite with the family, is
boat-shaped, the hollow of the dish being oval; the ends are provided
with odd prow-shaped projections that serve as handles—one of these
ends being usually carved into the head and fore-feet of some animal
or bird, the other to represent its hind-feet and tail. These dishes
are seldom more than eight or ten inches in length, and curve upward
from the middle each way, like the “sheer,” or the gunwale, of a
clipper ship.

[Illustration: A STICKEEN SQUAW

Boiling Berries and Oil, Toasting Herrings, etc.]

Water-dippers, pot-spoons and ladles are made from horns of the
mountain sheep. They are steamed, bent, and pared down thin, carved
and shaped so as to be exceedingly symmetrical, and well finished.
The stew and berry-spoons in ordinary use are made from the stiff,
short black horns of the mountain goat, the handles often carved to
represent a human form, animal, or bird. Knives of all sorts are now
in use. Much ingenuity is often exhibited by the adaptation of old
blades to new handles—in converting the large, flat blacksmithing
files into keen weapons, and making fish-cleaning knives out of
pieces of iron; thin, square or oblong sheets of this metal are
so fitted into oblong wooden handles as to resemble the small
hash-knives used in our kitchens.

But the Sitkan housekeeper glories in her boxes—great chests and
little ones—in which she stores everything of value belonging to the
family, except the dogs and the canoes. The big boxes, corded up with
bark ropes, are her blanket and fur treasuries; the smaller ones
contain her oolachan “butter” and dried fish and meat. The larger
chests are from two and a half to four feet square; the lesser are
between a foot to two feet. The sides of such a box are made of a
single piece of thinly shaven cedar board, which by steaming is bent
three times at a right angle, and pegged tightly and very neatly up
to the fourth corner. The bottom is a separate solid plank, keyed
in with little pegs very solidly, and water-tight; the cover is cut
out of a thick slab, and fits over and sets down heavily on the
upper edge of the chest. Those boxes are all decorated in designs of
the peculiar type so common among these savages, painted in black
and white. The next desideratum of the squaw is a full supply of
cedar-bark mats, which she plaits from strips of this material, and
which are always spread out on the ground or rude plank floor when
the Indian prepares to roll up in his blanket for slumber. Such mats
are the pride of all Thlinket squaws, and vary much in texture and in
pattern.

But the daily routine of the dusky housekeeper is a very different
one indeed from that characteristic of woman’s labor in caring
for our homes. No sweeping or dusting in the Indian rancherie; no
bed-chambers to change the linen in and tidy up; no kitchen or
servants to look after; nothing whatever of the kind. Yet the Indian
matron is always busy. She has to hew the firewood and drag it in;
she has to carry water and attend to all of the rude cooking and
filling of the trenchers; she looks after the mats and the sewing
of the children’s fur and other garments—not much to be sure in the
way of dressmaking—she has to make all of the tedious berry-trips,
picking and drying of the fruit, as well as attending to the
preservation, in the same manner, of the fish and game which the
man brings in. She has an infinite amount of drudgery to do in the
line of gathering certain herbs, bark, and shell-fish. Many small
roots indigenous to the country, containing more or less starch,
are eagerly sought after, dried, and stored away by the women. The
inner sap-layer of the spruce and also that of the hemlock—the
cambium layer—is collected by cutting the trees down and then
barking the trunks for that object. It is shaved off in ribbons and
eaten in great quantities, both fresh and dried, and is considered
very wholesome. It is sweet, mucilaginous, but distinctly resinous
in flavor. The rank-growing seeds, shoots, and leaf-stalks of the
_Epilobium heracleum_, and many others, are plucked and carried by
the squaws in huge bundles to the family fire, and there eaten by all
hands, the stalks being dipped, mouthful after mouthful, in oil.

She has, however, no washing whatever of clothes to do for anybody,
except what little she may see fit to do for herself; she never
treats the dishes even to that ordeal. With all this, however, it
seems rather strange that the clothes of the Indians, consisting of
dresses, shirts and blankets for the men; and for women, petticoats,
chemises, dresses (sometimes), and blankets also—that these articles
usually appear neat and tolerably clean—the children excepted,
as they are always dirty beyond all adequate description. Every
individual attends to his or her own washing—if the husband wants a
clean shirt, he washes it himself.

Before the introduction of the potato through early white
fur-traders, the only plant cultivated by the Alaskan savages was
a potent weed which they grew as a substitute for tobacco—the
importation of the latter, however, has taken its place entirely
to-day, because the Virginian weed is far more pleasant. But the old
stone mortars and pestles that are still to be found knocking around
the most venerable town-sites, bear evidence to the industry of
making native tobacco here ages ago. This plant was prepared for use
by drying over a fire on a little frame stretcher, then bruised to a
powder in the stone mortars, then moistened and pressed into cakes.
It was not smoked in a pipe, but, mixed with a little clamshell lime
(burnt for the purpose), it was chewed or held in the cheek, just as
the Peruvian Indians use coca.[25] Everybody knows how fond Indians
are of tobacco—there is no exception to the rule in Alaska, and no
excuse for attempting to recite in these pages the well-worn story
anew.

No domesticated animals, except dogs, are to be found with the
Alaskan Indians—no cats or fowls. The original breed of curs has been
very much disguised by imported strains; the present natives are gray
and black, shaggy, wolfish beasts, about the size of a large spitz
dog. These cowardly, treacherous animals alone make a white man’s
stay in an Indian village a burden to his existence.

The work bestowed by several of the Sitkan clans upon their so-called
potato gardens is hardly to be designated as the “cultivation” of
that tuber. It forms to-day, this vegetable does, a very important
part of the food-supply, and where a white man takes hold of such
a garden the result, in a small way, is very satisfactory; but the
Siwash finds that the greater part of the low, flat, rich soil in
this country is so thickly wooded that the task of clearing the
ground is altogether too much for him to even consider, much less
undertake. But when he can find a place where an old settlement once
existed, though long abandoned—there the sites of decayed rancheries
are sure to be of rich, warm soil—such are the spots which the Siwash
calls his garden, and where his potatoes are rudely planted, little
or no attention being paid to the hoeing and drilling which we deem
essential, therefore the variety in use has been run down so that the
size and yield is very small, and the quality watery and poor.

While we observe the very general possession of firearms in every
rancherie, and we hardly ever see a canoe-load of savages unless the
barrels of several muskets or rifles project over the gunwale, yet
these Sitkan Indians are not great hunters; but the potent fact that
there is no place in all this region where foot travel is practicable
into the interior, or even along the coast margin itself, affords an
excellent reason; they do, however, kill a very considerable number
of black bears every year, at two special seasons therein, _i.e._,
when these brutes are found prowling upon the sea-beach. But they
never follow bruin into the mountainous recesses, where he invariably
retreats.

In the early spring, during that brief period when the weeds and
grasses first grow green along the outskirts of the timber in warm
sheltered nooks down by the tide-level, black bears come below
from the cold, gloomy cañons above and feed upon the sprouting
skunk-cabbage[26] and other succulent shoots, browsing here and
rooting up there, these tender growths, just as hogs do in our
orchards and clover-fields. Again, late in autumn, when the salmon
rush up into the estuaries and through the shallows by countless
myriads, bruin is once more tempted down to the sea-beaches, and
again gets into trouble. In the same manner the Indians secure the
beautiful little mule-deer,[27] which also loves tender vegetation,
and in this love falls an easy prey to the silent approach of a
canoe with its skulking crew. Geese and ducks, during winter months,
spend much time on the quiet fiörds in large flocks, and constitute
the chief gunning of the Siwashes, who shoot them from their canoes
with the same old flint-lock trade-muskets first used by the whites
a hundred years ago. The Indian admires this pattern still above
all other patterns—despises the percussion-cap, which in this damp
region often fails him, and the trader, knowing this weakness of the
savage, always has a stock of these flint-lock muskets, newly made,
on hand. A supply is steadily furnished by the Hudson’s Bay Company
at Victoria.

But the one thing of joy, of delight, and of infinite use to the
native of the Sitkan archipelago is his canoe. Life, indeed, would
be a sad problem for him were it not for this adjunct of his own
creation. Upon its construction he lavishes the best of his thought,
the height of his manual skill, and his infinite patience. The result
of this attention is to fashion from a single cedar log a little
vessel which challenges our admiration invariably, for its fine
outline and its seaworthiness and strength.

All the canoes of this region have a common model, and are similar in
type, though they differ much in details of shape and size. They are
all made from the indigenous pine[28] and giant cedar,[29] the wood
of which is light, durable, and worked very readily; but it is apt to
split parallel to its grain. This constitutes the only solicitude
of the Indian’s mind. He keeps the canoe covered with mats and brush
whenever it is hauled out, even for a few days, to avoid this danger,
for whenever a canoe is heavily laden, and working, as it will do,
in a rough channel, it is in constant danger of splitting at the
cleavage lines of its grain, and thus jeopardizing its living as well
as dead freight.

With an exception of the bow and stern-pieces, each canoe, no matter
how large or how small, is made in the same manner and from a single
log, which is roughed out in the forest, then towed around to the
permanent village, where it is hauled up in front of the architect’s
house. Here he works upon it during winter months, usually in odd
hours, employing nothing but his little adze-like hatchet and fire
to assist in giving it shape and fine lines. The requisite expansion
amidships, to afford that beam required, is effected by steaming
with water and hot stones and the insertion of several thwart
sticks. Canoes are smoothed outside and painted black, with a red
or white streak under the gunwale in most cases; inside they bear
the regular fine tooth-marks of the excavating adze, and are smeared
with red-ochre. The paddles are usually made of yellow cypress, and
a great variety of small wooden baling dippers are also provided,
one or two for each canoe, because the water often slops over the
gunwales in bad weather. The canoe itself is never suffered to leak.
The average size is one of fifteen to twenty feet in length, which
will carry from eight to ten savages, with baggage. One having a
length of from thirty to thirty-five feet carries as many men. The
smaller canoes of from twelve to thirteen feet are usually used by
one or two savages in their quick, irregular trips to and from the
village, and are easily launched and hauled out by one man.

It is very doubtful, indeed, whether the Sitkan ever took or takes
any real enjoyment in hunting or fishing. If he does, it is never
exhibited on his countenance or evidenced by his language. It is, in
fact, the serious business of his life, and the steady routine of
its prosecution has robbed him of every enjoyable sporting sensation
which we love to experience when after fish or game. Perhaps,
however, he may recall the thrill of that feeling which he felt when,
as a boy, he was first taken out in his father’s canoe to the halibut
banks, and there permitted to bait a huge wooden hook and haul away
upon the taut kelp-line when the “kambala” had swallowed it; but the
necessity of going out to this shoal in all sorts of disagreeable
weather every summer and winter of his subsequent existence, at very
frequent intervals, soon destroyed pleasurable emotions. Therefore,
he fashions his acute-angled wooden hooks, his iron-tipped fish and
seal spears, and polishes up his musket with none of those enjoyable
anticipations which possess the soul of a white sportsman.

In 1841-42 the best understanding of the Russian and English traders
agreed in reporting a population of over twenty thousand Indians
within the limits of the Alexander archipelago; to-day the same
country can show no more than a scant seven thousand. The inroads
that small-pox and measles have made, by which these savages were
destroyed even as fire sweeps through and burns drought-withered
thickets, leave little doubt as to the great numerical superiority of
earlier days as compared with the present. This decay and abandonment
is everywhere exhibited now even in the permanent villages, where
houses have been deserted completely: some are shut up, mouldering,
and rotting away upon their foundations; others, large and fit for
the shelter of fifty or sixty natives, will be found tenanted by
only two or three Siwashes. All the standing carved posts in this
entire region, with rare exceptions, are, as a rule, more or less
advanced into decay. A rank growth of weeds, dark and undisturbed in
some cases, presses up close to inhabited houses, the traffic not
being sufficient to keep them down. The original features of these
settlements, in a few years more of this unchecked neglect and decay,
will have entirely disappeared as they have already at Sitka. At the
present hour, however, we can go among them, and readily call up to
our minds what they once were when they were swarming with occupants
who were dressed in tanned-leather shirts and sea-otter cloaks, as
they thronged about the ships of Cook and Vancouver.

Slavery, which was originally firmly interwoven with the social
fabric of these people, has been about abolished—slaves themselves
to-day are very scarce, and are not much more so than in name. They
were the captives taken in savage warfare between opposing clans, and
were most horribly tortured and cruelly treated by their masters.

As a rule the young people marry young, after the stolid fashion
of Indians. They approve of polygamy, but seldom do you find a man
with more than one squaw, simply because the women do not contribute
materially and primarily to the support of the family, and attend
only to the accessory duties of it; thus it becomes an increased tax
upon the dull energies of the savage whenever he adds an extra woman
to his household. The squaws are all well treated everywhere up here;
they have just as much to say as their lords and masters whenever the
occasion of buying, selling, or hiring arises; as to the children (we
will not see many of them to-day), they are always kindly cared for
by both parents, and the whole tribe is as indulgent, since they are
constantly roaming about the village, after the custom of youngsters
universally.

A candid verdict will result, in view of the surroundings of the
Koloshian, that the only vice which can be legitimately charged up
against him, or his kind, is the sin of gambling. To this dissipation
the Alaskan savage is desperately prone; the monotonous chant of the
stick-shuffling players is ever on the air in the villages. These
worthies sit on the ground, in a circle usually, in the centre of
which a mat is spread; six or seven small wooden pins about as large
as the little finger of your hand, upon which various values are
marked or carved, are taken into the hands of the first gambler, who
thrusts them into a ball of soft teased cedar bark, or holds them
under his blanket, then shuffles them rapidly, meanwhile shouting
a deep guttural _hah-hah-ee-nah-hah!_ the others watch him with
lynx-like eyes for a few moments, when one of the players suddenly
orders the shuffler to show his hands, in which the sticks are firmly
clinched, and at the same time endeavors to guess the value of
these sticks in either one hand or the other, which have been held
up—he pauses a moment, then makes his decision, the clinched hand
designated is opened, the little sticks fall to the mat, and the
caller wins or loses just as he happens to hit the value expressed
by the markings on these pins: if he guesses correctly he wins
everything in the pot or pool, and takes up the wooden dice in turn,
to shuffle, shout, and repeat for the rest of the circle. This game
is usually sustained night and day, until some one of the party
remains the winner of everything that the others started in with.

That wretched debauchery which an introduction of rum into the
rancheries of these natives has caused, cannot be justly laid at
the Indian’s door; this intense morbid craving for liquor among the
Alaskan savages of this region is most likely due to the climate—it
is not near so strong in the appetite of the natives who live east of
the coast range. Although Congress has legislated, and our officials
have endeavored to carry out the prohibition statutes, yet the matter
thus far is wholly beyond control—the savage cannot only smuggle
successfully within these intricate watery channels, but he now
thoroughly understands the distillation of rum itself from sugar and
molasses.

There is something in this atmosphere which enables a white man
to drink a great deal more with impunity than he can in any other
section of the United States or Territories—the quantities of strong
tea, the nips of brandy, wine, and cordials which he will swallow
with perfect physical indifference, in the course of every day of
his life, at Sitka for instance, would drive him to delirium in
an exceedingly short time if repeated at San Francisco. Naturally
enough, we find that the same craving for stimulants is reflected
by Indian stomachs; and now that they have fully grasped the
understanding of how to successfully satisfy that aching, no valid
reason can be presented why the Thlinket will not continue to gratify
a burning desire in this fatal direction to the ultimate extinction
of his race. This fault of our civilization is far more potent to
effect his worldly degeneration, than any one or all of our combined
virtues are to regenerate his earthly existence.


FOOTNOTES:

[16] All savages are called by this name up here—the sex being
indicated by “buck” and “squaw.” Children are called “pappooses.”

[17] This Act wisely does not establish a full-fledged form of
territorial government in Alaska, because the lack of a suitable
population to maintain it reputably was conclusively shown by the
census returns of 1880: it creates an executive and a judiciary;
it extends certain laws of the United States relating to crimes,
customs, and mining, over Alaska, and provides for their enforcement.
The land laws of the United States should also be made operative in
Alaska, they are expressly omitted in the present act.

[18]

     I. _Chillkahts_: Lynn Canal and Glacier Bay.
    II. _Hooniahs_: Chichagov Island and islets.
   III. _Awks_: North end Admiralty Island.
    IV. _Tahkoos_: Mainland, Stephen’s Passage and Juneau City.
     V. _Khootznahoos_: South end Admiralty Island.
    VI. _Sitkas_: Baranov Island.
   VII. _Kakho_: Kou and Kuprianov Islands, Prince Frederick Sound,
         mainland coast.
  VIII. _Stickeens_: Wrangel, Zarenbo and Etholin Islands, Stickeen
         River mouth.
    IX. _Haidah_: Prince of Wales Island.
     X. _Tongass_: Mainland, Cape Fox to Cape Warde, and contiguous
         islands.

[19] The exact measurements of such a rancherie, and of which the
author submits a careful drawing, were: Breadth in front of house, 54
feet 6 inches; depth from front to back, “in the clear,” 47 feet 8
inches; height of ridge of roof, 16 feet 6 inches; height of eaves,
10 feet 8 inches; girth of main vertical posts and horizontal beams,
9 feet 9 inches; width of outer upright beams, 2 feet 6 inches,
thickness, about 6 inches; width of carved totem post in front of
house, 3 feet 10 inches, height, (?) 50 feet.

[20] Whole volumes have been written upon this subject of the totem
and consanguinity among these savages of the northwest coast. Further
description or discussion, in this instance, is superfluous.

[21] The blanket is now, however, the general recognized currency
among these people. It is the substitute among them of that unit of
value, the beaver skin, which has been for so long the currency of
the great Hudson Bay region. The blankets used in Alaskan trade are
of all colors—green, blue, yellow, red, and white—of the very best
woollen texture, none others will do. They are rated in value by the
“points” or line-marks woven into the edge, the best and largest
being a “four-point,” the smallest and poorest being “one-point.” The
unit of value is a single “two and a half point” blanket, worth a
little over $1.50. Everything is referred to this unit, even a large
four-point blanket is said to be worth so many blankets. Traders not
infrequently buy in blankets, taking them, when in good order, from
the Indians as money, and selling them out again as trade demands.

[22] There are naturally in every clan certain individuals of
hereditary Indian wealth and a long pedigree, who speak in better
language, who have a fine physical presence, a more dignified
bearing, and the self-possession and pride of incarnate egotism. From
these men the chiefs are selected, and although the chieftainship
is not necessarily hereditary, yet it is often retained in this
manner for many generations in one family. The covers of this volume,
however, cannot be expanded wide enough to permit the further
discussion and enumeration of a thousand and one singular points in
this connection which rise in the author’s mind.

[23] _Clupea mirabilis._

[24] _Squalus acanthias._

[25] This accounts for the puzzling appearance of ancient stone
mortars and pestles in Alaska, throughout the Sitkan region.
Ethnologists have endeavored to reason that certain extinct tribes
must have cultivated grain up here of some kind and used it as food.
I am indebted to the venerable Dr. W. F. Tolmie for this fact,
he showing me the mortars and giving the reason of their use in
December, 1866, at Victoria, B. C.

[26] _Lysichiton sp._

[27] _Cervus columbianus_—a well-grown specimen weighs about one
hundred and fifty pounds. Great numbers are taken in the Tahkoo
region, though it is found everywhere.

[28] _Abies sitkensis._

[29] _Thuja gigantea._




CHAPTER IV.

THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS.

  The Hot Spring Oasis and the Humming-bird near Sitka.—The Value
  and Pleasure of Warm Springs in Alaska.—The Old “Redoubt” or
  Russian Jail.—The Treadwell Mine.—Futility of Predicting what may,
  or what will not Happen in Mining Discovery.—Goal of Alaska not
  fit for Steaming Purposes.—Salmon Canneries.—The Great “Whaling
  Ground” of Fairweather.—Superb and Lofty Peaks seen at Sea One
  Hundred and Thirty-five Miles Distant.—Mount Fairweather so
  named as the Whalemen’s Barometer.—The Storm here in 1741 which
  Separated Bering and his Lieutenant.—The Grandeur of Mount St.
  Elias, Nineteen Thousand Five Hundred Feet.—A Tempestuous and
  Forbidding Coast to the Mariner.—The Brawling Copper River.—Mount
  Wrangel, Twenty Thousand Feet, the Loftiest Peak on the North
  American Continent.—In the Forks of this Stream.—Exaggerated
  Fables of the Number and Ferocity of the Natives.—Frigid, Gloomy
  Grandeur of the Scenery in Prince William Sound.—The First Vessel
  ever built by White Men on the Northwest Coast, Constructed here
  in 1794.—The Brig _Phœnix_, One Hundred and Eighty Tons, No Paint
  or Tar.—Covered with a Coat of Spruce-Gum, Ochre, and Whale-oil,
  Wrecked in 1799 with Twenty Priests and Deacons of the Greek Church
  on Board.—Every Soul Lost.—Love of the Natives for their Rugged,
  Storm-beaten Homes.


A bronzed humming-bird[30] lies upon the author’s table, that once
hovered and darted over the waters of Sitka Sound. Its torn and
rudely stuffed skin was given to him at Fort Simpson with the remark
that it came from the hot springs just below New Archangel; and that
nowhere else in all of a vast wilderness, outside of the immediate
vicinity of these springs, ever did or could a humming-bird be
found. Should, therefore, a visitor to this Alaskan solitude chance
to travel within it during the months of April and May, if he will
but follow the path of that wee brave bird, he will be led into a
veritable green and fragrant oasis, encircled all round about with
savage icy mountains and snowy forests.

Twenty miles south of Sitka, on the same island, in a pretty little
bay sheltered by a score of tiny islets, there—from the sloping
face of a verdant bank, the finest hot springs known to Alaska
flow up and out to the sea. Fleecy clouds of steamy moisture rise
over all to betray from a distance this delightful retreat; the
luxuriant vegetation, the variety of shrubs in full blossom here,
when all botanical life about them is as dead as cold can make it,
create thereon a spot in the early spring where all the senses of a
traveller can rest with exquisite pleasure—the waters of the bay in
front are covered with geese and ducks, while the rugged mountains
that rise as a wall behind are teeming with deer and bear and grouse,
secluded in the jungle.

The Indians, from time immemorial, have resorted to these hot waters
of Baranov Island; four distinct and freely flowing springs take
their origin in those crevices and fissures of the feldspathic
granite foundation of the earth hereabouts; the temperature of the
largest spring, at its source, is 150° to 160° Fah.; the waters
are charged with sulphur to a very great extent. So jealous were
the savages of any attempt among themselves which might savor of
a monopoly of the use of these healing, beneficent warm streams,
that no one tribe ever dared to build a village upon the site; but,
by tacit consent, all were allowed to camp thereon. Some Indians
often came from a distance of three hundred miles away to enjoy the
sanitary result of bathing here, a few days or a few weeks, as their
troubles might warrant.

Naturally the Russians, burdened at Sitka with all diseases which
flesh is heir to, turned their attention very promptly to this
sanitarium; they erected a small hospital and two spacious bathhouses
over the springs, keeping everything in the strictest order and
cleanliness, without and within doors. A sad change confronts us
to-day—in so far as care of human hands; but the savage Sitkan is
here, exulting in his renewed supremacy.

The occurrence, however, of hot springs is quite frequent everywhere
in this archipelago; yet their extent and volume of outflow is not so
great as evidenced by those we have just noticed of Baranov Island.
Indians love to immerse their entire bodies in pools and eddies of
these hot rivulets, which are cooled sufficiently by flowing a dozen
or fifty yards from their origin over pebbly bottoms; Siwashes will
soak themselves in this manner for hours at a time, with nothing
but their heads visible. Though the Koloshian, like all others of
his kind, never verbally complains, yet he is subject to acute
rheumatism, to fevers, and to divers malignant cutaneous diseases;
these springs, wherever known to him, are always well regarded as
his happy relief and hope. Certain it is that when you behold the
parboiled skin of a native, after bathing here, the fair almost white
complexion really startles, for, prior to the immersion, he was a
coppery brown or black.

Midway between these thermal fountains and Sitka is the site of an
old Russian jail or prison; in a deep inlet, with no land in sight,
but lofty mountains rising abruptly from the water’s edge, is the
“Redoubt.” Here a small alpine lake empties itself in a foaming
cascade channel of a few yards in width, that quickly plunges into
a cañon, the perpendicular walls of which are a full thousand feet
in mural height. The Russians erected mills of various kinds along
the rapids to avail themselves of such abundant water-power; the
buildings stood upon a bare rocky portion of the channel, and were
kept in order by an old veteran in command; a squad of soldiers aided
him; the fish, dried and salted salmon, which were required for the
use of the company, were annually caught here as they swarmed up the
cascade from the sea, into Gloobaukie Lake.

The great facility of travel afforded by these sheltered canals
of the Alexander archipelago, has enabled and facilitated a most
energetic and persistent search for gold and silver by our miners,
but the rugged features of the country and its dense timber and
jungle have rendered the progress of such investigation slow, and
one of great physical difficulty. In the sands of every stream
flowing between California and Cook’s Inlet the “color” of gold can
be found, but the paying quantities therein seldom warrant a mining
camp or settlement. To-day the only mining rendezvous which we find
in Alaska is a little village of rough cabins called “Juneau City,”
located on the north side of Gastineaux Channel, at a point near the
upper end of that passage; near by, and adjacent, is established a
large gold-quartz stamp-mill[31] on Douglas Island, where the mining
experts feel justified in predicting a steady and inexhaustible yield
of paying ore—it is paying handsomely at present.

This subject of what is, or what is not, a good mining region or
investment is one to which no rational man can well afford to commit
himself. Those who have had extended experience in these matters know
that it is a topic which baffles the best investigator, and returns
no safe answer to the most intelligent cross-examination. The true
advice which can be honestly given is that which prompts every man
interested to look and resolve wholly for himself, for he, in fact,
knows just as much as anybody else. At the most, the finding of a
rich or desirable lead of gold or silver in a new country is an
accident or sheer opportunity of chance. Whether it will hold out,
or end in a “pocket,” is also only to be determined by working it
for all it is worth. Once in a while a man makes a rich find, and
is rewarded; but an overwhelming majority of prospectors are ever
wandering in fruitless, restless, tireless search for those golden
ingots which are still hidden in the recesses of mountain ledges, or
buried in the alluvium of river bottoms. The miners in Alaska embrace
various nationalities—Australians and Canadians, Cornishmen and
Californians, Oregonians and British Columbians predominate—but the
number aggregated is not large.[32]

If gold or silver-quartz mines of free-milling ore (no matter how low
the grade) can be located anywhere on the shores of these mountainous
fiörds of the Alexander archipelago, their wealth will be great,
because the transportation to them and from them is practically
without cost. The expense of working such valuable quartz mines up
a hundred or more miles from the sea, will result in abandonment,
where reaching them involves frequent transfers of supplies, and the
working season is cut by the rigor of winter to less than half or
one-third of every year. The same mines, down within the dockage of
an ocean-steamer in the Sitkan district would be a steady source of
wealth and industry all the year round.

The coal which is found here is not satisfactory for steamers’
use—too heavily charged with sulphur. Copper ore is well-known, but
not worked in competition with the Lake Superior and Arizona cheap
outputs. At the present writing there are no active industries
whatsoever in the Sitkan archipelago beyond the energetic stamp-mill
of the Treadwell Mine on Douglas Island, and the limited placer
diggings of Juneau City. Until a market is created for its large
natural resources of food-fishes, the little canneries which our
people have started here will not develop; nor will the timber be
of much commercial importance until the great reservoirs of the
lower coast are exhausted. Statisticians and political economists
can easily figure out the time when a population of twenty-five or
thirty millions of our own people will be living upon the Pacific
coast alone; then the real value of those latent resources[33] of
the Sitkan watery wilderness must be patent to a most indifferent
calculator.

With this survey of the Alexander archipelago fixed on our minds,
we pass from it through the bold Cross Sound headlands that loom
above those storm-churned swells of an open ocean, which break here
in unceasing turmoil, and we sail out into an area that charts
tell us is the “Fairweather ground,” over which that superb peak
itself and sister, Crillon, stand like vast sentinel-towers, rearing
their immense bulk into many successive strata of clouds, until the
elevation of thirteen thousand and fourteen thousand feet is reached,
sheer and bold above the sea. This great expanse of the Pacific Ocean
between us and Kadiak Island, five hundred and sixty miles to the
west, and again down to Victoria, nine hundred miles farther to the
south, was the rendezvous of the most successful and numerous whaling
fleet that the history of the business records. In these waters
the large “right” whale did most congregate, and the capture of it
between 1846 and 1851 drew not less than three and four hundred ships
with their hardy crews to this area backed by the Alaskan coast.
They never landed, however, unless shipwrecked, which was a rare
occurrence, but cruised “off and on” with the majestic head of Mount
Fairweather as their point of arrival and departure.

When the whalemen saw the summit of that snow-clad peak unveiled by
clouds they were sure of fair weather for several consecutive days
afterward, hence the name. Early one June morning Captain Baker,
of the _Reliance_, called the author up to see a mountain which
was sharply defined in the warm, hazy glow of the dawning sunrise
on the horizon—there, bearing N.N.E.,[34] was the image of Mount
Fairweather, just as clear cut as a cameo, and lofty as the ship’s
spars, though one hundred and thirty-five miles distant! Closely
associated and fully as impressive and quite as high, was the heavier
form of the snowy Crillon.

That long stretch of more than four hundred miles of bare Alaskan
coast, between Prince William’s Sound and Cape Spencer, which stands
at the northern entrance to the Sitkan waters, is one that sustains
very little human or animal life, and is so rough and is so bleak,
that from September until May it is feared and avoided by the
hardiest navigator. The flanks of Mounts Fairweather and Crillon rise
boldly from the ocean at their western feet, and this sheerness of
elevation undoubtedly gives them that effect of cloud-compelling,
which does not lose its awe-inspiring power even when a hundred miles
away. To the northward and westward of Fairweather, however, the
alpine range which it dominates abruptly sets back from the coast
some forty or fifty miles, then turns about and faces the sea in
an irregular, lofty half-moon of more than three hundred miles in
length. A low table-land, or rolling shelf, is extended at its base,
intervening between the mountains and the wash of the Pacific. It is
timbered with spruce quite thickly, and reported by the Indians to be
the best berrying ground in all Alaska.

The Fairweather shore is a steep, woody one, much indented with
roadstead coves or bays; the coast line is hilly and uneven, with
some rocks and rocky islets scattered along not far out from the
surf. The sand-beaches which extend from Fairweather toward the feet
of those under St. Elias are remarkably broad and extensive; so much
so that, from the ship’s mast-head, large lagoons within the outer
swell of the open ocean are frequently seen. These beach-locked
estuaries communicate with the ocean by shallow breaks in the
outer beach-wall of sand and gravel, across all of which the sea
rolls with great violence.

[Illustration: MT. SAINT ELIAS: 19,500 FEET

Under the shadow of this great mountain. Bering’s crew landed in
July, 1741; they were the first white men to behold its sullen
grandeur, and it fitly stands as the initial point of that early
recognition of Russian America. In clear weather it is distinctly
seen by mariners, 150 miles at sea; usually, however, it is wrapped
in clouds]

Right under the towering slopes of Fairweather, as at St Elias, is
a large area of upland entirely destitute of verdure of any kind,
except the brown and russet mosses and lichens; huge, rugged masses
of naked rocks are strewn about in every direction—an old prehistoric
lava-flood, perhaps.

The coast, from the head of Cross Sound to Fairweather, is not sandy,
but may be well described as the surf-beaten base of a frozen range
of magnificent Alpine peaks.

In the centre of the arc of this grand crescent-range is the superb
body and hoary crest of Mount St Elias, which is, save Mount Wrangel,
now known to be the loftiest peak on the North American coast; the
latter is slightly higher. Triangulated from a base line in Yakootat,
in 1874, by one[35] of the most accomplished mathematicians of the U.
S. Coast Survey, the summit of that royal mountain was determined to
be more than nineteen thousand feet above the level of the tide at
the observer’s feet. It was under the shadow of this “bolshoi sopka”
that Bering first saw the Continent of North America on the 18th of
July, 1741, and undoubtedly he discerned it from a long distance, ere
his boat landed. Two days before anchoring, he records the fact that
“the country had terrible high mountains, which were covered with
snow.”

When he finally landed (it was St. Elias’ day), near a point that
he named as he named the lofty central peak, Cape St. Elias, he
found the temporary summer-houses of a band of natives; those
people themselves had fled in terror from an unwonted invasion,
but the Russians soon had reason to regret their subsequent better
understanding.

After the storm which parted Bering, early in June, from the company
of the second vessel of his expedition, he had hoped to fall in with
her ever afterward, and while eagerly scanning the coast and horizon
about him for some sign of his lost comrades, the hand of fate caused
him to turn to the northward, when, had his helm been set south, he
would have met the object of his search. For the other vessel, the
_St. Paul_, had proceeded on its solitary course, and anxiously
sought the commander, until it, too, had sighted this same coast,
three days earlier than had its storm-separated consort. Tschericov
came to anchor off some distance from “steep and rocky cliffs”[36]
in “lat. 56°,” July 15. Weary and expectant, the captain sent his
mate with the long-boat and a crew of ten or twelve of his best men
away to the shore for the purpose of inquiry and for a fresh supply
of water. The ship’s boat disappeared behind the point sheltering a
small wooded inlet; it and its men were never seen again by their
shipmates. Troubled in mind, but thinking that the surf, perhaps,
had stove the boat in landing, the captain sent his boatswain in
the dingy with five men and two carpenters, all well armed, to
furnish the necessary assistance. The small boat disappeared also,
and it, too, was never seen again. At the same time a great smoke
was constantly ascending from the shore. Shortly afterward two huge
canoes, filled with painted, yelling savages, paddled out from the
recesses of the bay, and lying at some distance from the ship, all
howled, in standing chorus, “Agai—agai!” then, flourishing their rude
arms, they rapidly returned to the shore. Sorrowfully the disturbed
and distressed Tschericov turned his ship’s course about and hurried
home,[37] not knowing the fate of his men, unable to help them, and,
to this day, no authentic inkling of what became of these Slavonian
seamen has ever been produced. Unquestionably, they were tortured and
destroyed.

The rains caught in the ship’s sails filled the casks of the _Saint
Paul_, since Tschericov, deprived of his boats and thoroughly
alarmed, made no further attempts to land; but he had not the
faintest idea of the presence, at that moment, of his superior
officer in the same waters, and only a few leagues to the northward,
who also, like himself was eagerly looking for his storm-parted
consort. What a most remarkable voyage, this voyage of the discovery
of the Alaskan region—what a chapter of disappointment, of hardship,
and of death!

That bluffy sea-wall which forms a face to the low coast plateau
at the feet of the St Elias Alps is cut by no great river, nor
indented by any noteworthy gulf or inlet, except at Yakootat Bay.
Here a succession of precipitous glaciers sweep down from the lofty
cradles of their birth to the waters of the sea, making an icy cliff
of more than fifteen miles in breadth, where it breaks in constant
reverberation and repetition. At the mouth of Copper River all
silt carried down from old eroded glacial paths has been deposited
for thousands and thousands of years, until a big deltoid chart of
sea-water channels in muddy relief of bank and shoal has been formed,
and through which the flood of an ice-chilled river takes its rapid
course.

The gloomy, savage wildness of this region of supreme mountainous
elevation, with its vast gelid sheets and precipitous cañons, its
sombre forests and eternal snows, all as yet wholly unexplored,
and only faintly appreciated as we can from the remote distance of
shipboard observation—this region cannot remain much longer untrodden
by the geologist and the naturalist, while the artist must accompany
them if an adequate presentation is ever to be given of its weird,
titanic realities.

The Mount St Elias shore-line is made up of small projecting
points, awash. These alternate with low cliffy or else white sandy
beaches, which border a flat, rolling woodland country that extends
back from the sea ten to thirty miles, where it suddenly laps and
rises upon the lofty flanks of the Elias Alps. Into the ocean many
rocky shoals and long sandy bars stretch for miles, and streams of
white muddy glacial or snow waters rush into the surf at frequent
intervals—hundreds of them.

There are sand-beaches and silt-shoals which extend from Cape
Suckling, up seventy-five miles to Hinchinbrook Island, that stands
as a gate-post to the entrance of Prince William’s Sound: here is a
long sand-ridge which is more than sixty miles in length and from
three to seven miles broad, lying between the ocean and the mainland,
which in turn is composed of low wooded uplands and of steep abrupt
cliffs and hills that are quickly lost in the lofty snowy range of
the Choogatch Alps. Through a section of this dreary sand-wall the
impetuous flood of the Copper or Atna River forces its way, carrying
its heavy load of glacial mud and silt far into the ocean. How the
winds do blow here! How the trader dreads to tarry “off and on” this
coast!

There are a few lonely places in this world, and the wastes of the
great Alaskan interior are the loneliest of them all. Those of
Siberia are traversed occasionally by wandering bands, but those of
Alaska, never. The severe exigencies of climate there are such as
to substantially eliminate savage life, and to rear an impregnable
barrier to that of civilization.

When Alaska was first transferred, an estimate of many thousands of
Indians inhabiting its vast interior was gravely made and as gravely
accepted by us; but a thorough investigation made by our traders
and officers of our Government during the last fifteen years has
exposed that error. Hundreds only live where thousands were declared
to exist. The Indians who live on the banks of the Copper River are,
perhaps, the most poverty-stricken of all their kind in Alaska. Their
shiftless spruce-bark rancheries and rude belongings are certainly
the most primitive of their race, and render that weird Russian
legend of the massacre of Seribniekov in 1848, which declared them so
numerous and savage, absolutely grotesque. They are perfectly safe as
they live in their wild habitat. The cupidity of savage or civilized
man never has and never will molest them. But if half is true as to
what they relate of huge glaciers which empty into their river, then
those that have been described in Cross Sound have formidable rivals,
which may yet prove to be superiors, perhaps, although it seems
incredible.

[Illustration: MT. WRANGEL: 20,000 FEET

In the Forks of Copper River: it is the loftiest Mountain on the
North American Continent]

The Suchnito or Copper River has long been a bugbear, for the
Russians[38] years ago have returned from several unsuccessful
attempts to ascend it, and gave the excuse of being driven out
of the valley by savage and warlike natives. Recently it has been
thoroughly explored, and the “savages” are found to be less than two
hundred inoffensive natives, who constitute the whole population
of this mysterious Atna or Maidnevskie region. But navigating the
river is terrific labor, inasmuch as it is a continuous, swift rapid
throughout its entire course.

This river is a short, turbulent, brawling stream, less than two
hundred and fifty miles in length, but rising in the heart of a
lofty and mighty mass of volcanic mountains. It receives a score
of imposing glaciers, which almost rival those of Icy Bay in Cross
Sound. The silt that these gelid rivers pour into its channel has
given it a deltoid mouth of extended and most intricate area.

Triangulations made by an officer of the Army last year declare that
Mount Wrangel is the loftiest peak on the North American continent.
The feet of this magnificent volcanic dome are washed by the forks
of Copper River, which is eighteen thousand six hundred and forty
feet below the apex of its smoking cap. Then the river at this point
is more than two thousand feet above sea-level, so the vast altitude
of more than twenty thousand feet for Mount Wrangel seems to be
truthfully claimed.

The soil which borders the abrupt banks of the Copper River is
entirely composed of glacial silt and gravel. It is moist and boggy
in the driest seasons, covered with rank growing grasses and dense
thickets of poplars, birches, and willows, that line the margins of
the stream. The higher lands, as they rise from the narrow valley,
are in turn clothed with a dense growth of spruce-forest, which
gradually fades out into russet-colored areas of rock-sphagnum as
the altitude increases to that point where nothing but the cold
and frost-defying lichen can cling alive to the weather-splintered
summits of alpine heights above.

Fish (salmon) are the chief reliance of these natives of Copper
River; they depend almost wholly upon the annual running of those
creatures. The difficulty of hunting is so great that the savage
is content with shooting a few mountain sheep, a wandering moose or
two, and, perhaps, a stray bear in the course of the year. Also,
huckleberries and salmon berries are abundant on the sunshiny slopes
of the high glacial river-terraces during August and September.

West of the Copper River mighty masses of the Choogatch Mountains
rise directly from the sea without any intervening lowland, save
at three tiny points upon which savage man has hastened to fix
his abode. Many crests to this range on the north side of Prince
William’s Sound must have a mean elevation of over ten thousand
feet, densely wooded with semper-virent coniferous forests up to
a height of one thousand feet above sea-level, and covered with
everlasting snowy blankets to within three or four thousand feet
of the ocean at their bases. The body of Prince William’s Sound is
so forbidding in its dark grandeur that even the stolid Russians
never tired of narrating its stirring impression upon their senses.
Although the interior of this gulf is completely land-locked, being
sheltered from the south by the islands of Noochek and Montague, yet
it is by no means a safe or pleasant sheet of water to navigate,
inasmuch as furious gales and “woollies” sweep down upon it from the
steep mountain sides and cañons, so that, without even a moment’s
warning, the traveller’s craft is suddenly stricken, and compelled to
instantly run for shelter under the lee of some one of the hundreds
of islands and capes which stud its waters or point its coast.
Immense glaciers are descending from the cavernous inlets of the
northern and eastern shores, and shedded fragments of ice, large and
small, are cemented by the tide into large sheets, which are finally
swept out and lost in the ocean.

[Illustration: VALDES GLACIER

View at the head of Valdes Inlet, Prince William’s Sound: typical
study of hundreds of such gelid rivers which discharge into the
waters of this gloomy sound. A September sketch, made at low-tide]

The shores of these canals are formed of high, stupendous mountains
that rise abruptly from the water’s edge perpendicularly, and often
overhanging. The dissolving snow upon their summits gives rise
to thousands upon thousands of little cataracts, which fall with
great impetuosity down their seamed sides and over sheer and rugged
precipices. This fresh water, clear as crystal and cold as winter,
thus descending into the green and blue salt sea, changes that tone
to one of a strange whitish hue in its vicinity, as it also does in
many fiörds of the Sitkan region. This peculiar flood always arrests
attention and excites the liveliest curiosity in the mind of him who
beholds it for the first time. Everywhere, save to the southward,
mountains can be seen looming up in the background with snowy
peaks and guttered ridges, and they attest the wild legends of their
sullen grandeur which the first white men related who ever beheld
them. These hardy sailors, when sent out in the ship _Three Saints_
from Kadiak, in 1788, arrived in the Gulf of Choogatch, or this Sound
of Prince William, during the month of May. They anchored in a little
bay of Noochek Island, and there established a trading-station. This
is the only post, Fort Constantine, or “Noochek,” that has ever been
located by our people in all this section of a vast wilderness;
to-day it is but little changed—a couple of trading-stores standing
on the foundations of Ismailov’s[39] erection, in which the only
three white men now known to reside in all that region of alpine
wonder are living, surrounded by a small village of sixty natives.

The large size of those spruce-trees on the southern slopes of
Kenai Peninsula, Montague, and Noochek Islands of Prince William’s
Sound, so impressed the Russians that they established a shipyard at
Resurrection Bay as early as 1794; by the close of that year they
actually built and launched a double-decker, 73 feet long by 23 feet
beam, of 180 tons burden—the first three-masted, full-rigged ship
ever constructed on the west coast of the North American continent;
she was named the _Phœnix_, and as she slid from her ways into the
unruffled waters of this far-away place the exultation and delighted
plaudits[40] of her builders echoed in strange discord with the wild
surrounding. Baranov had no paint or even tar, so that this pioneer
ship was covered with a coat of spruce-gum, ochre, and whale-oil.
A few small vessels only were built after this, inasmuch as the
company found it much more economical to purchase in European yards
the sailing-craft and steamers which it was obliged to employ:
but, to-day the traces of the Russian ship-carpenter’s axe can be
still plainly recognized at many points of the western coast of the
sound, and on Montague Island huge logs, as roughed out nearly a
full century ago, are lying now, as they lay then, slightly decayed
in many instances; the anticipation which felled them was never
realized, and they have never been disturbed consequently.

In these early colonial Alaskan days, Fort St. Constantine, or
Noochek Island, was a very important trading-centre; it was visited
by all the tribes living on the Mount St. Elias sea-wall to the
eastward as far as Yakootat, and also by the Copper Indians. Then
the sea-otter was abundant, and in its ardent chase those Choogatch
savages captured, incidentally, large numbers of black and brown
bears, marten, and mink. Now, with the practical extermination of
the sea-otter, we find a very poor lot of natives at this once
flourishing post; but, for the means of a simple physical existence,
they have no lack of an abundant supply of salmon, seal-blubber and
flesh—meat of the marmot, porcupine, and bear, varied by the frequent
killing of mountain sheep, which are found all over this alpine
range; fine foxes are plentiful too.

These Indians live in houses partly underground, which we shall
describe as we visit Kadiak, and in purely race-characteristics those
people also closely resemble the Kadiak Eskimo. From the north of the
Copper River, however, toward the Sitkan archipelago, the Koloshian
or Thlinket is dominant in the form and features of those savages
which we find in a few small and widely separated villages that exist
on the narrow table-land between the high mountains and the unbroken
swell of the ocean. These natives all, however, agree in describing
their country as an excellent hunting-ground, well timbered, and
traversed by numerous small streams which take their rise in the
glaciers and eternal snows of the St. Elias Alps.

By some happy dispensation of the Creator every savage is so
constituted that here in Alaska, at least, he believes in his own
particular area of existence as the very best realm of the earth—he
becomes homesick and refuses to be comforted if taken to California
or Oregon, enters into a slow decline, and soon dies if not returned
to the dreary spot of his birth—a sad illustration of fatal nostalgia.

An Alaskan Indian or Innuit has very little of what may be styled
true slavish superstition; certainly he is credulous, but he rather
encourages it for the sake of the romance. He gives slight attention
to augurs or omens; he ventures out in search of food alike under
all sorts of varying conditions of health and weather; he has a few
charms or amulets, but does not surrender to them by any means.
Shamans, or sorcerers, never have had the influence with him that
they have exerted in the barbarism of our own ancestry, and which
they possess among the savages of Central and South America and
Africa to-day. It is no solution of this difference in disposition to
call him stupid, for it is not true; he is far more alert, mentally,
than the ghost-ridden Australian, or fetich-slave of Africa; and,
again, the sun-worshipping and intensely superstitious Incas were far
superior, intellectually, to him.

Most of the Innuits give hardly a thought to the subject, yet they
are exceedingly vivacious and social among themselves; much more so
than the Indians. They relate a great many supernatural stories,
but it is only in amusement, and it seldom ever provokes serious
attention.


FOOTNOTES:

[30] _Selasphorus rufus_—it is common in California, Oregon, and
parts of Washington Territory, and Southern British Columbia—never
found north of Victoria on the coast, except as above stated: it
winters in Central America.

[31] The Treadwell Mine—free-milling gold ore; 120 stamps; employs
150 to 250 men—situated right at the tide-level.

[32] Eight hundred, or a thousand, perhaps. They come and go
suddenly, alternating in travel as the rumors relative to their
occupation circulate.

[33] A few small saw-mills have been erected at several points in
this Sitkan district to supply the local demand of trading-posts and
mining-camps. With reference to quality or economic worth, the timber
found herein may be classified as follows, in the order of its value:
1. Yellow cedar (_Cupressus nutkaensis_) and _Thuja gigantea_, the
red variety. 2. Sitkan spruce (_Abies sitkensis_). This is the most
abundant. 3. Hemlock (_Abies mertensiana_). 4. Balsam fir (_Abies
canadensis_). The finest growth of this timber is found upon Prince
of Wales Island, Admiralty, and Kou Islands, within the Alaskan lines.

[34] Tuesday, June 13, 1874. It did not seem possible at first that
the officer’s observations were accurate, but the captain verified
the ship’s position anew, and confirmed the correctness of Lieutenant
Glover’s entry and sights: “bearing N.N.E., 135 m.”

[35] Marcus Baker. Unfortunately no one connected with this Coast
Survey Party was able to make an adequate drawing of the mountains,
and it was so enveloped in clouds as to be partially invisible when
the author cruised under its lee.

[36] That point, most likely, was Kruzov Island, and the bay into
which the unhappy Russians were decoyed was Klokachev Gulf. This
island forms the western shore of Sitka Sound.

[37] He reached Kamchatka on the 9th October following, with only
forty-nine survivors out of his original crew of seventy. Bering
never did; he was shipwrecked and died on a bleak island, of the
Commander group, December 8, 1741. They seem to have really sailed
over this course of six thousand miles almost together, anxiously
searching for each other, yet unconscious of their proximity.

[38] When the surveying parties of the War Department were ascending
Copper River last summer, certain Indians, who had been instrumental
in slaying the Russian party of Seribniekov in 1848, were very much
alarmed. They were sure that the fates had come for them at last.
One of these natives, an aged man, now wholly blind, was reported as
saying that he was ready to die, and knew what the white men wanted.
This old fellow, Lieutenant Allen says, was one of the finest-looking
savages that he ever saw. The face of the blind man was one of
remarkable character—a large, massive head, high aquiline nose, with
a full, thin-lipped mouth and broad forehead. He was totally blind
and his hair white as snow.

The Russian party were sleeping in their sledges, which they
compelled the natives to draw while ascending the river. At a
preconcerted signal the unwilling Indians turned and brained their
taskmasters with hatchets. These natives had welcomed the Russians;
but when they were made to perform the labor of dogs they turned
upon their white oppressors, naturally. The massacre of Seribniekov
and his party in this manner made the Indians very restless and
determined in their opposition to further intercourse with the
Russians. The memory of hostility has, however, died out, and nothing
of the kind was shown to our people last year as they charted the
valley and river.

  Lieutenant H. T. Allen.

[39] Ivan Ismailov and Gayorgi Bochorov; they went in the dual
capacity of explorers and traders, lured into the undertaking by
rumors which had prevailed at Kadiak respecting great numbers of
sea-otters in this bay.

[40] Had these enthusiastic builders then been able to have foreseen
the tragedy which this vessel precipitated, five years later, they
would have scarcely thus expressed themselves, but rather have stood
in silence, with bowed heads, as the work of their hands swept into
the flood that embraced her. In 1799 she sailed from the Okotsk,
bound for Sitka, with the newly-ordained Bishop Joasaph and twenty
priests and deacons of the Greek Church; she was never seen or heard
of afterward, nor was anything seen or heard of her passengers and
crew—she took them with her to the bottom of the sea.




CHAPTER V.

COOK’S INLET AND ITS PEOPLE.

  Cook’s “Great River.”—The Tide-rips, and their Power in Cook’s
  Inlet.—The Impressive Mountains of the Inlet.—The Glaciers of
  Turnagain Canal.—Old Russian Settlements.—Kenai Shore of the
  Inlet, the Garden-spot of Alaska.—Its Climate best Suited to
  Civilized Settlement.—The Old “Colonial Citizens” of the Russian
  Company.—Small Shaggy Siberian Cattle.—Burning Volcano of
  Ilyamna.—The Kenaitze Indians.—Their Primitive, Simple Lives.—They
  are the Only Native Land-animal Hunters of Alaska.—Bears and Bear
  Roads.—Wild Animals seek Shelter in Volcanic Districts.—Natives
  Afraid to Follow Them.—Kenaitze Architecture.—Sunshine in Cook’s
  Inlet.—Splendid Salmon.—Waste of Fish as Food by Natives.—The
  Pious Fishermen of Neelshik.—Russian Gold-mining Enterprise on the
  Kaknoo, 1848-55.—Failure of our Miners to Discover Paying Mines in
  this Section.


That volcanic energy and amazing natural variation of the region
known as Cook’s Inlet, and the Peninsula of Alaska, endow it with a
certain fascination which it is hard to adequately define in words,
and difficult to portray. The rugged, uninviting boldness of the
Kenai Mountains turn us abruptly, after our departure at Noochek, to
the southward, where, in an unbroken frowning cordon of one hundred
and fifty miles in length, they bar us out from the waters of that
striking estuary—the greatest on the northwest coast, which is so
well exhibited by the map to everybody as Cook’s Inlet. But it is
known only in name—not by the faintest appreciation, even, of its
real character and of its strange belongings.

Two and three hundred miles still farther north than Sitka it does
not in itself present that increased wintry aspect at any season of
the year which would be most naturally looked for—but it does offer,
in physical contour and phenomena, a most marked contrast to the
Alexander archipelago and its people. It is an exceedingly dangerous
and difficult arm of the sea to navigate, and prompts an involuntary
thought of admiration for the nautical genius, skill, and courage of
Captain Cook, who sailed up to the very head of this entirely unknown
gulf, in 1778, seeking that mythical northwest passage round the
continent—his dauntless exploration to the utter limit of Turnagain
Canal—his extraordinary retreat in his clumsy ships, and safe
threading of his way out and through the hundreds of then absolutely
nameless and chartless islets and reefs to the shoals of Bering
Sea—all this, viewed to-day, seems simply marvellous, that he should
have escaped all these dangers which the best sailor now hesitates to
undertake, even with excellent courses laid down and determined for
him.

The ship’s entrance to this great land-locked gulf, which the
Russians named, for many years, the Bay of Kenai, lies between
the extreme end of that peninsula called Cape Elizabeth, and Cape
Douglas, which is a bold promontory jutting out from the Alaskan
mainland. Nearly half-way between the two points is a group of bleak,
naked islets, the Barren Islands: around them the tide-rips of this
channel, which they obstruct, boil in savage fury, and are the dread
of every navigator, civilized or Innuit, who is brought near to them;
these violent and irregular tidal currents here, even in perfectly
calm weather, will toss the waters so that the wildest fury of a
tempest elsewhere cannot raise so great a disturbance over the sea,
or one which will so quickly wash a vessel under.

When your ship, bound in, passes this Alaskan “Hell Gate,” she enters
into a broad and ample expanse of water caused by the widening
effect of two large bays which are just opposed to each other on
the opposite shores. The coast of the Kenai Peninsula is low, the
mountains contiguous are not high, though toward the interior the
ridges become much loftier; but everywhere between them and this
coast-line is that characteristic marshy tundra of the Arctic—a
low, flat, broad strip, varying in width from forty to fifty miles,
through which sluggishly flow a multitude of streams and brooks,
wooded with birch, poplar, and spruce everywhere on the banks, but
bare of timber over the great bulk of its expanse. As the inlet
contracts still further, especially at the point between the two
headlands of East and West Foreland, the tide again increases in
velocity and violence of action until it attains a speed of eight
and nine knots an hour, with an average vertical rise and fall of
twenty-four to twenty-six feet. The northeastern extremity of this
large arm of the sea, which Cook entered with the confident hope of
finding a watery circuit of a continent, and, being disappointed,
applied to it the name of “Turnagain,” presents a tidal phenomena
equal to that so well recognized in the Bay of Fundy. Here the tide
comes in with a thundering roar, raising a “bore” wave that advances
like an express train in rapidity, carrying everything before it
in its resistless onward, upward sweep. High banks of clay and
gravel, which at low-tide seem as though they were far removed from
submersion, are flooded instantly, to remain so until the ebb takes
place. The natives never fail to remember the angry warning of this
incoming tide; they always hurriedly rush out of their huts, scan
quickly everything surrounding, lest some utensil, some canoe, or
basket-weir be thoughtlessly left within the remorseless rush of that
swift-coming flood.

Those glacial sheets which fill countless ravines and cañons in
the mountain ridges at the head of Cook’s Inlet, especially of
Turnagain Canal, and avalanches of snow, from their lofty cradles
thereon, all sweep down together upon the wooded flanks below, and
are thus destroying great belts of forest and piling up innumerable
heaps of rocky débris to such an extent as to often change the
superficial aspect of an entire section of country from season to
season; meanwhile the tide rushing up and down over this drift of
avalanches and glaciers, carries the débris hither and thither, so as
to constantly alter the channels, and the very outlines of the coast
itself.

One of the oldest and best of Russian posts was early established on
the Kenai Peninsula, a few miles to the southward of that narrowing
of Cook’s Inlet, caused by the two Forelands. On the low banks of
the Kinik River, and facing the gulf, the ruins of the “Redoubt St.
Nicholas” are still to be plainly seen, though at the time of the
transfer of the Territory, this old post was yet fortified with a
high stockade and octagonal bastions. But both stockade and bastions
have disappeared since then; a number of new frame buildings have
been erected close by, and quite a colony of Russian half-breeds
are living here now, trading, and growing, to better advantage than
anywhere else in Alaska, fair crops of potatoes and turnips. They
keep a few hardy cattle, and it is said that as much as ten or twelve
acres of ground are under cultivation by them.

The aspect of the country surrounding this settlement is much more
suggestive of farming and cattle-raising than is that presented
anywhere else in the Alaskan Territory. The land is rolling and
hilly, the higher eminences being covered with thick spruce
forests; but as you advance into the interior, great swamps of
tangled heather, fir, jungle, and sphagnum are prevalent. The soil
everywhere, not covered with grass and forest, is mossy, with a
little grass and many bushes. The trees are large, fifty to sixty
feet high, and eighteen inches to twenty-four in diameter, mostly
spruce—no cedar or hemlock. That district adjoining the East Foreland
Head is, perhaps, the best with reference to dry, fertile soil,
for, in its vicinity, there are broad plains where wild timothy and
red-top grasses grow to the height of your waist and shoulders. An
extended experience of the Russians taught them to locate their
agricultural operations here; that the coast-line belt of the Kenai
Peninsula, between the Forelands and Kooshiemak Bay, a belt of low
and semi-prairie uplands some eighty miles in length, and varying in
depth from ten to twenty, was the most eligible base of agricultural
effort afforded anywhere in Alaska, the quality of the crops always
being best near the coast, the soil being drier, and the danger of
little nipping summer-frosts wholly abated.

The several small settlements which we find upon this pastoral
strip to-day have a curious history, as to the origin of their
inhabitants. About the period of 1836-38, the expenses of the Russian
American Company in maintaining their trading stations in Alaska
were increasing to an alarming degree, while the receipts remained
stationary, or fell off. An enquiry into its cause revealed it. The
fact was, that hundreds of superannuated employés were drawing their
salaries and subsistence, rendering no adequate return for the same.
These persons had grown old, and had lost their health in serving
the company; were, nearly all of them, infirm survivors of Shellikov
and Baranov’s parties, whose daring and energy had established the
company. It would be inhuman to discharge these aged and crippled
Russians, and throw them upon their own resources in such a region.
After much deliberation the company was authorized by the Crown to
make the following terms of settlement and relief, and thus locate
them as permanent pensioners and settlers in the country. Therefore
all of the old employés who had married or lived with native or
half-breed women, and who were unable to successfully engage in
the trading avocations of the company, by reason of age and other
infirmities, were, upon their written or witnessed request, after
being stricken from the pay-rolls, provided for in this manner.

The company was obliged to select and donate a piece of ground,
build a comfortable dwelling, furnish agricultural tools, seeds,
cattle and fowls, and supply the pensioner receiving all this with
provisions enough to support him and his wife for one year. These
“old colonial citizens” (as they were called), thus established,
were then exempted from all taxation, military duty, or molestation
whatsoever, and a list of their names was annually forwarded in
the reports of the company. The children of those settlers were at
liberty to enter or not, as they pleased, the service of the company
at stated salaries. The company, furthermore, was commanded to
purchase all the surplus produce of these pensioners, furs, and dried
fish, etc. This order of the Crown, thus fixing the status of those
old servants, also included the half-breeds who were equally infirm
by reason of such service. Such whites, or Russians, were officially
designated “colonial citizens,” the half-breeds were styled “colonial
settlers.”

The descendants of these pensioned servants of the Russian Company
are the men and women you observe to-day in those little hamlets
scattered along the east coast of Cook’s Inlet, or the Kenai
Peninsula. They are bright, clean, and, though very, very poor, still
appear wholly independent. They are engaged in small trading with the
Kenaitze savages and in their limited agricultural efforts, whereby
they have potatoes, turnips, and other hardy vegetables. The cattle,
of which they have a few in each settlement, are of the small, shaggy
Siberian breed, not much larger than Shetland ponies, and capable of
living in the rigors of a winter which would destroy or permanently
injure our breeds of neat cattle. These people make butter by
laboriously shaking the milk in bottles.

They are obliged to shelter their cattle during winters from the
driving fury of heavy snow-storms, and when the herd ranges in the
grass-season, the boys and old men always have to guard it from the
deadly attention of the big brown bears which infest the entire
region. They have a regular “round-up” in each hamlet every night.

[Illustration: THE VOLCANO OF ILYAMNA: 12,060 FEET

The most prominent Fire Mountain of that Chain forming the North
Shore of Cook’s Inlet]

Everywhere on the west coast of Cook’s Inlet the mountains rise
steeply and rugged from the sea, a wild and uninviting contrast with
the park-like terraces of the Kenai coast just opposite. Here are
the same lofty ridges and smoking peaks which startled and oppressed
the brave heart of Captain Cook, as they muttered and trembled in
volcanic throes when he sailed by. The two cones which rise
dominant are the summits of Mount Ilyamna and the “Rédoute,” from
which columns of brownish smoke ascend by day and ruddy fire-glowings
by night. So precipitous is this mainland shore of Cook’s Inlet
that at only two small points of the most limited area is there any
low land to be found, and these spots have been promptly utilized
by the Kenaitze Indians as sites for their villages of Toyonok and
Kustatan. The dense, sombre coniferous forest which we have become
so familiar with, clothes the flanks of those grim mountain walls
with the thickest of all coverings to a height of one thousand feet
above the beaches below. Here and there we glance into the recesses
of a cañon or a gorge where the naked, mossy surface of immense rocky
declivities arrests and fixes the eye, while the glittering caps
of ice and snow far away above fit down snugly upon long, rough,
treeless intervals, covered with heather, lichens, and varied arctic
sphagnum.

The upper waters of Cook’s Inlet are said to be quite remarkable for
their barrenness of fish—salmon only being plenty in the running
season, ascending all the numerous rivers and rivulets; the reason
most likely is due to the turbid upheaval of the bottoms everywhere
by that violent tidal bore which prevails, recurring twice every
twenty-four hours. The Indians here employ a curious trestle or
staging of poles, which they use in spearing salmon, and netting them
from its support.

An extensive spread of the largest fresh-water lake in Alaska just
over the divide from Cook’s Inlet, early led the Russians to explore
it, and to find a portage via its waters to the sea of Bering. But,
though this barrier can be passed by an active man in a single
day, yet it has divided, and continues to absolutely separate, two
distinct races of savages—the Innuits from the Indians; for the
Kenaitze are Indians, as we understand them, based upon our types of
the great plains and foothills of the Rocky Mountains; and, living
here as they do on the shores of Cook’s Inlet, they live, perhaps,
in the most romantic and picturesque region of Alaska. Burning
volcanoes, smoking and grumbling, a large inland sea rolling for
miles and miles therein, and lay at their feet; wide watery moors,
tundra, timber and lakes, and rivers rising in the snow-white peaks
everywhere visible, all combine to make the most striking lights and
shades of natural scenery that human thought can realize in fancy.

[Illustration: A Kenaitze Chief: Cook’s Inlet.]

These natives of Cook’s Inlet are strongly defined from those of
Kadiak as a separate people, both in language (which no white man has
ever been able to repeat), in appearance, and in disposition. They
are true Athabascans, or exactly like the meat-eating Indians of our
great North American interior. An average man here is an Indian of
medium height, say five feet seven or nine inches, well built and
symmetrical, lithe and sinewy. The cold glint of his small, jet-black
eyes is not relieved by any expression of good humor in his taciturn
features and physical bearing. His nose will present, as a rule, the
full aquiline or Julius Cæsar outline. Their skin is darker than that
of the Innuit, though now and then a comely young person will show
perceptible blood-mantlings to the cheeks. The mouth is large—lips
rather full; beardless faces are the rule. Their women are much
better-looking than either the Siwash squaws of the Sitkan region, or
the females of the Aleutian and Innuit races. Their hair is worn in
clubbed bunches and braids, hanging upon their backs, thickly larded
over with grease, and often powdered with feathers and geese-down.

In the immediate vicinity of the shores of Cook’s Inlet the primitive
habits of these savages have been very much changed by their daily
intercourse with the Creoles; but at the head of the gulf, especially
in the Sooshetno and Keknoo valleys, they are still dressed in their
deer-skin shirts and trousers, men and women alike. They work those
garments with a great variety of beads, porcupine quills stained in
bright colors, and grass plaitings.

These Kenaitze are the only real hunters in all Alaska. They place
little or no dependence on fish like the other tribes, unless we
except the walrus-eating Eskimo, who hunt, however, in water-craft
entirely. And were they not natural Nimrods, the abundance of game
which abounds in their district would stimulate such ambition alone
in itself. The brown bear[41] of Alaska is found almost everywhere;
but it seems to prefer an open, swampy country to that dense timber
most favored by its ursine relative, the black bear. It attains
its greatest size, and exhibits the most ferocity, on the Kenai
Peninsula. It should be called the grizzly, because it is frequently
shot here fully as large, if not larger,[42] than those examples
recorded in Oregon and California.

This wide-ranging brute is found away up beyond the Arctic Circle,
though never coming down to the coast of the icy ocean except
at Kotzebue Sound. It is a most expert fisherman, and a terror
to the reindeer and cariboo of those hyperborean solitudes. It
frequents, during the salmon season, all the Alaskan rivers and their
tributaries which empty into Bering Sea and the North Pacific, as
far as the fish can ascend. When the run for the year is over, then
the animal retires into the thick recesses of semi-timbered uplands
and tundra, where berries and small game, deer especially, are most
abundant.

Everywhere throughout this large extent of Alaska the footpaths, or
roads, of that omnipresent ursine traveller arrest your attention.
The banks of all streams are lined by the well-trodden trails of
these heavy brutes, and offer far better facilities for progress than
those afforded by the paths of men. Not only are the swampy plains
intersected by such well-worn routes of travel, but the mountains
themselves and ridges, to the very summits thereof, are thus laid
out; and the judgment of a bear in traversing a rough, mountainous
divide is always of the best—his track over is sure to be the most
practicable route. On the steep, volcanic uplands of the mountainous
coast of the west shore in Cook’s Inlet, groups of twenty, and even
thirty, of these huge bears can be seen together feeding upon the
berries and roots which are found there in season. Their skins are
not valuable, however, being “patched” and harsh-haired. Then they
are very fierce, so that they are not commonly hunted anywhere except
by the Kenaitze, who, like all other aboriginal hunters, respect them
profoundly, and invariably address a few eulogistic words of praise
to a bear before killing or attempting to kill it.[43]

[Illustration: Bear “Roads” over the Moors of Oonimak Islands.]

A peculiar dread which all the natives of this region have, of
visiting those areas where volcanic energy manifests itself, is
taken advantage of by those dumb beasts upon which the savage wages
relentless warfare; the immediate vicinity of craters, of steaming
hot springs and solfataras, will always be a rendezvous for game,
especially bears, which seem to fully understand that in staying
there they will never be disturbed. But the Kenaitze are ardent
hunters, nevertheless, and spend most of their time and energy in the
chase of land animals—making long journeys into the interior, and
gloomy recesses of mountainous cañons and defiles, to follow and find
the fur-bearing quarry peculiar to their country.

They have regular tracks of main travel, where, like stage stations
on our frontier post-roads, at intervals they have erected
shelter-huts, in which they often live with their families for months
of the year at a time; they make birch-bark canoes for their river
and lake transit, but in navigating Cook’s Inlet, they buy skin
bidarkas of the Kadiak model and use them altogether. They are fairly
independent of salt water, and seldom pass many hours upon it, except
in travelling and trading one with another, and the Creoles; they
are, however, very expert at fresh-water fishing through holes in the
ice for trout in the thousand and one lakes, large and small, which
are so common in their country.[44]

As these natives live in their permanent settlements, we find them
distinguished by a peculiar architecture. Their houses are fashioned
out of logs, and set above ground resting upon its surface; the
logs are hollowed out on one side so as to fit one upon the other
in true spoon-fashion, and make a really air and water-tight wall;
an enclosure of these walls will hardly ever be larger than 20 feet
square, and most of them never go over 12 or 15 feet; they have
regularly laid cross-rafters, with a low, or half-pitch, over which
spruce-bark shells are so spread as to shed rain and drifting snow;
these shingle slabs are kept in place by a number of heavy poles,
lashed transversely across; a fireplace is always in the centre
with a very small smoke-hole opened in the roof just above it; the
door is a square aperture cut through the logs at the least exposed
front, about large enough to easily admit the ingress and egress of
a crouching Indian. It is stopped in stormy weather by a bear-skin,
hung so as to fall directly over it from the inside. When the door is
thus closed the naturally dark interior becomes almost wholly so; but
the howling of a tempest, laden with rain, sleet or snow, as the case
may be, renders this gloomy indoor perfectly radiant to the senses of
its sheltered inmates, and they loll in robes and blankets and doze
away the time on the rude wooden platform which surrounds the walls
and keeps their bodies from the cold damp earth. Upon this staging
they spread grass mats and skins, and, in fact, it is a catchall for
everything.

[Illustration: The Bedroom Annex of a Kenaitze Rancherie.]

An odd feature seen in some of the most pretentious houses of those
inlet savages, is the presence of a little kennel-like bedroom
annex, which many of the most wealthy or important have built up
against the main walls. These boxlike additions are tightly framed
and joined to the houses, the only entrance being from the inside of
the main structure by a small hole cut directly through the logs of
the wall; they are sleeping chambers, and are furnished with a rough
plank floor, and sometimes a window made of a piece of translucent
bladder-gut. They are also reserved and special apartments during
the occasion of those visits of ceremony which Indians often pay,
one to each other. But the main idea is to have these tight little
dormitories so snug and warm that they will insure the comfortable
rest of the owner therein without much burdensome bed-clothing—in
many cases the Kenaitze can sleep here in the coldest weather
without any covering at all, and do. Such a bed is a great and
priceless luxury to them.

No furniture annoys the Kenai housekeeper, unless the small square
blocks of wood used occasionally as stools or seats can be so styled;
the grease and fire-boxes which we have seen in Sitkan households
are also duplicated here, but though made of wood they are not so
neatly put together. The traders recently have introduced a very
novel feature to the interior of nearly every Kenaitze house; it is
the common, cheap, box-imitation, in miniature, of a Saratoga trunk
with lock and key. Those oddly contrasted articles will be found
everywhere among these people, who keep in them all their valuables,
such as charms, and toys for the children, flashy handkerchiefs,
small tools fashioned out of bits of iron and steel, bags of thread
and stripped sinews, needles, ammunition, and their percussion-caps,
which are to them as pearls without price—nothing so precious.
Outside of this trunk-craze, and their odd sleeping-rooms, these
Indians do not live together or act differently from the usual habit
and manner of savages proper, so familiar to us by reason of repeated
descriptions published of our own meat-eaters who live near by. They
crave nothing from the white trader save powder, lead, good rifles,
percussion-caps, tobacco, calico, and the sham trunks alluded to.

The sun shines out over Cook’s Inlet much more than it does in the
Sitkan region and the Aleutian Islands. The proportion of fair,
bright weather is larger than that experienced anywhere else in all
Alaska or its coast. The winter months here are not excessively cold;
snow falls in December—sometimes as late as 3d of January before the
first flakes of the season arrive. By the first to middle of May
it has usually melted away on the lowlands, and the grass springs
up anew, green and luxuriant. Summer, and even winter storms, are
drawn along the lofty ranges of the Kenai Peninsula when all is
serene and pleasant at the same time on the moors and lowlands of the
inlet shores. Often, too, the people of that coast can look up to
a continued falling of heavy rain and snow on the mountain summits
of the steep ridges across the inlet, while they bask in unclouded
sunshine, and have no interruption of its comfort.

We ourselves have as yet made but slight use of the natural resources
and advantages of Cook’s Inlet. A party of San Francisco merchants
have established at the mouth of the Kassilov River a salmon
cannery, which has been worked to the full limit of demand; and a
smaller, similar factory is located at the head of this inlet, in the
Kaknoo estuary.

The finest salmon known to man, savage or civilized, both in flavor
and size combined, is that giant fish which runs in especial good
form and number into Cook’s Inlet, and which the Russians called the
“chowichah;”[45] they are most abundant during the summer neap-tides,
but they are not as numerous as are the several other varieties of
smaller and far less palatable salmonidæ, which also run up here with
them. The average length of these superb chowichah fish is four feet,
and a weight of fifty pounds is a low medium. They appear regularly
on the 20th and 22d of every May, running in pairs, refusing the
hook, though hugging the shore lines. Our people catch them in
floating gill-nets, and in weirs of brush and saplings of wicker-work
woven with spruce-roots and bark, which are erected on the mud-flats
at the river mouth, during low tide.

[Illustration: SALMON WEIRS OF THE KENAITZE

Method employed by Indians of Cook’s Inlet to catch Salmon]

The king salmon, however, is erratic in running to any one spawning
spot, and in this respect differs from all the rest of its family,
which is remarkably constant in annually returning to the same
spawning ground. But the abundance of salmon which we see in their
reproductive periods of each year, ascending every river and possible
rivulet that communicates with the sea in Alaska south of Bering’s
Straits, is a never-failing source of wonder and delight to the
white visitor and a measure of infinite creature-comfort to his
physical being while sojourning here. Also, the pleasant thought
constantly arises that when we shall have a populous empire on the
Pacific slope, as we have now in the Mississippi Valley and east
of the Alleghanies, what a handsome use we will make of this waste
of fish-food wealth[46] which we now observe in the vast realm
of its indulgence throughout Alaska. Also in another, but wholly
correct sense, the natives themselves shamefully waste the flesh of
those fine salmon. To illustrate the extraordinary nature of this
suggestion, let the following statements of fact be recalled: The
native population of Cook’s Inlet is not large—it is embraced in
about one hundred and sixty-eight families, averaging four souls to
each household; everyone of these families prepares at least seven
hundred and fifty to eight hundred pounds of dried salmon for its own
specific consumption during the winter months. That amount of cured
fish, therefore, is about one hundred and twenty-six thousand pounds,
and as every pound weight of dried meat is equal to an original
weight of at least eight or nine pounds of fresh, or undried, then
this cured total gives us an immense aggregate of 1,000,000 pounds
of fresh salmon; this, figured down, shows that a single Indian uses,
during the winter solstice—five months—the enormous amount of 1,430
pounds of this rich-meated article of diet, or about ten pounds
every day, in addition to the bear-meat, deer, and sheep-meat, seal
and beluga oil, berries and roots which he is constantly consuming,
at the same time, in the greatest freedom, and which are always
in abundant supply. The full thought of my presentation will be
better understood when it is remembered that a pound of fresh salmon
has more nourishing and sustaining quality than the same amount
dried. The salt-dried codfish with which we are so familiar is very
different in its texture, and weighs many times more than it would if
it were cured by the air and smoke-exposure to which the natives of
Alaska are driven in preserving their fish.

An exceedingly happy illustration of the singular force of habit
which the salmon have in returning every recurring season to the
exact localities of their birth was afforded near the Creole
settlement of Neelshik on the Kenai Inlet coast. A small stream runs
down to the gulf from the mountains and moors of the interior. Its
mouth had been closed by a barrier of surf-raised sand and gravel
during storms in the winter of 1879-80, and through which the
sluggish stream filtered in its course without overflowing. When
the salmon, which had descended the year previously from the upper
waters of the stream in the course of their reproductive circuit,
again returned to renew such labors in the following season, this
unexpected wall barred their ingress. They did not turn away, but
actually leaped out upon this sandy spit, and many of them succeeded,
by spasmodic springs and wriggling, while on the dry gravel, in
getting across and into the river-water beyond! the Creoles, in the
meantime, having nothing to do except to walk down from their houses
and gather up the self-stranded salmon as they fancied their size and
condition. Inasmuch as these “old colonial settlers” are very pious,
as well as very indolent, they were profuse in giving thanks to their
patron saints for this unexpected bounty.

The color of gold everywhere found by washing the sands of Cook’s
Inlet on the Kenai shore early aroused the cupidity of the Russians.
They made systematic examinations here under the lead of experienced
men, between 1848 and 1855, and the Russian American Company spent a
great deal of money in the same time by sustaining a large force of
forty miners, directed by Lieutenant Doroshin, in active operations
at the head of the inlet on the Kaknoo River, and in the Kenai
Mountains and Prince William or Choogatch Alps. Gold was found, but
in such small quantities, compared with the labor of getting it,
that the ardor of the Russians soon cooled, and nothing as yet has
resulted from the prospecting of our own miners in this district, who
have been all over these Slavonian trails since the transfer.


FOOTNOTES:

[41] _Ursus richardsonii._

[42] One shot at Kenai Mission in 1880 measured nine feet two inches
in length.

[43] Perhaps fully half the brown-bear skins taken by the Alaskan
natives are retained by them, used as bedding, and hung up as
portières over the entrance-holes or doors to their houses; the
smaller skins are tanned and then cut into straps and lines to use
in sledge-fastenings, snowshoe network bottoms, because this leather
does not stretch when moist like deer and moose skin.

[44] The greatest number of different mammals found wild in any one
region of Alaska is to be recorded here: bears, brown and black;
deer, reindeer and the woodland cariboo; big-horn mountain sheep,
a long-haired variety. These animals are all shot. The trapped
varieties are: beaver, land-otter, porcupines, whistling marmot or
woodchuck, large gray wolves, lynx, wolverine, marten, mink, ermine,
weasels, and muskrats. Wild-fowl: grouse both white and ruffled,
geese, ducks, sandhill cranes, and the great northern swan. Berries:
whortleberries, salmonberries, gooseberries, and cranberries; all
gathered in season and mixed with the everlasting rancid oil used by
every native in every section of Alaska.

[45] _Oncorhynchus chouicha_—examples of this species have a recorded
weight of one hundred pounds each, and six feet in length; it is also
abundant in the Yukon and Kuskokvim Rivers.

[46] Dr. T. H. Bean, who, as a trained ichthyologist, passed
the season of 1880 investigating the fish of Alaska by cruising
throughout its waters, says:

“The greatest fish-wealth of Alaska, so far as the shore fisheries
are concerned, lies in the abundance of salmon of the genus
_Oncorhynchus_, which is represented by five species—_chouicha_,
_keta_, _kisutch_, _nerka_, and _gorbuscha_. The first three of
these are the largest, the whole series being named in the order
of their size. _O. chouicha_ is the giant of the group, and is the
most important commercially; it attains to its greatest size in the
large rivers, which it ascends long distances in its spawning season.
In Alaska it is known to extend as far north as Bering Strait,
and it is especially abundant in Cook’s Inlet and in the Yukon.
Individuals weighing nearly one hundred pounds are occasionally
reported from these waters, and even in the Columbia. The finest
product of this salmon is the salted bellies, which are prepared
principally on the Kenai, Kassilov, and Yukon Rivers; the fame of
this luxury once extended to the centre of government in Russia, The
well-known ‘quinnat salmon’ is the same species; its importance, as
evidenced by the efforts of the United States Fish Commission and
other commissions toward its propagation and distribution, is too
well understood to require additional mention. The great bulk of the
salted salmon exported from Alaska are the small ‘red fish,’ _O.
nerka_; and this species is sought after simply on account of the
beautiful color of the flesh and not for its intrinsic value, which
is far below that of most of the other species. All the salmon extend
northward to Bering Strait, but only one, _gorbuscha_, is reported
as occurring north of the Arctic Circle; _gorbuscha_ is said by
trustworthy parties to reach the Colville River. In the early part
of its run the flesh of this little ‘humpback’ seems to me to be
particularly good. Other members of the family of _Salmonidæ_, and
very important ones, are the species of _Salmo_ (_purpuratus_ and
_gairdneri_) and _Salvelinus malma_, two of which reach a large size
in Alaska. The first two are not known to exist much to the northward
of Unalashka, while _malma_ is believed to extend to the Colville.
_S. gairdneri_ resembles the Atlantic salmon in size and shape, but
its habits are different; it is found filled with mature eggs in
June. I have not seen any very large examples of _S. purpuratus_ from
the Territory, but the species is extremely abundant and valuable for
food. The red-spotted char, _S. malma_, is everywhere plentiful and
is highly esteemed as a food-fish; it grows much larger in Northern
Alaska than in California, and has some commercial value as an export
in its sea-run condition under the name of ‘salmon trout.’ Natives of
Alaska make water-proof clothing from the skins of this fish.”




CHAPTER VI.

THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK.

  Kadiak the Geographical and Commercial Centre of Alaska.—Site of
  the First Grand Depot of the Old Russian Company.—Shellikov and his
  Remarkable History, 1784.—His Subjection of the Kaniags.—Bloody
  Struggle.—He Founds the First Church and School in Alaska at Three
  Saints Bay, 1786, One Hundred Years ago.—Kadiak, a Large and Rugged
  Island.—The Timber Line drawn upon it.—Luxuriant Growth of Annual
  and Biennial Flowering Plants.—Reason why Kadiak was Abandoned
  for Sitka.—The Depot of the Mysterious San Francisco Ice Company
  on Wood Island.—Only Road and Horses in Alaska there.—Creole
  Ship and Boat Yard.—Tough Siberian Cattle.—Pretty Greek Chapel
  at Yealovnie.—Afognak, the Largest Village of “Old Colonial
  Citizens.”—Picturesque and Substantial Village.—Largest Crops
  of Potatoes raised here.—No Ploughing done; Earth Prepared with
  Spades.—Domestic Fowls.—Failure of Our People to Raise Sheep at
  Kolma.—What a “Creole” is.—The Kaniags or Natives of Kadiak; their
  Salient Characteristics.—Great Diminution of their Numbers.—Neglect
  of Laws of Health by Natives.—Apathy and Indifference to
  Death.—Consumption and Scrofula the Scourge of Natives in Alaska;
  Measles equally deadly.—Kaniags are Sea-otter Hunters.—The Penal
  Station of Ookamok, the Botany Bay of Alaska.—The Wild Coast of
  the Peninsula.—Water-terraces on the Mountains.—Belcovsky, the
  Rich and Profligate Settlement.—Kvass Orgies.—Oonga, Cod-fishing
  Rendezvous.—The Burial of Shoomagin here, 1741.—The Coal Mines here
  Worthless.


The boldest and the most striking cape in this wilderness of bluffy
headlands and jutting promontories is that point which marks the
dividing line between the Kadiak region and Cook’s Inlet—Cape
Douglas. It is a lofty alpine ridge or spur, abruptly thrust out at a
right angle to the coast, and into and over the sea for a distance of
three miles, where it drops suddenly with a sheer precipitous fall of
over one thousand feet into the waves that thunder on its everlasting
foundations. Baffling winds here, and turbulent tide-rips distress
that navigator who, coming down from the inlet, seeks the harbor of
St. Paul’s village. He hardly regards this seared and rugged headland
with that admiration which the geologist and the artist always
will. The “woollies,” which blow fiercely off from it, worry him and
challenge all his nautical skill.

Kadiak Island is the centre, geographical and commercial, of a most
interesting and wide-extended district, perhaps the most so, of the
Alaskan Territory, and Kadiak village, or Saint Paul Harbor is, in
turn, the central and all-important settlement of this district.[47]
It was the site of the first grand depot of the old Russian American
Company, and also the location of the first missionary establishment
and day-school ever founded on the northwest coast of the continent.
From the quiet moorings of this beautiful Kadiak bay hundreds of
shallops and vessels bearing courageous monks and priests have set
out in every direction over all Alaska, carrying scores of them to
preach the gospel among its savage inhabitants, who then were savage
indeed to all intents and purposes.

The first visit ever made by white men to the great Island of
Kadiak was the landing here in the autumn of 1763, at Alikitak
Bay, of Stepan Glottov, a Russian sea-otter trader, who went into
winter-quarters at the southeastern extremity of the island, on a
spot now called Kahgooak settlement. The natives were ugly, hostile,
refused all intercourse, and kept the Russians in a chronic state
of fear. Scurvy broke out in their camp and nearly destroyed the
invaders, leaving less than one-third of them alive in the spring.
They managed then, with the greatest effort, to launch their vessel
and get away, the savages meanwhile constantly attempting to finish
that destruction which bodily disease had so well-nigh effected.

The beginning of the eighth decade of the eighteenth century is a
true date of the real epoch of Russian domination in Alaska. All
history of white exploration in this country prior to that is simply
the cruel legend of an eager, heartless band of outraging Muscovites,
doing everything just for the gain of the present moment, sowing so
badly that they dared not remain and reap. One of those big-brained,
cool, and indomitable Russians, who gave then as they give now, the
stamp of high character to the race, was for several years prior
to 1780 prominently engaged in the American fur trade. Grigor Ivan
Shellikov was this man. He was a citizen of the Siberian town of
Roolsk. He resolved to survey in person those scenes of rapid
demoralization and ruin to the profitable prosecution of his Alaskan
business, and, if possible, to attempt a change for the better.
An evident decrease in furs, together with the hostile attitude
of the natives, provoked altogether by their inhuman treatment at
the hands of the “promishlyniks,” called for reform in the most
emphatic manner. After a carefully deliberated plan of action had
been determined upon between himself and his partners, the brothers
Gollikov, he at once proceeded to the Okotsk Sea and fitted out three
small vessels for his expedition.[48] He did not reach Kadiak until
1784, two years after starting out, when two of his vessels came to
anchor in the harbor now known, as it was then christened by him,
Three Saints Bay. Shellikov was a ready and willing correspondent.
His numerous letters to his Siberian partners and his own published
“Journeys” give us a clear idea of the hardihood of his enterprise,
and they have a rare ethnographic value. From them we learn of the
great liking which Shellikov’s party took to the Island of Kadiak,
and how they resolved, soon after making a short reconnoissance, to
establish themselves permanently if they could gain the confidence of
its savage inhabitants.

Shellikov sent out a scouting party and captured a Kaniag, brought
him into camp, and loaded the bewildered native with presents and
kindness, then sent him back to his people; but the native, though
won wholly over himself,[49] could not prevail upon his hostile
countrymen, who soon gave the Russians ample evidence of their
enmity. A party of the latter in two of the ships’ boats were
exploring and hunting, when they were disturbed by the appearance
of a “perfect cloud” of natives that were encamped on rough and
precipitous uplands of Oogak Island, a short distance from the main
island itself. Shellikov resolved to proceed himself to the spot and
endeavor to win them over to amity and trade. He exhausted every
art of pacification that his ready wit could suggest without making
the slightest favorable impression upon these men, who treasured up
in the liveliest recollection those outrages and indignities which
they had hitherto suffered from the arms and vices of Shellikov’s
Muscovitic predecessors. The only answer that they made to the trader
now was that he at once embark and leave the island, and a few arrows
and bird-spears were discharged and thrown at him by way of clinching
the argument. The Russians retired to their camp, and wisely erected
over day a rude stockade—none too quick, for these Kaniags approached
the harbor in the middle of the night, unobserved, and threw
themselves with frenzied fury upon the slightly fortified Russians.
The battle lasted until daylight. The necessity and instinct of
self-preservation caused the whites to fight with desperate coolness
and intrepidity. The slaughter was great among the natives, and,
considering the vastly inferior numbers of the Russians, their
loss, too, was heavy. In spite of the bravery of the whites in this
terrible midnight struggle, they would have been overpowered and
exterminated ere the dawning, had it not been for the consternation
which the reports of their small iron two-pounders created in the
assailing ranks of those dusky hosts.

Recognizing the fact that now the only hope of peace and
commercial intercourse with these natives lay in their complete
subjugation, Shellikov, immediately after the sullen retreat
of the hostiles, armed one of his vessels and followed them up
to their rocky fortresses in Oogak, where they had taken up a
position that was well-nigh impregnable, and to which savage
reinforcements were rapidly flocking from the main islands. Unable
to reach the entrenched camp of those defiant natives with the
small ship’s-cannon, Shellikov picked a party of sixty men out
of his company, went ashore with them, and, with his little iron
two-pounders, he stormed the enemy with such impetuosity that the
rapid discharges of these guns and small firearms of the charging
Russians utterly demoralized an immensely superior force of the
savages, who became panic-stricken, and actually jumped by scores
off the high bluffs of Oogak into the sea, hundreds of feet below;
the rest of them, more than a thousand souls, surrendered to the
Russians, who took and located them on a rocky islet, several miles
from the harbor of Three Saints, and temporarily provided them with
provisions; and then, with hunting-gear, they were set to work and
liberally paid for their peltries. Twenty or thirty of their leaders
were kept as hostages on the vessels, and the result was entire
submission everywhere afterward to the Russians in this region.
Occasional attacks and massacres would now and then be made upon
far-distant hunting parties of the Russians, it is true, but the
moral effect of the Oogak victory and slaughter was such among the
Kadiakers that no further combined organized resistance or opposition
was ever given again.

Shellikov soon realized that he was in no further danger from savage
attacks. He began a most extensive and thorough exploration of the
great island, and organizations of trading-posts at every eligible
point. He sent a large party around to the north side and located it
at Karlook, where we now find quite a salmon-canning establishment.
Here, during the winter of 1785-86 fifty-two Russians and as many
natives ranged all over the water of Shellikov Straits in eager
search of the sea-otter; in the meantime the whites under Shellikov’s
immediate command were actively examining the recesses and fiörds
which are so numerous and deep on the south side of Kadiak. So well
and so thoroughly was this work carried out, that by the beginning
of 1786 Shellikov had made himself well acquainted with the whole
region—had established his trading-posts at every point between
Shooak, in the north, and Trinity Islands, at the extreme south; and
had even made himself tolerably familiar with the coast of Cook’s
Inlet, having chastised the ugly Kenaitze in a most summary manner.

Again, this remarkable man is distinguished by the successful and
sensible effort which he made in substituting for the orgies of
Kadiak demonology the practices of the Greek Church, which, he
wisely foresaw, if effected, would bind the natives closer to the
Russians than any other power. He was aided in this by the personal
labors and example of his wife, who accompanied him at the outset.
She instructed the girls and women in needle-work, and acquired an
influence over them that was very great. Feeling certain that he had
established his trade on a secure foundation, Shellikov and his wife
sailed for home on May 22, 1786, in the same vessel which brought
them out, leaving an impress of enduring character upon Alaska of the
greatest good and worth.

During the first years of the existence of the Shellikov Company,
thus established here in Kadiak, it enjoyed the partial protection of
the Crown and many exclusive privileges, by which advantages nearly
all the smaller trading companies had been fairly crowded out of
the country. But it was not always the power conferred upon a great
firm by its favor at Court and larger capital that gained supremacy
in Alaska during those early days—it frequently occurred that the
employés of one association resorted to physical force of arms in
dispossessing those of another, and then, this order initiated, the
strongest organization was sure to eventually dominate the coveted
region. This commercial anarchy led to the autocratic monopoly of the
Russian American Company in a very few years—it was the best thing
that could then have transpired for Alaska and its people.

The approach to Kadiak from the ocean is striking, because it and the
numerous islets and islands that join it closely are mountainous and
hilly, with many lofty peaks that have plateaux and ravines full of
eternal snow. It is not often seen clearly, however, along its full
extent of wild topography, on account of clouds, fog and boisterous
weather, which terrifies the navigator, driving him from its vision.
It is, however, an island that affords the greatest number of safe
and snug harbors, and has no rival as the most enjoyable place for
the traveller to visit. It so justifies us in our mind to-day, just
as it warranted the Russians in expressing their preference for it a
full hundred years ago.

Nature has drawn across Kadiak in a firm line, the ultimate limit
of timber growth to the westward. It seems to be as arbitrary and
capricious as if traced there by the humor of a human ruler. Only
one-third of the island itself, its northern extremity, is covered
with spruce-forest; the invisible barrier to the west seems to be
a perfectly straight line over from the heads of Orlova Bay on the
south side to that of Ooganok on the north coast. Here the change
from a vigorous growth of spruce-forest to bare hills and grassy
tundra is most abrupt and astonishingly sharp in definition; you pass
from the jungle of the woods, at a single step, into heather of the
moor. This line, with a slight curve to the westward only, strikes
the same definition over on the mainland of the peninsula opposite,
and runs right up north to Bering’s Straits’ latitude, avoiding the
coast everywhere except at Cape Denbigh, Norton’s Sound.

There is scarcely any lowland, indeed none at all, on the large
island itself; it is everywhere mountainous and abruptly rolling,
with spaces here and there in which the grasses flourish to a great
extent. A legion of small streams rush down to the bays from their
mountain sources, but none of them are navigable—they are mere rapids
and cascades in their entire length. A growth of the characteristic
circumpolar annuals and biennials on the slopes of these hills of
Kadiak is of exotic luxuriance, and of the most varied beauty of
floral display in June, July, and August. Willows and alders fringe
the borders of the streams in their range throughout the woodless
area, while stunted birch and green grasses reach to the very summits
of the hilly ridges of the interior.

Although Shellikov had established the headquarters of his Russian
Company on Three Saints Bay with good reason at the time, yet
when the entire Alaskan region went into the control of a single
organization, it became necessary to have a grand central depot of
supplies. Therefore Baranov promptly removed to the site of the
present village of Kadiak. Upon that wooded island in the offing he
procured the lumber and timbers necessary for the erection of those
huge warehouses and numerous dwellings of many sizes required to
house the merchandise, furs, and his employés. The harbor, too, is
ample, and so situated that sailing-craft can come and go in all
winds. Sadly, indeed, did the Russians, a few years later, abandon
Kadiak for Sitka, as the numerous letters and protests still on
file show; but the menacing encroachments of foreign traders in the
far-distant Alexander archipelago were too grave in their portents of
loss and usurpation of vested rights to allow of any other action.

To-day many of the ancient Russian structures are still pointed out
in the village here which commands the harbor of Saint Paul, and in
which some three hundred Creoles are living in well-built log and
frame houses. Everything is clean[50] and orderly, but very, very
quiet, inasmuch as no commerce, no monthly steamer, no tramping
miners invade the solitude of its location. It supports a large Greek
church and the priest attendant. Its people, as a rule, are wholly
engaged in the business of trading fur and hunting sea-otters. Small
codfish schooners often rendezvous here, and the natives also cut
considerable cord-wood, for the use of such fur-traders who ply to
the treeless districts westward, and fuel for fishing canneries at
Karlook and Kassilov. Several little mountain rivulets flow through
the limits of this settlement, which is everywhere well drained,
and therefore dry in the streets by reason of its position on the
rising slopes of the lofty hills which make a bold background, when
the picture is viewed from the ship’s deck as you sail up to the
anchorage. The presence here of some thirty white men, pure Russian
Creoles, and several of our own people who have really settled in the
country, many of them married, and who call the place home, makes
Kadiak unique in this respect. Elsewhere, if we find a white man
living at the trading-posts, or plying his vocation as a cod-salmon
fisherman, or miner, he always draws himself up and emphatically
denies any idea of permanent residence in Alaska.

Looking down the bay, we observe a thickly timbered and a somewhat
more level island than usual—it is the famous Wood Island, where the
largest spruce-trees in all this section grow; upon it is a small
village of one hundred and fifty-six souls, living in thirteen log
houses, thickly clustered together; they are all sea-otter hunters
during the summer. This village is also the depot of that mysterious
San Francisco corporation which has regularly cut up and stored tons
of ice here every winter since 1856, and never has shipped a pound of
it away! and when the bright, hearty agent of this corporation asks
you to come out with him to the stable and advises you to mount one
of the three or four horses sheltered therein, so that you can gallop
round the island with him, your astonishment is perfect.

Sure enough, there is a road, incredible as it first seemed; for, in
order that the horses might be exercised, a good track has been made
upon the entire tide-level circuit of the island, about twelve miles
in length, over which the ice company’s stock is trotted every summer
at frequent intervals; in the winter these unwonted animals are busy
hauling ice. You may well improve this opportunity, for it will not
occur again as you travel in Alaska—you will not be able to ride
elsewhere on a road worthy of the name.

A number of small trading-sloops and schooners have been built here
in a boatyard, fashioned by the skill of some Creole ship-carpenters,
who were trained in the yards at Sitka when Russian authority was
dominant, and who have taken up their permanent abode in this
“Leesnoi” settlement. A few small, tough Siberian cattle, such as we
saw at Neelshik, Cook’s Inlet, are roaming about here, cared for by
the natives who prize milk; also several of these same bovines are
to be seen at Kadiak, where they are limited also to a few head, on
account of the trouble of winter attendance and loss from bears in
the summer pasturage.

An odd, weather-beaten faded little building is pointed out by the
natives with pride and animation, as the house in which a “soul-like
man”—a Russian monk made his abode for thirty consecutive years,
teaching the children of the village and those of the neighboring
towns, who flocked here in great numbers to be instructed. He
taught the Russian alphabet, so that the church service might be
intelligible; also rudimentary art-principles, gardening and divers
useful habits for such youth. This unique shrine is in the heart
of the next village closely adjoining, and which is located on
Spruce Island, or “Yealovnie,” as the seventy odd Russian Creoles
who live there call it. It is a little hamlet of only fifteen small
log houses, very neat and clean; and the prettiest of flower-pots
within the scant windows give you a far-away thought as you observe
them. Here is also one of the tiniest of Greek chapels, in which the
natives are regularly joined by the small number of those of Oozinkie
village (a little way off) and just across the straits; these people,
who have no church, are also pure Creoles, and unite in perfect
accord with those of Spruce town.

Near by, on the southern shore of Afognak Island, is the largest
settlement of the “old colonial citizens” in the Territory; three
hundred and thirty of these people are living here in a very
picturesque and substantial village; a large chapel, which is also
used as a school-house, is the distinguishing architectural feature,
while a number of newly-built row-boats for fishermen, on the stocks,
in a miniature shipyard, point to an industry worthy of attention.
The town is spread over a large landed extent, which in many places
between the dwellings is devoted to vegetable gardens. More land
is under cultivation here than all the rest so treated in Alaska
to-day; the crops of potatoes, cabbages, turnips, and garden-salads,
like radishes, etc., seldom fail except in very backward years. No
ploughing[51] is done; the earth prepared for potatoes is thrown
with spades, picks, and hoes up as small ridges or tumuli, into the
surface of which the seed is planted. A few of those shaggy little
bulls and cows, which we have noticed before at Wood Island and
Kadiak, are also roaming about, and a great many domestic fowls, such
as chickens and ducks, are raised by the women and children, who take
the poultry into the attics or lofts above their living rooms during
the inclemencies of winter.

The desire of the Russians to have beef, milk, and butter, led to a
very general importation of Siberian cattle from Petropaulovsk so
that every post in Alaska, at one time, had at least a pair of these
useful animals to start with. The greatest care was given to them
at first, everywhere; they were especially fostered at Sitka, where
the demand for their flesh and milk was most urgent, but at Kadiak
and the Kenai mission on Cook’s Inlet, the only partial success in
causing an increase to the stock was achieved. Impressed with an idea
that certain sections of the Kadiak region would serve admirably for
sheep-husbandry, a San Francisco merchant-firm shipped a flock of
rams and ewes—one hundred and fifty of them—sheep of the hardiest
breed, to Kolma, a spot not far from St. Paul’s Harbor, Kadiak. They
were in charge of a trained Scotch shepherd; but while the flock
did remarkably well in the summer, yet most of them perished during
the following winter, not from exposure nor want of food, but the
long-continued and frequent intervals when the sheep are obliged to
be shut up tightly from the fury of wintry gales laden with sleet and
rain and snow, causes their wool to “sweat” and fall from the skin in
large patches, producing an emaciation and debility which the animal
seldom fully recovers from. Also, the general dampness everywhere
under foot during the summer season in many good grazing sections of
Alaska, is such as to cause an abnormal increase of the hoofs, so
that the horny toes turn and grow upward, destroying the peace and
comfort of a sheep and literally confine its movements and destroy
its thrifty life.[52]

Since these little villages of Kadiak, Leesnoi, Yealova, and Afognak
embrace within their limits a large majority of the sixteen or
seventeen hundred Creoles who are residents and natives of Alaska,
it may be interesting if a sketch be given of the physical and
mental characteristics which distinguish them broadly from the
aboriginal types. The original Creole was the offspring of a Russian
father and an Aleutian or Kaniag mother. He inherited the strong
thickset frame and bushy, curly beard and brown hair of his father;
in many cases his eyes were as blue (and his hair sometimes red),
his skin as white, and his bearing just as good as was his Russian
progenitors’. The aggressive energy, however, of the sire seldom
was transmitted, the Creole being indolent and very pacific in
disposition. If this original Creole, in his time and turn, married
a full-blooded Aleutian or Kaniag girl, then the offspring would
show a marked dominance of the mother’s race—indeed, the child would
be as much like other Aleutian babies as they are related in looks
among themselves; but if this original Creole marries an original
Creole girl, sired like himself, then we have a type which cannot
be distinguished at all from the full-blooded Slavonian, only much
less demonstrative, alert, and pugnacious. Most of these old colonial
citizens of this district of Kadiak are therefore full-blooded
Russian quadroons and octoroons, and in every physical aspect are as
much like Russians as if of pure origin. Those early Creoles, male
and female, who mated, as they matured, with the native males and
females, in so doing caused all their offspring, long ago, to revert
to the savage types, and we cannot distinguish them to-day.

[Illustration: CREOLES AND ALEUTES

Pencil Portraits of typical Alaskan faces, selected from the Author’s
Portfolio

   1. Luka Mandriggan, an Aleute,      49 years of age
   9. Philip Vollkov,   a Creole,      50   ”       ”
   8. Matroona Vollkov,     ”    girl, 15   ”       ”
  10. Anoorka Meeseekin,    ”     ”    11   ”       ”
   7. Fevronia Eevanov,     ”     ”     9   ”       ”
  11. Deemietri Veatkin,    ”          48   ”       ”
   6. Aggie Kooshing,       ”    boy,  18   ”       ”
   3. Ivan,            an Aleute boy,   7   ”       ”
   5. Domian,               ”     ”    12   ”       ”
   a. Paraskeeva,           ”    girl, 13   ”       ”
   4. Natalia,              ”     ”    12   ”       ”

Some of the Creole girls and women whom we observe in these
settlements are exceedingly handsome, modest, and the only fault we
can find with them is their absolute speechlessness—they cannot be
induced to chat with us, though they seem to enjoy our presence.
Most of them live in scrupulously clean houses, the floors scrubbed
and sanded like a well holystoned ship’s deck, walls papered and
decorated with pictures of saints and other pious subjects; old
Russian furniture, chairs, settees, bureaus, and clocks of our own
make; the bright, omnipresent “samovar” in which the boiling water
for tea is never allowed to get cool; little curtains over the small
windows, and big curtains puckered around the beds—everything is
usually clean, tidy, and quiet within the Creole’s home.

The wants of the Creole are very few outside of what the country in
which he lives affords him. He manages to so deal in sea-otter, and
fox and bear skins as to get from the trader’s store what tea, sugar,
flour, and cloth are required for his family. Beyond this exertion
and that displayed in his gardening he rests wholly at peace with
himself and all the rest of the world.

The Kaniags or Kadiakers, who are the natives of this island and
contiguous islands, are in much greater numbers, and are to be found
everywhere here in small hamlets that nestle in the deep fiörds and
bays of Kadiak. They resemble the Aleutes so closely in outward form
and characteristics that the full description given in a following
chapter of those people will cover the whole ground of this inquiry,
only let it be remembered that the Kaniag is a trifle taller than
his Aleutian cousin, has a fairer skin, a somewhat broader face,
and is considerably more muscular. Like the Aleutes, he has small
feet and hands, small black eyes set in deep sockets, little or no
beard, and an abundance of coarse, straight, black hair, which he
cuts off roughly just above his shoulders; he has a trifle more beard
and a better mustache, but this is a very fine distinction. He is
lighter-hearted, freer, and more jovial, but has less patience during
seasons of privation or epidemic disease.

When the Kaniags gather together they are exceedingly talkative,
abounding in jokes, in the recitation of funny legends, and stories
of every imaginable nature associated with their simple lives. As
they paddle their bidarkas and bidarrahs in making long journeys,
they enliven the labor by continuous songs, snatches from church
tunes, or lively airs taught them by the Russians and later by our
soldiers and traders. They are in every respect much more susceptible
of emotional impulses than are the Aleutes. This greater sociability
is well exhibited by the invariable erection, in every settlement, of
a “kashima,” or public dance and work-house, or, in fact, a town-hall
as we have it:—the Aleutes have nothing of the sort. They pass a
good deal of their time on the land, traversing mountain trails in
quest of bears, wolves, foxes, the land-otter, and the marmot, or
“yeavrashkie,” which is made into that famous skin coat called
the “parkie” all over this Alaskan country outside of the Sitkan
archipelago.

As these natives exist to-day there are only eighteen hundred, a few
more or less, of them, which is an immense shrinkage from the Russian
enumeration of six thousand five hundred made by actual count of
Baranov. They seem to be declining even now, year by year, even as
the Koloshians of the Sitkan region do, so that the native population
of the Kadiak district, if decreased[53] in the next two decades as
it has in the last, will hardly have a living representative. No one
can well avoid a train of fast-crowding thought when he stops in
contemplation of sickness and death as it appears and is treated in
savage settlements—the only medical counsel that they ever have is
their own individual instinct. Ignorant as they are of the simplest
anatomical details of their structure, it is not surprising that
they should surrender to disorders and disease with that remarkable
passive apathy which is so distinctive of the sick everywhere in such
communities.

Indians, and these Aleutes and Kaniags, as they grow up, have no
parental supervision whatever as to details of diet, of warm or cool
clothing, or of any of those many attentions which our children
receive from their parents. For the first ten or twelve years of
their lives they literally run wild, and are semi-naked or wholly
so, both male and female;[54] this is their condition, then, at all
seasons of the year. Exposed as they are, in their manner of living,
to draughts, to insufficient covering, and damp, cold nooks for
slumber, in which the air reeks with odors too vile for the power of
language to express, naturally they lay a foundation, at the very
outset of their existence, for pulmonic troubles in all the varied
degrees of that dread disease. Consumption is, therefore, the simple
and broad term for that single ailment which alone destroys the
greatest number of these people, every season, in Alaska; all the
natives, the Eskimo, the Aleut, the Kaniag, and the Indians suffer
from it alike, and they all exhibit that same stolid indifference
to its stealthy but fatal advancement—no extra care, no attempt to
shelter, to protect or to ward off in the slightest manner this
trouble, until the very moment of supreme dissolution calls in a
shaman and the sorrowing relatives.

After lung diseases, the next destroying factor of greatest power is
embodied in the virulence of scrofulous affections, which take the
form of malignant ulcers that eat into the vitals and slough away
the walls of the large arteries. This most loathsome blood-poisoning
renders a few settlements entirely leprous, especially so to our
startled eyes when we visit them. And in this regard it is hard to
find a village in the whole Alaskan boundary where at least one or
more of the families therein has not got upon some one of its members
the singularly prominent scars that attest this disease. Often a
comely young girl or man will, in turning suddenly, reveal under the
jaws or on the neck and throat, a disgusting, livid eruption which
a scrofulous ancestry has cursed the youth with. Since most of this
complaint is on the surface, as it were, we naturally would look for
some care on the part of the afflicted native, even if for no other
end than self-contentment and the ready alleviation of this cutaneous
misery; but we will look in vain, the patient never gives it. On
the contrary, it is utterly neglected, and by reason of the filthy
habit of these people, it is immensely aggravated and made infinitely
more violent. In regard to consumption this apathy on the part of
the victim is not, in contrast, so very remarkable, since it is more
concealed and not near so disagreeable both to the native and his
associates.

Though consumption and scrofula are the two great indigenous sources
of disease and death among the natives, yet there is still a
list—quite a long one—of other ills, such as paralysis, inflammatory
rheumatism and peritonitis, fits, and an abrupt ending of life in the
middle-aged, called most graphically “general debility.” As might be
inferred from the method and exigencies of aboriginal life in Alaska,
these natives do not survive to any great age; rarely, indeed, will
an authenticated case of the full limit of sixty years be recorded or
observed—an overwhelming majority of them are old at thirty-five and
forty. When a man or a woman in a settlement rounds the fiftieth year
of his or her life, a noted example of the tribe is afforded; but
should this age be attained, and the man then be free from rheumatic
troubles or the death-grasp of scrofulous or pulmonic disease, he
is sure to be afflicted with injured and defective vision, if not
totally blind; the glint of snow and the intensely smoky interiors
of every style of native dwelling so affect the eyes of these people
that those organs of sight, in the middle-aged, are seldom without
signs of decay—showing some one of the various stages of granular
ophthalmia, as a rule.

Snow-blindness can be remedied and its pain abated by the use of
peculiar goggles, which the savages know well how to make and use,
but the greater evil of smoke-poison to the optic nerve is not
obviated at all by any action on their part, though it would be easy
so to do. They actually seem determined to live on so as to live as
wretchedly in the future as they have in the past.

Another singular characteristic of these Alaskan savages is the fact
that none of the many tribes have any medicine whatever; nor have
they any knowledge, so far as we can find out, of any medicinal herb
or mineral, and this again is the most extraordinary item of it all.
Every less or great indisposition is treated by a universal resort
to the sweat-bath; this is the sole specific, and this is the only
relief, except when the shaman is called in to worry the last hours
of the unhappy patient to death, or, perhaps, in rare cases, to
prolong his wretched existence for a longer period, by stimulating
an undue or extra nervous tension, which then causes, at times, the
usually languid and resigned sufferer to rally, as it were, before
the flame flickers out. Truly these people are predestinarians; they
are wonderful in their patience when suffering long and acutely, as
they lie stretched out or squatted in their gloomy, noisome hovels.

All the traders, and every vessel that sails in Alaskan waters, have
medicine-chests, and to their credit be it said that, as far as
they can, they do everything in their power to aid the natives when
sick; but the aborigines have not the right idea of taking physic,
since they appreciate nothing but forcible treatment—large doses of
something that acts immediately, or nothing at all. For instance, if
the trader gives an Indian a dose of Epsom-salts, the amount given
must be at least four or five times as much as would do for himself,
or there will be no effect on the patient whatever. Consequently,
the simplest remedies known are the only ones which the white man
dare give to these people, and they have, as a matter of course, very
little power to relieve them. During the last six or seven years a
violent form of typhoid-pneumonia has been wasting whole settlements
on the Kadiak and Aleutian coasts; the Creoles and the natives alike
yield at once to the disease, making scarcely an effort to save
themselves. The traders everywhere became seriously alarmed, as
the force of sea-otter hunters was rapidly decreasing, and exerted
themselves to their utmost in staying the epidemic, which seemed to
be carried from one village to the other in vessels and by canoes.
But the only medicines which can be used in the safe and successful
treatment of this complaint were regarded as unworthy of notice by
the suffering natives, who, not feeling immediately relieved after
taking them, would then totally ignore their further use.

Bad enough are the indigenous ills of the savages in Alaska. They
were, however, nothing to the horrors which followed the importation
of small-pox by the Russians in 1838-39. This terrible scourge swept
like wildfire up from its initial point at Sitka, over the whole
length of the Alaskan mainland and island coast, until it faded out
in the far north where it had nothing to prey upon. It actually
carried in its grim grasp one-half of the whole population then
living in that large area to an abrupt and violent death—several
districts were so afflicted that not a soul escaped—every human
being was exterminated; it was exceedingly fatal and virulent in the
Sitkan archipelago. We, knowing the filth and exposure of the lives
of these people, can readily understand how they fell down and were
crushed under the march of this disease.[55] As might be supposed the
Russians lost no time in thoroughly vaccinating the survivors; and
they have been faithfully followed, in this duty, by our own sailors
and traders who now live in the country.

Another imported evil, the measles, is almost as deadly up here among
the natives as small-pox. While it is a simple trouble arousing
no especial anxiety with us, yet in this climate, together with
the careless methods of life, it assumes a black form and becomes
malignant and fatal. The last extended attack took place principally
in the villages of the Kadiak district in the winter of 1874-75,
where it so alarmed and impressed the sojourning members of an
Icelandic Commission as to shake their desire to emigrate to that
region—at least, when they returned to their country, they were never
heard from in favor of Alaska.

A very natural question arises in this connection as to whether or
no the savages of Alaska will ever increase in numbers or diminish
to actual extermination as time advances. It appears very plain,
however, that the inhabitants of the Aleutian chain, the Peninsula,
and Cook’s Inlet are nearly as numerous to-day as they have been
ever since the small-pox decimation of 1838-39. But all authorities
agree in declaring that these people have never regained their
numerical force represented in the settlement prior to the advent of
the scourge which depopulated them. As to the Eskimo of the Bering
Sea coasts and the Koloshians of the Sitkan region, it seems well
established, from what we can learn, that they have regained their
former strength in part, and were they only provident they might
live by hundreds where they now exist in tens. Indifferent, wholly
indifferent when living, they are as apathetic when they face death.

After reading the quaint yet strong narrative of the ferocity and
strength of the Kaniags which Shellikov[56] has given us, it is
hard, indeed, to realize that bold pioneer’s feeling as we now
look in upon the steep slopes of Three Saints Bay, where, at the
head of it, within the sweep of a sand-spit, he erected the first
permanent white habitation ever planted on Kadiak with the aid of
the one hundred and fifty or sixty Russians who formed his company.
Here, to-day, we see a cluster of sod-walled barraboras and two
small, frame trading-houses, in which live one hundred and ninety
of the descendants of those hardy savages who terrified and nearly
annihilated the party of Shellikov one hundred years ago in this
very spot. Nothing else is left, for Baranov in 1796 removed the
post itself to the present site of Kadiak village. As we scan the
settlement of Three Saints we notice that the most prominent object
is the rough-hewn walls and thatched roof of an old Greek chapel,
in front of which is a rude trestle; from the upper frame of this a
bell hangs. Now a stooping figure emerges from the church door; he
seizes the clapper, or bell tongue, with both hands and swings it
vigorously. Promptly the villagers emerge from their huts; trotting
and shambling in single file, they all troop into the chapel.
Meanwhile the dusky sub-deacon still tolls and chimes away long after
every inhabitant has been gathered in. These men and women who, with
bowed heads and fervent crossings, bend and kneel as they enter
that place of worship, are the children of the “blood-thirsty and
implacable” Kaniags of whom Shellikov gave so vivid a picture to the
Empress of all the Russias just a century ago.

They are hunting sea-otters, however, just as they did then, and
living in precisely the same manner, save the variations of outward
demeanor and intercourse due to the teachings of the Greek Church.
But if you go among them and strive to have them tell you of the
heroic battle made by their ancestors on the Oogak “kekour,” you will
be rewarded by either a stupid stare of vacancy or a muttered “Bogue
ezniet” (God knows)!

The deep recess of Eagle Harbor, which lies between this point of
earliest Russian occupation and Kadiak village, affords the location
of another large native village, and its region is called the best
grazing ground in all Alaska. On the surf-beaten islets at the mouth
of the inlet a great many sea-lions are always found, and thus yield
to these hunters of Orlova a rich return in hides and sinews so
essential for the construction of the “bidarka.” A few families of
Creoles also reside here, who attend to a small herd of cattle, keep
fowls, and generally look after their commissions as middlemen in the
sea-otter revenues.

From the earliest colonial time to the present the little village
of Karlook, on the north side of the island, has been the busiest
spot in the country. Here is a salmon-fishing settlement right on
the coast at the mouth of a small river, where from the ancient
date of Russian occupation there has been a salt house and packing
establishment, in which the salt and dried fish used throughout the
entire Alaskan region was annually secured and prepared. To-day we
find two large canning establishments set up and sustained by San
Francisco merchants. The run of salmon into this river of Karlook
at the height of the season is so great that it interferes with the
free movement of canoes in crossing the stream; while the fishermen
of long experience in such matters say that twenty thousand barrels
of the red-meated flesh could be easily secured and packed away at
Karlook every summer and autumn. This salmon,[57] so abundant here,
is much smaller in average size than is the one common in Cook’s
Inlet—it does not average ten pounds in weight. But the rich red
color of its flesh is an object of the canner, who soon finds out
what public taste prefers.

The rough, rocky islands of Trinity, which constitute the extreme
southern limit of the Kadiak influence, are the chosen resort of
sea-lions and many of the rare sea-otter. Their capture lures a few
hardy natives to live in close juxtaposition to the favored haunts
of these much-prized animals, and they have a most extended hunting
range, reaching far away down to the westward and southward as low
as that remarkable barren island of Ookamok, where the celebrated
“Botany Bay,” of the old Russian régime, was established. That
lonely, isolated, desolate spot was the point where the old-time
criminals who were guilty of murder, arson, and other capital
offences, were always shipped, and left largely to their own devices
for a livelihood. They were literally entombed alive on this
islet, where nothing but moss and lichens and scant sphagnum could
exist upon the rough, rocky surfaces, where the soil was barely
appreciable—elsewhere there was none. But, strange to say, upon this
island great numbers of that lively little ground squirrel, Parry’s
marmot, were found, and still continue to be found, which were
characterized then as now by a peculiar bluish ground-tint to their
fur. This color is most popular and the one so highly prized in those
universal coats or cloaks used by the natives, and called “parkies”
by them.

Therefore the convicts were obliged, in order to get food of their
liking and many small luxuries, to diligently hunt these little
animals, which they did, not only for this reason alone, but in
self-defence to kill time as well.

In 1870 the descendants of the original convicts, and survivors of
recent transportation by Russian order, learned in some way or other
that they might lead a free life; so they then actually removed _en
masse_ in two large skin bidarrahs, loaded to the gunwales, and made
in safety that long sea-voyage which intervenes between Ookamok and
Kadiak Island. They had about one chance in a hundred of getting over
the route alive, for the least of those chronic gales and storms that
prevail here would have swept them to the bottom of the ocean had it
arisen in the time of their passage.[58]

A great expanse of tide-troubled and wind-tossed water is bound
between the northern coast of Kadiak and the volcanic ridges of the
mainland opposite. The Straits of Shellikov are fair to see on the
chart, but the mariner who has once sailed into them, lured there by
the false promise of a sheltered passage, never fails to avoid the
track afterward—he gladly makes the open detour of the broad Pacific.
That same precipitous mountain range which we have gazed upon as
it rose in sullen grandeur from the waters of Cook’s Inlet, still
fronts us, just as boldly, as it sweeps down the entire three hundred
miles of the peninsula, forming the southern coast of that land. The
sombre green and blue timber-cloak, so characteristic of its northern
range, is here replaced by the russet-grays and brownish-yellows of
that sphagnum and moss which now supplant the coniferous forests
of Cook’s Inlet, giving to the picture a much richer tone. Several
of these peaks in this chain of mountains thus extended down the
south coast of the peninsula are five and seven thousand feet in
altitude, their summits much eroded and broken. They hold in their
lofty solitudes a great many little glaciers, that, however, never
come down to the sea as they habitually do in the Choogatch and Elias
Alps. The feet of these peninsular mountains are washed by the direct
roll of the ocean waves, which dash into innumerable fiörds and
coves, studded with small, rocky islets and reefs awash. A beautiful
geological demonstration of the effect which surf-beating waves of
the ocean have made upon these mountains ages ago, is shown by the
plainly evident lines traced on their flanks fully one thousand feet
above the present level of the tide; and again, another terrace is
sculptured in parallel relief just above it, some five hundred feet
higher—a silent, but conclusive showing of the truth that the entire
Aleutian chain has been lifted out, at two successive periods, and up
from the sea.

This range of the peninsula is in itself quite peculiar from the
others which we have hitherto noticed thus far. It differs from their
physiognomy in one respect—the mountains and ridges themselves are
interrupted in one continuity down the line of their extension by
abrupt depressions. These passes, as they appear to be, are not so
in fact, but are either low or elevated marshy plains, which extend
clear across the peninsula; they create an impression in the mind of
the observer that at a not very remote period, geologically speaking,
the peaks of this peninsula range were then islands, and the marshy
portages, now elevated, were the bottoms of the straits then between
them. The natives are continually going to and fro between the waters
of Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean over these areas of swampy level,
engaged in hunting reindeer, bear, or in friendly intercourse with
the settlements. The most signal mountain groups on the peninsula
are those of Morshovie, of Belcovsky, and the Pavlosk volcanic
cluster—all joined by low, wet isthmian swales. The Shoomagin volcano
of Veniaminov is also a noteworthy peak. The peninsula is almost
bisected between Moller and Zakharov Bays, where the natives cross
from water to water in a half-day’s portage, and again at Pavlov
Harbor. All these isolated or nearly detached mountain sections have
a striking resemblance in every respect to the first large island,
Oonimak, that is separated from the mainland by the narrow and
unnavigable Krenitzin Straits.

The Bering Sea coast line of the great Alaskan Peninsula presents
a most radical contrast to that of the Pacific—the unbroken, rocky
abruptness and roughness there is here suddenly transformed right
at the very turn in the Straits of Krenitzin, to low, sandy reaches
and slightly elevated moorland tundra, which cover a wide interval
between the mountains and the waters of Bristol Bay and Bering Sea.
The huge masses of lava, of breccia and conglomerate tufa, that
everywhere rear their black-ebony shoulders above the Pacific
surf, disappear entirely and suddenly here. At Oogashik, where we
find a small settlement of Aleutes from Oonalashka, hunting walrus
and sea-lions, reindeer and bears, the first rocks of granite and
quartz-porphyries appear, every evidence of that character to the
westward being purely and essentially igneous.

[Illustration: The Walrus-hunting Village of Oogashik.]

Belcovsky is the metropolis of the Alaskan Peninsula. It is the chief
settlement of the sea-otter hunters, and the seat of the greatest
rivalry and traffic in that fur-trade, based wholly upon the costly
skins of the “bobear,”[59] and which constitutes the only traffic
worthy of mention in which the inhabitants of the entire Aleutian
and Kadiak districts can engage. Here we observe from our anchorage
a little town perched upon the summit of a bluff and clinging to the
flanks of a precipitous mountain that looms up behind it, usually
so wreathed in fog that its summit is seldom seen. Some two hundred
and sixty or seventy Aleutian sea-otter hunters and their families
are living here in an oddly contrasted hamlet of frame houses and
earthen barraboras; the freshly painted red roof and yellow walls
of a large, new church, in the tower of which a pleasing chime of
bells (but rudely struck, however), arrests the ear and the eye as
the most attractive single object within the limits of the place.[60]
The rival traders have run up their flags very smartly on the poles
that are erected before their doors as we swing to anchor in the
offing, and a great bustle is evident among the inhabitants when
our boat pulls away for the landing, which is a sheltered surf-eddy
right under the blackest and most forbidding of bluffs. Two rival
trading-firms have each erected a landing warehouse for the reception
of their stores upon the rocky beach where we step ashore. The
ascent to the village above is steep, but over a sloping slide of
mossy earth and rocks. A clear, brawling brook runs down through the
town, and we cross it by a little foot-bridge on our way. We observe
cord-wood piled upon the beach, which the traders have brought from
Kadiak, and several heaps of coal that had been brought up as ballast
from Vancouver’s Island. This fuel is regularly sold to the natives
here, who have none, unless it be a stray stick of drift-wood or the
“chicksa”[61] vines, which the women gather on the hill-sides.

Sea-otter hunting is the sole industry and topic of conversation,
for within a radius of fifty miles from the site of Belcovsky fully
one-half of the entire Alaskan catch of these valuable peltries
is secured. Were they not hopelessly improvident, shiftless and
extravagant, they would be a really wealthy community; but the
notoriety of the debauches here has become a by-word and a reproach
over the whole region between Cook’s Inlet and Attoo. Every dollar
of their surplus earnings is squandered in orgies, stimulated by the
vile “quass” or beer which they make. They dress, however, in suits
of every-day clothing, such as we wear ourselves, when lounging about
the village, and their women wear cloth garments and hats cut after a
fashion not very remote in San Francisco.

[Illustration: BELCOVSKY

Village of Aleutian Sea-otter Hunters, on the South Shore of the
Alaskan Peninsula. Viewed from the Schooner’s Anchorage]

The neatness of the villages which we have just visited at Kadiak
and Cook’s Inlet has no counterpart in Belcovsky, where, in spite of
its much greater trade and wealth, the filth and neglect everywhere
manifested among the barraboras and their interiors, are in harsh
and disagreeable contrast, while the taciturn, swelled heads of the
inmates speak volumes for the strength of that carousal during the
night prior to your arrival. A small frame house is pointed out as
the school, where it seems that those natives actually sustain a
teacher and send a large percentage of their children. It declares
that these people are not vicious at heart, though they cannot resist
intemperance. They read and write, however, principally in the
Aleutian dialect, using an alphabet prepared for their race by the
Greek Catholic missionaries in 1810-25. But, while the large capture
of sea-otters and consequent flow of the traders’ money and supplies
into this settlement brings these people greater wealth than that
showered elsewhere, yet the real physical misery of those natives of
Belcovsky proves the truth and points the moral of a very old saying
which declares that riches alone do not bring contentment to the
human mind, be it ever so high or ever so low.

A strong south wind is springing up, and you are told by the
skipper that you must get aboard as quickly as possible, for it is
sure destruction to his vessel if she lies long at anchor in the
offing, since the sunken rocks and open roadstead are dangerous.
The little schooner is rapidly put under way, “beating out” in the
freshening gale and headed for Oonga, which is the next settlement
in importance, about fifty miles east. Sailing-vessels never come
into Belcovsky, except those of rival traders, because it is the most
risky port that the mariner has to make in all these waters of Alaska.

Before leaving the sea-otter emporium it is well to call attention
to the fact that at a small indentation of this same peninsula,
twenty-nine miles to the northward, is a settlement made up entirely
of the poor relatives of these Belcovsky people, some forty or fifty
souls, who, however, take a great pride in their superior health
and morality. They have a little chapel, and enjoy much better
opportunities for hunting bear and reindeer. These animals, the
reindeer leading, always followed by the bears, come down at regular
intervals in large herds from a great moorland to the northeast,
travelling on a well-beaten “road” or track, which leads clear to
the westernmost end of the peninsula, where those bovine road-makers
plunge into and cross the narrow Krenitzin Straits to renew their
land march and scatter all over the rugged and extended tundra and
mountain sides of Oonimak Island.

With a line of dissipation and general misery which the rich commerce
of Belcovsky causes in that settlement, we ought not to fail to
include the Protassov or Morserovie village which is located on the
far end of the peninsula—the extreme west end, where a much smaller
community exists, though equally opulent and just as dissolute. Here
is a settlement of nearly a hundred natives, who have an annual
average income of about $1,000 to each family. Yet, in spite of
this small fortune in such a region, when visited by an agent of
the Government in 1880, they shocked him by their aspect of abject
physical misery and that excessive debauchery which had stamped them
more wretchedly than it had even their cousins of Belcovsky. These
people, in addition to their fine natural advantages of position
for hunting sea-otters, enjoy a location in close juxtaposition to
walrus-banks and sea-lion spits and islands elsewhere on the Bering
shore, where they find these pinnipeds in great numbers at certain
seasons of the year. The flesh, skins, blubber, and sinews are both
articles of essential use and of luxury to them. Also, the same
reindeer and brown-bear road, which we have just noticed, passes
close by the village, so that those desiderata of food-supply and
trade are very accessible.

Near by the village, less than half a mile, as if planned especially
by a merciful providence, there are a number of hot sulphur-springs
which would afford the diseased and sickly natives infinite relief,
if they could only be induced to make the necessary exertion to go to
them and bathe therein. Yet this officer of the Government declares
that not one of them could be induced by him to try the efficacy of
the healing waters—“It was too far to walk!”

When our little vessel comes to anchor in Delarov Harbor, Oonga
Island, of the Shoomagin group, we see a flag flying from the summit
of a grassy knoll which caps an irregular but bluffy headland. The
village lies directly over, and under the shelter of that ridge,
and it opens quickly on our view as we pull around the point and
land with our dingy in a deeply indented cove upon a smooth sand and
pebbly beach. The town is just above, in its full extent, but it is a
thickly clustered mass of fourteen frame houses, twenty or twenty-one
barrabkies, and the ever-present church. It does not make near as
much of a spread as does Belcovsky, although it is quite as large.
This is the chief codfishing rendezvous for the white fishermen who
annually come up to the Shoomagin banks from San Francisco in six or
seven small schooners. The location and surroundings of the little
hamlet are exceedingly picturesque, but, unfortunately, though in a
somewhat less disagreeable extent, the people here are also given
over to those Belcovsky orgies, inasmuch as they, too, are great and
successful otter-hunters, and have an income of over six hundred
dollars for each family, which wealth seems to demoralize far more
than it comforts their existence.

The strong southerly and southeast winds that prevail here during
the summer season are the most severe, and, strange to say, they
are the ones which are the coldest and the chilliest—a north wind
is always warmer! These south winds bring to Oonga its foggiest
weather, its heaviest rains, and raise such a ground swell in the
village harbor that the craft therein are often compelled to go to
sea for safety, and it always drives the fishermen from the banks
outside. Those cod-banks are best, off the southerly range of the
islands, and hence, when a southeaster blows, the schooners are
on a most dangerous lee-shore. They seldom ever take the risks of
riding out such a gale. Old skippers who have fished for forty years
on the Grand Banks and “Georges,” for the Gloucester and Boston
markets, declare that the fury of the sea and wind is greater off the
Shoomagins in a southeaster than anything of the kind experienced on
the Atlantic. These wild gales become stronger, loaded with sleet and
snow, as winter approaches, so that by the middle or end of November,
until next April, all sailing-craft are practically driven from the
fishing grounds.

The same method of catching cod is employed here as practised by our
Gloucester men, in only one respect, however: the long, buoyed lines
are not set out and regularly under-run, but instead, small boats and
dories, with two men in each, are put off from the schooners, and
fish with hand-lines, using what is known as “11-inch” and “12-inch”
hooks. Halibut, and “squid,” or cuttle-fish, make the best bait.
A good, smart man, if he is fortunate, will haul up four hundred
codfish in a day’s steady labor, but this is an extraordinary streak
of luck. An average of three hundred every fair day is one that
gives the highest satisfaction. These fish are taken on board of the
schooner, salted, and not touched again until the cargo is broken
for re-drying and curing at several points chosen for that purpose
in California. At first our people were disposed to hire the natives
up here to do this hand-line fishing, and they did so; but a patient
trial has demonstrated the fact that it pays to employ our own men
instead, even at greatly advanced wages. The Aleutes are docile,
and do exceedingly well in spurts, but they do not like to work in
steady, well-sustained periods of any great length at a time.

Were it not for the intense physical discomfort of the rapidly
recurring fog, sleet, and rain-laden gales, Oonga would undoubtedly
be a site well chosen for a neat New England fishing village. Many
of those white men now employed up there in the cod-fishery declare
that they would bring their wives and children into the country,
to permanently settle, if they thought that they could be happy
under the conditions of climate which prevail. But they argue that
where they themselves cannot peacefully exist the year round, it
would be idle to suppose that a civilized settlement could be well
established. We will find, however, quite a number of genial,
sociable fellows, men of our race, who are well educated, and who
have had excellent opportunities, and who to-day are roaming here,
there, and everywhere in Alaska, hunting, fishing, and trading, or
prospecting. They appear to be entirely happy, not a bit cynical,
and never express the slightest desire to return with us to the
world which they have left behind them voluntarily. Alaska to them
is a perfect Mecca of peace, and they have no desire to see it
changed. They unite usually in saying that their wants are few,
easily supplied, and they scarcely remember what care was—it does not
trouble them now.

The cod-fishermen do not make their working headquarters in this
village, but across, over the bay on Popov Islet, at a spot which is
called Pirate Cove. They are not annoyed by idle villagers there,
and are also somewhat nearer to the fishing-resorts which are just
outside. They are most likely not far from that spot where Bering
landed, August 30, 1741, to bury one of his seamen named Shoomagin,
and to refill his water-casks. The exact locality, or even the
precise islet of the many that form this Shoomagin group, on which
the then sick and sadly demoralized explorer and his crew interred
the remains of their dead comrade, will never be satisfactorily
established; the cross of wood set up was immediately pulled down,
after his departure, by the natives, who were then decidedly
hostile, and who eyed him and his vessel with unaffected dislike and
apprehension.[62] When the _St. Peter_, six days later, hauled off
from those islands and turned her prow for Kamchatka, perhaps that
gloomy, timid Dane commanding her may have had an astral premonition
of the wreck of this vessel, which soon followed—and his own death
too, in a self-made sand grave beneath the black shadows of the
bluffs at “Kommandor”—this may have caused him to earn that reproach
which has been so lavishly laid upon his conduct of a most remarkable
and disastrous voyage.

The Shoomagins are all bold and bluffy, with high uplands and lofty
ridges; on Oonga the most elevated summits are to be seen. Bare of
timber, but covered with sphagnum and mosses and clumps of dwarfed
crab-apples and willows, they stand as rock-ribbed break-waters
against the full sweep of the mighty uninterrupted roll of a vast
ocean. The surf that dashes foaming and booming upon their firm
foundations is of unrivalled force, and fear-inspiring.

Oonga Island has also been the base of a very extended and thorough
attempt to develop a large vein of coal which is found cropping out
on the face of a bluff in a small inlet of its north shore. The
oldest coal-mine in the region of Alaska is located in Cook’s Inlet
near its mouth, at a spot still indicated on maps as Coal Harbor.
Here the Russians, eager to be able to obtain fuel for the use of
their steam-vessels, began, in 1852, a most active and systematic
series of mining operations; they brought machinery and ran it by
steam-power; experienced German miners were engaged to superintend
and direct a large force of Muscovitic laborers sent up from Sitka.
In 1857 the work had been so energetically pushed that shafts had
been sunk, and a drift run into the vein for a distance of one
thousand seven hundred feet; during this period, and three following
years, two thousand seven hundred tons of coal were mined, the
value of which was forty-six thousand rubles, but the result was
a net loss. The thickness of the vein was found to vary from nine
to twelve feet, and its extent was practically unlimited. But the
Russians found out then, as our people at Oonga did afterward, that
this Alaskan lignite was utterly unfit for use in the furnaces of the
steamers—that it was so highly charged with sulphur as to burn like a
flash and eat out, fuse and warp the grate-bars—even melting down the
smoke-stacks! Steam-vessels now bring their own coal with them from
San Francisco, Puget Sound or Nanaimo, or have it sent up from there
by sailing-tenders to depots previously designated.[63]

As we leave the sheltering bluffs of Oonga, our course seems to
be laid directly south; so much so, that for once we express our
surprise to the skipper, who, feeling sure that he understands our
dread of losing time in reaching Oonalashka, spreads out his chart
and calls us to the table. A moment’s inspection shows the wisdom of
the roundabout course, for a forest of rough, rocky islets studs the
ocean directly to the west and many to the south. To sail through the
intricate passages of the Chernaboors and the reefs of Saanak would
be to invite certain destruction. Therefore, as we make a long detour
to clear the path of our progress from all danger, we will give the
reader some interesting facts relative to the chase of the sea-otter,
which is the sole object of those natives who hunt in this district.


FOOTNOTES:

[47] With the exception of Prince of Wales Island in the Sitkan
archipelago, Kadiak is the largest Alaskan island. There is not much
difference between these two islands in landed area; the former,
however, is the bigger.

[48] These “galiots” where characteristically named by Shellikov’s
spiritual advisers, viz.: _The Three Saints_; _The Archangel Michael
and Simeon, the Friend of God_; and _Anna the Prophetess_. Bad
weather and poor navigation caused the vessels to separate, so that
Shellikov was compelled to winter on Bering Island; but during the
following year the little fleet was reorganized, and it reached
Oonalashka, where repairs again were necessary.

[49] Shellikov says that this man returned the following day and
refused to leave the Russian camp; that he not only accompanied and
served him in all his voyages thereafter, but often warned the party
of hostile ambuscades and hidden dangers by land and sea.

[50] Cleanliness and comfort, however, were but little regarded by
the Russian fur-traders, who gave their surroundings of residence
no sanitary attention whatever. Even Baranov himself was supremely
indifferent, and when the Imperial Commissioner, Resanov, called
on him at Sitka in 1805, the chief manager of the Russian American
Company was living in a mere hut, “in which the bed was often
afloat,” and a leak in the roof too small a matter to notice!

[51] On Wood Island, however, a small field of rye, oats, or barley,
is planted every year for the use of the horses kept there; here a
plough is employed. These cereals never ripen, but are cut green, and
fed as fodder. Corn is a total failure everywhere, even as fodder. No
cereals have been ripened in Alaska; the attempt, however, has been
made a thousand times.

[52] The first cattle brought into Alaska were taken to Kadiak in
1795, and from this central station the stock was distributed—so that
by 1833 it had increased to a herd of over two hundred and twenty.
At the present writing it is very doubtful whether there are sixty
head in the whole region. Every season it is the habit of traders and
others to send upon steamers as they go, a few head of beef-steers,
which are turned out at Sitka, Kadiak, and Oonalashka to fatten
during the summer, and then are slaughtered when winter ensues. Pigs
thrive here, but live too much on the sea-refuse for the good of
their flesh. So they are not favored.

[53] The church records show that the people of the Kadiak district
have decreased as follows: 1796—6,510; 1818—3,430; 1819—3,252;
1822—2,819; 1863—2,217; 1880—1,813. Small-pox, measles, and other
imported diseases have caused this.

[54] The little girls, as a rule, receive the earliest garments,
generally nothing but a cotton shift and a torn blanket.

[55] La Pérouse, who touched on this coast in 1786 at Litooya Bay,
under the flanks of Mount Fairweather, declares that he saw marks of
the small-pox on the savages who were there then; most likely what he
saw was the scar of scrofulous sores. In 1843-44 another small-pox
outbreak on the Aleutian Islands took place, but the people had been
vaccinated in the meantime, and nothing serious came of it.

[56] Grigoria Shellikova Stransvovania, or Shellikov’s Journeys, from
1783 to 1787. Published, St. Petersburg, 1792-93. 12mo. 2 vols.

[57] _Oncorynchus nerka._ The fishing is done entirely with seines,
floating across the river twenty to twenty-five fathoms in length,
three fathoms in depth, with a three-and-a-half-inch mesh. The whole
native population is also employed in this fishery during the summer.

[58] The true reason for this hegira of the convicts is a most
amusing one. It is as follows: Shortly after the transfer, in 1869,
General Thomas made an extended inspection of the Alaskan posts on
a steamer detailed for that work. He was accompanied by a certain
representative of a Protestant Board of Missions. The vessel
accidentally ran across Ookamok Island when making her way to the
westward from Kadiak and touched there, where, ignorant of the fact
that the people were convicts and their descendants, moved by their
pitiful tales of privation, a large amount of ship’s stores were
landed upon the beach to satisfy the “suffering” natives: they ate,
drank, and were merry, and lived sumptuously for several months
afterward. But an end to these good things came at last; the reaction
in the settlement was terrible. So, urged by its pangs, the penal
colony determined to pack up and move to the nearest point possible,
where, when living, they could again meet, and often too, their kind
benefactors! Hence that startling journey to find those generous
Americans. Lately, however, the traders at Kadiak have taken many of
these people back to Ookamok, where they begged to be allowed to go
and end their lives. This is the most desolate island, perhaps, in
all the range of that vast Aleutian archipelago.

[59] Literally “beaver.” The Russians always called this animal the
“sea-beaver,” but shortened from “morskie-bobear” to the simple name.

[60] This church was finished in 1882—begun in 1880, it cost $7,000,
every cent being freely contributed by the natives.

[61] Trailing tendrils of the _Empetrum nigrum_.

[62] From the record made in the ship’s log it would seem most likely
that he landed on either Popov Island, or else Nogai; the description
will fit either locality.

[63] Captain F. W. Beechey in his voyage of the _Blossom_, 1825-27,
discovered and located at Cape Beaufort, in the Arctic Ocean and
on the Alaskan coast, a vein of coal; this has been subsequently
revisited and mined to a small extent by the officers of the Revenue
marine cutters of our Government, who pronounce it very satisfactory
for steaming purposes. Its situation, however, is so remote that it
has no economic significance, and no harbor is there for a vessel of
any kind.




CHAPTER VII.

THE QUEST OF THE OTTER.

  Searching for the Otter.—Exposure and Danger in Hunting
  Sea-otters.—The Fortitude, Patience, and Skill of the
  Captor.—Altasov and his Band of Cruel Cossacks.—Feverish Energy of
  the Early Russian Sea-otter Traders.—Their Shameful Excesses.—Greed
  for Sea-otter Skins Leads the Russians to Explore the Entire
  Alaskan Coast, 1760-1780.— Great Numbers of Sea-otters when they
  were First Discovered in Alaska.—Their Partial Extermination in
  1836-40.—More Secured during the Last Five Years than in all the
  Twenty Years Preceding.—What is an Otter?—A Description of its
  Strange Life.—Its Single Skin sometimes Worth $500.—The Typical
  Sea-otter Hunter.—A Description of Him and his Family.—Hunting the
  Sea-otter the Sole Remunerative Industry of the Aleutians.—Gloomy,
  Storm-beaten Haunts of the Otter.—Saanak, the Grand Rendezvous
  of the Hunters.—The “Surround” of the Otter.—“Clubbing” the
  Otter.—“Netting” the Otter.—“Surf-shooting” Them.


Little does my lady think, as she contemplates the rich shimmer of
the ebony sea-otter trimming to her new seal-skin sacque, that the
quest of the former has engaged thousands of men during the last
century in exhaustive deeds of hazardous peril and extreme daring,
and does to-day—that the possession of the sea-otter’s coat calls
for more venturesome labor and inclement exposure on the part of the
hunter than is put forth in the chase of any other fur-bearing or
economic animal known to savage or civilized man. No wonder that it
is costly; what abundant reason that it should be rare!

The rugged, storm-beaten resorts of the sea-otter, its wariness and
cunning, and the almost incredible fortitude and patience, skill and
bravery, of its semi-civilized captor, have so impressed the writer
that he feels constrained to rearrange his notes and touch up his
field-sketches made upon the subject-matter of this chapter several
years ago, while cruising in Alaskan waters, so that he may give to
the readers of this work the first full or fair idea of the topic
ever put into type and engraving.

Feodor Altasov, with a band of Russian Cossacks[64] and Tartar
“promishlyniks,” were the pioneers of civilized exploration in
Eastern Siberia, and finally arrived at the head of the great
Kamchatkan Peninsula, toward the end of the seventeenth century.
Here they found, first of all their race, the rare, and to them
the exceedingly valuable, fur of the sea-otter. The animal bearing
this pelage then was abundant on that coast, and not prized above
the seals and sea-lions by the natives who displayed their peltries
to the ardent Russians, and who in barter asked little or nothing
extra from the white men in return. The feverish eagerness of
the Slavonians, quickly displayed, to secure these choice skins,
so excited the natives as to result very soon in the practical
extirpation of the “kahlan,” as they termed it, from the entire
region of the Kamschadales. The greedy fur-hunters then rifled graves
and stripped the living of every scrap of the precious object of
their search, and, for the time being, searched in vain for other
haunts of the otter.

Along by the close of 1743, the survivors of Bering’s second voyage
of exploration and Tscherikov brought back to Petropaulovsk an
enormous number of skins which they had secured on the Aleutian and
Commander Islands, until then unknown to the Kamchatkans or the
Russians. In spite of the rude appliances and scanty resources at
the command of these eager men, they fitted out rude wooden shallops
and boldly pushed themselves over dark and tempestuous seas to
the unknown and rumored resorts of the sea-otter. In this manner
and by this impulse the discovery of the Aleutian Islands and the
mainland of Alaska was fully determined, between 1745 and 1763. In
this enterprise some twenty-five or thirty different individuals
and companies, with quite a fleet of small vessels and hundreds of
men, were engaged; and so thorough and energetic were they in their
search and stimulated capture of the coveted animal, that, along by
the period of 1772-74, the catch of this unhappy beast had dwindled
down from thousands and tens of thousands at first, to hundreds and
tens of hundreds at last. When the Russian traders opened up the
Aleutian Islands they found the natives commonly wearing sea-otter
cloaks, which they willingly parted with at first for trifles, not
placing any especial value upon the otter, as they did upon the
bodies of the hair-seal and sea-lion, the flesh and skins of which
were vastly more palatable to them and serviceable. But the fierce
competition and raised bidding of the greedy traders soon fired the
savages into hot and incessant hunting. During the first decade or
two of pursuit the numbers of these animals taken all along the
Aleutian chain and down the entire northwest coast as far as Oregon,
were so great that they appear fabulous in comparison with the
exhibit made now.[65]

The result of this warfare upon sea-otters, with ten hunters
then where there is one to-day, was not long delayed. Everywhere
throughout the whole coast-line frequented by them, a rapid and
startling diminution set in; so much so, that it soon became
difficult to get from places where a thousand were easily taken, as
many as twenty-five or thirty. When the region known as Alaska came
into our possession, the Russians were taking between four and five
hundred sea-otters annually from the Aleutian Islands and South of
the Peninsula and Kadiak, with perhaps one hundred and fifty more
from Cook’s Inlet, Yakootat, and the Sitkan district, the Hudson Bay
traders and others getting some two hundred more from the coasts
of Queen Charlotte’s and Vancouver’s Islands, and Gray’s Harbor,
Washington Territory.

Now during the last year, instead of less than seven hundred skins
taken as above specified, our traders have secured more than four
thousand. This immense difference is not due to the fact of a
proportionate increase of sea-otters—that is not evident—but it
is due to the keen competition of our people, who have reanimated
the organization anew of old-fashioned hunting-parties, after the
style of Baranov’s bateaux. As matters are now conducted, the
hunting-parties do not let the sea-otter have a day’s rest during the
whole year: parties relieve each other in orderly, steady succession,
and a continual warfare is maintained. Stimulated by our people,
this persistence is rendered still more deadly to the kahlan by the
use of rifles of our best make, which, in the hands of the young and
ambitious natives, in spite of the warnings of their old sires, must
result in the virtual extermination of that marine beast.[66]

This is the more important because all the world’s supply comes from
the North Pacific and Bering Sea, and upon its continuance between
four thousand and five thousand semi-civilized natives of Alaska
depend absolutely and wholly for the means by which they are enabled
to live beyond simple barbarism; its chase and the proceeds of its
capture furnish the only employment offered by their country, and
the revenue by which they can feed and clothe themselves as they do,
and, by so doing, appear to all intents and purposes much superior
to their Indian neighbors of Southeastern Alaska, or their Eskimo
cousins of Bering Sea.

The sea-otter, like the fur-seal, is another striking illustration
of an animal long known and highly prized in the commercial world,
yet respecting the life and habits of which nothing definite has been
ascertained or published. The reason for this is obvious, for, save
the natives who hunt them, no one properly qualified to write has
ever had an opportunity of observing the _Enhydra_ so as to study it
in a state of nature, inasmuch as of all the shy, sensitive beasts
upon the capture of which man sets any value whatever, this creature
is the most keenly on the alert and difficult to obtain; and, also,
like the fur-seal, it possesses, to us, the enhancing value and
charm of being principally confined in its geographical distribution
to our own shores of the Northwest. A truthful account of the
strange, vigilant life of the sea-otter, and the hardships and the
perils of its human hunters, would surpass, if we could give it all,
the novelty and the interest of a most weird and attractive work of
fiction.

[Illustration: The Kahlan or Sea-otter.]

The sea-otter is widely removed from close relationship to our common
land-otter. Unlike this latter example, it seldom visits the shore,
and then only when the weather is abnormally stormy at sea. Instead
of being a fish-eater, like _Lutra canadensis_, it feeds almost
wholly upon clams, crabs, mussels, and echinoderms, or “sea-urchins,”
as might be inferred from its peculiar flat molars of dentition. It
is, when adult, an animal that will measure from three and a half to
four and a half feet in length from nose to root of its short, stumpy
tail. The general contour of the body is strongly suggestive of the
beaver, but the globose shape and savage expression of the creature’s
head are peculiar to it alone. The small, black, snaky eyes gleam
with the most wild and vindictive light when the owner is startled;
the skin lies over its body in loose folds, so that when taken hold
of in lifting the carcass out of the water, it is slack and draws up
like the elastic hide on the nape of a young dog. This pelt, when
removed in skinning, is cut only at the posteriors, and the body is
drawn forth, turning the skin inside out, and in that shape it is
partially stretched, air-dried, and is so lengthened by this process
that it gives the erroneous impression of having been taken from an
animal the frame of which was at least six feet in length, with the
proportionate girth and shape of a mink or weasel.

There is no sexual dissimilarity in color or size, and both male
and female manifest the same intense shyness and aversion to man,
coupled with the greatest solicitude for their young, which they
bring into existence at all seasons of the year, for the natives
capture young pups in every calendar month. As the hunters never have
found the mothers and their offspring on the rocks or beaches, they
affirm that the birth of a sea-otter takes place on the numerous
floating kelp-beds which cover large areas of the ocean south of the
Aleutian chain and off the entire expanse of the northwest coast.
Here, literally “rocked in the cradle of the deep,” the young kahlan
is brought forth and speedily inured to the fury of fierce winds and
combing seas. Upon these algoid rafts the Aleutes often surprise them
sporting one with the other, for they are said to be very playful,
and one old hunter told the writer that he had watched a sea-otter
for half an hour as it lay upon its back in the rollers and tossed a
bit of sea-weed up into the air from paw to paw, apparently taking
great delight in catching it before it fell into the water.

The sea-otter mother clasps her young to her breast between her
fore-paws, and stretches herself at full length on her back in the
ocean when she desires to sleep, and she suckles it also in this
position. The pup cannot live without its mother, though frequent
attempts have been made by hunters to raise them, for the little
animals are very often captured alive and wholly uninjured; but, like
some other animals, they seem to be so deeply imbued with fear or
dislike of man that they invariably die of self-imposed starvation.
The enhydra is not polygamous, and it is seldom, indeed, that the
natives, when out in search of it, ever see more than one animal at a
time. The flesh is very unpalatable, highly charged with a rank taste
and odor. A single pup is born, as the rule, about fifteen inches in
length and provided with a natal coat of coarse, brownish, grizzled
hair and fur, the head and nape being rather brindled, and the nose
and cheeks whitish-gray, with the roots of the hair everywhere much
darker next to the skin. From this poor condition of fur at birth
the otter gradually improves as it grows older, shading darker,
finer, thicker, and longer by the time they are two years of age.
Then they rapidly pass into prime skins of the most lustrous softness
and ebony shimmering, though the creature is not full-grown until
it has passed its fourth season. The rufous-white nose and mustache
of the pup are not changed in the pelage of the adult, but remain
constant through life. The whiskers are short, white, and fine. So
much for the biology of the sea-otter. Now we turn to the still more
interesting one of its captors.

The typical hunter is an Aleutian Islander or a native of Kadiak.
He is not a large man—rather below our standard—say five feet
five or six inches in stature. There are notable exceptions to
this rule, for some of them are over six feet, while others are
veritable dwarfs—resemble gnomes more than anybody else. He wears
the peculiar expression of a Japanese more than any other. His hair
is long, coarse, and black; face is broad; high, prominent cheek
bones, with an insignificant flattened nose; the eyes are small,
black, and set wide in his head under faintly marked eyebrows, just
a faint suggestion of Mongolian obliquity; the lips are full, the
mouth large, and the lower jaw square and prognathous; the ears
are small, likewise his feet and hands; his skin in youth is often
quite fair, with a faint flush in the cheeks, but soon weathers into
a yellowish-brown that again seams into deep flabby wrinkles with
middle and old age. He has a full, even set of good teeth, while his
body, as might be inferred from his habit of living so much of his
life in the cramped “bidarka”[67] or skin boat, is well developed
in the chest and arms, but decidedly sprung at the knees, and he is
slightly unsteady in his pigeon-toed gait.

The mate of this hunter was when young a very good-looking young
woman, who never could honestly be called handsome, yet she was then
and is now very far from being hideous or repulsive. She partakes,
somewhat mellowed down, of the same characteristics which we have
just sketched in the face and form of her husband. As they live
to-day, they are married and sustain this relation, sheltered in
their own hut or “barrabkie.” They have long, long ago ceased to
dress themselves in skins, and now appear in store clothes and cotton
gowns, retaining, however, their characteristic water-proof garment
known as the “_kamlayka_,” and the odd boots known as “_tarbosars_,”
in which they are always enveloped in wet weather, or whenever
they venture out to sea in their bidarka. They dress themselves up
on Sundays, when at home, in boots and shoes and stockings of San
Francisco make. He wears a conventional “beaver” or plug hat often,
and she affects a gay worsted hood, although, on account of the
steady persistence of high winds, he prefers a smart marine-band
cap, such as our soldiers on fatigue-duty wear. He is, however,
inclined to be quite sober, not giving much attention to display or
color, as is the habit of semi-civilized people everywhere else; but
he does lavish the greatest care and labor over the decoration of
his bidarka, and calls upon his wife to ornament the seams of his
water-repellant kamlayka and tarbosars with the gayest embroidery,
and tufts of bright hair and feathers, and lines of cunning
goose-quill work.

Mrs. Kahgoon, however, is a true woman. She naturally desires all the
bright ribbons and cheap jewellery which the artful trader exhibits
to her longing eyes in his store, that stands so near and so handy
to her barrabkie, and her means only limit the purchase which she
makes of these prized desiderata. She dresses her hair in braids,
as a rule, and twists them up behind. She seldom wears a bonnet or
hat, but has a handkerchief, generally of cotton, sometimes silken,
always tied over her head, and when she goes, as she often does, out
to call on a neighboring spinster or madam, or to the store, she
throws a small woollen shawl over head and shoulders, holding it
drawn together under her chin by one hand. As we have intimated, she
dresses principally in cotton fabrics, with skirts, overskirts, white
stockings, etc.; but when she was a girl, and much more than that,
she usually went, with her legs and feet bare, into the teeth of
biting winds and over frosty water and wood-paths.

[Illustration: A Barrabkie.

(_The characteristic dwelling of Aleutes and Kadiakers._)]

The domestic life of this hunter and his wife is all bound up
within the shelter of their “barrabkie.” This hut or house of the
Aleutian hunter is half under ground, or, in other words, it is an
excavation on the village site of a piece of earth ten or fifteen
feet square, three or four feet deep, which is laid back up and
over upon a wooden frame or whalebone joisting, which is securely
built up within and above this excavation, so that a rafter-ceiling
is made about six feet in the clear from the earthen floor. A wall
of peaty sod is piled up around outside, two and three feet thick.
The native architect enters this dwelling through a little hall
patched on to that leeward side from the winds prevalent in the
vicinity. The door is low, even for Kahgoon, and he stoops as he
opens and closes it. If he has been a successful hunter, he will
have the floor laid with boards secured from the trader; but if he
has been unlucky, then nothing more to stand upon than the earth
is afforded. This barrabkie is divided into two rooms, not wholly
shut out one from the other, by a half-partition of mats, timber, or
some hanging curtains, which conceal the bedroom or “spalniah” from
the direct gaze of the living and cook-room. They are very fond of
comfortable beds, having adopted the feather-ticks of the Russians.
Soap is an expensive luxury, so Kahgoon’s wife is economical of
its use for washing in her laundry; and, though she may desire to
spread over her sleeping couch the counterpane and fluted shams of
our own choice, she has nothing better than a colored quilt which
the traders bring up here especially to meet this demand. A small
deal-table, two or three empty cracker-boxes from the store, and
a rude bench or two constitute all the furniture, while a little
cast-iron stove, recently introduced, stands in one corner, and the
heating and cooking is created and performed thereon. The table-ware
of a hunter’s wife and the household utensils do not require much
room or a large cupboard for their reception. A few large white
crockery cups, plates, and saucers, with gaudy red and blue designs,
and several pewter spoons, will be found in sufficient quantity to
entertain with during seasons of festivity. She manifests a marked
dislike to tin dishes, probably due to the fact that it is necessary
to take care of this ware, or it rusts out. Then, above all the
strange odors which arise here in this close, hot little room, we
easily detect the smell of kerosene, and, sure enough, it is the oil
which is burned in the lamp.

Such a barrabkie built and furnished in this style and occupied by
Kahgoon, his wife, two or three children, and a relative or so, is a
warm and a thoroughly comfortable shelter to him and his, as long as
he keeps it in good repair. It is true that the air seems to us, as
we enter, oppressively close, and, in case of sickness, is positively
foul; yet on the whole the Alaskan is very comfortable. He never
stores up much food against the morrow—the sea and its piscine booty
is too near at hand. Whatever he may keep over he does not have in a
cellar, but hangs it up outside of his door on an elevated trestle
which he calls a “laabas,” beyond the reach of the village dogs,
while there is no thought of theft from the hands of his neighbors.
He lives chiefly upon fresh fish—cod, halibut, salmon and other
varieties, which he secures the year round as they rotate in the sea
and streams. He varies that diet according to the success of his
hunting, by buying at the store tea, sugar, hard-bread, crackers,
flour and divers canned fruits or vegetables. Nature sends him in
season the flesh and eggs of sea-fowl, geese, ducks, and a few land
birds like willow-grouse.

In this fashion the sea-otter hunter appears to us as we view him
now; his children come, grow up, and branch out, to repeat his life
and doing, as they show themselves capable of living by their own
exertions as hunters and fishermen. He is a peaceful, affectionate,
and thoroughly undemonstrative parent, a kind husband, and he imposes
no burden upon his wife that he does not fully share, unless he
becomes a drunkard, when, in that event, a sad change is made in
the man. He gets drunk, and his wife too, by taking sugar, flour,
and dried-apples, rice or hops, if he can get them, in certain
proportions, puts them into a barrel or cask, with water, bungs it
up and waits for fermentation to do its work. Before it has worked
entirely clear he draws off a thick, sour liquid which intoxicates
him most effectually—he beats his spouse and runs her and children
from the house, smashes things, and for weeks afterward the barrabkie
is desolate and open as the result of such orgies. If he continues,
his health is shattered, he rapidly fails as a hunter, and he
suffers the pangs of poverty with his family. It is said upon good
authority that the brewing of this liquor was taught to these people
by the earliest Russian arrivals in their country, who made it as an
anti-scorbutic; but it certainly has not proved to be a blessing in
disguise, for it has brought upon them nearly all the misery that
they are capable of understanding.

In concluding this brief introduction to the life of the
otter-hunter, we may fitly call attention to the fact that Kahgoon
and his family are devout members of the Greek Catholic Church, as
are all of his people, without a single exception, between Attoo and
Kadiak Islands—nearly five thousand souls to-day, living in scattered
hamlets all along between.

The subtle acumen displayed by the sea-otter in the selection of
its habitat can only be fully appreciated by him who has visited
the chosen land, reefs, and water of its resort. It is a region so
gloomy, so pitilessly beaten by wind and waves, by sleet, rain and
persistent fog, that the good Bishop Veniaminov, when he first came
among the natives of the Aleutian Islands, ordered the curriculum
of hell to be omitted from the church breviary, saying, as he did
so, that these people had enough of it here on this earth! The fury
of hurricane gales, the vagaries of swift and intricate currents
in and out of the passages, the eccentricities of the barometer,
the blackness of the fog enveloping all in its dark, damp shroud,
so alarm and discomfit the white man that he willingly gives up
the entire chase of the sea-otter to that brown-skinned Aleut, who
alone seems to be so constituted as to dare and wrestle with these
obstacles through descent from his hardy ancestors, who, in turn,
have been centuries before him engaged just as he is to-day.

So we find the sea-otter-hunting of the present, as it was in
the past, entirely confined to the natives, with white traders
here and there vieing in active competition one with the other in
bidding for the quarry of those dusky captors. The traders erect
small frame dwellings as stores in the midst of the otter-hunting
settlements, places like Oonalashka, Belcovsky, Oonga, and Kadiak
villages, which are the chief resorts of population and this trade
in Alaska. They own and employ small schooners, between thirty and
one hundred tons burthen, in conveying the hunting parties to and
from these hamlets above mentioned as they go to and return from
the sea-otter hunting-grounds of Saanak and the Chernaboor rocks,
where five-sixths of all the sea-otters annually taken in Alaska are
secured. Why these animals should evince so much partiality for this
region between the Straits of Oonimak and the west end of Kadiak
Island is somewhat mysterious, but, nevertheless, it is the great
sea-otter hunting-ground of the country. Saanak Island, itself, is
small, with a coast-circuit of less than eighteen miles. Spots of
sand-beach are found here and there, but the major portion of the
shore is composed of enormous water-worn boulders, piled up high by
the booming surf. The interior is low and rolling, with a central
ridge rising into three hills, the middle one some eight hundred feet
high. There is no timber here, but an abundant exhibit of grasses,
mosses, and sphagnum, with a score of little fresh-water ponds in
which multitudes of ducks and geese are found every spring and fall.
The natives do not live upon the island, because the making of fires
and scattering of food-refuse, and other numerous objectionable
matters connected with their settlement, alarm the otters and drive
them off to parts unknown. Thus the island is only camped upon by the
hunting-squads, and fires are never made unless the wind is from the
southward, since no sea-otters are ever found to the northward of the
ground. The sufferings—miseries of cold, and even hunger, to which
the Aleutes subject themselves here every winter, going for weeks and
weeks at a time without fires, even for cooking, with the thermometer
below zero in a wild, northerly and westerly gale of wind, is better
imagined than portrayed.

To the southward and westward of Saanak, stretching directly from it
out to sea, eight or ten miles, is a succession of small, submerged
islets, rocky, and bare most of them, at low water, with numerous
reefs and stony shoals, beds of kelp, etc. This scant area is the
chief resort of the kahlan, together with the Chernaboor Islets,
some thirty miles to the eastward, which are identical in character.
The otter rarely lands upon the main island, but he is, when found
ashore, surprised just out of the surf-wash on the reef. The quick
hearing and acute smell possessed by this wary brute are not equalled
by any other creatures in the sea or on land. They will take alarm,
and leave instantly from rest in a large section, over the effect
of a small fire as far away as four or five miles distant to the
windward of them. The footstep of man must be washed from a beach by
many tides before its trace ceases to scare the animal and drive it
from landing there, should it approach for that purpose.

The fashion of capturing the sea-otter is ordered entirely by the
weather. If it be quiet and moderately calm, to calm, such an
interval is employed in “spearing surrounds.” Then, when heavy
weather ensues, to gales, “surf-shooting” is the method; and if
a furious gale has been blowing hard for several days without
cessation, as it lightens up, the hardiest hunters “club” the kahlan.
Let us first follow a spearing party; let us start with the hunters,
and go with them to the death.

Our point of departure is Oonalashka village; the time is an early
June morning. The creaking of the tackle on the little schooner out
in the bay as her sails are being set and her anchor hoisted, cause a
swarm of Aleutes in their bidarkies to start out from the beach for
her deck. They clamber on board and draw their cockle-shell craft
up after them, and these are soon stowed and lashed tightly to the
vessel’s deck-rail and stanchions. The trader has arranged this trip
and start this morning for Saanak, by beginning to talk it over two
weeks ago with these thirty or forty hunters of the village. He is to
carry them down to the favored otter-resort, leave them there, and
return to bring them back in just three months from the day of their
departure this morning. For this great accommodation the Aleutes
interested agreed to give the trader-skipper a refusal of their
entire catch of otter-skins—indeed many of them have mortgaged their
labor heavily in advance by pre-purchasing at his store, inasmuch as
the credit system is worked among them for all it is worth. They are
adepts in driving a bargain, shrewd and patient. The traders know
this now, to the grievous cost of many of them.

If everything is auspicious, wind and tide the next morning, after
sailing, bring the vessel well upon the ground. The headlands are
made out and noted; the natives slip into their bidarkies as they
are successively dropped over the schooner’s side while she jogs
along under easy way, until the whole fleet of twenty or thirty craft
is launched. The trader stands by the rail and shakes the hand of
each grimy hunter as he steps down into his kyack, calling him, in
pigeon-Russian, his “loobaiznie droög,” or dear friend, and bids him
a hearty good-by. Then, as the last bidarka drops, the ship comes
about and speeds back to the port which yesterday morning she cleared
from, or she may keep on, before she does so, to some harbor at
Saanak, where she will leave at a preconcerted rendezvous a supply of
flour, sugar, tea, and tobacco for her party.

If the weather be not too foggy, and the sea not very high, the
bidarkies are deployed into a single long line, keeping well abreast,
at intervals of a few hundred feet between. In this manner they
paddle slowly and silently over the water, each man peering sharply
and eagerly into the vista of tumbling water just ahead, ready to
catch the faintest evidence of the presence of an otter, should
that beast ever so slyly present even the tip of its blunt head
above for breath and observation. Suddenly an otter is discovered,
apparently asleep, and instantly the discoverer makes a quiet signal,
which is flashed along the line. Not a word is spoken, not a paddle
splashes, but the vigilant, sensitive creature has taken the alarm,
and has turned on to its chest, and with powerful strokes of its
strong, webbed hind feet, has smote the water like the blades of a
propeller’s screw, and down to depths below and away it speeds, while
the hunter brings his swift bidarka to an abrupt standstill directly
upon the bubbling wake of the otter’s disappearance. He hoists his
paddle high in the air, and holds it there, while the others whirl
themselves over the water into a large circle around him, varying in
size from one-quarter to half a mile in diameter, according to the
number of boats engaged in the chase.

[Illustration: THE SURROUND

A fleet of Sea-otter Hunters in the North Pacific, South of Saanak
Island: marking the Wake of an Otter at the Moment of its Diving]

The kahlan has gone down—he must come up again soon somewhere within
reach of the vision of that Aleutian circle on the waters over its
head; fifteen or twenty minutes of submergence, at the most, compel
the animal to rise, and instantly as its nose appears above the
surface, the native nearest it detects the movement, raises a wild
shout, and darts in turn toward it; the yell has sent the otter down
again far too quickly for a fair respiration, and that is what the
hunter meant to do, as he takes up his position over the spot of
the animal’s last diving, elevates his paddle, and the circle is
made anew, with this fresh centre of formation. In this method the
otter is continually made to dive and dive again without scarcely
an instant to fully breathe, for a period, perhaps, of two or even
three hours, until, from interrupted respiration, it finally becomes
so filled with air or gases as to be unable to sink, and then falls
at once an easy victim. During this contest the Aleutes have been
throwing their spears whenever they were anywhere within range of the
kahlan, and the hunter who has stricken the quarry is the proud and
wealthy possessor, beyond all question or dispute.

In this manner the fleet moves on, sometimes very fortunate in
finding the coveted prey; again, whole weeks pass away without a
single surround. The landings at night are made without any choice
or selection, but just as the close of the day urges them to find
the nearest shore. The bidarkies are hauled out above surf-wash, and
carefully inspected; if it is raining or very cold, small A-tents are
pitched, using the paddles and spears for poles and pegs, into which
the natives crowd for sleep and warmth, since they carry no blankets
or bed-clothes whatever, and unless the wind is right they dare not
make a fire, even to prepare the cherished cup of tea, which they
enjoy more than anything else in the world, not excepting tobacco.
After ninety or a hundred days of such employment, during which
time they have been subjected to frequent peril of life in storm,
and fog-lost, they repair to the rendezvous agreed upon between the
trader and themselves, ready and happy to return for a resting-spell,
to their wives, children, and sweethearts in the village whence we
saw them depart. They may have been so lucky as to have secured forty
or fifty otters, each skin worth to them at least fifty to sixty
dollars, and if so, they will have a prolonged season of festivity
at Oonalashka, when they get back. Perhaps the weather has been so
inclement that this party will not have taken a half-dozen pelts;
then gloomy, indeed, will be the reception at home.

While the “spearing surround” of the Aleutian hunter is orthodoxy,
the practice, now universal, of surf-shooting the otter, is
heterodoxy, and is so styled among these people, but it has only been
in vogue for a short time, and it is primarily due to our traders,
who, in their active struggle to incite the natives to a greater
showing of skins, have loaned and have given, to the young hunters
in especial, the best patterns of rifles. With these firearms the
shores of many of the Aleutian channels, Saanak, and the Chernaboors,
are patrolled during heavy weather, and whenever a sea-otter’s head
is seen in the surf, no matter if a thousand yards out, the expert,
patient marksman shoots seldom in vain, and if he does miss the mark,
he has a speedy chance to try again, for the great distance, and
thunderous roar of the breakers prevent the kahlan from hearing or
taking alarm in any way until it is hit by the rifle-bullet: nine
times out of ten, when the otter is thus struck, it is in the head,
which is all that the creature usually exposes. Of course such a shot
is instantly fatal, so that the hunter has reason to sit himself down
with a long landing-gaff and wait serenely for the surf to gradually
heave the prized carcass within his ready reach.

Last, but most exciting and recklessly venturesome of all human
endeavor in the chase of a wild animal is the plan of “clubbing.”
You must pause with me for a brief interval on Saanak to understand,
even imperfectly, the full hazard of this enterprise. We cannot walk,
for the wind blows too hard—note the heavy seas foaming, chasing and
swiftly rolling by, one after the other—hear the keen whistle of the
gale as it literally tears the crests of the breakers into tatters,
and skurries on in sheets of fleecy vapor, whirring and whizzing away
into the darkness of that frightful storm which has been raging in
this tremendous fashion, coming from the westward, during the last
three or four days without a moment’s cessation. Look at those two
Aleutes under the shelter of that high bluff by the beach. Do you
see them launch a bidarka, seat themselves within and lash their
kamlaykas firmly over the rims to the man-holes? And now observe them
boldly strike out beyond the protection of that cliff and plunge into
the very vortex of the fearful sea, and scudding, like an arrow from
the bow, before the wind, they disappear almost like a flash and a
dream in our eyes!

[Illustration: ALEUTES CLUBBING SEA OTTERS

During a furious gale on the Chernaboor Rocks]

Yes, it looks to you like suicide; but there is this method to
their madness. These men have, by some intuition, arrived at an
understanding that the storm will not last but a few hours longer at
the most, and they know that some ten or twenty or even thirty miles
away, directly to the leeward from where they pushed off, lies a
series of islets, and rocks awash, out upon which the long-continued
fury of this gale has driven a number of sea-otters that have been
so sorely annoyed by the battle of the elements as to crawl there
above the wash of the surf, and, burying their globose heads in
heaps of sea-weed to avoid the pelting of the wind, are sleeping
and resting in great physical peace until the weather shall change:
then they will at once revive and plunge back into the ocean
without the least delay. So our two hunters, perhaps the only two
souls among the fifty or sixty now camped on Saanak, who are brave
enough, have resolved to scud down on the tail of this howling gale,
run in between the breakers to the leeward of this rocky islet ahead
of them, and sneak from that direction over the land and across to
the windward coast, so as to silently and surely creep up and on to
the kelp-bedded victims, when, in the fury of the storm, the fast
falling footsteps of the hunter are not heard by the active yet
somnolent animal ere a deadly whack of his short club falls upon its
unconscious head. The noise of such a tempest is far greater than
that made by the stealthy movements of these venturesome natives,
who, plying their heavy, wooden bludgeons, despatch the animals one
after another without alarming the whole number. In this way, two
Aleutian brothers are known to have slain seventy-eight otters in
less than one hour!

If these hardy men, when they pushed off from Saanak in that gale,
had deviated a paddle’s length from their true course for the islet
which they finally struck, after scudding twenty or thirty miles
before the fury of wind and water, they would have been swept on and
out into a vast marine waste and to certain death from exhaustion.
They knew it perfectly when they ventured, yet at no time could they
have seen ahead clearly, or behind them, farther than a thousand
yards! Still, if they waited for the storm to abate, then the otters
would all be back in the water ere they could even reach the scene.
By doing what we have just seen them do they fairly challenge our
admiration for their exhibit of nerve and adroit calculation, under
the most trying of all natural obstruction, for the successful issue
of their venture.

In conclusion, the writer calls attention to a strange habit of the
Aleutian otter-hunters of Attoo, who live on the extreme westernmost
island of the grand Alaskan archipelago. Here the kahlan is captured
in small nets,[68] which are spread out over the floating kelp-beds
or “otter-rafts,” the natives withdrawing and watching from the
bluffs. The otters come out to sleep or rest or sport on these
places, get entangled in the meshes, and seem to make little or no
effort to escape, being paralyzed, as it were, by fear. Thus they
fall an easy prey into the hands of the captors, who say that they
have caught as many as six at one time in one of these nets, and that
they frequently get three. The natives also watch for surf-holes
or caves awash below the bluffs: and, when one is found to which a
sea-otter is in the habit of going, they set this net by spreading it
over the entrance, and usually capture the creature, sooner or later.

No injury whatever is done to these frail nets by the sea-otters,
strong animals as they are; only stray sea-lions and hair-seals
destroy them. There is no driving an otter out upon land if it is
surprised on the beach by man between itself and the water; it will
make for the sea with the utmost fearlessness, with gleaming eyes,
bared teeth and bristling hair, not paying the slightest regard to
the hunter. The Attoo and Atkah Aleutes have never been known to hunt
sea-otters without nets, while the people of Oonalashka, and those
eastward of them, have never been known to use such gear. Salt-water
and kelp appear to act as disinfectants for the meshes, so that the
smell of them does not repel or alarm the shy, suspicious animal.


FOOTNOTES:

[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.

[Illustration: A GLIMPSE OF SHISHALDIN

  The Volcano of Shishaldin, 8,500 feet
  The Volcano of Pogromnia Sopka, 5,500 feet

The beautiful Peak of Shishaldin as seen from the entrance to Oonimak
Pass, in Bering Sea. A Summer picture looking East over Oonimak
Island]

As we draw into Oonimak Pass—it is the gateway for all sailing
vessels bound to Bering Sea from American ports, we, in closing up
with the land, almost lose sight of Shishaldin, and come into the
shadow of the rougher and less attractive volcano of Pogromnia.
It shows ample evidence of its origin by the streams of blackened
frost-riven basalt and breccia which are ribbed upon its rugged
sides; great masses of eruptive rock and pumice lie here and there
scattered all over the broad-stubbed head of the mountain; tons and
tons of this material have rolled from thence in lavish profusion
and disorder, clear down for miles to the very waters of the sea
and straits, strewing that entire route with huge débris. Seams
of snow and ice lacquer, in white, thread the bold black crown
of this, the “booming” or “noisy” volcano of the Russians. It has
not been in action since 1820, when it then threw showers of ashes
and pumice; but those fires in its furnace are only banked, as it
has been smoking in inky brown and black clouds at irregular and
frequent intervals ever since; loud mutterings, deep rumblings and
wide-felt tremors of land and sea are aroused by it constantly. This
Island of Oonimak has been always regarded by the Russians as the
roof of a subterranean smelting furnace with many chimneys through
which telluric forces ascended from the molten masses beneath. It has
been, and is still, the theatre of the greatest plutonic activity
in Alaska. Russian eye-witnesses have described violent earthquakes
here where whole ridges of the interior and coast have been rent
asunder, cleft open, from which torrents of lava poured and columns
of flame and clouds of ashes, steam and smoke, have risen so as to be
viewed and noticed for a circuit of hundreds of miles around. These
manifestations were always accompanied by violent earthquakes, and
tidal-waves which often submerged adjacent villages on the sea-level,
and also whole native settlements were swept away in mountain floods
caused by the sudden melting of those big banks of ice and snow on
such volcanic summits and their foothills, upon which the hot breccia
from a vomiting crater fell.[69]

This great island in olden times was the one most densely populated
by the Aleutes. The excesses and terrible outrages of Russian
promishlyniks, followed by the wholesale work of death wrought by
small-pox, have utterly eliminated every human settlement from the
length and breadth of Oonimak, upon which no one has resided since
1847. Ruins on the north shore show the abandoned sites of numerous
large hamlets; one was over four thousand two hundred feet in
its frontage on the beach. The fear and superstition which those
tragedies of early Russian intercourse produced in the simple minds
of the natives, who belonged by birth to this great island, became
at length so potent as to cause the entire and permanent abandonment
of their desolated villages, which were once so populous and well
satisfied.

The craters, and outflow therefrom, on Oonimak have been, from time
immemorial, resorted to by the natives as their store-houses for
sulphur, and that shining obsidian with which they tipped their
bone-spear and arrow-heads; of it, also, they made their primitive
knives, and traded the surplus stock to those Aleutes living
elsewhere. They used the sulphur with dried moss in making fires,
which they started with the fire-stick and by rocky concussions.[70]

Before entering the straits of Oonimak, we had a fine view of the
entire sweep of the Krenitzin group, that presents a succession of
the wildest and most irregular peaks and bluffs, everywhere seeming
to jut up and fall into the sea, without a gentle slope for a human
landing, as they face the Pacific billows dashing so incessantly
upon their basaltic bases; the extreme eastern islet of the group
is Oogamok, and it forms the opposite land from Cape Heethook on
Oonimak, directly across the straits. A swarm of sea-parrots fly
out from its rocky bluffs on the south shore, stirred into unwonted
activity and curiosity by the near approach of our vessel, while
a dozing herd of sea-lions suspiciously stretch their long necks
into the air, smell us, then simultaneously and precipitately plump
themselves into the foaming breakers just below their basking-place
above the surf-wash.

It is very difficult to adequately define or express those varying
impressions which are inspired by a panorama of these Aleutian
Islands, such as unfolds itself to your eye when rapidly sailing
along under their lee on a clear day. The scene is one of rare
beauty. The water is blue and dancing until it strikes in heavy waves
upon the rocky curbing of the islands, dashing up clouds of spray in
white, fleecy masses against the dark-brown and reddish cliff-walls
rising over all. The slopes and the summits of everything on land,
save the very highest peaks, are clothed in an indescribably rich
green and golden carpet of circumpolar sphagnum; exquisitely-colored
lichens[71] adorn the stony sea-bluffs and precipices inland. Every
minute of the ship’s progress in a free, fair wind shifts the
fascinating scene—a new peak, another bold headland, a narrow pass,
unfolds now between two islets that just before apparently were solid
and as united as one island could be; a steamy jet of hot-spring
vapor rises from a deeper, richer mass of green and gold than that
surrounding it, and a dark-brownish column of smoke that issues from
a lofty, cloud-encircled summit in the distance is the burning crater
of Akootan.

Everything is so open here, is so plain to see, that when you
try to find some points of resemblance to that picture which has
challenged your admiration in the Sitkan archipelago, you find
nothing—absolutely nothing—in common effect. It is, nevertheless,
just as attractive, just as grand; but how different! All is laid
perfectly bare to inspection here—no dense forests and tangled
thickets to conceal the surface of the diversified uplands and
mountain slopes, or to hide the innermost recesses of the deep
ravines and narrow valleys. While there is a vast variation in the
islands, yet there is, to the mind of him who views them for the
first time, the most helpless inability on his part to distinguish
or even recognize them apart when he happens to revisit them. They
are seldom ever clearly defined, being more or less obscured in fog
and heavy rifts of cloud. The top of a headland peeps aloft, sharply
outlined, while all below is lost in the mists and banks of fog that
roll up there from the sea. Then, in remarkable contrast, only a
few miles beyond, the rocks at sea-level and foothills of the next
island will be entirely plain to your sight; while everything above
is concealed, in turn, by a curtain of the same moist and vanishing
misty fog. Fog, fog, fog everywhere, rising and descending with the
force of wind-currents that bear it—now veiling, now revealing the
startling and impressive beauties of this vast sea-girt chain of the
Aleutian archipelago. These majestic blue swells of the great Pacific
join with those cold green waves of that lesser, shallower ocean of
the North in holding with firm embrace the most impressive range of
fire-eaten mountains known to the geographer. This cordon of smoking,
grumbling, quaking hills and peaks, when once surveyed, leaves an
enduring image, grand and superb, on the retina of that eye which has
been so fortunate as to behold it.

As the little schooner bears up to the westward for our port of
Oonalashka, after we have well passed the Straits of Oonimak, we sail
into the shorter, choppy waters of Bering Sea—into its characteristic
light gray-green hue of soundings. The precipitous walls of Akoon
Island, rising like so much Titanic sandstone masonry everywhere
abruptly from the surf, carry a broad green plateau, that rolls and
extends high above the surrounding tide-level. Here, under their
lee, on the north shore, we encounter one of those large schools of
humpback whales[72] which are so common and so frequently met with
in the Aleutian straits and passages. These animals rise and sink
alongside of the vessel, in utter disregard of its presence; and even
volleys and bullets of our breech-loading rifles rapidly fired into
their broad, glistening, gray-black backs and sides do not seem to
arouse or alarm them in the least. Down they lazily go, to soon rise
again with a sonorous whistle as they “blow.” A cloud of whale-birds
hover over and settle on the watery area occupied by the feeding
whales, ever and anon rising, to alight again as the cetacean fleet
leaves its feathered convoy tossing behind on the wavelets of the sea.

Our skipper, who has been a whaler in his youth, tells us, with
a quaint air of contempt for what we so much admire, that these
fish-like monsters are of no consequence in the eyes of a wise
whaling captain, for though they are large enough, it is true, yet
they are the wrong breed of whales—they are lean, fighting humpbacks,
which, if struck with a harpoon, will run like an express engine for
fifty miles or more, carrying a boat and crew of our species, either
down in its rapid rush, or else diving in the shoals, over which it
feeds, it rolls the death-dealing iron out or breaks it off on the
bottom.

A stiff head-wind causes the course of the vessel to frequently
lie close in to the shore where the massive bluffs of Akoon and
Akootan rise in grim defiance, and from the shelves and interstices
of which flocks of sea-parrots and little auks fly out in circling
flights of curiosity and inspection around the schooner. As we watch
the lazy motions of the whales, we recall the fact that on the
summits of these bluffs and headlands now before us, the natives of
Oonimak, as well as those to the country born, were in the habit of
standing through long vigils of daily and nightly watch, as they went
whale-fishing long ago after their own primitive fashion.

Nothing fit to eat is, or was, so highly prized by the Aleutes or
Kaniags, as the blubber and gristle of a whale. To secure this
luxury these savages were in the habit of subjecting themselves to
infinite hardship and repeated bitter disappointment. The chase of
the “ahgashitnak”[73] and the little “akhoaks”[74] was the important
business of their lives in times of peace. The native hunter used, as
his sole weapon of destruction, a spear-handle of wood about six feet
in length; to the head of this he lashed a neatly-polished socket
of walrus ivory, in which he inserted a tip of serrated slate that
resembled a gigantic arrow-point, twelve or fourteen inches long
and four or five broad at the barbs, and upon the point of which he
carved his own mark

In the months of June and July the whales begin to make their first
inshore visits to the Aleutian bays, where they follow up schools of
herring and shoals of _Amphipoda_, or sea-fleas, upon which they love
to feed. These bays of Akootan and Akoon were and are always resorted
to more freely by those cetaceans than are any others in Alaska, and
here the hunt is continued as late as August. When a calm, clear day
occurs the natives ascend the bluffs and locate a school of whales;
then the best men launch their skin-canoes, or bidarkas, and start
for the fields. “Two-holed” bidarkas only are used. The hunter
himself sits forward with nothing but his whale-spear in his grasp;
his companion, in the after hatch, swiftly urges the light boat over
the water in obedience to his order. Carefully looking the whales
over, the hunter finally recognizes that yearling, or the calf, which
he wishes to strike; for it is not his desire to attack an old bull
or angry cow-whale. He calculates to a nice range where the “akhoak”
will rise again from its last point of disappearance, and directs
the course of the bidarka accordingly. If he is fortunate he will be
within ten or twenty feet of the rising calf or yearling, and as it
rounds its glistening back slowly and lazily out from its cover of
the wavelets the Aleut throws his spear with all his physical power,
so as to bury the head of it just under the stubby dorsal fin of
that marine monster; the wooden shaft is at once detached, but the
contortions of the stricken whale only assist to drive and urge the
barbed slate-point deeper and deeper into its vitals. Meanwhile the
canoe is paddled away as alertly as possible, before the plunging
flukes of the tortured animal can destroy it or drown its human
occupants.

[Illustration: ALEUTES WHALING

Natives of Akoon and Akootan killing Hump-back Whales]

As soon as the whale is thus wounded it makes for the open sea, where
“it goes to sleep” for three days, as the natives believe; then death
intervenes, and the gases of decomposition cause its carcass to
float, and, if the waves and currents are favorable, it will be so
drifted as to lodge on a beach at some locality not so very remote
from the place where it was struck by the hunter. The business of
watching for these expected carcasses then became the great object of
everyone’s life in that hunters’ village; dusky sentinels and pickets
were ranged over long intervals of coast-line, stationed on the brows
of the most prominent headlands, where they commanded an extensive
range of watery vision. But the caprices of wind and tides are such
in these highways and byways of the Aleutian Islands, that on an
average not more than one whale in twenty, struck in this manner
by native hunters, was ever secured; nevertheless, that one alone
(when cast ashore) amply repaid the labor and the exposure incurred
chiefly by watching day after day, in storm and fog, from the bluffs
of Akoon and Akootan. The lucky hunter who successfully claimed,
by his spear-head mark, the credit of slaying such a stranded
calf or yearling, was then an object of the highest respect among
his fellow-men, and it was remembered well of him even long after
death.[75] Also, the greatest expression of respect for the size and
ability of a native village and its people was the statement that it
was so populous as to be able to eat all the meat and blubber of a
large whale’s carcass in a single day!

As we “put about” under the frowning walls at Cape North, of Akootan,
our captain says that the next tack will carry us into Oonalashka
Harbor. Meanwhile, as we stand out into the waters of Bering Sea,
we have a superb vista of the rugged, seared, and smoking summit of
Akootan itself, which rears its hot head high above the rough, rocky
island that bears its name. The beaches are few and far between, and
there is but little land upon this island to invite a pedestrian,
since masses of dark basalt, vesicular and olivine, are scattered
in wild profusion everywhere. Over the northeast side steamy clouds
arise from the path of a hot spring, which gushes out of the
mountain, so hot that meat and fish are cooked in its scalding flood
by the natives. On the very crest, as it were, of this whale-backed
volcano, are two small, deep lakes that once were the vent-holes
of subterranean fires. In olden times seven settlements, with a
population of more than six hundred Aleutes, lived on the coast of
this island, which, with Akoon, was then the whale-hunter’s paradise.
To-day we find it utterly desolate, inhabited by a poverty-stricken
hamlet of sixty-five natives, who are located on the southwest shore.
The able-bodied men of this place spend the greater part of their
time, however, far away from home on the sea-otter grounds of Saanak,
being carried, like their brethren of Akoon and Avatanak, to and from
that spot by a trader’s vessel.

Closely joined to them is the village of Akoon, in which fifty-five
or sixty of their countrymen live on the northwest shore, who hunt
and deport themselves as do those of Akootan. The Akoonites, however,
enjoy the satisfaction of being nearer than their neighbors to that
small, rugged islet of Oogamak, which stands in the path, as it were,
of the great Pass of Oonimak; here on the low rocks a comparatively
large number of sea-lions repair, and the little hair-seal also.
For some reason or other, more of these last-named seals are found
here than elsewhere in the entire large extent of this gigantic
island chain. Akoon used to boast of many mighty whalers among its
prehistoric population of five or six hundred natives, who, in fading
away, have left the ruins only of eight settlements to attest their
previous proud existence.

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_.

If Campbell had only substituted “Akoon” for “Oonalashka” in this
much-admired verse descriptive of savage desolation, he would
not have marred a famous passage by the slightest error—but, at
Oonalashka, never, never was a wolf ever known to be. In 1830,
however, two of these animals got over from Oonimak as far west as
Akoon—on drifting ice-floes, most likely. They were speedily noticed
by the natives, who killed them at once, so Veniaminov says, for they
were cordially hated by the Aleutes, since these beasts “kill foxes
and spoil the traps.”

[Illustration: ILLOOLOOK, OR OONALASHKA

View of the Village looking West from the Cemetery]

The panorama of land and water here in summer is an exceedingly
attractive one—in its effect fully as charming as is the lovely
spread of Sitka Sound; but its character is widely opposed. If we
chance to view Oonalashka in clear sunshine during a day in the
summer months, we will recall this picture to our mind’s eye often
with positive pleasure. Here, strung along for half a mile just
back of a curved and pebbly beach, is an irregular row of frame,
single-story cottages, a large Greek church, and a fine parsonage,
three or four big wooden warehouses with a wharf running well into
the harbor, two or more trading-stores, one of them quite imposing
in its size, and fifty or sixty barraboras—these constitute the
abiding-places of the four hundred residents of Illoolook. They are
placed upon a narrow spit of alluvium that divides the sea from the
waters of a small creek which runs just back of the village right
under these hills that abruptly rise there, to rise again, farther
inland, to higher peaks in turn. A rich, dark, vivid green covers and
clothes the mountain slopes, the valleys, and the hills, even to the
loftiest summits, where only a light patch of glistening snow is now
and then seen relieved thereon by the grayish-brown rocky shingle.
These hills and mountains, rising on every hand above us from the
land-locked shores of Captain’s Harbor, bear no timber whatsoever,
but the mantle of circumpolar sphagnum, interspersed with grasses
and a large flora, makes ample amends for that deficiency and hide
their nakedness completely—in their narrow defiles and over the
bottom-land patches grass grows with tropical luxuriance, waist-high,
with small clumps of stunted willow-bushes clinging to the banks of
little water-courses and rivulets. This is the only growing timber
found anywhere on the Aleutian chain. It never becomes stouter than
the thickness of a man’s wrist, and the tallest bushes in scattered
thickets are never over six or seven feet high, rapidly dwindling in
growth as they ascend the hillsides.

Especially gratifying is the landscape, thus adorned, to the senses
of any ship-worn traveller, who literally feasts his eyes upon it.
But if he should go ashore and step upon what appeared to him, from
the vessel’s deck, to be a firm greensward, he will find instead
a quaking, tremulous bog, or he will slide over a moss-grown
shingle, painted and concealed by cryptogamic life, where he fondly
anticipated a free and ready path. The thick, dense carpet of
crowberry[77] plants that is spread everywhere over the hillsides,
into which the pedestrian sinks ankle-deep at every step, makes
a stroll very laborious when undertaken at any distance from the
sea-beach.

If a wide survey is accomplished here of Oonalashka Island, the
studies made will give a perfect understanding of every other island
to the westward in this great archipelago, which is enveloped during
the major portion of each year in fogs, and swept over by frequent
gales. Such a combination of the elements, with mists and hidden
sea-currents, make it a region dreaded by mariners; yet there is
enough sunshine now and then to make the life of our landsmen very
comfortable, even though they cannot engage in any other profitable
calling than that of sea-otter trading with the natives.

Summers are mild, foggy, and humid. The average temperature is
about 50° Fahrenheit. Winters are also mild, foggy, and humid, with
a slightly colder average of 30°. The thermometer nowhere in the
Aleutian chain ever went much below zero at sea-level. There is no
record even of a consecutive three or four weeks in winter lower than
3° or 5° above zero. The mercury seldom ever falls as low as 10°.
There is no nice distinction of the four seasons here. We can notice
only two. Winter begins in October and ends by May 1st to 5th, when
summer suddenly asserts herself for the rest of the year not thus
appropriated.

Flurries of snow sometimes fall in August and often in September.
It never stays long on the ground or even on the hilltops then, and
generally melts as fast as it comes, away into December; but on the
highest peaks it is seen all the year round. From January to May
1st or 5th, as a rule, snow covers everything in a spotless shroud
from two to five feet deep. The high, blustering wintry gales make
this snow intensely disagreeable to us, driving into and through
air-tight crevices, and literally making the inmates of the village
huts prisoners for weeks at a time. The dogs and sleds so common and
characteristic elsewhere in the vast expanse of Alaska are never seen
here. They would be a mere nuisance to these people, since the rugged
inequalities of the Aleutian country simply prohibit their use.

This is, however, the chosen land for lingering fogs. The foggy
cloudiness of the Aleutian Islands is most remarkable. There are not
a dozen fogless days in the whole year at Oonalashka, though the
sun may be seen half the time. Fifty sunshiny days in the year is
a handsome average. Thunder is never heard, or seldom ever, while
lightning is never seen, although the dark swelling clouds seem
to constantly suggest it; also the northern lights—these auroral
displays are almost unknown, and when seen are very, very faint.

But the wind—ah, the winds that riot over this range of rocky
islands! They are always stirring. A perfect calm has never been
recorded at Oonalashka. They are strong and come from all points
of the compass; they are freshest and most violent in October and
November, December, and March. Gales follow each other in quick
succession during these months every year, lasting usually about
three days each.

All sides of Oonalashka Island are deeply indented by bays and
fiörds; but the points on the southern coast are avoided and not
well known. They are not safe to approach on account of reefs and
rocks, awash and sunken, which extend out to sea a long distance, and
upon them the heavy billows of the Pacific Ocean break incessantly,
as well as against the cliff-beaches of this forbidding shore. But
around the northern and eastern margins of the island more good
harbors are located than can be found on all of the other islands of
the Aleutian archipelago put together. They call the bay which we
entered, as we sailed in from Akootan Pass, “Captain’s Harbor.” It
is the same place where the natives first gazed upon a white man and
his ship after the frightful massacres of 1762 and 1763. Here in 1769
Layvashava, with a crew of those Siberian promishlyniks, anchored
during the whole of one autumn and engaged the astonished inhabitants
in active trade; but it was a guarded and tedious barter, since the
Aleutes had a lively recollection of the terrible past, so recent and
so bloody.

The island of Oonalashka chanced to be the scene of that only real
desperate and fatal blow ever struck by the simple natives of the
Aleutian chain at their Cossack oppressors. By 1761 the Russians
had advanced to the eastward as far as Oonimak, and up to this
time the relations between the natives and the white invaders had
been altogether of an outwardly friendly character, the former
submitting, as a rule, patiently to the demands of the newcomers,
but the Cossack Tartars, encouraged by their easy conquests, rapidly
proceeded from bad to worse, committing outrages of every kind, so
that in 1762 they had reduced the Aleutes to the verge of absolute
slavery, and continued to act in this manner until the patience and
the timidity of the simple race were exhausted. The arrival of a
brutal, domineering, lustful party of over one hundred and fifty
of these Cossack Russians at Chernovsky, on the northwest coast of
this island, in the summer of 1762, under the nominal command of
a Siberian trader named Drooshinnin, proved to be “the last straw
laid upon the camel’s back.” At a given signal the despoiled and
ravished natives arose in every one of the then populous Oonalashkan
settlements (twenty-four villages), flocked together, and unitedly
fell upon their oppressors. They slaughtered every man except four,
who happened, luckily for them, to have been absent from their
vessels in Chernovsky Harbor, hunting grouse in the mountains.
They were secreted in the recesses of a hot cave (that is still
pointed out in the flanks of Makooshin Mountain), by the kindness
of a charitable native, until they were able to escape and join the
expedition of Solovaiyah, which appeared at the offing of Oomnak
early in the following year. Fired by a recital of the Drooshinnin
slaughter, this fierce Cossack turned his half-savage comrades, and
worse yet, himself, loose upon the unhappy people of Oonalashka, and
literally exterminated every male, old and young, that he could find,
visiting each settlement in swift rotation of death and desolation.
The men and boys fled to the fastnesses of the interior, followed
by many of the women, and when the inclemencies of winter began to
threaten their starvation, they humbly sued for peace, and became the
abject and submissive vassals of the promishlyniks ever after.

A smoking volcano that rears its ragged crown high above all the
surrounding hills and peaks is Makooshin; it juts, alone and
unsupported, as a bold promontory, five thousand four hundred and
seventy-five feet above, and into the green waters of Bering Sea.
It is the chief point of scenic interest on Oonalashka Island, and
the objective one in particular, if the day be clear, as the visitor
sails up and into the harbor of Illoolook. While it is not near so
majestic in elevation, or perfect of outline, as the Shishaldin
Mountain, yet it is wild and striking. It can be easily ascended in
July and August, when the winds do not blow their hardest, and when
there is the least snow. No one remembers, nor is there any legend of
any disturbance more serious than the shaking of the earth and loud
noises which Makooshin is charged with. In 1818 it made the whole
island tremble violently during a period of several days, emitting,
however, nothing but dense columns of smoke, and fine ashes were
sifted lightly everywhere with the winds. A resounding cannonade that
then burst from its bowels sorely alarmed the people, however, who
fled from their little hamlets clustered at its base.

[Illustration: THE VOLCANO OF MAKOOSHIN: 5,475 FEET

Viewed from Bering Sea: bearing S.E. by S. 26 miles distant. Sept.
26, 1876]

Immediately under the steep slopes and large proportions of this
quiescent volcano is a small settlement of sixty natives, housed
in those typical Aleutian barraboras, with a small chapel, of
course. Here, in 1880, lived the oldest inhabitant of the Oonalashka
parish, an Aleut who had an undisputed age of eighty-three years.
These simple souls have that same faith in the good behavior of
Makooshin which distinguished the citizens of Herculaneum and Pompeii
with reference to the dangers of Vesuvius. But the most amusing
indignation is expressed by them in speaking of the bad behavior of
an Oomnak crater, just across the straits from them, which in 1878
broke out into earthquakes, smoke, fire, and mud-showers, that so
frightened the fish all about in these waters as to literally cause
a famine at Makooshin. The finny tribes seem to be driven off by a
trembling of the rocky bottom to the sea.

It was at Makooshin that the first Russians landed under Stepan
Glottov in 1757. These traders in their reports declared that the
natives here then “were very numerous and warlike,” and that they
had a great deal of that peculiar trouble with them which we so
thoroughly understand now in the light of their infamous record.
Certain it is that a more innocent-looking, indolent group of Aleutes
cannot be found in all this region to-day than are these descendants
of the “blood-thirsty savages,” which Glottov saw in council here.
They trap cross-foxes on the flanks of the great mountain which
overshadows their settlement, and do but little else. They are not
at all impressed by the volcano, and cannot understand why we should
walk over a long portage of eight miles from Oonalashka Harbor just
to ascend it: because, they say truly, that the chances are ten to
one against our seeing anything when we shall get up there, inasmuch
as fog will surely shut down over everything. In spite, however,
of their argument we ascended, and they were right. We could not
see a rod beyond our footing in any direction, and had it not been
for their guidance, as the fog continued, we would have had a very
difficult matter in regaining the lowlands at all that day.[78]

When Makooshin is seen from Bering Sea, in the early autumn, the snow
rests upon its peculiar form so as to make a most striking suggestion
of its being extended as a huge corpse, with a sheet thrown over the
upper part only of the body. The natives have many folk-lore stories
and legends which belong to the mountain; but these yarns are like
the ballads of our sailor boys, they run on forever, ending in the
same manner as they began. A hot spring sends a little rivulet of
warm water across our path as we come down, and we notice that most
of the boggy places are tinged with iron oxides.

In overlooking any of these islands from an interior view of high
altitude, you are impressed by the large number of fresh-water lakes
and ponds that nestle in the valleys, in the uplands, and even in the
depressions on the loftiest summits. One of the prettiest pools of
water which can be imagined is formed by the red, bowl-shaped walls
of an extinct crater that makes the top of Paistrakov Mountain: this
is a very prominent landmark just across the bay from Oonalashka
village, looking west.

A superb survey of Oonalashka Island can be made by the ascent
of Mount Wood, which rears its sharp, syenitic peak two thousand
eight hundred feet behind and right over the village and harbor of
Illoolook. The path to the summit is not difficult, and the panorama
spread out under your eyes well repays the effort. It gives you a
better idea of what a singularly mountainous region the island is,
of the comparative absence of level or bottom-land areas—everything
seems to spring from the surrounding ocean mirror, to hills—from
hills, in turn, to mountains that end in sharp and rugged peaks. Upon
the rocky, frost-riven shingle of these summits nothing can grow
except those tiny polar lichens which we find existing, clinging to
the earth and rocks of the uttermost limits of the North as far as we
have knowledge.

If the fog lifts its gray-blue curtain from the unruffled, clear
surface of Captain’s Harbor, and rolls back and away from the red
and brown head of the cold crater of Paistrakov on the left, and
from the black, jagged outlines of the “Prince” on your right, you
will then have at your feet a picture of surpassing scenic beauty,
both of contour and color, before and under your delighted vision.
The rougher waters of Bering Sea have power no farther inland than
their foaming at the feet of Waterfall Head and the dark bases of
the Prince, for they rapidly fade into a smooth, still peace as the
queer, hook-like sand-spit of Oolachta Harbor is reached, and the
anchorage of Illoolook village is attained; its houses and barraboras
just peep out from the obscuring foothills of the mountain upon which
we stand, and we can faintly discern a delicate fringe of sea-foam
along the border of a long-curved beach in front. Two schooners and a
steamer lie motionless upon the glassy bay, like so many microscopic
water insects.

Turning right about and looking south, our eyes fall upon a radically
different landscape—a bewildering, labyrinthian maze of Oonalashkan
mountain peaks and ranges, rising in defiance to all law and order
of position, with that lovely island-studded water of the head to
Captain’s Harbor in the foreground. Ridge after ridge, summit after
summit, fades out one behind the other into the oblivion of distance,
where the suggestion of a continuance to this same wild interior is
vividly made, in spite of wreaths of fog and lines of snowy sheen,
relieved so brightly by that greenish-blue of the mosses and sphagnum
in which they are set. A few pretty snow-buntings flutter over the
rocks to the leeward of our position; their white, restless forms are
the only evidence or indication of animal life in our rugged vista of
an Oonalashkan interior. Yet, could we see better, we might notice a
lurking red fox, and flush a bevy or two of summer-dressed ptarmigan,
feeding as they do on the crowberries, the sphagnum, willow-buds and
insect-life.

While gazing into the endless succession of valleys, and scanning the
varied peaks, a puff of moist wind suddenly strikes our cheeks—we
turn to its direction and behold it bearing in and up from Bering
Sea—a thick and darkening bank of fog which rapidly envelopes and
conceals everything that it meets. It ends our sightseeing, and
peremptorily orders a return to the village below from which we came.

When we look at the Aleutes we are impressed at once with their
remarkable non-resemblance to the Sitkans. They constantly remind us
of Japanese faces and forms in another costume. The average Aleut
is not a large man; he is below our medium standard—being about
five feet six inches in stature, though, of course, there are a few
exceptions to this rule, when examples will be found six feet tall,
and many that are mere dwarfs. The women are in turn proportionately
smaller. The hair is coarse, straight, and black; the beard scanty;
cheek-bones are broad, high, and very prominent; the nose very
insignificant and almost flattened out at the bridge—the nostrils
thick and fleshy; the eyes very wide-set—very small, too, with a
jet-black pupil and iris; the eyebrows very faintly marked; the
lips are thick; the mouth large; the lower jaw is very square and
prognathous; the ears are small, set close to the head, and almost
always pierced for brass or silver rings. The complexion is a light
yellowish-brown; in youth it is often fair, almost white, with a
faint blush in the cheeks; in middle age and to senility the skin
always becomes very strongly wrinkled and seamed, with a leathery
harshness. They all have full even sets of teeth, but never take the
least care of them whatever. They have small, well-shaped hands and
feet, but the finger-nails are exceedingly thin and brittle, bitten
off, and never trimmed neatly. They walk in a clumsy, shambling
manner, with none of that lithe, springy stepping so characteristic
of the Rocky Mountain Indians. When we meet them as we saunter
through the settlement, men, women, and children alike drop their
eyes to the ground, and pass by in stupid humility, or indifference,
as the case may be.

As we see these people at Oonalashka, so they are seen in every
respect elsewhere, as they exist between Attoo and Bristol Bay
and the Shoomagin Islands. They spend most of their time, men and
women, in their skin-canoes, hunting the sea-lion and sea-otter—in
codfishing and travelling to and from their favorite salmon-runs and
berrying-grounds. Therefore, they have not enabled a symmetrical
figure to develop—their legs are always sprung at the knees, some
badly bowed, and all are unsteady in walking. While there is nothing
about the countenances of the women or girls which will warrant the
term of handsome, yet they are not so ugly as the squaws of the
Sitkan archipelago. Many of them have very kindly expressions, and a
gleam of true womanly instinct far above their surroundings.

No people are more amiable or docile than are these natives of the
Aleutian Islands to-day. They are quiet and respectful in their
intercourse with the traders, and are all duly baptized members
of the Greek Catholic Church. A chapel is never absent from their
villages. They hunt sea-otters and trap foxes for their means of
trading for those simple luxuries and necessaries of their life which
they cannot find in their own country. There are no other fur-bearing
animals here, and no other industries whatever in which they can
engage.

As they live here to-day, they are married and sustain very
faithfully the relation of husband and wife. Each family, as a
rule, has its own hut or barrabora. They have long, long ago ceased
to dress in skins; but they still retain and wear the primitive
water-proof coat or “kamlayka” and boots or tarbosars, which are made
from seal and sea-lion intestines. In the poverty-smitten stations
of Akoon and Avatanak the early bird-skin “parkas” will probably be
most commonly worn; (but it is because these natives are so miserably
poor in furs that they do so). They get from the trader’s store at
every village a full assortment of our own shop-made clothes, and,
on Sunday in especial, many shiny broadcloth suits will be displayed
by the luckier hunters. The women are all attired in cotton dresses
and gowns, made up pretty closely in imitation of the prevailing
fashions among our own people. They wear the boots and shoes which
are regularly brought up from San Francisco. But whenever they go out
fox-trapping, or enter their bidarkas, they wear the “tarbosar” or
water-proof boot of primitive use—the uppers to it are made from the
intestines or the gullets of marine mammalia, and it is soled with
the tough flipper palms of a sea-lion.

They have the same weakness for our conventional high stovepipe
hats which we display; but the prevalence of those boisterous gales
and winds peculiar to these latitudes prevents that use of the
cherished “beaver” that they otherwise would make of it. Instead,
they universally wear low-crowned, leather-peaked caps, to which
they love to add a gay red-ribbon band, suggested most likely by the
recollection which they have of that gorgeous regalia of the Russian
army and naval officers, who were wont to appear in full dress very
often when among them in olden time.

The Aleutian men dress very plainly, young and old alike,
little or no attention being given by them to details of color
or ornamentation, as is the common usage and practice of most
semi-civilized races; but they do lavish a great deal of care and
skill in the decoration of their antique “kamlaykas,” “tarbosars,”
and their bidarkas: the seams of these garments and the boats are
frequently embellished with gay tufts of gaily colored sea-bird
feathers and lines of goose-quill embroidery.

True feminine desire for all the bright ribbons and cheap jewelry
that a trader spreads before her consumes the heart of the Aleutian
woman, especially if she be young and admired by her people. The
women are, therefore, only limited by their means, when it comes
to bedecking themselves with all of these trinkets and gewgaws of
the kind which the artful trader exhibits for that purpose. They
braid their hair up in two queues usually and let them hang down
behind upon their backs. They never wear bonnets, or hats, for
that matter; but as they go to church or from hut to hut they tie
cotton handkerchiefs over their heads. When hasty little errands
out of doors, or sudden gossiping trips are undertaken, a shawl
is thrown over the woman’s head and held there, with the gathered
ends together, under her chin by one hand. The shawls are of bright
colors, and supply the place of woollen garments, though ready-made
cloaks and dolmans are not uncommon at those points where the
sea-otter-hunting harvest is the best: her skirts, overskirts,
waists, and stockings are all of cotton.

As these people have really but one idea and no variation of
occupation, they all live alike, in the same general manner. The
difference between the families is only that of relative cleanliness
and thrift. The most important and serious business of their
shore-life is that embodied in the construction and repair of their
huts, or barrabkies. If it is well built it makes a warm, dry
shelter, and answers every requirement of a comfortable domicile. An
excavation is made in the earth on the spot selected in the village
site, ten or twelve feet square, and three or four feet deep. A
wooden frame and lining is then put into this sub-cellar, and the
excavated earth is then thrown back against and over it, with an
outer wall of carefully-cut sod and boggy peat, being laid up two
and three feet thick, sloping down to which is a well-thatched roof
of grass and sedge, that abounds everywhere on the sandy margins of
the sea-shore. Some of these huts are made very much larger than this
pattern just defined, having regularly spread wings, like a Maltese
cross, on the floor. The entrance to the barrabkie is usually through
a low doorway that is made to a small annex or storm hallway, also
built of sod and peat. This shields another little door, which opens
into the living-room that the architect steps down into as he enters.
A single window is put at the opposite end of the room from the door,
in which a small glazed sash is usually employed. The floor is either
covered with boards which the native has purchased from the trader,
or else it is the hard-trodden earth itself, upon which the women
strew grass and spread mats of the same texture.

A diminutive cast-iron stove is now very generally used by the
Aleutes. It commonly stands right in the centre of the room, and upon
it the cooking can be done, instead of being driven to the hallway
fireplace, or “povarnik,” of the olden time, when the smoke then
stifled them from the burning of that fat of seals, fish and birds,
which was used very largely for fuel Therefore, they were obliged
to stew and broil on a special fireplace constructed outside of the
living-room. A great many old-style “peechka” stoves of the Russians
are still in use, but no new ones are being made any more, since the
introduction of our little iron stoves. This living-room of the hut
is usually curtained or partitioned into two sections, one of which
is the bedchamber, or “spalniah.” They have a great variety of beds
and bedsteads, or bunks rather. They are proud of a well-stuffed
couch of feathers, and take more real, solid comfort in sleeping
thereon than in anything else that transpires of an enjoyable nature
in their lives. The dealers sell a series of the most gaudily printed
spreads for these beds, and sometimes you will be much surprised
to see a white counterpane and fluted pillow-shams spread over an
Aleutian couch. Those beds are always raised well up from the floor,
and sometimes a curtain is specially hung around them—a borrowed
Russian idea, unquestionably. A rude table, two or three empty
cracker-boxes from the trader’s store for chairs, and a rough bench
or two, is about all the furniture ever seen in a barrabkie. The
table-ware and household utensils do not require a large cupboard for
their reception. Cups and saucers of white crockery, highly decorated
in flaring blue and red floral designs, plates to match, a few pewter
teaspoons, will usually be found in sufficient quantity for the daily
use of the family; and these are loaned out to a neighbor also, on
occasions of festivity, when an entire circle of chosen friends join
under the roof of some one barrabora in tea-drinking and “praznik”
feasting.

The traders say that recently a great desire has come upon the
natives to possess granite ware cooking utensils and drinking cups,
or those porcelain or silicon-plated iron vessels which we designate
by that name; they do not require washing, and can be easily wiped
out and never rust. Tin-ware is at a great discount among them—it
rusts. The odor of coal-oil will be noticed among many others in
the barraboras of the Aleutians and Kadiaks in these days, for the
general use of this fluid has been established. The glass lamps and
the smell suggestive of that illuminant can be plainly detected by
any stranger who goes into a village up there now, in spite of the
fishy and other indigenous strong aromas, which are in themselves
equally odious and penetrating. However, an old Aleutian fogy will
occasionally insist upon using a primitive stone lamp, with a wicking
of moss or strips of cotton cloth.

A marked fondness for pictures, old engravings, chromos, in fact
anything that goes in the line of caricature or illustration, is
manifested by the Aleutes. They paste all sorts of scraps from
newspapers, magazines, and theatrical posters, which the traders give
them, upon the walls of the barrabora. The Russians early took notice
of this trait, and the priests of the Greek Church made good use of
it by distributing richly-colored and gilded portraits of holy men
and women, the Imperial family, and mythological church groups.

As the Aleut, his wife and children, and a relative or two, perhaps,
are living in the barrabora, he enjoys a warm and comfortable shelter
as long as he keeps it in good repair. He does not place what he has
of surplus supply in a cellar—such fish, fowl, or meat as he may have
in excess of immediate consumption is hung up outside of his door on
a wooden frame, or “laabaas.” Here it is beyond the reach of dogs,
and is quite secure, inasmuch as he lives in no danger or dread of
theft from the hands of his neighbors.

He is a fish-eater, like a vast majority of the rest of native
Alaskans. He has cod, halibut, salmon, trout, and herrings in
overflowing abundance, and all swim close to his door. He hooks and
nets his piscine food-supply all the year round as it rotates with
the seasons. He varies this steady diet with all the tea, sugar,
and hard bread, or flour, that he can purchase from the trader’s
store; some other little articles in the grocery line, such as canned
California fruits, are especially agreeable to his palate. These
natives call on the trader for biscuits, or sea-crackers, not because
they like this hard bread best, but on account of the scarcity of
fuel wherewith to properly bake up flour.

While fish is the staff of Aleutian daily life, yet nature has
vouchsafed many simple luxuries to those people: these are
sea-urchins, or echinoderms, and the eggs and flesh of the several
species of water-fowl peculiar to and abundant in such latitudes.
Then, in August and September, the valleys, hillsides, and margins
of the sea are resorted to by the natives for the huckleberries,
the “moroshkies,” the crowberries, and giant umbelliferous stalks
of the _Archangelica_, found ripe and ripening there. The Aleutian
huckleberries are much better than those of the Sitkan district, and
are really the only good indigenous fruit, according to the evidence
of our palates.

[Illustration: OONALASHKAN NATIVES COD-FISHING

An Aleutian Fisherman and Bidarka hooking “Treesca” in Oolachta
Harbor, Oonalashka Island]

Another peculiarity of an Aleutian village, which strikes a
stranger’s eye, is the irregular but frequent coming and going of
a number of old women, and younger ones, to and from the mountains;
they always return with a burden of what appears to be coarse grass
upon their backs, in such huge bundles that the bearers are quite
hidden from view. These females, while not literally hewers of wood,
are really working as hard. They are gathering the only natural
resource which is afforded them for fuel. When long and tedious
journeys along the coast fail to reward a search for drift-logs,
which are found here and there in scant number at the best, then
the women repair to those spots on the mountain sides where the
slender strawberry-like runners of the crowberry[79] have grown and
intergrown into thick masses. These they pull from the earth, as we
would gather dried grasses. A large bundle is made for each woman in
the party, and then, assisting each other to load up, they stagger
down the hillside trails, under these heavy burdens, back to their
respective barraboras. This “sheeksa” is then air-dried, or weathered
several weeks, so as to get it ready and fit for use in those odd
Russian ovens or “peechka” stoves. It is twisted into short wisps,
two or three of which at one time are ignited, and thrust as they
blaze, into the oven; then the door of the peechka is closed tightly
and promptly. This makes a hot fire for a few moments; every particle
of the heat is absorbed by the thick, brick walls of the oven, so
that, as it radiates slowly, the small apartment within the earthen
walls of the barrabora is kept at a tropical temperature, for several
hours at a time, without a renewal of this fire. To-day, however, at
Oonalashka, and at three or four other central sea-otter villages,
the natives are buying cord-wood and coal from the traders. The wood
is brought from Kadiak, while the coal comes up as ballast from San
Francisco in the traders’ vessels.

Housed and fed in this manner, the entire Aleutian population have
been, and are living; as their children grow up and inherit the
parental homes, or branch out, after marrying, to erect barraboras
of their own, they repeat the same methods of their ancestry. In a
normal condition the Aleut is a quiet, peaceful parent, affectionate
but yet not demonstrative; he is kind to his wife and imposes no real
burden upon her which he does not fully share himself. The children
grow up without harsh discipline; still they are not the recipients
of marked attention. The family life, when the head or the hunter
is at home, is one of very simple routine; he is in bed most of the
time, striving to balance that account of the very many sleepless
nights he has passed in his bidarka scouring sea-otter reefs during
his recent three months’ trip, to Saanak or the Chernaboors. The
others rise at broad daylight, light their blubber-fire in the
outside kitchen, and prepare a slight breakfast of crackers, tea,
and boiled fresh fish. This meal is carried into the living-room,
where the “peechka” has been started up, so as to thoroughly warm
that apartment. If this native is the possessor of a little iron
stove, of our own make, then all heating and cooking is done on the
one fire made in it and the smoke of that burning fat and oil with
which so much of their fuel of drift-wood and sheeksa is mixed, goes
up the pipe and leaves no annoying trace behind. Between the members
of the household there is never much conversation—the topics are
few, indeed, beyond the ordinary routine of irregular meals, and the
desultory rising and retiring of a family. This monotony of their
lives is very much enlivened by exercises of the church, to which
they are constantly going and coming from. But when they meet in a
neighboring barrabkie, or receive friends in their own, then tongues
are loosened, and conversation flows freely, especially over cups of
tea between the old men and women; the latter are incessant talkers
under such genial encouragement.

Although the Aleut does not give you, at first, the least idea that
he has ever had any severe training of a heroic order, yet it is a
fact that most of the young men, ere they become recognized hunters,
had to “win their spurs,” as it were. The old men always impress
upon the native youth that great importance of strictly observing
the customs of their forefathers in conducting the chase, and that
neglect in this respect will surely bring upon them disaster and
punishment; therefore the young men are encouraged to go to sea in
gales of wind, and make difficult landings with their bidarkas at
surf-washed places. Before the advent of Russian priests, every
village had one or two old men at least, who considered it their
especial business to educate the children; thereupon, in the morning
or the evening when all were at home, these aged teachers would
seat themselves in the centre of one of the largest village yourts
or “oolagamuh:” the young folks surrounded them, and listened
attentively to what they said—sometimes failing memory would cause
the old preceptors to repeat over and over again the same advice
or legend in the course of a lecture. The respect of the children,
however, never allowed or occasioned an interruption of such a senile
oration.

But to-day their education, in so far as the strict sense of the
term goes, is received from the priests and deacons of the Greek
Church. They seem to have abandoned all the shamanism, the mummery
and savagery of their primitive lives eagerly and willingly for
those practices and precepts of the Christian faith; in this strange
accord the Kadiakers also joined. No recourse to violent measures was
ever resorted to by the Russian missionaries, who were always met
more than half-way by these singular heathen. An Aleut is the better
Christian when fairly compared with the Kaniag—the latter is not half
as sincere or faithful.

Stepan Glottov, in 1759, wintered, first of all white men, at Oomnak
Island, and he lived there then in perfect peace and quiet with the
natives; so amicable were his relations with these people, that he
persuaded their chief to be baptized, and to allow a little son to
go with Glottov to Kamchatka, where the youth lived several years,
then returned, well versed in the Russian language, and assumed the
title of supreme chief of the Aleutians; this is the earliest record
made of the conversion of these people. In 1796 the first priest
or missionary came among them; and never, from that time to the
present moment, has a representative of that church ever been treated
otherwise than well by these islanders.

The Aleutian brain has streaks of genuine philosophy and a keen
sense of humor. A priest once reproached an aged sire for allowing
a worthless son to worry and vex the household. “Why, Ivan,” said
he, “do you, who are so good, and Natalie, your wife, also most
excellent, permit this rude child to so deport himself?” “Ah,
father,” replied the old man with great emotion, “not out of every
sweet root grows a sweet plant!”

This inherent religious disposition of the Aleut is the reason why
we find a Greek church or a chapel in every little hamlet where his
people live. The exclusion of all other sects, however, is natural,
since the character of the ornate service and frequent “prazniks,”
or festivals of that chosen denomination, suits him best. The Greek
Catholic Bishop of the Alaskan diocese now resides in Oonalashka.
He used to make Sitka his headquarters, but the depopulation of the
whites there after the transfer of the country made that spot too
lonely for him, and he soon removed to San Francisco. A few years
ago a final transfer was made to Illoolook. As far as possible the
natives support their own respective chapels, erect the church
structures, keep them in repair, and make an annual contribution
sufficient to support a reader, or “deacon,” so that the order of
daily services shall be constantly in operation. When a community is
too poor, however, to do this, then the bishop has money supplied to
him by the Russian Home Church Fund, which he uses to maintain the
proper conduct of those chapels situated at impecunious settlements.
Of course these outlying and far-distant hamlets of the Aleutian
archipelago are unable to secure and pay, each one, for the services
of a regularly ordained resident priest. Therefore a parish priest,
either from Oonalashka, Belcovsky, Sitka, or even San Francisco, is
in the habit of making a tour of the entire Alaskan circuit once in
every year or two, so as to administer the higher offices of the
church, such as baptism, marriage, etc.

Most amusing is that intense outward piety of these grimy people—they
greet you with a blessing and a prayer for your good health in the
same breath, and they part from you murmuring a benediction. They
never sit down to their rude meals without asking the blessing of
God; never enter a neighbor’s house without crossing themselves at
the threshold; and in most of the barraboras a little image-picture
of a patron saint will be found in one corner, high up on a shelf, to
which the face of every member of the family is always turned when
they rise and retire—the head bowed and the cross sign made before
this “eikon,” in humility and silence. These people also carry the
precepts and phraseology of the church upon their lips, constantly
repeating them during holy weeks and pious festivals.

The fact that among all the savage races found on the northwest
coast by Christian pioneers and teachers, the Aleutians are the only
practical converts to Christianity, goes far, in my opinion, to set
them apart as very differently constituted in mind and disposition
from our Indians and our Eskimo of Alaska. To the latter, however,
they seem to be intimately allied, though they do not mingle in the
slightest degree. They adopted the Christian faith with very little
opposition, readily exchanging their barbarous customs and wild
superstitions for the rites of the Greek Catholic Church and its more
refined myths and legends.

At the time of their first discovery, they were living as savages
in every sense of the word, bold and hardy, throughout the Aleutian
chain, but now they respond, on these islands, to all outward signs
of Christianity, as sincerely as our own church-going people. The
question as to the derivation of those natives is still a mooted
one among ethnologists, for in all points of personal bearing,
intelligence, character, as well as physical structure, they seem to
form a perfect link of gradation between the Japanese and Eskimo,
notwithstanding their traditions and their language are entirely
distinct and peculiar to themselves; not one word or numeral of their
nomenclature resembles the dialect of either. They claim, however,
to have come first to the Aleutian Islands from a “big land in the
westward,” and that when they came there first they found the land
uninhabited, and that they did not meet with any people, until their
ancestors had pushed on to the eastward as far as the peninsula and
Kadiak. Confirmatory of this legend, or rather highly suggestive of
it, is the fact that repeated instances have occurred within our
day where Japanese junks have been, in the stress of hurricanes and
typhoons, dismantled, and have drifted clear over and on to the reefs
and coasts of the Aleutian Islands. Only a short time ago, in the
summer of 1871, such a craft was so stranded, helpless and at the
mercy of the sea, upon the rocky coast of Adak Island, in this chain;
the few surviving sailors, Japanese, five in number, were rescued by
a party of Aleutian sea-otter hunters, who took care of them until
the vessel of a trader carried them back, by way of Oonalashka, to
San Francisco, and thence they returned to their native land.

A number of the males in every Aleutian village will be found who can
read and write with the Russian alphabet. This education they get
in the line of church exercises, inasmuch as they are all conducted
in the Russian language, though the responses for the congregation
usually are made by Aleutian accents. An Aleut grammar and phonetic
alphabet, adapted to the expression of the Russian language, is used
in all of these hamlets. It was prepared by that remarkable man,
Veniaminov, in 1831: a large number of the books were printed, and
they have been in use ever since. The young men and boys are taught
as they grow up, by the church deacon usually, to read, first in the
Aleut dialect, then in the Russian. The traders take advantage of
this understanding among these people, and facilitate their bartering
very materially. They give every hunter a pass, or grocer’s book,
in which he keeps a regular account, charging what he may need, in
advance of payment, so enabling his family to get what it requires
during his long absence on the hunting-grounds. In short, that book
is a regular letter of credit at the store, and the traders have
found it the best way of influencing the natives in their favor, and
also of aiding the superior hunters.

This method of credit has developed, and made manifest the truth of a
strong statement in which Veniaminov declared his belief that these
people were really honest at heart, totally unlike all other savages
in Alaska, or elsewhere on the American continent, for that matter.
Many of the hunters, when they are about to depart for a long four or
five months’ sea-otter chase, and consequent absence for such length
of time from home, go to the trader and tell him to restrict their
wives from overdrawing a certain pecuniary limit, which they fix of
their own idea as to what they can afford. This action, however, is
the purpose of true honesty only, for those same hunters, when they
get back, after first religiously settling every indebtedness in
full, make at once a heavy draft upon any surplus that they may have,
going so far in the line of extravagance and singular improvidence,
in some instances, as to purchase, on the spur of the moment,
music-boxes worth two hundred dollars each, or whole bolts of silk
and costly packages of handkerchiefs, neckties, and white linen, and
many other things of a like nature, wholly unwarranted by the means
of the hunter, or of any real service to him or his family.

The church “prazniks,” or festivals, are very quiet affairs, but
when the Aleut determines to celebrate his birthday or “eman
nimik,” he goes about it in full resolution to have a stirring and
vociferous time. Therefore he brews a potential beer by putting a
quantity of sugar, flour, rice, and dried apples (if he can get the
latter) into a ten or twenty-gallon barrel, which is filled with
water. He sends invitations out to his friends so dated as to bring
them to the barrabkie when a right degree of fermentation in the
kvass-barrel shall have arrived; sometimes the odor of that barrel
itself is sufficient to gather them in all on time. Some one of the
natives who is famous for natural and cultivated skill in playing
the accordion or concertina, is given the post of honor and the best
of the beer; he or she, as the case may be, soon starts the most
hilarious dancing, because Aleutes are exceedingly fond of this
amusement, especially so when stimulated by beer. If the apartment
is large enough, the figures of an old Russian quadrille are gone
through with, accompanied by indescribable grimaces and grotesque
side-shuffles of the dancers, the old women and young men being the
most demonstrative. Usually, however, a single waltzing couple has
the floor at one time, whirling around with the liveliest hop-waltz
steps, and as it settles down out of breath, a fresh pair springs up
from the waiting and watching circle. The guests rapidly pass from
their normal sedateness into the varying stages that rotate between
slight and intense drunkenness.

These kvass orgies, on such occasions, are the only exhibitions of
disorder that the people of the Aleutian Islands and Kadiak ever
afford. At Belcovsky, and at every point where the sea-otter industry
is most remunerative to the native hunter, there you will find the
greatest misery, due wholly to those beery birthday celebrations as
sketched above.

Some traders often give entertainments to the natives, in which
they wisely offer plenty of strong tea, with white sugar-lumps, and
nothing else; these parties are quite reputable and highly enjoyed
by all concerned. The floor of the warehouse, or the living-rooms
of the trader himself, are cleared, and this allows ample space for
a full-figured cotillon or quadrille, or a dozen or two of dancing
couples. The ball-room of the chief trading-firm at Oonalashka is a
very animated and extensive prospect when an evening-party of this
sort is in fine motion. The familiar strains of “Pinafore,” the
“Lancers,” “John Brown,” and “Marching through Georgia,” rise in
piercing strength from the vigorous men and women who are squeezing
the accordions, and every now and then a few of the young Aleutes
break out into a short singing refrain, using English words to suit
the music, as they caper in the high-tide of this festivity. It is
the young men, however, only, who thus vocalize; the women, when
sober, old and young, are always silent, with downcast eyes, and are
very abject in demeanor.

The great feminine solace in a well-to-do native hut is recourse to
a concertina or accordion, as the case may be. These instruments are
especially adapted to the people. Their plaintive, slow measure,
when fingered in response to native tunes and old Slavonian ballads,
always rise upon the air in every Aleutian hamlet, from early morning
until far into night. An appreciation of good music is keen: many of
the women can easily pick up strains from our own operas, and repeat
them correctly after listening a short while to the trader or his
wife play and sing. They are most pleased with sad, wailing tunes,
such as “Lorena,” the “Old Cabin Home,” and the like.

Thus we note those salient characteristics of Aleutians, who are
the most interesting and praiseworthy inhabitants of Alaska. There
are not a great many of them, however, when contrasted numerically
with the Indians and the Eskimo of this region; but they come
closer, far nearer to us in good fellowship and human sympathy. We
turn, therefore, from them again to resume our contemplation of the
country in which they live. The sun is burning through a gray-blue
bank of sea-swept fog, ever and anon shining down brilliantly upon
the beautiful, vividly green mountains, and glancing from the clear
waters of Oonalashka’s harbor. It tempts us to walk, to stroll, when
the trader tells us that we can easily cross over to Beaver Bay,
where Captain Cook anchored and refitted in 1778. So we go, and a
patient, good-humored native trots ahead to keep us on the road and
bring us back safely, lest the fog descend and shut all in darkness
which is now so light and bright. A narrow foot-trail that is deeply
worn by the pigeon-toed Aleutes into moss and sphagnum, or fairly
choked by rank-growing grasses and annuals in low warm spots, winds
around and over the divide between Oonalashka village and Borka. As
we reach the rippling, rocky strand of Beaver Bay, a cascade arrests
our attention on account of its exceeding beauty. Tumbling down from
the brow of a lofty bluff of brown and reddish rocks, a rivulet
falls in a line of snowy spray, which reflects prismatic colors
from the rocks and sunlight as it drops into the cold embrace of
the sea. While we, resting on the grassy margin of the beach, enjoy
this charming picture, our native turns his face to the bay, and he
points out to us the pebbly shore where Captain Cook “hove down” his
vessel, more than a century ago, and then scraped those barnacles and
sea-weed growths from that ship’s bottom. Here the English discoverer
first came in contact with the natives of Oonalashka, and there are
people over on Spirkin or “Borka” Island, just across the bay from
us, who will recite the legend of this early visit of that Englishman
with great earnestness, circumspection, and detail, so faithfully
has the story been transmitted from father to son. Their own name of
Samahgaanooda was changed voluntarily to English Bay, or “Anglieeski
Bookhta,” by which designation they themselves call the harbor to-day.

A broad expanse of this bay lies directly between us on the north
side and the village of Borka, which is perched on a narrow
beach-level shelf of an island that rises bold and abruptly, high
from the sea. This hamlet is the most remarkable native settlement in
all Alaska with respect to a strange and unwonted cleanliness which
is exhibited in this community of one hundred and forty Aleutes, who
are living here to-day in twenty-eight frame houses, barraboras, and
a chapel. What makes it still more remarkable is the fact that these
people are in close communication with their kindred of Oonalashka,
who are distant only a few hours’ journey by canoe and portage, and
who are not especially cleanly to the slightest noteworthy degree.
Those people of Borka are living in the cleanest and neatest of
domiciles. They are living so without an exceptional instance, every
hut being as tidy and as orderly as its neighbor. They have large
windows in the small frame houses and barraboras, scrub and sand the
floors, and keep their simple furniture, their beds, and window-panes
polished and bright. Glass tumblers, earthen pots, and wooden firkins
filled with transplanted wild-flowers stand on the tables and deep
window-sills to bloom fresh and sweet all the year round. A modest,
unassuming old Russian Creole trader, who has lived there all his
life, and who was living recently, is credited with this influence
for the better with the natives. Certainly he is the only one who has
ever succeeded in working such a revolution in the slovenly, untidy
household habits of these amiable but shiftless people.

As we retrace our steps to Oonalashka village we become fully
impressed with the size of this island. It bears so many mountain
spurs, with a singularly rugged, cut-up coast, in which the deep
indentations or gulf-fiörds nearly sever the island in twain as they
run in to almost meet from the north and south sides. Beautiful
mats of wild poppies are nodding their yellow heads as the gusts
sweep over them on the hillsides, and a rank, rich growth of tall
grasses by the creek-margins and the sea-shore in sheltered places
shimmers and sways like so many fields of uncut green grain do at
home. Vegetation everywhere, except on the summits of the highest
peaks and ridges and the mural faces of the bluffs! Even there some
tiny lichens grow, however, and give rich tones of golden ochre and
purplish-bronzed reflections from the cold, moist rocks, whereto they
cling.

We pause in that little cemetery, just outside of the village of
Illoolook. It is on a small knoll, under higher hills that rear
themselves over it. Its disorder and neglect is a fair reminder of
what we see in most of our own rural graveyards. The practice of all
these natives is to inter by digging a shallow grave. The body is
prepared in its best clothes, and coffined in a plain wooden box. A
small mound and a larger or smaller wooden Greek cross is the only
monument. Tiny oil-portraits of their patron saints, painted on tin
or sheet-iron, especially made for these purposes, and furnished
by the Church, are tacked to the crosses, with now and then a rude
Russian inscription carved or painted thereon in addition. During
certain periods of the summer, when the weather is pleasant, little
squads of relatives will come out here from the village and pass a
whole day in tea-drinking and renovating the crosses, sitting on the
mounds as they chat, work, and boil their samovar. The Illoolook
church-bells ring—they arouse us to resume the walk thus interrupted
in this small city of Aleutian dead. As we enter the town, we see the
occupants of turfy barraboras and frame cottages hastening from every
quarter and trooping to the door of a yellow-walled and red-roofed
house of worship. Perched on that three-barred cross which crowns the
cupola of this chapel are half a dozen big black ravens, all croaking
most lugubriously, as the clanging chimes peal out below them. That
is their favorite roosting-place. The natives take no notice of
those ill-omened birds, which as feathered scavengers, hop around
the barraboras in perfect security, since no one ever disturbs them,
unless it be some graceless trader who is anxious to test the killing
power of a new shotgun. They breed in high chinks of the bluffs, and
find abundant food cast upon the beaches by the sea. A few domestic
fowls, some with broods of newly-hatched chicks, are running about or
scratching around the place. The priest’s shaggy little bull and cow
stand in front of a small stable or “scoatnik,” lazily chewing their
cud. There is no other live-stock in the hamlet, except a few dogs
and cats; not a great many of the latter, however.

West of this Island of Oonalashka is a narrow-lined stretch of more
than eight hundred miles of rapidly-succeeding islets and islands,
until the extreme limit of the Alaskan border is reached at Attoo. In
all this dreary wilderness of land and water only three small human
settlements are to be found to-day, with a population of less than
five hundred natives and six or seven white men. Attoo, Atkha, and
Oomnak are the only villages, the last closely adjoins Oonalashka, on
a large island of the same name.

[Illustration: THE VILLAGE AND HARBOR OF ATTOO

This Settlement is the extreme Western Town of North America: it is
three thousand miles West of San Francisco]

Attoo is the extreme western town which is or can be located on the
North American continent. It is the first land made and discovered
by the Russians, as they became acquainted with the Aleutian chain.
Michael Novodiskov, a sailor who had survived Bering and the wreck
of the _St. Peter_ in 1741, took command of a small shallop in 1745,
and sailed from Lower Kamchatka. He reached Attoo, and also landed
on its sister island of Aggatoo, in the same season. The Aleutes
were then numerous, bold, and richly supplied with sea-otter skins.
Now, nothing but the ruined sites of once populous villages remain
behind to attest the truth of that early Russian narrative; and the
descendants, who number but a little more than one hundred souls,
are living in a small hamlet that nestles in the shelter of that
beautiful harbor on the north side of Attoo Island, at the rear of
which abrupt hills and high mountains suddenly rise. A sand-beach
before the village is fringed by a most luxurious growth of rank
grass, that wild wheat of the north, the tasselled seed-plumes of
which are waving as high as the waists, and even the heads of the
natives themselves.

Sea-otters have been virtually exterminated or driven from the coast
here, so that the residents of Attoo are, in worldly goods, poor
indeed; and a small trader’s store is stationed here, more for the
sake of charity than of commercial gain. But they have an abundance
of sea-lion meat, of eggs and water-fowl; a profusion of fish—cod,
halibut, algæ mackerel, and a few salmon. They have a liberal supply
of drift-wood landed by currents upon the shores of this and the
contiguous rugged islets. Several times during the last ten years
have traders endeavored to coax these inhabitants to abandon Attoo
and go with them to better situations for sea-otter hunting. But,
although pinched by poverty, yet so strongly attached are they
to this lonely island of their birth, that they have obstinately
declined. Though they are poor, yet the contrast between their
cheerful, healthy faces and those debauched countenances which
we observed at the wealthy villages of Protassov and Belcovsky
is a delightful one, and preaches an eloquent sermon in its own
reflection. Naturally the people of Attoo do not enjoy much sugar,
tea, cloth, and other little articles which they have learned
to covet from the trader’s store; so we find them living nearer
the primitive style of Aleutian ancestry than elsewhere in the
archipelago, being dressed largely in tanned seal and bird-skins,
of the fashion made and worn by their forefathers who welcomed
Novodiskov long, long ago.

The necessity of doing something in order to gain from the trader a
few of the simplest articles, such as the natural resources of Attoo
utterly failed to supply, has driven the natives to the care and
conservation of blue foxes, which they introduced here many years
past, and of which they secure, in traps, two or three hundred every
season. The common red fox[80] of the whole Aleutian chain became
extinct here in prior time; so, taking advantage of this fact, those
blue foxes, so abundant and so valuable on the Seal Islands, were
imported, and have ranged without deterioration, since ice-floes
never bridge the straits that isolate this island from the nearest
adjacent land, and upon which the common breed might cross over to
ruin the quality of the fur of that transported _Vulpes lagopus_.
They have also domesticated the wild goose, and rear flocks of them
around their barraboras, being the only people in Alaska who have
ever done so.

It hardly seems credible, at first thought, but the village of Attoo
makes San Francisco practically the half-way town as we go from
Calais, Me., to it, our westernmost settlement! It is really but
slightly short of being just midway, since Attoo stands almost three
thousand miles west of the Golden Gate.[81] A strict geographical
centre of the American Union is that point at sea forty miles off the
Columbia River mouth, on the coast of Oregon.

The nearest neighbors of the Attoo villagers are not of their own
kith and kin—they are the Atkhan and Kamchadale Creoles and natives
of the Russian Seal Islands, some two hundred miles west; but on our
side they are separated by more than four hundred and thirty miles
of stormy water from the first inhabited island, which is Atkha,
where a much larger and a much more fortunately situated settlement
exists on its east coast, at Nazan Bay. Here is a community of over
two hundred and thirty souls, being all the people gathered together
who previously lived in small scattered hamlets on the many large and
small islands between Atkha and Attoo. They secure a comparatively
good number of sea-otters, and are relatively well-to-do, being able
to excite and sustain much activity in the trader’s store.

General agreement among those who have visited the Atkhans, as
traders and agents of the Government, is that these natives are
the finest body of sea-otter hunters in all respects known to the
business. They make long journeys from their homes, carried to the
outlying islands of Semeisopochnoi, Amchitka, Tanaga, Kanaga, Adahk
and Nitalikh, Siguam and Amookhta, some of them far distant, on which
they establish camps and search the reefs and rocks awash, as they
learn by experience where the chosen haunts of the shy sea-otter are.
Here they remain engaged in the chase over extended periods of months
at a time, when, in accord with a preconcerted date arranged with the
traders, those schooners which carried them out from Atkha, return,
pick them up, and take them back. Then the trader’s store is made
a grand rendezvous for the village; the hunters tally their skins,
settle their debts, make their donations to the church, and then
promptly invest their surplus in every imaginable purchase which the
goods displayed will warrant.

The women of Atkha employ long intervals, in which their husbands and
sons are absent, by making the most beautifully woven grass baskets
and mats. The finest samples of this weaving ever produced by a
savage or semi-civilized people are those which come from Atkha. The
girls and women gather grasses at the proper season, and prepare them
with exceeding care for their primitive methods of weaving; and they
spare no amount of labor and pains in the execution of their designs,
which are now almost entirely those suggested by the traders, such as
fancy sewing-baskets, cigar-holders, table-mats, and special forms
that are eagerly accepted in trade, for they find a ready sale in San
Francisco.

A peculiar and valuable food-fish is found in the Atkhan waters which
has been attracting a great deal of attention as a substitute for the
mackerel of our east coast, inasmuch as there is no such fish found
oil the Alaskan coasts. Among the sea-weed that floats in immense
rafts everywhere throughout the Aleutian passes, the “yellow-fish,”
or “Atkha mackerel,”[82] is very abundant; it is also plentiful
off the Shoomagin Islands. It is a good substitute for the real
mackerel,[83] resembling it in taste after salting, as well as in
size and movements.

During early days of Russian order and control, the people of Atkha
lived altogether on the north side of the island, and it was then
the grand central depot of the old Russian American Company. A chief
factor was in charge, who had exclusive jurisdiction over all that
country embraced in the Kurile archipelago, and the Commander group
of Kamchatka, and the Aleutian chain as far east as Oomnak. It was
a very important place then, and this territory of its jurisdiction
was styled the “Atkhan Division.” But within the last ten or twelve
years, fish and drift-wood became very scarce on the Bering Sea
coast, so the inhabitants made a sweeping removal of everything from
the ancient site on Korovinsky Bay to that of Nazan, where the little
hamlet now stands, overtopped by lofty peaks and hills on every side,
except where it looks out over the straits to the bold headlands of
Seguam. So thorough were they in this “nova-sailnah,” that they even
disinterred the remains of their first priest and re-buried them in
front of their new chapel—a delightful exhibition of fond memory and
respect where we might, perhaps, have least thought to have found
them manifested.

The curious Island of Amlia shuts out the heavy swell of the Pacific
Ocean from Nazan Harbor, and gives that little bay great peace and
protection. This island is thirty miles in length, and nowhere has
it a breadth of over four miles; most of its entire extent is only
some two miles from ocean to ocean. It consists of a string of sharp,
conical peaks, which once were active volcanoes, but now cold and
silent as the tomb. So abruptly do they rise from the oceans which
they divide, that there is but one small spot on the south side where
a vessel can lie at anchor and effect a landing.

Atkha is a large island, and it has very slight resemblance to
that of Oonalashka in shape; its indented fiörds are, however,
less deep and not near so commodious and accessible. The snowy,
smoking crater of Korovinsky Sopka stands like a grim sentinel
overlooking the north end of the island, a sheer five thousand feet
above the sea-beach at its feet. A few miles to the south another
rises to almost as great an elevation, from the flanks of which a
number of hot springs pour out a steady boiling flood; then, at
the northeast extremity, and handsomely visible from the village,
is a silent, snowy crater which they call Sarichev. Korovinsky is
the only disturber of the peace that rightfully belongs to Atkha.
It is constantly emitting smoke and ashes, while earthquakes and
subterranean noises are felt and heard all over the island at
frequent though irregular periods during the entire year. In the
ravines and cañons of this volcano and its satellites are the
only glaciers which the geologist has ever been able to find on
any of these peaked, lofty islands west of Oonalashka, though a
hundred eternal snow-clad summits and a thousand snow-filled gorges
are easily discerned. The natives here also describe a series of
mud-volcanoes, or “mud-pots,” that exist on the island, in which this
stuff is constantly boiling up with all the colors of the rainbow,
about as they seethe and puff in the Geyser Basin of the Yellowstone
Park.

There are a dozen or so small, mountainous, uninhabited islands
between Atkha and the larger island of Adakh in the west. Very little
is known of them, since they endanger life if a landing is made. The
most imposing one is Sitkhin, a round, mountainous, lofty mass which
culminates in a snow-covered peak over five thousand feet in height.
The crater is dead, however, and no sign of ancient volcanic energy
is now displayed, beyond the emission of hot springs from fissures
in its rocky flanks. Adakh itself is quite a large island, rough and
hilly to an excessive degree. A grand cone, which rises up directly
in the centre high above all the rest, is called the “white crater.”
It is also a dead volcano like Sitkhin; but steamy vapors from
outpouring hot waters rise in many valleys and from the uplands. A
succession of volcanic peaks reared from the sea, a few of them still
smoking and muttering, constitute the islands of Tanaga and Kanaga
in the vicinity of Adakh. No place is feasible for a boat to land on
either of these wild islets, except on the west shore of Tanaga in
Slava Rossia Bay.

A single immense peak, rising all by itself, solitary and alone,
from the girdle of surf that encircles it—a band of foaming breakers
eighteen miles in circumference, is the islet of Goreloi. It is a
formidable rival of the majestic volcano of Shishaldin, on Oonimak.
Though nearly as high, yet it is not so symmetrical a cone. Wreaths
and solid banks of fog are pressed against its volcanic sides, and
hang around its glittering white head, so that the full impression
of its grandeur cannot strike us as we gaze at its defiant presence,
where, unsupported, it alone beats back the swell of a vast ocean.

That cluster of islands which stand between Goreloi and Attoo is
an aggregate of cold volcanic peaks—Amchitka and Kyska being the
largest—the Seven Peaks, or Semiseisopochnoi, smoking a little, all
the rest entirely quiet. They offer no hospitality to a traveller,
and the natives have done wisely in abandoning these savage
island-solitudes to reside at Nazan Bay, where the country has a most
genial aspect, and many stretches of warm sand-dune tracts are found,
upon which vegetation springs into luxuriant life. Here, also, quite
a herd of Kamchatkan cattle were cared for when the Russian régime
was in vogue. This stock-raising effort was not a practical success,
however, and the last of the bovine race disappeared very shortly
after the country changed ownership. Goats were also introduced
here, as well as elsewhere throughout the fur-trading posts of the
old company in Alaska; but the morbid propensity of those pugnacious
little animals to feed upon the grasses which grow over roofs of
the barraboras, and thus break in and otherwise damage such earthen
tenements, made them so unpopular that their propagation was
energetically and successfully discouraged by the suffering Aleutes.

Two hundred miles of uninhabited waste extends between the natives
of Atkha and their nearest neighbors, the villagers of Nikolsky, who
live in a small, sheltered bight of the southwest shore of Oomnak.
This is one of the largest islands of the whole Aleutian group, very
mountainous, with three commanding, overlooking peaks that are most
imposing in their rugged elevation. Several large lakes nestle in
their hilly arms, and feed salmon rivulets that rush in giddy rapids
and cascades down to the ocean. Everything grows at Oomnak which we
have noticed on its sister island of Oonalashka, except the willow;
while cross and red foxes are much more abundant here than at any
other place in the whole archipelago. A great many hot springs
boil up on the north side, and only as recently as 1878 a decided
volcanic shock was experienced, which resulted in the upheaval of
a small mud-crater between the village and Toolieskoi Sopka, a
huge fire-mountain of the middle interior. Subterranean noises and
tremors of the earth are chronic phenomena here, but the natives
pay no attention to them. They complain, however, of inability to
find fish where they usually found them in abundance prior to these
earthquakes. Redoubled attention, however, is paid to the salmon when
they run, and thus the deficiency is made up.

[Illustration: An Aleutian Mummy.

[_Unrolled from its cerements._]]

Before the coming of the Russians, Oomnak was one of the most
populous islands; then there were over twenty villages, some of them
quite large. One was so big that “the inhabitants of it were able
to eat the carcass of an enormous whale in a single day!” The most
stubborn and independent spirit displayed by the Aleutes prior to
their subjugation was exhibited by the inhabitants of this island.
The four or five thousand hardy savages which the promishlyniks met
here in 1757-59 have dwindled to a microscopic number of less than
one hundred and thirty souls, who reside at Nikolsky to-day. They
enjoy a somewhat better climate, for a good deal less snow falls here
than at Oonalashka, and the small vegetable-garden does much better
than elsewhere, except at Attoo. They raise domestic fowls, and have
a very fair sea-otter catch every winter, when they scour the south
coast, and reside for months at Samalga, hunting that animal. Furious
gales which prevail during certain seasons drive kahlans out upon the
south beach, there to rest from the pelting of storms: then they are
speedily apprehended and clubbed by the watchful Oomnak hunter.

That curious group, the “Cheetiery Sopochnie,” or Islands of the
Four Mountains, stands right across the straits, opposite Oomnak.
From Kaygamilak, which lies nearest, eleven mummies were taken as
they were found in a warm cave on the northeast side of this island.
These bodies were placed there in 1724, or some twenty-five or thirty
years before the Russians first appeared. The mummies[84] were in
fine preservation, and were the remains of a noted chief and his
family, who in that time ruled with an iron hand over a large number
of his people. The Island of Kayamil is a mere volcanic series of
fire-chimneys, the walls of which are not yet cool. The southeast
shore in olden times was the site of several large settlements, where
the people lived well upon an abundance of sea-lions, hair-seals,
and water-fowl, which still repair to its borders. Now that it is
desolate and uninhabitable, large flocks of tundra geese spend the
summers here, as they shed their feathers and rear their young, not
a fox to vex or destroy them having been left by those prehistoric
Aleutian hunters.

But on Tahnak, which is the largest of the group, plenty of red
foxes are reported. The loftiest summits are also on this one of the
four islets, and on the south side once lived a race of the most
warlike and ferocious of all Aleutes. They were destroyed to a man by
Glottov, and their few descendants have long since been merged with
those of Oomnak, where they now live. Several small, high, bluffy
islands stand around Tahnak, and between it and its sister, Oonaska,
which is nearly as large, equally rugged and precipitous. Amootoyon
is a quite small islet, and completes the quartet of “Cheetiery
Sopochnie.”

A most interesting volcanic phenomenon of recent record is afforded
by the study of that small Bogaslov islet which now stands hot and
smoking twenty miles north of Oomnak, and which, two years ago,
raised a great commotion by firing up anew. In the autumn of 1796
the natives of Oomnak and Oonalashka were startled by a series of
loud reports like parks of artillery, followed by tremblings of the
earth upon which they stood. Then a dense dark cloud, full of gas
and ashes, came down upon them from Bering Sea, swept by a northerly
wind, and it hung over their astonished heads for a week or ten
days, accompanied by earthquakes and subterranean thunder; then when
an interval of clearing occurred by a change of winds, they saw
distinctly to the northward a bright light burning over the sea. The
boldest launched their bidarkas, and, after a close inspection, saw
that a small island had been elevated about one hundred feet above
the level of the surrounding waters; that it had been forced up from
some fissure of the bottom to the sea, and was still rising, while
liquid streams of lava and scoriæ made it impossible for them to
land. This plutonic action did not cease here until 1825, when it
left above the green waters of Bering Sea an isolated oval peak with
a serrated crest, almost inaccessible, some two hundred and eighty
feet high, and two or three miles in circumference. The Russians
landed here then for the first time, and the rocks were so hot
that they passed but a few moments ashore. It has, however, cooled
off enough now to be occupied by large herds of sea-lions, and is
resorted to by flocks of sea-fowl. In this fashion of the making
of Bogaslov was our vast chain of the Aleutian archipelago cast up
from that line of least resistance in the earth’s crust which is now
marked by the position of these islands, as they alternately face the
billows of the immense wastes of the Pacific, and those storm-tossed
waves of the shoal sea of Bering.


FOOTNOTES:

[69] Bishop Veniaminov, who witnessed one of these eruptions in 1825,
describes the occurrence: “On the 10th March, 1825, after a prolonged
subterranean noise resembling a heavy cannonade, that was plainly
heard on the islands of Oonalashka, Akoon, and the southern end of
the Alaska Peninsula, a low ridge at the northwestern end of Oonimak
opened in five places with violent emissions of flames and great
masses of black ashes, covering the country for miles around; the
ice and snow on the mountain tops melted and descended in a terrific
torrent five to ten miles in width, on the eastern side of the
island. The Shishaldin crater, which up to that time had also emitted
flames, continued to smoke only.”

[70] A flat, flinty rock—upon it a layer of dried moss or eider-down
was spread, then a sprinkling of powdered sulphur was cast over
the moss or feathers, then a large quartzite stone was grasped in
the native’s hand, who struck it down with all his force upon this
preparation. The concussion produced fire, and, when feathers were
used, a terrible smell.

[71] The range and diverse beauties of the numerous mosses and
lichens on these islands must serve as an agreeable and interesting
study to anyone who has the slightest love for nature. They
undoubtedly formed the first covering to the naked rocks, after
these basaltic foundations had been reared upon and above the bed
of the sea—bare and naked cliffs and boulders, which with calm
intrepidity presented their callous fronts to the powerful chisels
of the Frost King. Rain, wind, and thawing moods destroyed their
iron-bound strongness; particles larger and finer, washed down and
away, made a surface of soil which slowly became more and more
capable of sustaining vegetable life. “In this virgin earth,” says an
old author, “the wind brings a small seed, which at first generates
a diminutive moss, which, spreading by degrees, with its tender
and minute texture, resists, however, the most intense cold, and
extends over the whole a verdant velvet carpet. In fact, these mosses
are the medicines and the nurses of the other inhabitants of the
vegetable kingdom [in the North]. The bottom parts of the mosses,
which perish and moulder away yearly, mingling with the dissolved
but as yet crude parts of the earth, communicate to it organized
particles, which contribute to the growth and nourishment of other
plants. They likewise yield salts and unguinous phlogistic particles
for the nourishment of future vegetable colonies, the seeds of other
plants, which the sea and winds, or else the birds in their plumage,
bring from distant shores and scatter among the mosses.” Then the
botanist needs no prompting when he observes the maternal care of
these mosses, which screen the tender new arrivals from the cold and
imbue them with the moisture which they have stored up, and “nourish
them with their own oily exhalations, so that they grow, increase,
and at length bear seeds, and afterward dying, add to the unguinous
nutritive particles of the earth; and at the same time diffuse over
this new earth and mosses more seeds, the earnest of a numerous
posterity.”

[72] _Megaptera versabilis._

[73] Yearling whale.

[74] Calf whales.

[75] Then it was the custom to cut up the dead body of a celebrated
native whale-hunter into small pieces, each of which was kept by the
survivors to rub over their spear-heads, being carefully dried and
preserved for that purpose. Again, in ancient times, the pursuit
of the whale was the prelude to many secret and superstitious
observances by the hunters. These primitive whalers preserved the
bodies of distinguished hunters in caves, and before going out on a
whale-chase would carry those remains into the water of streams so as
to drink of that which flowed over them. The tainted draught conveyed
the spirit and luck of the departed!

[76] The natives always called this settlement “Illoolook,” or
“curved beach.”

[77] _Empetrum nigrum._ The natives call it “shecksa.” It is their
chief supply of fuel.

[78] But on two other occasions the author has had clear and unfogged
glimpses of this singular mountain, which he made careful studies of;
they are presented to the reader in this connection.

[79] _Empetrum nigrum._ The fruit is a small black berry very much
like that borne upon those hedges of an English privet, which grows
in our garden here at home.

[80] The only fur-bearing animal found in every section of Alaska
is the red fox (_Vulpes fulvus_). From Point Barrow to the southern
boundary, and from the British line to the Island of Attoo, this
brute is omnipresent. It varies greatly in size and quality of fur,
from the handsome specimens of Nooshagak down to the diminutive
yellow-tinged creatures that ramble furtively over the Aleutian
Islands.

[81] “The distance in statute miles between San Francisco and a point
due south of Attoo, measured on the parallel of San Francisco, is
2,943.1 miles. The distance east from Attoo of a point due north of
San Francisco, measured on the parallel of Attoo, is 2,214.5 miles.
The amount of westing made in sailing from San Francisco to Attoo,
on a great circle, is very nearly 2,582.5 miles.”—(Henry Gannett,
Geographer U. S. Geological Survey: letter to author.)

[82] _Pleurogrammus monopterygius._

[83] _Scomber scombrus._

[84] These specimens were procured at the urgent request of the
author, who induced a trader to make the attempt, September 22, 1874.
They were presented by the Alaska Commercial Company of San Francisco
to the Smithsonian Institution.




CHAPTER IX.

WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS.

  The Fur-seal Millions of the Pribylov Islands.—Marvellous
  Exhibition of Massed Animal-life in a State of Nature.—Story of
  the Discovery of these Remarkable Rookeries, July, 1786.—Previous
  Knowledge of them Unknown to Man.—Sketch of the Pribylov
  Islands.—Their Character, Climate, and Human Inhabitants.—A Realm
  of Summer-fog.—The Seal-life here Overshadows Everything, though
  the Bird Rookeries of Saint George are Wonderful.—No Harbors.—The
  Roadsteads.—The Attractive Flora.—Only Islands in Alaska where
  the Curse of Mosquitoes is Removed.—Natives Gathering Eggs on
  Walrus Islet.—A Scene of Confusion and Uproar.—Contrast very Great
  between Saint Paul and Saint George.—Good Reason of the Seals in
  Resorting to these Islands to the Exclusion of all other Land in
  Alaska.—Old-time Manners and Methods of the Russians Contrasted
  with Our Present Control.—Vast Gain and Improvement for Seals and
  Natives.—The Character of the Present Residents.—Their Attachment
  to the Islands.—The History of the Alaska Commercial Company.—The
  Wise Action of Congress.—The Perfect Supervision of the Agents of
  the Government.—Seals are more Numerous now than at First.—The
  Methods of the Company, the Government, and the Natives in Taking
  the Seals.

    When they the approaching time perceive,
    They flee the deep, and watery pastures leave;
    On the dry ground, far from the swelling tide,
    Bring forth their young, and on the shores abide
    Till twice six times they see the eastern gleams
    Brighten the hills and tremble on the streams.
    The thirteenth morn, soon as the early dawn
    Hangs out its crimson folds or spreads its lawn,
    No more the fields and lofty coverts please,
    Each hugs her own and hastes to rolling seas.

  —OVID.


The story of the gloomy grandeur of Alaskan scenery and the wild
existence of its inhabitants is not half told until that picture of
what we observe on the Pribylov Islands of Bering Sea is graphically
drawn. Here is annually presented one of the most marvellous
exhibitions of massed animal-life that is known to man, civilized
or savage; here is exhibited the perfect working of an anomalous
industry, conducted without a parallel in the history of human
enterprise, and of immense pecuniary and biological value.

In treating this subject the writer has trusted to nothing save what
he himself has seen, for, until these life-studies were made by him,
no succinct and consecutive history of the lives and movements of
these animals had been published by any man. Fanciful yarns, woven
by the ingenuity of whaling captains, in which the truth was easily
blended with that which was not true, and short paragraphs penned
hastily by naturalists of more or less repute, formed the knowledge
that we had. Best of all was the old diary of Steller, who, while
suffering bodily tortures, the legacy of gangrene and scurvy, when
wrecked with Bering on the Commander Islands, showed the nerve, the
interest, and the energy of a true naturalist. He daily crept, with
aching bones and watery eyes, over the boulders and mossy flats
of Bering Island to catch glimpses of those strange animals which
abode there then as they abide to-day. Considering the physical
difficulties that environed Steller, the notes made by him on the
sea-bears of the North Pacific are remarkably good; but, as I have
said, they fall so far from giving a fair and adequate idea of
what these immense herds are and do as to be absolutely valueless
for the present hour. Shortly after Steller’s time great activity
sprang up in the South Atlantic and Pacific over the capture and
sale of fur-seal skins taken in those localities It is extraordinary
that, though whole fleets of American, English, French, Dutch, and
Portuguese vessels engaged during a period of protracted enterprise
of over eighty years in length in the business of repairing to the
numerous rookeries of the Antarctic, returning annually laden with
enormous cargoes of fur-seal skins, yet, as above mentioned, hardly
a definite line of record has been made in regard to the whole
transaction, involving, as it did, so much labor and so much capital.

The fact is, that the acquisition of these pelagic peltries had
engaged thousands of men, and that millions of dollars had been
employed in capturing, dressing, and selling fur-seal skins during
the hundred years just passed by; nevertheless, from the time of
Steller, away back as far as 1751, up to the beginning of the last
decade, the scientific world actually knew nothing definite in regard
to the life history of this valuable animal. The truth connected
with the life of the fur-seal, as it herds in countless myriads
on the Pribylov Islands of Alaska, is far stranger than fiction.
Perhaps the existing ignorance has been caused by confounding the
hair-seal, _Phoca vitulina_, and its kind, with the creature now
under discussion. Two animals, more dissimilar in their individuality
and method of living, can, however, hardly be imagined, although they
belong to the same group, and live apparently upon the same food.

The following notes, surveys, and hypotheses herewith presented are
founded upon the writer’s personal observations in the seal-rookeries
of St. Paul and St. George, during the seasons of 1872 to 1874
inclusive, supplemented by his confirmatory inspection made in
1876. They were obtained during long days and nights of consecutive
observation, from the beginning to the close of each seal-season, and
cover, by actual surveys, the entire ground occupied by these animals.

During the progress of heated controversies that took place pending
the negotiation which ended in the acquisition of Alaska by our
Government, frequent references were made to the fur-seal. Strange
to say, this animal was so vaguely known at that time, even to
scientific men, that it was almost without representation in any of
the best zoölogical collections of the world; even the Smithsonian
Institution did not possess a perfect skin and skeleton. The writer,
then as now, an associate and collaborator of that establishment, had
his curiosity very much excited by these stories; and in March, 1872,
he was, by the joint action of Professor Baird and the Secretary of
the Treasury, enabled to visit the Pribylov Islands for the purpose
of studying the life and habits of these animals.[85]

All writers on the subject of Alaskan exploration and enterprise
agree as to the cause of the discovery of the Pribylov Islands in
the last century. It was due to the feverish anxiety of a handful
of Russian fur-gatherers, who desired to find new fields of gain
when they had exhausted those last uncovered. Altasov and his band
of Russians, Tartars, and Cossacks arrived at Kamtchatka toward the
end of the seventeenth century, and they were the first discoverers
of the beautiful, costly fur of the sea-otter. The animal bearing
this pelage abounded then on that coast, but by the middle of the
eighteenth century they and those who came after them had entirely
extirpated it from that country. Then the survivors of Bering’s
second voyage of observation, in 1741-42, and Tschericov brought
back an enormous number of skins from Bering Island; then Michael
Novodiskov discovered Attoo and the contiguous islands in 1745;
Paicov came after him, and opened out the Fox Islands, in the same
chain, during 1759; then succeeded Stepan Glottov, of infamous
memory, who determined Kadiak in 1763; the peninsula of Alaska was
discovered by Krenitzin in 1768. During these long years, from the
discovery of Attoo until the last date mentioned above, a great many
Russian companies fitted out at the mouth of the Amoor River and
in the Okotsk Sea; they prospected therefrom this whole Aleutian
archipelago in search of the sea-otter. There were, perhaps,
twenty-five or thirty different companies, with quite a fleet of
small vessels; and so energetic and thorough were they in their
search and capture of the sea-otter that as early as 1772 and 1774
the catch in that group had dwindled from thousands and tens of
thousands at first to hundreds and tens of hundreds at last. As all
men do when they find that that which they are engaged in is failing
them, a change of search and inquiry was in order; and, then the
fur-seal, which had been noted, but not valued much, every year as
it went north in the spring through the passes and channels of the
Aleutian chain, then going back south again in the fall, became the
source of much speculation as to where it spent its time on land and
how it bred. No one had ever known of its stopping one solitary hour
on a single rock or beach throughout all Alaska or the northwest
coast. The natives, when questioned, expressed themselves as entirely
ignorant, though they believed, as they believe in many things of
which they have no knowledge, that these seals repaired to some
unknown land in the north every summer and left it every winter. They
also reasoned then, that when they left the unknown land to the north
in the fall, and went south into the North Pacific, they travelled
to some other strange island or continent there, upon which in turn
to spend the winter. Naturally the Russians preferred to look for
the supposed winter resting-places of the fur-seal, and forthwith
a hundred schooners and shallops sailed into storm and fog, to the
northward occasionally, and always to the southward, in search of
this rumored breeding-ground. Indeed, if the record can be credited,
the whole bent of this Russian attention and search for the fur-seal
islands was devoted to that region south of the Aleutian Islands,
between Japan and Oregon.

Hence it was not until 1786, after more than eighteen years of
unremitting search by hardy navigators, that the Pribylov Islands
were discovered. It seems that a rugged Muscovitic “stoorman,”
or ship’s “mate,” Gerassim Pribylov by name, serving under the
direction and in the pay of one of the many companies engaged in
the fur-business at that time, was much moved and exercised in his
mind by the revelations of an old Aleutian shaman at Oonalashka, who
pretended to recite a legend of the natives, wherein he declared that
certain islands in Bering Sea had long been known to the Aleutes.

Pribylov[86] commanded a small sloop, the _St. George_, which he
employed for three successive years in constant, though fruitless,
explorations to the northward of Oonalashka and Oonimak, ranging over
the whole of Bering Sea from the straits above. His ill-success does
not now seem strange as we understand the currents, the winds, and
fogs of those waters. Why, only recently the writer himself has been
on one of the best-manned vessels that ever sailed from any port,
provided with good charts and equipped with all the marine machinery
known to navigation, and that vessel has hovered for nine successive
days off the north point and around St. Paul Island, sometimes almost
on the reef, and never more than ten miles away, without actually
knowing where the island was! So Pribylov did well, considering,
when at the beginning of the third summer’s tedious search, in July,
1786, his old sloop ran up against the walls of Tolstoi Mees, at St.
George, and, though the fog was so thick that he could see scarce the
length of his vessel, his ears were regaled by the sweet music of
seal-rookeries wafted out to him on the heavy air. He knew then that
he had found the object of his search, and he at once took possession
of the island in the Russian name and that of his craft.

His secret could not long be kept. He had left some of his men behind
him to hold the island, and when he returned to Oonalashka they were
gone; and ere the next season fairly opened, a dozen vessels were
watching him and trimming in his wake. Of course, they all found the
island, and in that year, July, 1787, the sailors of Pribylov, on
St. George, while climbing the bluffs and straining their eyes for
a relief-ship, descried the low coast and scattered cones of St.
Paul, thirty-six miles to the northwest of them. When they landed at
St. George, not a sign or a vestige of human habitation was found
thereon; but during the succeeding year, when they crossed over to
St. Paul and took possession of it, in turn, they were surprised at
finding on the south coast of that island, at a point now known as
English Bay, the remains of a recent fire. There were charred embers
of drift-wood and places where grass had been scorched; there was
a pipe and a brass knife-handle, which, I regret to say, have long
passed beyond the cognizance of any ethnologist. This much appears in
the Russian records.

But, if we can believe the Aleutes in what they relate, the islands
were known to them long before they were visited by the Russians.
They knew and called them “Ateek,” after having heard about them. The
legend of these people was as follows:

Eegad-dah-geek, a son of an Oonimak chief of the name of
Ah-kak-nee-kak, was taken out to sea in a bidarka by a storm, the
wind blowing strong from the south. He could not get back to the
beach, nor could he make any other landing, and was obliged to run
before the wind three or four days, when he brought up on St. Paul
Island, north from the land which he had been compelled to leave.
Here he remained until autumn, and became acquainted with the hunting
of different animals. Elegant weather one day setting in, he saw
the peaks of Oonimak. He then resolved to put to sea, and return
to receive the thanks of his people there, and after three or four
days of travelling he arrived at Oonimak with “many otter tails and
snouts.”[87]

The Pribylov Islands lie in the heart of Bering Sea, and are among
the most insignificant landmarks known to that ocean. They are
situated one hundred and ninety-two miles north of Oonalashka, two
hundred miles south of St. Matthews, and about the same distance
westward of Cape Newenham on the mainland.

The islands of St. George and St. Paul are from twenty-seven to
thirty miles apart, St. George lying southeastward of St. Paul. They
are far enough south to be beyond the reach of permanent ice-floes,
upon which polar bears would have made their way to the islands,
though a few of these animals were doubtless always present. They
were also distant enough from the inhabited Aleutian districts and
the coast of the mainland to have remained unknown to savage men.
Hence they afforded the fur-seal the happiest shelter and isolation,
for their position seems to be such as to surround and envelop them
with fog-banks that fairly shut out the sun nine days in every ten
during the summer and breeding-season.

In this location ocean-currents from the great Pacific, warmer than
the normal temperature of this latitude, trending up from southward,
ebb and flow around the islands as they pass, giving rise during the
summer and early autumn to constant, dense, humid fog and drizzling
mists, which hang in heavy banks over the ground and the sea-line,
seldom dissolving away to indicate a pleasant day. By the middle
or end of October strong, cold winds, refrigerated on the Siberian
steppes, sweep down over the islands, carrying off the moisture and
clearing up the air. By the end of January, or early in February,
they usually bring, by their steady pressure, from the north and
northwest, great fields of broken ice, sludgy floes, with nothing
in them approximating or approaching glacial ice. They are not very
heavy or thick, but as the wind blows they compactly cover the whole
surface of the sea, completely shutting in the land, and for months
at a time hush the wonted roar of the surf. In the exceptionally
cold seasons that succeed each other up there every four or five
years, for periods of three and even four months—from December to
May, and sometimes into June—the islands will be completely environed
and ice-bound. On the other hand, in about the same rotation, occur
exceptionally mild winters. Not even the sight of an ice-blink is
recorded then during the whole winter, and there is very little
skating on the shallow lakes and lagoons peculiar to St. Paul and St.
George. This, however, is not often the case.

The breaking up of winter-weather and the precipitation of summer
(for there is no real spring or autumn in these latitudes), usually
commences about the first week in April. The ice begins to leave or
dissolve at that time, or a little later, so that by the 1st or 5th
of May, the beaches and rocky sea-margin beneath the mural precipices
are generally clear and free from ice and snow, although the latter
occasionally lies, until the end of July or the middle of August, in
gullies and on leeward hill-slopes, where it has drifted during the
winter. Fog, thick and heavy, rolls up from the sea, and closes over
the land about the end of May. This, the habitual sign of summer,
holds on steadily to the middle or end of October again.

The periods of change in climate are exceedingly irregular during
the autumn and spring, so-called, but in summer a cool, moist, shady
gray fog is constantly present. To this certainty of favored climate,
coupled with the perfect isolation and an exceeding fitness of the
ground, is due, without doubt, that preference manifested by the
warm-blooded animals which come here every year, in thousands and
hundreds of thousands to breed, to the practical exclusion of all
other ground.[88]

I simply remark here, that the winter which I passed upon St. Paul
Island (1872-73) was one of great severity, and, according to the
natives, such as is very seldom experienced. Cold as it was, however,
the lowest marking of the thermometer was only 12° Fahr. below zero,
and that lasted but a few hours during a single day in February,
while the mean of that month was 18° above. I found that March was
the coldest month. Then the mean was 12° above, and I have since
learned that March continues to be the meanest month of the year.
The lowest average of a usual winter ranges from 22° to 26° above
zero; but these quiet figures are simply inadequate to impress the
reader with this exceeding discomfort of a winter in that locality.
It is the wind that tortures and cripples out-door exercise there,
as it does on all the sea-coasts and islands of Alaska. It is
blowing, blowing, from every point of the compass at all times; it
is an everlasting succession of furious gales, laden with snow and
sleety spiculæ, whirling in great drifts to-day, while to-morrow the
wind will blow from a quarter directly opposite, and reverse its
drift-building action of the day preceding.

Without being cold enough to suffer, one is literally confined
and chained to his room from December until April by this Æolian
tension. I remember very well that, during the winter of 1872-73,
I was watching, with all the impatience which a man in full health
and tired of confinement can possess, every opportunity to seize
upon quiet intervals between the storms, in which I could make
short trips along those tracks over which I was habituated to walk
during the summer; but in all that hyemal season I got out but three
times, and then only by the exertion of great physical energy. On
a day in March, for example, the velocity of the wind at St. Paul,
recorded by one of the signal-service anemometers, was at the rate of
eighty-eight miles per hour, with as low a temperature as -4°! This
particular wind-storm, with snow, blew at such a velocity for six
days without an hour’s cessation, while the natives passed from house
to house crawling on all fours. No man could stand up against it,
and no man wanted to. At a much higher temperature—say at 15° or 16°
above zero—with the wind blowing only twenty or twenty-five miles an
hour, it is necessary, when journeying, to be most thoroughly wrapped
up so as to guard against freezing.

As I have said, there are here virtually but two seasons—winter and
summer. To the former belongs November and the following months up
to the end of April, with a mean temperature of 20° to 28°; while
the transition of summer is but a very slight elevation of that
temperature, not more than 15° or 20°. Of the summer months, July,
perhaps, is the warmest, with an average temperature between 46° and
50° in ordinary seasons. When the sun breaks out through the fog,
and bathes the dripping, water-soaked hills and flats of the island
in its hot flood of light, I have known the thermometer to rise to
60° and 64° in the shade, while the natives crawled out of that
fervent and unwonted heat, anathematizing its brilliancy and potency.
Sunshine does them no good; for, like the seals, they seem under its
influence to swell up at the neck. A little of it suffices handsomely
for both Aleutes and pinnipedia, to whom the ordinary atmosphere is
much more agreeable.

It is astonishing how rapidly snow melts here. This is due, probably,
to the saline character of the air, for when the temperature is only
a single degree above freezing, and after several successive days
in April or May, at 34° and 36°, grass begins to grow, even if it
be under melting drifts, and the frost has penetrated the ground
many feet below. I have said that this humidity and fog, so strongly
and peculiarly characteristic of the Pribylov group, was due to the
warmer ocean-currents setting up from the coast of Japan, trending to
the Arctic through Bering’s Straits, and deflected to the southward
into the North Pacific, laving, as it flows, the numerous passes and
channels of the great Aleutian chain; but I do not think, nor do I
wish to be understood as saying, that my observation in this respect
warrants any conclusion as to so large a Gulf Stream flowing to the
north, such as mariners and hydrographers recognize upon the Atlantic
coast. I do not believe that there is anything of the kind equal to
it in Bering Sea. I believe, however, that there is a steady set up
to the northward from southward around the Seal Islands, which is
continued through Bering’s Straits, and drifts steadily off up to the
northeast, until it is lost beyond Point Barrow. That this pelagic
circulation exists, is clearly proven by the logs of the whalers,
who, from 1845 to 1856, literally filled the air over those waters
with the smoke of their “try-fires,” and ploughed every square rod of
that superficial marine area with their adventurous keels. While no
two, perhaps, of those old whaling captains living to-day will agree
as to the exact course of tides,[89] for Alaskan tides do not seem
to obey any law, they all affirm the existence of a steady current,
passing up from the south to the northeast, through Bering’s Straits.
The flow is not rapid, and is doubtless checked at times, for short
intervals, by other causes, which need not be discussed here. It is
certain, however, that there is warm water enough, abnormal to the
latitude, for the evolution of those characteristic fog-banks, which
almost discomfited Pribylov, at the time of his discovery of the
islands, nearly one hundred years ago, and which have remained ever
since.

Without this fog the fur-seal would never have rested there as he has
done; but when he came on his voyage of discovery, ages ago, up from
the rocky coasts of Patagonia mayhap, had he not found this cool,
moist temperature of St. Paul and St. George, he would have kept on,
completed the circuit, and returned to those congenial antipodes of
his birth.

Speaking of the stormy weather brings to my mind the beautiful,
varied, and impressive nephelogical display in the heavens overhead
here during October and November. I may say, without exaggeration,
that the cloud-effects which I have witnessed from the bluffs of
this little island, at this season of the year, surpass anything
that I had ever seen before. Perhaps the mighty masses of cumuli,
deriving their origin from warm exhalations out of the sea, and
swelled and whirled with such rapidity, in spite of their appearance
of solidity, across the horizon, owe their striking brilliancy of
color and prismatic tones to that low declination of the sun due to
the latitude. Whatever the cause may be, and this is not the place
to discuss it, certainly no other spot on earth can boast of a more
striking and brilliant cloud-display. In the season of 1865-66, when
I was encamped on this same parallel of latitude in the mountains
eastward of Sitka and the interior, I was particularly attracted by
an exceeding brilliancy, persistency, and activity of the aurora;
but here on St. Paul, though I eagerly looked for its dancing light,
it seldom appeared; and when it did it was a sad disappointment, the
exhibition always being insignificant as compared in my mind with its
flashing of my previous experience. A quaint old writer, a hundred
years ago, was describing Norway and its people: he advanced what he
considered a very plausible theory for the cause of the aurora; he
cited an ancient sage, who believed that the change of winds threw
the saline particles of the sea high into the air, and then by aërial
friction, “fermentation” took place, and the light was evolved! I
am sure that the saline particles of Bering Sea were whirled into
the air during the whole of that winter of my residence there, but
no “fermentation” occurred, evidently, since rarely indeed did the
aurora greet my eyes. In the summer season there is considerable
lightning; you will see it streak its zigzag path mornings, evenings,
and even noondays, but from the dark clouds and their swelling masses
upon which it is portrayed no sound returns—a _fulmen brutum_, in
fact. I remember hearing but one clap of thunder while in that
country. If I recollect aright, and my Russian served me well, one
of the old natives told me that it was no mystery, this light of the
aurora, for, said he, “we all believe that there are fire-mountains
away up toward the north, and what we see comes from their burning
throats, mirrored back on the heavens.”

The formation of these islands, St. Paul and St. George, was recent,
geologically speaking, and directly due to volcanic agency, which
lifted them abruptly, though gradually, from the sea-bed. Little
spouting craters then actively poured out cinders and other volcanic
breccia upon the table-bed of basalt, depositing below as well as
above the water’s level as they rose; and subsequently finishing
their work of construction through the agency of these spout-holes
or craters, from which water-puddled ashes and tufa were thrown.
Soon after the elevation and deposit of the igneous matter, all
active volcanic action must have ceased, though a few half-smothered
outbursts seem to have occurred very recently indeed, for on Bobrovia
or Otter Island, six miles southward of St. Paul, is the fresh,
clearly blown-out throat, with the fire-scorched and smoked, smooth,
sharp-cut, funnel-like walls of a crater. This is the only place on
the Seal Islands where there are any evidences of recent discharges
from the crater of a volcano.

Since the period of the upheaval of the group under discussion, the
sea has done much to modify and even enlarge the most important
one, St. Paul, while the others, St. George and Otter, being lifted
abruptly above the power of water and ice to carry and deposit sand,
soil, and boulders, are but little changed from the condition of
their first appearance.

The Russians tell a somewhat strange story in connection with
Pribylov’s landing. They say that both the islands were at first
without vegetation, save St. Paul, where there was a small “talneek,”
or willow, creeping along on the ground; and that on St. George
nothing grew, not even grass, except on the place where the carcasses
of dead animals rotted. Then, in the course of time, both islands
became covered with grass, a great part of it being of the sedge
kind, _Elymus_. This record of Veniaminov, however, is scarcely
credible; there are few, surely, who will not question the opinion
that the seals antedated the vegetation, for, according to his own
statements, these creatures were there then in the same immense
numbers that we find them to-day. The vegetation on these islands,
such as it is, is fresh and luxuriant during the growing season of
June and July and early August, but the beauty and economic value
of trees and shrubbery, of cereals and vegetables, are denied to
them by climatic conditions. Still I am strongly inclined to believe
that, should some of those hardy shrubs and spruce trees indigenous
at Sitka or Kadiak, be transplanted properly to any of the southern
hill-slopes of St. Paul most favored by soil, drainage, and bluffs,
for shelter from saline gales, they might grow, though I know that,
owing to the lack of sunlight, they would never mature their seed.
There is, however, during the summer, a beautiful spread of grasses,
of flowering annuals, biennials, and perennials, of gayly-colored
lichens and crinkled mosses,[90] which have always afforded me great
delight whenever I have pressed my way over the moors and up the
hillsides of the rookeries.

[Illustration: THE NORTH SHORE OF SAINT GEORGE

View of the Coast looking East from the North Rookery over to the
Village and the Landing]

There are ten or twelve species of grasses of every variety, from
close, curly, compact mats to tall stalks—tussocks of the wild wheat,
_Elymus arenaria_, standing in favorable seasons waist high—the
“wheat of the north”—together with over one hundred varieties
of annuals, perennials, sphagnum, cryptogamic plants, etc., all
flourishing in their respective positions, and covering nearly
every point of rock, tufa, cement, and sand that a plant can grow
upon, with a living coat of the greenest of all greens—for there
is not sunlight enough there to ripen any perceptible tinge of
ochre-yellow into it—so green that it gives a deep blue tint to gray
noonday shadows, contrasting pleasantly with the varying russets,
reds, lemon-yellows, and grays of the lichen-covered rocks, and
the brownish-purple of the wild wheat on the sand-dune tracts in
autumn, together, also, with innumerable blue, yellow, pink, and
white phænogamous blossoms, everywhere interspersed over the grassy
uplands and sandy flats. Occasionally, on looking into the thickest
masses of verdure, our common wild violet will be found, while the
phloxes are especially bright and brilliant here. The flowers of
one species of gentian, _Gentiana verna_ are very marked in their
beauty; also those of a nasturtium, and a creeping pea-vine on the
sand-dunes. The blossom of a species of the pulse family is the only
one here that emits a positive, rich perfume; the others are more
suggestive of that quality than expressive. The most striking plant
in all of a long list is the _Archangelica officinalis_, with its
tall seed-stalks and broad leaves, which grows first in spring and
keeps green latest in the fall. The luxuriant rhubarb-like stems of
this umbellifer, after they have made their rapid growth in June,
are eagerly sought for by the natives, who pull them and crunch them
between their teeth with all the relish that we experience in eating
celery. The exhibition of ferns at Kamminista, St. Paul, during the
summer of 1872, surpassed anything that I ever saw: I recall with
vivid detail the exceedingly fine display made by these luxuriant and
waving fronds, as they reared themselves above the rough interstices
of that rocky ridge. From the fern roots, and those of the gentian,
the natives here draw their entire stock of vegetable medicines.
This floral display on St. Paul is very much more extensive and
conspicuous than that on St. George, owing to the absence of any
noteworthy extent of warm sand-dune country on the latter island.

When an unusually warm summer passes over the Pribylov group,
followed by an open fall and a mild winter, the elymus ripens its
seed, and stands like fields of uncut grain in many places along
the north shore of St. Paul and around the village, the snow not
falling enough to entirely obliterate it; but it is seldom allowed
to flourish to that extent. By the end of August and the first
week of September of normal seasons, the small edible berries of
_Empetrum nigrum_ and _Rubus chamæmorus_ are ripe. They are found in
considerable quantities, especially at “Zapadnie,” on both islands,
and, as everywhere else throughout circumpolar latitudes, the
former is small, watery, and dark, about the size of an English or
black currant; the other resembles an unripe and partially decayed
raspberry. They are, however, keenly relished by the natives, and
even by American residents, being the only fruit growing upon the
islands. Perhaps no one plant that flowers on the Seal Islands is
more conspicuous and abundant than is the _Saxifraga oppositofolia_;
it grows over all localities, rank and tall in rich locations,
to stems scarcely one inch high on the thin, poor soil of hill
summits and sides, densely cespitose, with leaves all imbricated
in four rows; and flowers almost sessile. I think that at least
ten well-defined species of the order _Saxifragaceæ_ exist on
the Pribylov group. The _Ranunculaceæ_ are not so numerous; but,
still, a buttercup growing in every low slope where you may chance
to wander is always a pleasant reminder of pastures at home; and,
also, a suggestion of the farm is constantly made by the luxuriant
inflorescence of the wild mustard (_Cruciferæ_). The chickweeds
(_Caryophyllaceæ_) are well represented, and also the familiar
yellow dandelion, Taraxacum palustre. Many lichens (_Lichenes_) and
soft mosses (_Musci_) are in their greatest exuberance, variety,
and beauty here; and myriads of golden poppies (_Papaveraceæ_) are
nodding their graceful heads in the sweeping of the winds—the first
flowers to bloom, and the last to fade.

The chief economic value rendered by the botany of the Pribylov
Islands to the natives is an abundance of the basket-making rushes
(_Juncaceæ_), which the old “barbies” gather in the margins of many
of the lakes and pools.

The only suggestion of a tree[91] found growing on the Pribylov
group is the hardy “talneek” or creeping willow; there are three
species of the genus _Salix_ found here, viz., _reticulata_,
_polaris_, and _arctica_; the first named is the most common and of
largest growth; it progresses exactly as a cucumber-vine does in our
gardens; as soon as it has made from the seed a growth of six inches
or a foot upright from the soil, then it droops over and crawls along
prostrate upon the earth, rocks, and sphagnum; some of the largest
talneek trunks will measure eight or ten feet in decumbent length
along the ground, and are as large around the stump as an average
wrist of man. The usual size, however, is very, very much less; while
the stems of _polaris_ and _arctica_ scarcely ever reach the diameter
of a pencil case, or the procumbent length of two feet.

Although _Rubus chamæmorus_ is a tree-shrub, and is found here very
commonly distributed, yet it grows such a slender diminutive bush,
that it gives no thought whatever of its being anything of the sort.
Herbs, grasses, and ferns tower above it on all sides.

The fungoid growths on the Pribylov Islands are abundant and varied,
especially in and around the vicinity of the rookeries and the
killing-grounds. On the west slope of the Black bluffs at St. Paul
the mushroom, _Agaricus campestris_, was gathered in the season of
1872 by the natives, and eaten by one or two families in the village,
who had learned to cook them nicely from the Russians. These Seal
Island mushrooms have deeper tones of pink and purple-red in their
gills than do those of my gathering in the States. I kicked over
many large spherical “puff-balls” (_Lycoperdæ_) in my tundra walks;
myriads of smaller ones (_Lycoperdon cinereum?_) cover patches near
the spots where carcasses have long since rotted, together with
a pale gray fungus (_Agaricus fimiputris_), exceedingly delicate
and frosted exquisitely. Some ligneous fungi (_Clavaria_), will be
found attached to the decaying stems of _Salix reticulata_ (creeping
willows). The irregularity of the annual growing of the agarics, and
their rapid growth when they do appear, makes their determination
excessively difficult; they are as unstable in their visits as are
several of the _Lepidoptera_. The cool humidity of climate during
the summer season on the Pribylov Islands is especially adapted to
that mysterious, but beautiful growth of these plants—the apotheosis
of decay. The coloring of several varieties is very bright and
attractive, shading from a purplish-scarlet to a pallid white.

A great many attempts have been made, both here and at St. George, to
raise a few of the hardy vegetables. With the exception of growing
lettuce, turnips, and radishes on the Island of St. Paul, nothing
has been or can be done. On the south shore of St. George, and at
the foot of a mural bluff, is a little patch of ground less in area
than one-sixteenth of an acre, which appears to be so drained and
so warmed by the rarely-reflected sunlight from this cliff, every
ray of which seems to be gathered and radiated from the rocks, as to
allow the production of fair turnips; and at one season there were
actually raised potatoes as large as walnuts. Gardening, however, on
either island involves so much labor and so much care, with so poor a
return, that it has been discontinued. It is a great deal better, and
a great deal easier, to have the “truck” come up once a year from San
Francisco on the steamer.

There is one comfort which nature has vouchsafed to civilized man
on these islands. There are very few indigenous insects. A large
flesh-fly, _Bombylius major_, appears during the summer and settles
in a striking manner on the backs of quiet, loafing natives, or
strings itself in rows of millions upon the long grass-blades which
flourish about the killing-grounds, especially on the leaf-stalks of
an elymus, causing this vegetation, over the whole slaughtering-field
and vicinity, to fairly droop to earth as if beaten down by a
tornado of wind and rain. It makes the landscape look as though it
had moulded over night, and the fungoid spores were blue and gray.
Our common house-fly is not present; I never saw one while I was up
there. The flesh-flies which I have just mentioned never came into
the dwellings unless by accident: the natives say they do not annoy
them, and I did not notice any disturbance among the few animals
which the resident company had imported for beef and for service.

Then, again, this is perhaps the only place in all Alaska where man,
primitive and civilized, is not cursed by mosquitoes. There are none
here. A gnat, that is disagreeably suggestive of the real enemy just
referred to, flits about in large swarms, but it is inoffensive,
and seeks shelter in the grass. Several species of beetles are also
numerous here. One of them, the famous green and gold “carabus,” is
exceedingly common, crawling everywhere, and is just as bright in
the rich bronzing of its wing-shields as are its famous prototypes
of Brazil. One or two species of _Itemosa_, a _Cymindis_, several
representatives of the _Aphidiphaga_, one or two of _Dytiscidæ_,
three or four _Cicindelidæ_—these are nearly all that I found. A
single dragon-fly, _Perla bicaudata_, flitted over the lakes and
ponds of St Paul. The familiar form to our eyes, of the bumble-bee,
_Bombus borealis_, passing from flower to flower, was rarely seen;
but a few are here resident. The _Hydrocorisæ_ occur in great
abundance, skipping over the water in the lakes and pools everywhere,
and a very few species of butterflies, principally the yellow
_Nymphalidæ_, are represented by numerous individuals.

Aside from the seal-life on the Pribylov Islands, there is no
indigenous mammalian creature, with the exception of the blue and
white foxes, _Vulpes lagopus_,[92] and a lemming, _Myodes obensis_.
The latter is restricted, for some reason or other, to the Island of
St. George, where it is, or at least was, in 1874, very abundant.
Its burrows and paths, under and among the grassy hummocks and
mossy flats, checkered every square rod of land there covered with
this vegetation. Although the Island of St. Paul is but twenty-nine
or thirty miles to the northwest, not a single one of these active,
curious little animals is found there, nor could I learn from
the natives that it had ever been seen there. The foxes are also
restricted to these islands; that is, their kind, which are not found
elsewhere, except the stray examples on St. Matthew seen by myself,
and those which are carefully domesticated and preserved at Attoo,
the extreme westernmost land of the Aleutian chain. These animals
find comfortable holes for their accommodation and retreat on the
Seal Islands, among the countless chinks and crevices of the basaltic
formation. They feed and grow fat upon sick and weakly seals, also
devouring many of the pups, and they vary this diet by water-fowl and
eggs[93] during the summer, returning for their subsistence during
the long winter to the bodies of seals upon the breeding-grounds and
the skinned carcasses left upon the killing-fields. Were they not
regularly hunted from December until April, when their fur is in its
prime beauty and condition, they would swarm like the lemming on St.
George, and perhaps would soon be obliged to eat one another. The
natives, however, thin them out by incessant trapping and shooting
during the period when the seals are away from the islands.

The Pribylov group is as yet free from rats; at least none have got
off from the ships. There is no harbor on either of these islands,
and vessels lie out in the roadstead, so far from land that those
pests do not venture to swim to the shore. Mice were long ago brought
to shore in ships’ cargoes, and they are a great nuisance to the
white people as well as the natives throughout the islands. Hence
cats also are abundant. Nowhere, perhaps, in the wide world are such
cats to be seen as these. The tabby of our acquaintance, when she
goes up there and lives upon the seal-meat spread everywhere under
her nose, is metamorphosed, by time of the second generation, into
a stubby feline ball. In other words, she becomes thickened, short,
and loses part of the normal length of her tail; also her voice is
prolonged and resonant far beyond the misery which she inflicts upon
our ears here. These cats actually swarm about the natives’ houses,
never in them much, for only a tithe of their whole number can be
made pets of; but they do make night hideous beyond all description.
They repair for shelter often to the chinks of precipices and bluffs;
but although not exactly wild, yet they cannot be approached or
cajoled. The natives, when their sluggish wits are periodically
aroused and thoroughly disturbed by the volume of cat-calls in their
village, sally out and by a vigorous effort abate the nuisance for
the time being. Only the most fiendish caterwauling will or can
arouse this Aleutian ire.

On account of the severe climatic conditions it is, of course,
impracticable to keep stock here with any profit or pleasure. The
experiment has been tried faithfully. It is found best to bring
beef-cattle up in the spring on the steamer, turn them out to
pasture until the close of the season in October and November,
and then, if the snow comes, to kill them and keep the carcasses
refrigerated until consumed. Stock cannot be profitably raised here;
the proportion of severe weather annually is too great. From three to
perhaps six months of every year they require feeding and watering,
with good shelter. To furnish an animal with hay and grain up there
is a costly matter, and the dampness of the growing summer season on
both islands renders hay-making impracticable. Perhaps a few head of
hardy Siberian cattle might pick up a living on the north shore of
St Paul, among the grasses and sand-dunes there, with nothing more
than shelter and water given them; but they would need both of these
attentions. Then the care of them would hardly return expenses, as
the entire grazing-ground could not support any number of animals.
It is less than two square miles in extent, and half of this area
is unproductive. Then, too, a struggle for existence would reduce
the flesh and vitality of these cattle to so low an ebb that it is
doubtful whether they could be put through another winter alive,
especially if severe. I was then and am now strongly inclined to
think that if a few of those Siberian reindeer could be brought over
to St. Paul and to St. George they would make a very successful
struggle for existence, and be a source of a good supply, summer
and winter, of fresh meat for the agents of the Government and the
company who may be living upon the islands. I do not think that they
would be inclined to molest or visit the seal-grounds; at least, I
noticed that the cattle and mules of the company running loose on St.
Paul were careful never to poke around on the outskirts of a rookery,
and deer would be more timid and less obtrusive than our domesticated
animals. But I did notice on St. George that a little squad of sheep,
brought up and turned out there for a summer’s feeding, seemed to be
so attracted by the quiet calls of the pups on the rookeries that
they were drawn to and remained by the seals without disturbing
them at all, to their own physical detriment, for they lost better
pasturage by so doing. The natives of St. Paul have a strange passion
for seal-fed pork, and there are quite a large number of pigs on the
Island of St. Paul and a few on St. George. Such hogs soon become
entirely carnivorous, living, to the practical exclusion of all other
diet, on the carcasses of seals.

Chickens are kept with great difficulty. In fact, it is only possible
to save their lives when the natives take them into their own rooms
or keep them over their heads, in their dwellings, during winter.

[Illustration: NETTING CHOOCHKIES

A Native catching little Auks (_Simorhyncus Pusillus_), St. Paul’s
Island]

While the great exhibition of pinnipedia preponderates over every
other feature of animal life at the Seal Islands, still there is
a wonderful aggregate of ornithological representation thereon.
The spectacle of birds nesting and breeding, as they do on St.
George Island, to the number of millions, flecking those high
basaltic bluffs of its shore-line, twenty-nine miles in length,
with color-patches of black, brown, and white, as they perch or
cling to the mural cliffs in the labor of incubation, is a sight of
exceeding attraction and constant novelty. It affords a naturalist
an opportunity of a lifetime for minute investigation into all the
details of the reproduction of these vast flocks of circumboreal
water-fowl. The Island of St. Paul, owing to the low character of its
shore-line, a large proportion of which is but slightly elevated
above the sea and is sandy, is not visited and cannot be visited by
such myriads of birds as are seen at St. George; but the small rocky
Walrus Islet is fairly covered with sea-fowls, and the Otter Island
bluffs are crowded by them to their utmost capacity of reception. The
birds string themselves anew around the bluffs with every succeeding
season, like endless ribbons stretched across their rugged faces,
while their numbers are simply countless. The variety is not great,
however, in these millions of breeding-birds. It consists of only
ten or twelve names, and the whole list of birds belonging to the
Pribylov Islands, stragglers and migratory, contains but forty
species. Conspicuous among the last-named class is the robin, a
straggler which was brought from the mainland, evidently against its
own effort, by a storm or a gale of wind, which also brings against
their will the solitary hawks, owls, and waders occasionally noticed
here.

After the dead silence of a long ice-bound winter, the arrival of
large flocks of those sparrows of the north, the “choochkies,”
_Phaleris microceros_, is most cheerful and interesting. These
plump little auks are bright, fearless, vivacious birds, with
bodies round and fat. They come usually in chattering flocks on
or immediately after May 1st, and are caught by the people with
hand-scoops or dip-nets to any number that may be required for the
day’s consumption, their tiny, rotund forms making pies of rare
savory virtue, and being also baked and roasted and stewed in every
conceivable shape by skilful cooks. Indeed, they are equal to the
reed-birds of the South. These welcome visitors are succeeded along
about July 20th by large flocks of fat, red-legged turn-stones,
_Strepsilas interpres_, which come in suddenly from the west or
north, where they have been breeding, and stop on the islands for
a month or six weeks, as the case may be, to feed luxuriantly upon
the flesh-flies, which we have just noticed, and their eggs. These
handsome birds go in among the seals, familiarly chasing the flies,
gnats, etc. They are followed as they leave in September by several
species of jack-snipe and a plover, _Tringa_ and _Charadrius_.
These, however, soon depart, as early as the end of October and the
beginning of November, and then winter fairly closes in upon the
islands. The loud, roaring, incessant seal-din, together with the
screams and darkening flight of innumerable water-fowl, are replaced
in turn again by absolute silence, marking out, as it were, in lines
of sharp and vivid contrast, summer’s life and winter’s death.

The author of that quaint old saying, “Birds of a feather flock
together,” might well have gained his inspiration had he stood under
the high bluffs of St. George at any season, prehistoric or present,
during the breeding of the water-birds there, where myriads of
croaking murres and flocks of screaming gulls darken the light of day
with their fluttering forms, and deafen the ear with their shrill,
harsh cries as they do now, for music is denied to all those birds
of the sea. Still, in spite of the apparent confusion, he would have
taken cognizance of the fact that each species had its particular
location and kept to its own boundary, according to the precision of
natural law. The dreary expanse and lonely solitudes of the North
owe their chief enlivenment, and their principal attractiveness for
man, to the presence of those vast flocks of circumboreal water-fowl,
which repair thither annually.

Over fifteen miles of the bold, basaltic, bluff line of St. George
Island is fairly covered with nesting gulls (_Rissa_) and “arries”
(_Uria_), while down in the countless chinks and holes over the
entire surface of the north side of this island millions of
“choochkies” (_Simorhyncus microceros_) breed, filling the air and
darkening the light of day with their cries and fluttering forms.
On Walrus Islet the nests of the great white gull of the north
(_Larus glaucus_) can be visited and inspected, as well as those
of the sea-parrot or puffin (_Fratercula_), shags or cormorants
(_Graculus_), and the red-legged kittiwake (_Larus brevirostris_).
These birds are accessible on every side, can be reached, and afford
the observer an unequalled opportunity of taking due notice of them
through the breeding-season of their own, as it begins in May and
continues until the end of September.

Not one of the water-birds found on and around the islands is
exempted from a place in the native’s larder; even the delectable
“oreelie” are unhesitatingly eaten by the people, and indeed these
birds furnish, during the winter season in especial, an almost
certain source of supply for fresh meat. But the heart of the Aleut
swells to its greatest gastronomic happiness when he can repair, in
the months of June and July, to the basaltic cliffs of St. George, or
the lava table-bed of Walrus Islet, and lay his grimy hands on the
gayly-colored eggs of the “arrie” (_Lomvia arra_); and if he were not
the most improvident of men, instead of taking only enough for the
day, he would lay up a great store for the morrow, but he never does.
On the occasion of one visit, and my first one there, July 5, 1872,
six men loaded a bidarrah at Walrus Islet, capable of carrying four
tons, exclusive of our crew, down to the water’s edge with eggs, in
less than three working hours.[94]

During winter months these birds are almost wholly absent, especially
so if ice-floes shall have closed in around the islands; then
there is nothing of the feathered kind save a stupid shag (_P.
bicristatus_) as it clings to the leeward cliffs, or the great
burgomaster gull, which sweeps in circling flight high overhead; but,
early in May they begin to make their first appearance, and they come
up from the sea overnight, as it were, their chattering and their
harsh carolling waking the natives from slothful sleeping, which,
however, they gladly break, to seize their nets and live life anew,
as far as eating is concerned. The stress of severe weather in the
winter months, the driving of the snow “boorgas,” and the floating
ice-fields closing in to shut out the open water, are cause enough
for a disappearance of all water-fowl, _pro tem_.

Again, the timid traveller here is delighted; he has been relieved
of the great Alaskan curse of mosquitoes: he also walks the moors and
hillsides secure in never finding a reptile of any sort whatever—no
snakes, no lizards, no toads or frogs—nothing of the sort to be found
on the Seal Islands.

Fish are scarce in the vicinity of these islands. Only a few
representatives of those families which can secrete themselves with
rare cunning are safe in visiting the Pribylovs in summer. Naturally
enough, the finny tribes avoid the seal-churned waters for at least
one hundred miles around. Among a few specimens, however, which I
collected, three or four species new to natural science were found,
and have since been named by experts in the Smithsonian Institution.

[Illustration: Aleutes catching Halibut, Akootan Pass, Bering Sea.]

The presence of such great numbers of amphibian mammalia about the
waters during five or six months of every year renders all fishing
abortive, and unless expeditions are made seven or eight miles at
least from the land, unless you desire to catch large halibut, it is
a waste of time to cast your line over the gunwale of the boat. The
natives capture “poltoos” or halibut, _Hippoglossus vulgaris_, within
two or three miles of the reef-point on St. Paul and the south shore
during July and August. After this season the weather is usually so
stormy and cold that fishermen venture no more until the ensuing
summer.[95]

With regard to the _Mollusca_ of the Pribylov waters, the
characteristic forms of _Toxoglossata_ and _Rhachiglossata_ peculiar
to this north latitude are most abundant; of the _Cephalopoda_ I have
seen only a species of squid, _sepia_, or _loligo_. The clustering
whelks (_Buccinum_) literally conceal large areas of the boulders
on the beaches here and there. They are in immense numbers, and are
crushed under your foot at almost every step when you pass over
long reaches of rocky shingle at low tide. A few of the _Neptunea_
are found, and the live and dead shells of _Limacina_ are in great
abundance wherever the floating kelp-beds afford them shelter.

On land a very large number of shells of the genera _Succinea_ and
_Pupa_ abound all over the islands. On the bluffs of St. George, just
over Garden Cove, I gathered a beautiful _Helix_.

The little fresh-water lakes and ponds contain a great quantity of
representatives of the characteristic genera _Planorbis_, _Melania_,
_Limnea_, and that pretty little bivalve, the _Cyclas_.

Of the _Crustacea_, the _Annelidæ_, and _Echinodermata_, there is
abundant representation here. The sea-urchins, “repkie” of the
natives, are eagerly sought for at low tide and eaten raw by them.
The arctic sea-clam, _Mya truncata_, is once in a long time found
here (it is the chief food of the walrus of Alaska), and the species
of _Mytilus_, the mussels, so abundant in the Aleutian archipelago,
are almost absent here at St. Paul and only sparingly found at St.
George. Frequently the natives have brought a dish of sea-urchins’
viscera for our table, offering it as a great delicacy. I do not
think any of us did more than to taste it. The native women are the
chief hunters for echinoidæ, and during the whole spring and summer
seasons they will be seen at both islands, wading in the pools at low
water, with their scanty skirts high up, eagerly laying possessive
hands upon every “bristling egg” that shows itself. They vary this
search by poking, with a short-handled hook, into holes and rocky
crevices for a small cottoid fish, which is also found here at low
water in this manner. Specimens of this cottoid which I brought down
declared themselves as representatives of a new departure from all
other recognized forms in which the sculpin is known to sport; hence
the name, generic and specific. The “sandcake,” _echinarachinus_, is
also very common here.

By May 28th to the middle of June a fine table-crab, large, fat, and
sweet, with a light, brittle shell, is taken while it is skurrying
in and out of the lagoon as the tide ebbs and flows. It is the
best-flavored crustacean known to Alaskan waters. They are taken
nowhere else at St. Paul, and when on St. George I failed to see one.
I am not certain as to the accuracy of the season of running, viz.:
May 28th to June 15th, inasmuch as one of my little note-books on
which this date is recorded turns out to be missing at the present
writing, and I am obliged to give it from memory. The only economic
shell-fish which the islands afford is embodied in this _Chionoecetes
opilio (?)_. The natives affirm an existence of mussels here in
abundance when the Pribylov group was first discovered; but now only
a small supply of inferior size and quality is to be found.

With reference to the jelly-fishes, _Medusæ_, which are so abundant
in the waters around these islands, their exceeding number
and variety and beauty startled and enchanted me. An enormous
aggregate of these creatures, some of them exquisitely delicate and
translucent, ride in and out of the lagoon at St. Paul when the
spring-tides flow and ebb. Myriads of them are annually stranded, to
decay on the sandy flats of this estuary.

[Illustration: MAP OF ST. PAUL ISLAND—PRIBYLOV GROUP.

Showing the Area and Position of the Fur Seal Rookeries and Hauling
Grounds. Surveyed and drawn (1873-74) by HENRY W. ELLIOTT.]

As to sea-weeds, or mosses,—the extent, luxuriance, variety, and
beauty of the algæ forests of those waters of Bering Sea which
lave the coasts of the Pribylov Islands, call for more detail of
description than space in this volume will allow, since anything like
a fair presentation of the subject would require the reproduction
of my water-colored drawings. After all heavier gales, especially
the southeasters in October, if a naturalist will take the trouble
to walk the sand-beach between Lukannon and northeast point of St.
Paul Island, he will be rewarded by the memorable sight. He will
find thrown up by the surf a vast windrow of kelp along the whole
eight or ten miles of this walk—heaped, at some spots, nearly as high
as his head; the large trunks of _Melanospermæ_, the small, but
brilliant red and crimson fronds of _Rhodospermæ_ interwoven with the
emerald-green leaves of the _Chlorospermæ_. The first-named group is
by far the most abundant, and upon its decaying, fermenting brown
and ochre heaps, he will see countless numbers of a buccinoid whelk,
and a limnaca, feeding as they bore or suck out myriads of tiny
holes in the leaf-fronds of the strong growing species. _Actinia_ or
sea-anemones, together with asteroids or starfishes, _Discophoræ_ or
jelly-fishes, are also interwoven and heaped up with the “kapoosta”
or sea-cabbages just referred to; also, many rosy “sea-squirts,”
yellow “cucumbers,” and other forms of _Holothuridæ_.

On the old killing-fields, on those spots where the sloughing
carcasses of repeated seasons have so enriched the soil as to render
it like fire to most vegetation, a silken green _Confervæ_ grows
luxuriantly. This terrestrial algoid covering appears here and there,
on these grounds, like so many door-mats of pea-green wool. That
confervoid flourishes only on those spots where nothing but pure
decaying animal matter is found. An admixture of sand or earth will
always supplant it by raising up instead those strong growing grasses
which I have alluded to elsewhere, and which constitute the chief
botanical life of the killing-grounds.

In order that the reader can follow easily the narrative of that
remarkable life-system which is conducted by the fur-seal as it
annually rests and breeds upon the Pribylov group, I present a
careful chart of each island and the contiguous islets, which are
the only surveys ever made upon the ground. The reader will observe,
as he turns to these maps, the striking dissimilarity which exists
between them, not only in contour but in physical structure, the
Island of St. Paul being the largest in superficial area, and
receiving a vast majority of the _Pinnipedia_ that belong to both. As
it lies in Bering Sea to-day, this island is, in its greatest length,
between northeast and southwest points, thirteen miles, air-line;
and a little less than six at points of greatest width. It has a
superficial area of about thirty-three square miles, or twenty-one
thousand one hundred and twenty acres, of diversified, rough and
rocky uplands, rugged hills, and smooth, volcanic cones, which either
set down boldly to the sea or fade out into extensive wet and mossy
flats, passing at the sea-margins into dry, drifting, sand-dune
tracts. It has forty-two miles of shore-line, and of this coast
sixteen and a half miles are hauled over by fur-seals _en masse_.
At the time of its first upheaval above the sea, it doubtless
presented the appearance of ten or twelve small rocky, bluffy islets
and points, upon some of which were craters that vomited breccia and
cinders, with little or no lava overflowing. Active plutonic agency
must have soon ceased after this elevation, and then the sea round
about commenced a work which it is now engaged in—of building on to
the skeleton thus created; and it has progressed to-day so thoroughly
and successfully in its labor of sand-shifting, together with the aid
of ice-floes, in their action of grinding, lifting, and shoving, that
nearly all of these scattered islets within the present area of the
island, and marked by its bluffs and higher uplands, are completely
bound together by ropes of sand, changed into enduring bars and
ridges of water-worn boulders. These are raised above the highest
tides by winds that whirl the sand up, over and on them, as it dries
out from the wash of the surf and from the interstices of rocks,
which are lifted up and pushed by ice-fields.

The sand that plays so important a part in the formation of the
Island of St. Paul, and which is almost entirely wanting in and
around the others of this Pribylov group, is principally composed of
_Foraminifera_, together with _Diatomacea_, mixed in with a volcanic
base of fine comminuted black and reddish lavas and old friable gray
slates. It constitutes the chief beauty of the sea-shore here, for it
changes color like a chameleon, as it passes from wet to dry, being
a rich steely-black at the surf-margin and then drying out to a soft
purplish-brown and gray, succeeding to tints most delicate of reddish
and pale neutral, when warmed by the sun and drifting up on to the
higher ground with the wind. The sand-dune tracts on this island are
really attractive in the summer, especially so during those rare days
when the sun comes out, and the unwonted light shimmers over them and
the most luxuriant grass and variety of beautiful flowers which exist
in profusion thereon. In past time, as these sand and boulder bars
were forming on St. Paul Island, they, in making across from islet to
islet, enclosed small bodies of sea-water. These have, by evaporation
and time, by the flooding of rains and annual melting of snow,
become, nearly every one of them, fresh; they are all, great and
small, well shown on my map, which locates quite a large area of pure
water. In them, as I have hinted, are no reptiles; but an exquisite
species of a tiny fish[96] exists in the lagoon-estuary near the
village, and the small pure-water lakes of the natives just under
the flanks of Telegraph Hill. The Aleutes assured me that they had
caught fish in the big lake toward Northeast Point, when they lived
in their old village out there; but, I never succeeded in getting
a single specimen. The waters of these pools and ponds are fairly
alive with vast numbers of minute _Rotifera_, which sport about in
all of them wherever they are examined. Many species of water-plants,
pond-lilies, algæ, etc., are found in those inland waters, especially
in that large lake “Mee-sulk-mah-nee,” which is very shallow.

The backbone of St. Paul, running directly east and west, from shore
to shore, between Polavina Point and Einahnuhto Hills, constitutes
the high land of that island: Polavina Sopka, an old extinct
cinder-crater, five hundred and fifty feet; Bogaslov, an upheaved
mass of splinted lava, six hundred feet; and the hills frowning over
the bluffs there, on the west shore, are also six hundred feet in
elevation above the sea. But the average height of the upland between
is not much over one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet above
water-level, rising here and there into little hills and broad, rocky
ridges, which are minutely sketched upon the map. From the northern
base of Polavina Sopka a long stretch of low sand-flats extends,
enclosing the great lake, and ending in a narrow neck where it unites
with Novastoshnah, or Northeast Point. Here that volcanic nodule
known as Hutchinson’s Hill, with its low, gradual slopes, trending to
the east and southward, makes a rocky foundation secure and broad,
upon which the great single rookery of the island, the greatest in
the world, undoubtedly, is located. The natives say that when they
first came to these islands Novastoshna was an island by itself, to
which they went in boats from Vesolia Mista; and the lagoon now so
tightly enclosed was then an open harbor in which the ships of the
old Russian Company rode safely at anchor. To-day, no vessel drawing
ten feet of water can safely get nearer than half a mile of the
village, or a mile from this lagoon at low tide.

The total absence of a harbor at the Pribylov Islands is much to be
regretted. The village of St. Paul, as will be seen by reference to
the map, is so located as to command the best landings for vessels
that can be made during the prevalence of any and all winds, except
those from the south. From these there is no shelter for ships,
unless they run around to the north side, where they are unable to
hold practicable communication with the people or to discharge. At
St. George matters are still worse, for the prevailing northerly,
westerly, and easterly winds drive the boats away from the village
roadstead, and weeks often pass at either island, but more frequently
at the latter, ere a cargo is landed at its destination. Under the
very best circumstances, it is both hazardous and trying to unload a
ship at any of these places. The approach to St. Paul by water during
thick weather is doubtful and dangerous, for the land is mostly low
at the coast, and the fogs hang so dense and heavy over and around
the hills as to completely obliterate their presence from vision.
The captain fairly feels his way in by throwing his lead-line and
straining his ear to catch the muffled roar of the seal-rookeries,
which are easily detected when once understood, high above the
booming of the surf. At St. George, however, the bold, abrupt, bluffy
coast everywhere all around, with its circling girdle of flying
water-birds far out to sea, looms up quite prominently, even in the
fog; or, in other words, the navigator can notice it before he is
hard aground or struggling to haul to windward from the breakers
under his lee. There are no reefs making out from St. George worthy
of notice, but there are several very dangerous and extended ones
peculiar to St. Paul, which Captain John G. Baker, in command of the
vessel[97] under my direction, carefully sounded out, and which I
have placed upon my chart for the guidance of those who may sail in
my wake hereafter.

When the wind blows from the north, northwest, and west to southwest,
the company’s steamer drops her anchor in eight fathoms of water
abreast of the black bluffs opposite the village, from which
anchorage her stores are lightered ashore; but in the northeasterly,
easterly, and southeasterly winds, she hauls around to the lagoon bay
west of the village, and there, little less than half a mile from the
landing, she drops her anchor in nine fathoms of water, and makes
considerable headway at discharging her cargo. Sailing-craft come to
both anchorages, but, however, keep still farther out, though they
choose relatively the same positions, yet seek deeper water to swing
to their cables in: the holding-ground is excellent. At St. George
the steamer comes, wind permitting, directly to the village on the
north shore, close up, and finds her anchorage in ten fathoms of
water, over poor holding-ground; still it is only when three or four
days have passed, free from northerly, westerly, or easterly winds
that she can make the first attempt to safely unload. The landing
here is a very bad one, surf breaking most violently upon the rocks
from one end of the year to the other.

[Illustration: “Bobrovia,” or Otter Island six miles south of St.
Paul Island.

[_The North Store and landing, viewed from St. Paul._]]

The observer will notice that six miles southward and westward
of the reef of St. Paul Island is a bluffy islet, called by the
Russians Bobrovia, because in olden time the promishlyniks are said
to have captured many thousands of sea-otters on its rocky coast. It
rises from the ocean, sheer and bold, an unbroken mural precipice
extending nearly all around, of sea-front, but dropping on its
northern margin, at the water, low, and slightly elevated above the
surf-wash, with a broken, rocky beach and no sand. The height of the
bluffs at their greatest elevation over the west end is three hundred
feet, while the eastern extremity is quite low, and terminated
by a queer, funnel-shaped crater-hill, which is as distinctly
defined, and as plainly scorched and devoid of the slightest sign of
vegetation within as though it had burned up and out yesterday. That
crater-point on Otter Island is the only unique feature of the place,
for with the exception of this low north shore, before mentioned,
where a few thousand of “bachelor seals” haul out during the season
every year, there is nothing else worthy of notice concerning it.
A bad reef makes out to the westward, which I have indicated from
my observation of the rocks awash, looking down upon them from the
bluffs. Great numbers of water-fowl roost upon the cliffs, and there
are here about as many blue foxes to the acre as the law of life
allows. A small, shallow pool of impure water lies close down to
the north shore, right under a low hill upon which the Russians in
olden times posted a huge Greek cross, that is still standing; indeed
it was the habit of those early days of occupation in Alaska to
erect such monuments everywhere on conspicuous elevations adjacent
to the posts or settlements. One of these is still standing at
Northeast Point, on the large sand-dune there which overlooks the
killing-grounds, and another sound stalwart cross yet faces the gales
and driving “boorgas” on the summit of Bogaslov Mountain, as it has
withstood them during the last sixty years.

To the eastward, six miles from Northeast Point, will be noticed
a small rock named Walrus Island. It is a mere ledge of lava,
flat-capped, lifted just above the wash of angry waves; indeed, in
storms of great power, the observer, standing on either Cross or
Hutchinson’s Hills, with a field-glass, can see the water breaking
clear over it: these storms, however, occur late in the season,
usually in October or November. This island has little or no
commercial importance, being scarcely more than a quarter of a mile
in length and one hundred yards in point of greatest width, with bold
water all around, entirely free from reefs or sunken rocks. As might
be expected, there is no fresh water on it. In a fog it makes an ugly
neighbor for the sea-captains when they are searching for St. Paul;
they all know it, and they all dread it. It is not resorted to by
the fur-seals or by sea-lions in particular; but, singularly enough,
it is frequented by several hundred male walrus, to the exclusion of
females, every summer. A few sea-lions, but only a very few, however,
breed here. On account of the rough weather, fogs, etc., this little
islet is seldom visited by the natives of St. Paul, and then only in
the egging season of late June and early July when that surf-beaten
breakwater literally swarms with breeding sea-fowl.

This low, tiny, island is, perhaps, the most interesting single
spot now known to the naturalist who may land in northern seas,
to study the habits of bird-life; for here, without exertion or
risk, he can observe and walk among tens upon tens of thousands of
screaming water-fowl; and, as he sits down upon the polished lava
rock, he becomes literally ignored and environed by these feathered
friends, as they reassume their varied positions of incubation, from
which he disturbs them by his arrival. Generation after generation
of their kind have resorted to this rock unmolested, and to-day,
when you get among them, all doubt and distrust seem to have been
eliminated from their natures. The island itself is rather unusual
in those formations which we find peculiar to Alaskan waters. It is
almost flat, with slight, irregular undulations on top, spreading
over an area of five acres perhaps. It rises abruptly, though low,
from the sea, and it has no safe beach upon which a person can land
from a boat; not a stick of timber or twig of shrubbery ever grew
upon it, though the scant presence of low, crawling grasses in
the central portions prevents the statement that _all_ vegetation
is absent. Were it not for the frequent rains and dissolving fog
characteristic of summer weather here, the accumulation of guano
would be something wonderful to contemplate—Peru would have a rival.
As it is, however, the birds, when they return, year after year, find
their nesting-floor swept as clean as though they had never sojourned
there before. The scene of confusion and uproar that presented itself
to my astonished senses when I approached this place in search of
eggs, one threatening, foggy July morning, may be better imagined
than described, for, as the clumsy bidarrah came under the lee of
the low cliffs, swarm upon swarm of thousands of murres or “arries”
dropped in fright from their nesting-shelves, and, before they had
control of their flight, they struck to the right and left of me,
like so many cannon-balls. I was forced, in self-protection, to
instantly crouch for a few moments under the gunwale of the boat
until the struggling, startled flock passed, like an irresistible,
surging wave, over my head. Words cannot depict the amazement and
curiosity with which I gazed around after climbing up to the rocky
plateau, and stood among myriads of breeding-birds; they fairly
covered the entire surface of the island with their shrinking forms,
while others whirled in rapid flight over my head, as wheels within
wheels, so thickly inter-running that the blue and gray of the sky
was hidden from my view. Add to this impression the stunning whir of
hundreds of thousands of strong, beating wings, the shrill screams
of the gulls, and a muffled croaking of the “arries,” coupled with
an indescribable, disagreeable smell which arose from broken eggs
and other decaying substances—then a faint idea may be evoked of the
strange reality spread before me. Were it not for this island and
the ease with which the natives can gather, in a few hours, tons
upon tons of sea-fowl eggs, the people of St. Paul would be obliged
to go the westward, and suspend themselves from the lofty cliffs of
Einahnuhto, dangling over the sea by ropes, as their less favored
neighbors are only too glad and willing to do at St. George.

I am much divided in my admiration of the two great bird-rookeries of
this Pribylov group, the one on the face of the high bluffs at St.
George, and the other on the table-top of Walrus Islet; but perhaps
the latter place gives, within the smallest area, the greatest
variety of nesting and breeding birds, for here the “arrie” and many
gulls, cormorants, sea-parrots, and auks come to lay their eggs in
countless numbers. The face and brow of the low, cliff-like sea-front
to this island are occupied almost exclusively by the “arries,”
_Lomvia arra_, which lay a single egg each on the surface of the bare
rock, and stand, just like so many champagne bottles, straddling over
them while hatching, only leaving at irregular intervals to feed, and
then not until their mates relieve them. Hundreds of thousands of
these birds alone are thus engaged about the 29th of every June on
this little rocky island, roosting stacked up together as tight as so
many sardines in a box, as compactly as they can be stowed, each and
all of them uttering an incessant, muffled, hoarse, grunting noise.
How fiercely they quarrel among themselves—everlastingly! and in this
way thousands of eggs are rolled off into the sea, or into crevices,
or into fissures, where they are lost and broken.

The “arrie” lays but one egg. If it is removed or broken, she will
soon lay another; but if undisturbed after depositing the first, she
undertakes its hatching at once. The size, shape, and coloration
of this egg, among the thousands which came under my observation,
are exceedingly variable. A large proportion of the eggs become so
dirty by rolling here and there in the guano while the birds tread
and fight over them as to be almost unrecognizable. I was struck by
a happy adaptation of nature to their rough nesting. It is found in
the toughness of this shell of the egg, so tough that the natives,
when gathering them, throw them as farmers do apples into their
tubs, baskets, etc., on the cliff, and then carry them down to a
general heap of collection near the boats’ landing, where they are
poured out upon the rocks with a single flip of the hand, just as a
sack of potatoes would be emptied; and then again, after this, they
are quite as carelessly handled when loaded into the “bidarrah,”
sustaining through it all a very trifling loss from crushed or broken
specimens.[98]

These “arries” seem to occupy a ribbon strip in width: it is drawn
around the outward edges of the flat table-top to Walrus Island as
a regular belt, reserved all to themselves: while the small grassy
interior from which they are thus self-excluded is the only place,
I believe, in Bering Sea where the big white gull, _Larus glaucus_,
breeds. Here I found among grassy tussocks the white burgomaster
building a nest of dry grass, sea-ferns, _Sertularidæ_, etc., very
nicely laid up and rounded, and in which it laid usually three eggs,
sometimes only a couple; occasionally I would look into a nest with
four. These heavy gulls could not breed on either of the other
islands in this manner, for the glaucous gull is too large to settle
on the narrow shelf-ledges of the cliffs, as the smaller gulls do,
and lesser water-fowls, and those places which could receive it would
also be a happy hunting-ground and footing to the foxes.

The red-legged kittiwake, _Rissa brevirostris_, and its cousin,
_Rissa tridactyla_, build in the most amicable manner together on the
faces of those cliffs, for they are little gulls, and they associate
with cormorants, sea-parrots, and tiny auks, all together, and, with
the exception of the last, their nests are very easy of access. All
birds, especially the “arries,” have an exceedingly happy time of it
on this Walrus Islet—nothing to disturb them, in my opinion, free
from the ravenous maw of blue foxes over on St. Paul, and from the
piratical and death-dealing sweep of owls and hawks, which infest the
Aleutian chain and the mainland.

The position of the islands is such as to be somewhat outside of
that migratory path pursued by the birds on the mainland, and owing
to this reason they are only visited by a few stragglers from that
quarter, a few from the Asiatic side, and by the millions of their
own home-bred and indigenous stock. One of these migratory species, a
turnstone, however, comes here every summer, for three or four weeks’
stay, in great numbers, and actually gets so fat in feeding upon the
larvæ which abound in the decaying carcasses over the killing-grounds
that it usually bursts open when it falls, shot on the wing. A heavy
easterly gale once brought a strange bird to the islands from the
mainland—a grebe, _P. griseigena_. It was stranded on St. George in
1873, whereupon the natives declared the like of which they had never
seen before; again, I found a robin one cool morning in October,
the 15th: the natives told me that it was an accident—brought over
by some storm or gale of wind that took it up and off from its
path across the tundra of Bristol Bay. The next fair wind sweeping
from the north or the west could be so improved by this robin, _M.
migratoria_, that it would spread its wings and as abruptly return.
Thus hawks, owls, and a number of strange water-fowls visit the
islands, but never remain there long.

The Russians tried the experiment of bringing up from Sitka and
Oonalashka a flock of ravens, as scavengers, a number of years ago,
and when they were very uncleanly in the village, in contrast with
the practice of the present hour. They reasoned that they would—these
ill-omened birds—be invaluable as health officers; but the _Corvidæ_
invariably, sooner or later, and within a very short time, took the
first wind-train or lightning-express back to the mainland or the
Aleutian islands. Yet the natives say that if the birds had been
young ones instead of old fellows they would have remained. I saw a
great many, however, at St. Matthew Island in August, 1874.

A glance at the map of St. Paul shows that nearly half of its
superficial area is low and quite flat, not much elevated above the
sea. Wherever the sand-dune tracts are located, and that is right
along the coast, will be found an irregular succession of hummocks
and hillocks, drifted by the wind, which are very characteristic. On
the summits of these hillocks an _Elymus_ has taken root in times
past, and, as the sand drifts up, it keeps growing on and up too, so
that a quaint spectacle is presented of large stretches to the view
wherein sand-dunes, entirely bare of all vegetation at their base
and on their sides, are crowned with a living cap of the brightest
green—a tuft of long, waving grass blades which will not down.
None of this peculiar landscaping, however, is seen on St. George,
not even in the faintest degree. Travel about St. Paul, with the
exception of that trail to Northeast Point, where the natives take
advantage of low water to run on the hard, wet sand, is exceedingly
difficult, and there are examples of only a few white men who have
ever taken the trouble and expended the physical energy necessary
to accomplish a comparatively short walk from the village to
Nahsayvernia, or the north shore. Walking upon the moss-hidden and
slippery rocks, or tumbling over slightly uncertain tussocks, is
a task and not a pleasure. On St. George, with the exception of a
half-mile path to the village cemetery and back, nobody pretends to
walk, except the natives who go to and from the rookeries in their
regular seal-drives. Indeed, I am told that I am the only white man
who has ever traversed the entire coast-line of both islands.[99]

Turning to St. George and its profile, presented by the accompanying
map, the observer will be struck at once by the solidity of that
little island and its great boldness, rising, as it does, sheer
and precipitous from the sea all around, except at the three short
reaches of the coast indicated on my chart, and where the only chance
to come ashore exists.

The seals naturally have no such opportunity to gain a footing here
as they have on St. Paul, hence their comparative insignificance as
to number. The island itself is a trifle over ten miles in extreme
length, east and west, and about four and a quarter miles in greatest
width, north and south. It looks, when plotted, somewhat like an old
stone axe; and, indeed, when I had finished my initial contours from
my field-notes, the ancient stone-axe outline so disturbed me that I
felt obliged to resurvey the southern shore, in order that I might
satisfy my own mind as to the accuracy of my first work. It consists
of two great plateaus, with a high upland valley between, the western
table-land dropping abruptly to the sea at Dalnoi Mees, while the
eastern falls as precipitately at Waterfall Head and Tolstoi Mees.
There are several little reservoirs of fresh water—I can scarcely
call them lakes—on this island; pools, rather, that the wet sphagnum
seems to always keep full, and from which drinking-water in abundance
is everywhere found. At Garden Cove is a small, living stream: it is
the only one on the Pribylov group.

[Illustration: NATIVES DRIVING "HOLLUSCHICKIE"

The Drove passing over the Lagoon Flats to the Killing Grounds under the Village of St. Paul.
Looking S. W. over the Village Cove and the Lagoon Rookery]

[Illustration: MAP OF ST. GEORGE ISLAND—PRIBYLOV GROUP.

Showing the Area and Position of the Fur Seal Rookeries and Hauling
Grounds. Surveyed and drawn (1873-74) by HENRY W. ELLIOTT.]

[Illustration: ST. GEORGE’S ISLAND, PRIBYLOV GROUP

Viewed from a point at sea about 7 miles E. N. E., off Tolstoi Mees:
these characteristic swarms of water-fowl, arries and choochkies,
stirred up by an approach of the steamer, encircle the whole island
in this manner, and give notice to a mariner, in thick weather, of
the proximity of that island long before it can be seen]

St. George has an area of about twenty-seven square miles; it has
twenty-nine miles of coast-line, of which only two and a quarter
are visited by the fur-seals, and which is in fact all the eligible
landing-ground afforded them by the structure of the island. Nearly
half of the shore of St. Paul is a sandy beach, while on St. George
there is less than a mile of it all put together, namely: a few
hundred yards in front of the village, the same extent on the
Garden Cove beach, southeast side, and less than half a mile at
Zapadnie on the south side.

Just above the Garden Cove, under the overhanging bluffs, several
thousand sea-lions hold exclusive, though shy, possession. Here
there is a half-mile of good landing. On the north shore of the
island, three miles west from the village, a grand bluff wall of
basalt and tufa intercalated rises abruptly from the sea to a sheer
height of nine hundred and twenty feet at its reach of greatest
elevation: thence, dropping a little, runs clear around the island to
Zapadnie, a distance of nearly ten miles, without affording a single
passage-way up or down to the sea that thunders at its base. Upon its
innumerable narrow shelf-margins, and in its countless chinks and
crannies, and back therefrom over an extended area of lava-shingled
inland ridges and terraces, millions upon millions of water-fowl
breed during the summer months.

The general altitude of St. George, though in itself not great, has,
however, an average three times higher than that of St. Paul, the
elevation of which is quite low, and slopes gently down to the sea
east and north; St. George rises abruptly, with exceptional spots
for landing. The loftiest summit on St. George, the top of the hill
right back to the southward of the village, is nine hundred and
thirty feet, and is called by the natives Ahluckeyak. That on St.
Paul, as I have before said, is Bogaslov Hill, six hundred feet. All
elevations on either island, fifteen or twenty feet above sea-level,
are rough and hummocky, with the exception of those sand-dune tracts
at St. Paul and the summits of the cinder hills, on both islands.
Weathered out, or washed from the basalt and pockets of olivine
on either island, are aggregates of augite, seen most abundant on
the summit slopes of Ahluckeyak Hill, St. George. Specimens from
stratified bands of old, friable, gray lavas, so conspicuous on the
shore of this latter island, show an existence of hornblende and
vitreous felspar in considerable quantity, while on the south shore,
near Garden Cove, is a large dike of a bluish and greenish gray
phonolite, in which numerous small crystals of spinel are found. A
dike, with well-defined walls, of old close-grained, clay-colored
lava, is near the village of St. George, about a quarter of a mile
east from the landing, in the face of those reddish breccia bluffs
that rise from the sea. It is the only example of the kind on the
islands. The bases or foundations of the Pribylov Islands are, all of
them, basaltic; some are compact and grayish-white, but most of them
exceedingly porous and ferruginous.[100] Upon this solid floor are
many hills of brown and red tufa, cinder-heaps, etc. Polavina Sopka,
the second point in elevation on St. Paul Island, is almost entirely
built up of red scoria and breccia; so is Ahluckeyak Hill, on St.
George, and the cap to the high bluffs opposite. The village hill at
St. Paul, Cone hill, the Einahnuhto peaks, Crater Hill, North Hill,
and Little Polavina are all ash-heaps of this character. The bluffs
at the shore of Polavina Point, St. Paul, show in a striking manner
a section of the geological structure of the island. The tufas on
both islands, at the surface, decompose and weather into the base of
good soil, which the severe climate, however, renders useless to good
husbandmen. There is not a trace of granitic or of gneissoid rocks
found _in situ_. Metamorphic boulders have been collected along the
beaches and pushed up by heavy ice-floes which have brought them down
from Siberian coasts far away to the northwest. The dark-brown tufa
bluffs and the breccia walls at the east landing of St. Paul Island,
known as “Black Bluffs,” rise suddenly from the sea sixty to eighty
feet, with stratified horizontal lines of light-gray calcareous
conglomerate, or cement, in which are embedded sundry fossils
characteristic of and belonging to the Tertiary Age, such as _Cardium
grœnlandicum_, _C. decoratum_, and _Astarte pectunculata_, etc. This
is the only locality within the purview of the Pribylov Islands
where any palæontological evidence of their age can be found. These
specimens, as indicated, are exceedingly abundant; I brought down a
whole series, gathered there at the east landing or “Navastock,” in a
short half-hour’s search and labor.

Although small quantities of drift-wood lodge at all points of the
coast, yet the greatest amount is found on the south shore, and
thence around to Garden Cove; this drift-timber is usually wholly
stripped of its bark, principally pine and fir sticks, some of them
quite large, eighteen inches or two feet in diameter. Several years
occur when a large driftage will be thrown or stranded here; then
long intervals of many seasons will elapse with scarcely a log or
stick coming ashore. I found at Garden Cove, in June, 1873, the
well-preserved husk of a cocoanut, cast up by the surf on the beach:
did I not know that it was most undoubtedly thrown over by some
whaler in these waters, not many hundred miles away at the farthest,
I should have indulged in a pretty reverie as to its path in drifting
from the South Seas to this lonely islet. I presume, however, that
the timber which the sea brings for the Pribylov Islands is that
borne down upon the annual floods of the Kuskokvim and Nooshagak
Rivers on the mainland, and to the east-northeastward, a trifle more
than two hundred and twenty-five miles; it comes, however, in very
scant supply. I saw very little drift-wood on St. Matthew Island; but
on the eastern shore of St. Lawrence there was an immense aggregate,
which unquestionably came from the Yukon mouth.

The fact that fur-seals frequent these islands and those of Bering
and Copper, on the Russian side, to the exclusion of other land,
seems at first odd or singular, to say the least; but when we come
to examine the subject we find that those animals, when they repair
hither to rest for two or three months on the land, as they must do
by their habit during the breeding-season, require a cool, moist
atmosphere, imperatively coupled with firm, well-drained land,
or dry broken rocks or shingle, rather, upon which to take their
positions and remain undisturbed by the weather and the sea for a
lengthy period of reproduction. If the rookery-ground is hard and
flat, with an admixture of loam or soil, puddles are speedily formed
in this climate, where it rains almost every day, and when not
raining, rain-fogs take rapid succession and continue the saturation,
making thus a muddy slime, which very quickly takes the hair off the
animals whenever it plasters or wherever it fastens on them; hence
they carefully avoid any such landing. If they occupy a sandy shore
the rain beats that material into their large, sensitive eyes, and
into their fur, so they are obliged, from simple irritation, to leave
and return to the sea for relief.

This inspection of some natural characteristics of the Pribylov group
renders it quite plain that the Seal Islands, now under discussion,
offer to the _Pinnipedia_ very remarkable advantages for landing,
especially so at St. Paul, where the ground of basaltic rock and of
volcanic tufa or cement slopes up from many points gradually above
the sea, making thereby a perfectly adapted resting-place for any
number, from a thousand to millions, of those intelligent animals,
which can lie out here from May until October every year in perfect
physical peace and security. There is not a rod of ground of this
character offered to these animals elsewhere in all Alaska, not on
the Aleutian chain, not on the mainland, not on St. Matthew or St.
Lawrence. Both of the latter islands were surveyed by myself, with
special reference to this query, in 1874; every foot of St. Matthew
shore-line was examined, and I know that the fur-seal could not rest
on the low clayey flats there in contentment a single day; hence
he never has rested there, nor will he in the future. As to St.
Lawrence, it is so ice-bound and snow-covered in spring and early
summer, to say nothing of numerous other physical disadvantages, that
it never becomes of the slightest interest to fur-seals.

When Pribylov, in taking possession, landed on St. George a part
of his little ship’s crew, July, 1786, he knew that, as it was
uninhabited, it would be necessary to establish a colony there from
which to draft laborers to do all killing, skinning, and curing
of the peltries; therefore he and his associates, and his rivals
after him, imported natives of Oonalashka and Atkha—passive, docile
Aleutes. They founded their first village a quarter of a mile to the
eastward of one of the principal rookeries on St. George, now called
“Starry Arteel,” or “Old Settlement”; a village was also located at
Zapadnie, and a succession of barraboras planted at Garden Cove.
Then, during the following season, more men were brought up from
Atkha and taken over to St. Paul, where five or six rival traders
posted themselves on the north shore, near and at “Maroonitch,” and
at the head of the Big Lake, among the sand-dunes there. They were
then, as they are now, somewhat given to riotous living if they
only had the chance, and the ruins of the Big Lake settlement are
pleasantly remembered by the descendants of those pioneers to-day, on
St. Paul, who take off their hats as they pass by to affectionately
salute, and call the place “Vesolia Mista,” or “Jolly Spot”—the
aged men telling me, in a low whisper, that “in those good old days
they had plenty of rum.” But, when the pressure of competition
became great, another village was located at Polavina, and still
another at Zapadnie, until the activity and unscrupulous energy
of all these rival settlements well-nigh drove out and eliminated
the seals in 1796. Three years later the whole territory of Alaska
passed into the hands of the absolute power vested in the Russian
American Company. These islands were in the bill of sale, and early
in 1799 the competing traders were turned off neck and heels from
them, and the Pribylov group passed under the control of a single
man, the iron-willed Baranov. The people on St. Paul were then all
drawn together, for economy and warmth, into a single settlement at
Polavina. Their life in those days must have been miserable. They
were mere slaves, without the slightest redress from any insolence
or injury which their masters might see fit, in petulance or brutal
orgies, to inflict upon them. Here they lived and died, unnoticed and
uncared for, in large barracoons half under ground and dirt-roofed,
cold and filthy. Along toward the beginning or end of 1825, in order
that they might reap the advantage of being located best to load and
unload ships, the Polavina settlement was removed to the present
village site, as indicated on the map, and the natives have lived
there ever since.

On St. George the several scattered villages were abandoned, and
consolidated at the existing location some years later, but for a
different reason. The labor of bringing the seal-skins over to Garden
Cove, which is the best and surest landing, was so great, and that
of carrying them from the north shore to Zapadnie still greater,
that it was decided to place the consolidated settlement at such
a point between them, on the north shore, that the least trouble
and exertion of conveyance would be necessary. A better place,
geographically, for the business of gathering the skins and salting
them down at St. George cannot be found on the island, but a poorer
place for a landing it is difficult to pick out, though in this
respect there is not much choice outside of Garden Cove.

Up to the time of the transfer of the territory and leasing of the
islands to the Alaska Commercial Company, in August, 1870, these
native inhabitants all lived in huts or sod-walled and dirt-roofed
houses, called “barrabkies,” partly under ground. Most of these huts
were damp, dark, and exceedingly filthy: it seemed to be the policy
of a short-sighted Russian management to keep them so, and to treat
the natives not near so well as they treated the few hogs and dogs
which they brought up there for food and for company. The use of
seal-fat for fuel, caused the deposit upon everything within doors of
a thick coat of greasy, black soot, strongly impregnated with a damp,
moldy, and indescribably offensive odor. They found along the north
shore of St. Paul and at Northeast Point, occasionally scattered
pieces of drift-wood, which was used, carefully soaked anew in water
if it had dried out, split into little fragments, and, trussing the
blubber with it when making their fires, the combination gave rise
to a roaring, spluttering blaze. If this drift-wood failed them at
any time when winter came round, they were obliged to huddle together
beneath skins in their cold huts, and live or die, as the case might
be. But the situation to-day has changed marvellously. We see here
now at St. Paul, and on St. George, in the place of the squalid,
filthy habitations of the immediate past, two villages, neat,
warm, and contented. Each family lives in a snug frame-dwelling;
every house is lined with tarred paper, painted, furnished with a
stove, with out-houses, etc., complete; streets laid out, and the
foundations of these habitations regularly plotted thereon. There
is a large church at St. Paul, and a less pretentious but very
creditable structure of the same character on St. George; a hospital
on St. Paul, with a full and complete stock of drugs, and skilled
physicians on both islands to take care of the people, free of
cost. There is a school-house on each island, in which teachers are
also paid by the company eight months in the year, to instruct the
youth, while the Russian Church is sustained entirely by the pious
contributions of the natives themselves on these two islands, and
sustained well by each other. There are eighty families, or eighty
houses, on St. Paul, in the village, with twenty or twenty-four such
houses to as many families at St. George, and eight other structures.
The large warehouses and salt-sheds of the Alaska Commercial Company,
built by skilful mechanics, as have been the dwellings just referred
to, are also neatly painted; and, taken in combination with the
other features, constitute a picture fully equal to the average
presentation of any one of our small eastern towns There is no
misery, no downcast, dejected, suffering humanity here to-day. These
Aleutes, who enjoy as a price of their good behavior, the sole right
to take and skin seals for the company, to the exclusion of all other
people, are known to and by their less fortunate neighbors elsewhere
in Alaska as the “Bogatskie Aloutov,” or the “rich Aleutes.” The
example of the agents of the Alaska Commercial Company, on both
islands, from the beginning of its lease, and the course of the
Treasury agents during the last eight or nine years, have been
silent but powerful promoters of the welfare of these people. They
have maintained perfect order; they have directed neatness, and
cleanliness, and stimulated industry, such as those natives had never
before dreamed of.[101] The chief source of sickness used to arise
from the wretched character of the barrabkies in which they lived;
but it was, at first, a very difficult matter to get frame-houses
to supplant successfully the sod-walled and dirt-roofed huts of the
islands.

Many experiments, however, were made, and a dozen houses built, ere
the result was as good as the style of primitive housing, when it
had been well done and kept in best possible repair. In such a damp
climate, naturally, a strong moldy smell pervades all inclosed rooms
which are not thoroughly heated and daily dried by fires; and, in
the spring and fall, frost works through and drips and trickles
like rain adown the walls. The present frame-houses occupied by the
natives owe their dryness, their warmth, and protection from the
piercing “boorgas” to the liberal use of stout tarred paper in the
lining. An overpowering mustiness of the hallways, out-houses, and,
in fact, every roofed-in spot, where a stove is not regularly used,
even in the best-built residences, is one of the first disagreeable
sensations which the new arrivals always experience when they take
up their quarters here. Perhaps, if it were not for the nasal
misery that floats in from the killing-grounds to the novice, this
musty, moldy state of things up here would be far more acute, as an
annoyance, than it is now. The greater grief seems to soon fully
absorb the lesser one; at least, in my own case, I can affirm the
result.

As they lived in early time, it was a physical impossibility for them
to increase and multiply;[102] but, since their elevation and their
sanitary advancement are so marked, it may be reasonably expected
that those people for all time to come will at least hold their own,
even though they do not increase to any remarkable degree. Perhaps
it is better that they should not. But it is exceedingly fortunate
that they do sustain themselves so as to be, as it were, a prosperous
corporate factor, entitled to the exclusive privilege of labor on
these islands. As an encouragement for their good behavior the Alaska
Commercial Company, in pursuance of its enlightened treatment of
the whole subject, so handsomely exhibited by its housing of these
people, has assured them that so long as they are capable and willing
to perform the labor of skinning the seal-catch every year, so long
will they enjoy the sole privilege of participating in that toil
and its reward. This is wise on the part of the company, and it is
exceedingly happy for the people. They are, of all men, especially
fitted for the work connected with the seal-business—no comment is
needed—nothing better in the way of manual labor, skilled and rapid,
could be rendered by any body of men, equal in numbers, living under
the same circumstances, all the year round. They appear to shake
off the periodic lethargy of winter and its forced inanition, to
rush with the coming of summer into the severe exercise and duty
of capturing, killing, and skinning the seals, with vigor and with
persistent and commendable energy.

To-day only a very small proportion of the population are descendants
of the pioneers who were brought here by the several Russian
companies in 1787 and 1788; a colony of one hundred and thirty-seven
souls, it is claimed, principally recruited at Oonalashka and Atkha.

The Aleutes on the islands as they appear to-day have been so mixed
in with Russian, Koloshian, and Kamschadale blood that they present
characteristics, in one way or another, of all the various races of
men from the negro up to the Caucasian. The predominant features
among them are small, wide-set eyes, broad and high cheek-bones,
causing the jaw, which is full and square, to often appear peaked;
coarse, straight, black hair, small, neatly-shaped feet and hands,
together with brownish-yellow complexion. The men will average in
stature five feet four or five inches; the women less in proportion,
although there are exceptions to this rule among them, some being
over six feet in height, and others are decided dwarfs. The manners
and customs of these people to-day possess nothing in themselves of
a barbarous or remarkable character aside from that which belongs
to an advanced state of semi-civilization. They are exceedingly
polite and civil, not only in their business with the agents of the
company on the seal-islands, but among themselves, and they visit,
the one with the other, freely and pleasantly, the women being great
gossips; but, on the whole, their intercourse is subdued, for the
simple reason that the topics of conversation are few: and, judging
from their silent but unconstrained meetings, they seem to have a
mutual knowledge, as if by sympathy, as to what may be occupying
each other’s minds, rendering speech superfluous. It is only when
under the influence of beer or strong liquor that they lose their
naturally quiet and amiable disposition. They then relapse into low,
drunken orgies and loud, brawling noises.[103] Having been so long
under the control and influence of the Russians, they have adopted
many Slavic customs, such as giving birthday-dinners, naming their
children, etc. They are remarkably attached to their church, and no
other form of religion could be better adapted or have a firmer hold
upon the sensibilities of the people. Their inherent chastity and
sobriety cannot be commended. They have long since thrown away the
uncouth garments of Russian rule—those shaggy dog-skin caps, with
coats half seal and half sea-lion—for a complete outfit, _cap-à-pie_,
such as our own people buy in any furnishing house, the same boots,
socks, underclothing, and clothing, with ulsters and ulsterettes;
but the violence of the wind prevents their selecting the hats of
our fashion and sporting fraternity. As for the women, they, too,
have kept pace and even advanced to the level of the men, for in
these lower races there is usually more vanity displayed by the
masculine element than the feminine, according to my observation.
In other words, I have noticed a greater desire among the young men
than among the young women of savage and semi-civilized people to
be gaily dressed, and to look fine; but the visits of the wives of
our treasury officials and the company’s agents to these islands
during the last ten years, bringing with them a full outfit, as
ladies always do, of everything under the sun that women want to
wear, has given the native female mind an undue expansion up there
and stimulated it to unwonted activity. They watch the cut of the
garments and borrow the patterns, and some of them are very expert
dressmakers to-day. When the Russians controlled affairs, the women
were the hewers of drift-wood and the drawers of water. At St. Paul
there was no well of drinking-fluid about the village, nor within
half a mile of the village. There was no drinking-water unless it was
caught in reservoirs, and the cistern-water, owing to those particles
of seal-fat soot which fall upon the roofs of the houses, is rendered
undrinkable, so that the supply for the town until quite recently
used to be carried by women from two little lakes at the head of the
lagoon, a mile and a half as the crow flies from the village, and
right under Telegraph Hill. This is quite a journey, and when it is
remembered that they drink so much tea, and that water has to go
with it, some idea of the labor of the old and young females can be
derived from an inspection of the map. Latterly, within the last four
or five years, the company have opened a spring less than half a mile
from the “gorode,” which they have plumbed and regulated, so that it
supplies them with water now and renders the labor next to nothing,
compared with all former difficulty. But to-day, when water is wanted
in the Aleutian houses at St. Paul, the man has to get it—the woman
does not; he trudges out with a little wooden firkin or tub on his
back and brings it to the house.

Some of the natives save their money; yet there are very few
among them, perhaps not more than a dozen, who have the slightest
economical tendency. What they cannot spend for luxuries, groceries,
and tobacco they manage to get away with at the gaming-table. They
have their misers and their spendthrifts, and they have the usual
small proportion who know how to make money, and then how to spend
it. A few among them who are in the habit of saving have opened a
regular bank-account with the company. Some of them have to-day two
or three thousand dollars saved, drawing an interest of nine per cent.

When the ships arrive and go, the severe and necessary labor of
lightering their cargoes off and on from the roadsteads where they
anchor is principally performed by these people, and they are paid so
much a day for their labor: from fifty cents to one dollar, according
to the character of the service they render. This operation, however,
is much dreaded by the ship-captains and sea-going men, whose habits
of discipline and automatic regularity and effect of working render
them severe critics and impatient coadjutors of the natives, who, to
tell the truth, hate to do anything after they have pocketed their
reward for sealing; and when they do labor after this, they regard it
as an act of very great condescension on their part.

As they are living to-day up there, there is no restraint, such as
the presence of policemen, courts of justice, fines, etc., which we
employ for the suppression of disorder and maintenance of the law
in our own land. They understand that if it is necessary to make
them law-abiding, and to punish crime, such officers will be among
them, and hence, perhaps, is due the fact that from the time that
the Alaska Commercial Company has taken charge, in 1870, there has
not been one single occasion where the simplest functions of a
justice of the peace would or could have been called in to settle any
difficulty. This speaks eloquently for their docile nature and their
amiable disposition.

These people are singularly affectionate and indulgent toward
their children. There are no “bald-headed” tyrants in our homes as
arbitrary and ruthless in their rule as are those snuffly babies
and young children on the Seal Islands. While it is very young, the
Aleut gives up everything to the caprice of his child, and never
crosses its path or thwarts its desire; the “deetiah” literally take
charge of the house; but as soon as these callow members of the
family become strong enough to bear burdens and to labor, generally
between twelve and fifteen years of age, they are then pressed into
hard service relentlessly by their hitherto indulgent parents. The
extremes literally meet in this application.

They have another peculiarity: when they are ill, slightly or
seriously, no matter which, they maintain or affect a stolid
resignation, and are patient to positive apathy. This is not due to
deficiency of nervous organization, because those among them who
exhibit examples of intense liveliness and nervous activity behave
just as stolidly when ill as their more lymphatic townsmen do. Boys
and girls, men and women, all alike, are patient and resigned when
ailing and under treatment; but it is a bad feature after all,
inasmuch as it is well-nigh impossible to rally a very sick man who
himself has no hope, and who seems to mutely deprecate every effort
to save his life. The principal cause of death among the people,
by natural infirmity, on the Seal Islands is the varying forms
of consumption and bronchitis, always greatly aggravated by that
inherited scrofulous taint or stain of blood which was, in one way
or another, flowing through the veins of their recent progenitors,
both here and throughout the Aleutian Islands. There is nothing worth
noticing in the line of nervous diseases, unless it be now and then
the record of a case of alcoholism superinduced by excessive quass
drinking. The “makoolah” intemperance among these people, which was
not suppressed until 1876, was a chief factor to an immediate death
of infants; for, when they were at the breast, their mothers would
drink quass to intoxication, and the stomachs of newly-born Aleutes
or Creoles could not stand the infliction which they received, even
second-hand. Had it not been for this wretched spectacle, so often
presented to my eyes in 1872-73, I should hardly have taken the
active steps which I did to put the nuisance down; for it involved
me, at first, in a bitter personal controversy, which, although
I knew at the outset was inevitable, still it weighed nothing in
the scales against the evil itself. A few febrile disorders are
occurring, yet they yield readily to good treatment.

The inherent propensity of man to gamble is developed here to a
very appreciable degree, but it in no way whatever suggests the
strange gaming love and infatuation with which all Indians and Eskimo
elsewhere of Alaska are possessed. The chief delight of men and boys
in the two villages is to stand on the street corners “pitching”
half-dollars. So devoted, indeed, have I found the native mind to
this hap-hazard sport, that frequently I would detect groups of them
standing out in pelting gales of wind and of rain, “shying” silver
coins at the little dirt-driven pegs. A few of them, men and women,
play cards with much skill and intelligence.

One of the peculiarities[104] of these people is that they seldom
undress when they go to bed—neither the men, women, nor children;
and also that at any and all hours of the night during the summer
season, when I have passed in and out of the village to and from the
rookeries, I always found several of the natives squatting before
their house-doors or leaning against the walls, stupidly staring out
into the misty darkness of the fog, or chatting one with the other
over their pipes. A number of the inhabitants, by this disposition,
are always up and around throughout the settlement during the entire
night and day. In olden times, and even recently, these involuntary
sentinels of the night have often startled the whole village by
shouting at the top of their voices the pleasant and electric
announcement of the “ship’s light!” or they have frozen it with
superstitious horror at daybreak by then reciting some ghostly vision
that had appeared to them.

The urchins play marbles, spin tops, and fly kites, intermittently,
with all the feverish energy displayed by such youth of our own
surroundings; they frolic at base-ball, and use “shinny” sticks
with great volubility and activity. The girls are, however, much
more repressed, and, though they have a few games, and play quietly
with quaintly dressed dolls, yet they do not appear to be possessed
of that usual feminine animation so conspicuously marked in our
home-life.

The attachment which the natives have for their respective islands
was well shown to me in 1874. Then a number of St. George people were
taken over to St. Paul, temporarily, to do the killing incidental to
a reduction of the quota of twenty-five thousand for their island
and a corresponding increase at St. Paul. They became homesick
immediately, and were never tired of informing the St. Paul natives
that St. George was a far handsomer and more enjoyable island to live
upon; that walking over the long sand reaches of “Pavel” made their
legs grievously weary, and that the whole effect of this change of
residence was “ochen scootchnie.” Naturally the ire of the St. Paul
people rose at once, and they retorted in kind, indicating the rocky
surface of St. George and its great inferiority as a seal-island. I
was surprised at the genuine feeling on both sides, because, as far
as I could judge from a residence on each island, it was a clear case
of tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum between them as to opportunities and
climate necessary for a pleasurable existence. The natives themselves
are of one and common stock, though the number of Creoles on St.
George is relatively much larger than on St. Paul. Consequently the
tone of the St. George village is rather more sprightly and vivacious.

The question is naturally asked, How do these people employ
themselves during the long nine months of every year after the close
of the sealing season and until it begins again, when they have
little or absolutely nothing to do? It may be answered that they
simply vegetate, or, in other words, are entirely idle, mentally and
physically, during most of this period. But, to their credit, let
it be said that mischief does not employ their idle hands. They
are passive killers of time, drinking tea and sleeping, with a few
disagreeable exceptions, such as the gamblers. There are a half-dozen
of these characters at St. Paul, and perhaps as many at St. George,
who spend whole nights at their sittings, even during the sealing
season, playing games of cards taught by Russians and persons who
have been on the island since the transfer of the territory; but
the majority of the men, women, and children, not being compelled
to exert themselves to obtain any of the chief or even the least
of the necessaries of life, such as tea and hard bread, sleep the
greater portion of the time, when not busy in eating and in the daily
observances of that routine belonging to the Greek Catholic Church.
The teachings, pomp, and circumstance of the religious observances of
this faith alone preserve these people from absolute stagnation. In
obedience to its promptings they gladly attend church very regularly.
They also make and receive calls on their saints’ days, and such
days are very numerous. The natives add to these entertainments of
their saints’ day and birth-festivals, or “Emannimiks,” the music
of accordions and violins. Upon the former and its variation,
the concertina, they play a number of airs, and are real fond of
the noise. A great many of the women in particular can render
indifferently a limited selection of tunes, many of which are the
old battle-songs, so popular during the rebellion, woven into weird
Russian waltzes and love-ditties, which they have jointly gathered
from their former masters and our soldiers, who were quartered here
in 1869. From the Russians and the troops also they have learned to
dance various figures, and have been taught to waltz. These dances,
however, the old folks do not enjoy very much. They will come in and
sit around and look at the young performers with stolid indifference;
but if they manage to get a strong current of tea setting in their
direction, nicely sugared and toned up, they revive and join in the
mirth. In old times they never danced here unless they were drunk,
and it was the principal occupation of the amiable and mischievous
treasury agents and others in those early days to stimulate this
beery fun.

Seal-meat is their staple food, and in the village of St. Paul they
consume on an average fully five hundred pounds a day the year round,
and they are, by the permission of the Secretary of the Treasury,
allowed occasionally to kill five thousand or six thousand seal-pups,
or an average of twenty-two to thirty young “kotickie” for each man,
woman, and child in the settlements. The pups will dress ten pounds
each. This shows an average consumption of nearly six hundred pounds
of seal-meat by each person, large and small, during the year. To
this diet the natives add a great deal of butter and many sweet
crackers. They are passionately fond of butter. No epicure at home
or butter-taster in Goshen knows or appreciates that article better
than these people do. If they could get all that they desire, they
would consume one thousand pounds of butter and five hundred pounds
of sweet crackers every week, and indefinite quantities of sugar.
The sweetest of all sweet teeth are found in the jaw of the ordinary
Aleut. But it is of course unwise to allow them full swing in this
matter, for they would turn their stomachs into fermenting-tanks
if they had free access to an unlimited supply of saccharine food.
The company issues them two hundred pounds a week. If unable to get
sweet crackers, they will eat about three hundred pounds of hard
or pilot bread every week, and, in addition to this, nearly seven
hundred pounds of flour at the same time. Of tobacco they are allowed
fifty pounds per week; candles, seventy-five pounds; rice, fifty
pounds. They burn, strange as it may seem, kerosene-oil here to the
exclusion of that seal-fat which literally overruns the island. They
ignite and consume over six hundred gallons of kerosene-oil a year
in the village of St. Paul alone. They do not fancy vinegar very
much; perhaps fifty gallons a year are used up there. Mustard and
pepper are sparingly used, one to one pound and a half a week for
the whole village. Beans they peremptorily reject; for some reason
or other they cannot be induced to use them. Those who go about the
vessels contract a taste for split-pea soup, and a few of them are
sold in the village-store. Salt meat, beef or pork, they will take
reluctantly, if it is given to and pressed upon them; but they will
never buy it. I remember, in this connection, seeing two barrels
of prime salt pork and a barrel of prime mess salt beef opened in
the company’s store shortly after my arrival in 1872, and, though
the people of the village were invited to help themselves, I think
I am right in saying these three barrels were not emptied when I
left the island in 1873. They use a very little coffee during the
year—not more than one hundred pounds—but of tea a great deal. I do
not know exactly—I cannot find among my notes a record as to that
article—but I can say that they each drink not less than a gallon of
tea per diem. The amount of this beverage which they sip from the
time they rise in the morning until they go to bed late at night is
astounding. Their “samovars,” and latterly the regular tea-kettles
of our American make, are bubbling and boiling from the moment the
housewife bestirs herself at daybreak until the fire goes out when
she sleeps. It should be stated in this connection that they are
supplied with a regular allowance of coal every year by the company,
_gratis_, each family being entitled to a certain amount, which
alone, if economically used, keeps them warm all winter in their new
houses; but for those who are extravagant, and are itching to spend
their extra wages, an extra supply is always kept in the store-houses
of the company for sale. Their appreciation of and desire to possess
all the canned fruit that is landed from the steamer is marked to a
great degree. If they had the opportunity, I doubt whether a single
family on that island to-day would hesitate to bankrupt itself in
purchasing this commodity. Potatoes they sometimes demand, as well
as onions, and perhaps if these vegetables could be brought here and
kept to an advantage the people would soon become very fond of them.
Most of these articles of food mentioned heretofore are purchased by
the natives in the company’s store at either island. This food and
the wearing apparel, crockery, etc., which the company bring up here
for the use of the people, is sold to them at the exact cost price
of the same, plus the expenses of transportation, and many times
within my knowledge they have bought goods here at these stores at
less rates than they would have been subjected to in San Francisco.
The object of the company is not, under any circumstances, to make a
single cent of profit out of the sale of these goods to the natives.
They aim only to clear the cost and no more. Instructions to this
effect are given to its agents, while those of the Government are
called upon to take notice of the fact.

The store at St. Paul, as well as that at St. George, has its regular
annual “opening” after the arrival of the steamer in the spring, to
which the natives seem to pay absorbed attention. They crowd the
buildings day and night, eagerly looking for all the novelties in
food and apparel. These slouchy men and shawl-hooded women, who pack
the area before the counters, appear to feel as deep an interest in
the process of shopping as the most enthusiastic votaries of that
business do in our own streets. It certainly seems to give them the
greatest satisfaction of their lives on the Pribylov Islands.

With regard to ourselves up here in so far as a purely physical
existence goes, the American method of living on and in the climate
of the Pribylov Islands is highly conducive to strength and health.
Tea and coffee, seasoned with condensed milk and lump sugar; hot
biscuits, cakes and waffles; potatoes, served in every method of
cookery; salt salmon, codfish, and corned beef; mess pork, and, once
a week, a fresh roast of beef or steaks; all the canned vegetables
and fruits; all the potted sauces, jams and jellies; pies, puddings
and pastries; and the exhaustive list of purely seafaring dishes,
such as pea and bean, barley and rice soups, curries and maccaroni;
these constitute the staples and many of the luxuries with which
the agents of the Alaska Commercial Company prolong their existence
while living here in the discharge of their duties, and to which they
welcome their guests for discussion and glad digestion.

A piano on St. Paul, in the company house; an assorted library,
embracing over one thousand volumes, selected from standard authors
in fiction, science, and history, together with many other unexpected
adjuncts of high comfort for body and soul, will be found on these
islands, wholly unlocked for by those who first set foot upon them.
A small Russian printed library has also been given by the company
to the natives on each island for their special entertainment. The
rising generation of sealers, however, if they read at all, will read
our own typography.

Before leaving the consideration of these people, who are so
intimately associated with and blended into the business on these
islands, it may be well to clearly define the relation existing
between them, the Government, and the company leasing the islands.
When Congress granted to the Alaska Commercial Company of San
Francisco the exclusive right of taking a certain number of fur-seals
every year, for a period of twenty years on these islands, it did
so with several reservations and conditions, which were confided in
their detail to the Secretary of the Treasury. This officer and the
president of the Alaska Commercial Company agreed upon a code of
regulations which should govern their joint action in regard to the
natives. It was a simple agreement that these people should have a
certain amount of dried salmon furnished them for food every year, a
certain amount of fuel, a school-house, and the right to go to and
come from the islands as they chose; and also the right to work or
not, understanding that in case they did not work, their places would
and could be supplied by other people who would work.

The company, however, has gone far beyond this exaction of the
Government; it has added an inexpressible boon of comfort, in the
formation of those dwellings now occupied by the natives, which
was not expressed nor thought of at the time of the granting of
the lease. An enlightened business-policy suggested to the company
that it would be much better for the natives, and much better
for company too, if these people were taken out of their filthy,
unwholesome hovels, put into habitable dwellings, and taught to live
cleanly, for the simple reason that by so doing the natives, living
in this improved condition, would be able physically and mentally,
every season when the sealing work began, to come out from their
long inanition and go to work at once with vigor and energetic
persistency. The sequel has proved the wisdom of the company.

Before this action on their part, it was physically impossible
for the inhabitants of St. Paul or St. George Islands to take the
lawful quota of one hundred thousand seal-skins annually in less
than three or four working months. They take them in less than
thirty working days now with the same number of men. What is the
gain? Simply this, and it is everything: the fur-seal skin, from
the 14th of June, when it first arrives, as a rule, up to the 1st
of August, is in prime condition; from that latter date until the
middle of October it is rapidly deteriorating, to slowly appreciate
again in value as it sheds and renews its coat; so much so that it
is practically worthless in the markets of the world. Hence, the
catch taken by the Alaska Commercial Company every year is a prime
one, first to last—there are no low-grade “stagey” skins in it; but
under the old regimen, three-fourths of the skins were taken in
August, in September and even in October, and were not worth their
transportation to London. Comment on this is unnecessary; it is the
contrast made between a prescient business-policy, and one that was
as shiftless and improvident as language can well devise.[105]

The company found so much difficulty in getting the youth of
the villages to attend their schools, taught by our own people,
especially brought up there and hired by the company, that they have
adopted the plan of bringing one or two of the brightest boys down
every year and putting them into our schools, so that they may grow
up here and be educated, in order to return and serve as teachers
there. This policy is warranted by the success which attended an
experiment made at the time when I was up there first, whereby a
son of the chief was carried down and over to Rutland, Vt., for his
education, remained there four years, then returned and took charge
of the school on St. Paul, which he has had until recently, with
the happiest results in increased attendance and attention from the
children. But, of course, so long as the Russian Church service is
conducted in the Russian language, we will find on the islands more
Russian-speaking people than our own. The non-attendance at school
was not and is not to be ascribed to indisposition on the part of the
children and parents. One of the oldest and most intelligent of the
natives told me, explanatory of their feeling and consequent action,
that he did not, nor did his neighbors, have any objection to the
attendance of their children on our English school; but, if their
boys and young men neglected their Russian lessons they knew not who
were going to take their places, when they died, in his church, at
the christenings, and at their burial. To any one familiar with the
teachings of the Greek Catholic faith, the objection of old Philip
Vollkov seems reasonable. I hope, therefore, that, in the course of
time, the Russian Church service may be voiced in English; not that
I want to substitute any other religion for it—far from it; in my
opinion it is the best one we could have for these people—but until
this substitution of our language for the Russian is done, no very
satisfactory work, in my opinion, will be accomplished in the way of
an English education on the Seal Islands.

The Alaska Commercial Company deserves and will receive a brief but
comprehensive notice at this point. In order that we may follow
it to these islands, and clearly and correctly appreciate the
circumstance which gave it footing and finally the control of the
business, I will pass back and review a chain of evidence adduced in
this direction from the time of our first occupation, in 1867, of the
territory of Alaska.

It will be remembered by many people, that when we were ratifying
the negotiation between our Government and that of Russia, it became
painfully apparent that nobody in this country knew anything about
the subject of Russian America. Every school-boy knew where it was
located, but no professor or merchant, however wise or shrewd, knew
what was in it. Accordingly, immediately after the purchase was
made and the formal transfer effected, a large number of energetic
and speculative men, some coming from New England even, but most
of them residents of the Pacific coast, turned their attention to
Alaska. They went up to Sitka in a little fleet of sail and steam
vessels, but among their number it appears there were only two of
our citizens who knew of or had the faintest appreciation as to the
value of the Seal Islands. One of these, Mr. H. M. Hutchinson, a
native of New Hampshire, and the other, a Captain Ebenezer Morgan, a
native of Connecticut, turned their faces in 1868 toward them; also
an ex-captain of the Russian-American Company, Gustav Niebaum, who
became a citizen immediately after the transfer, knowing of their
value, chartered a small vessel, and hastened so as to land there a
few days even before Captain Morgan arrived in the _Peru_, a whaling
ship.

Mr. Hutchinson gathered his information at Sitka—Captain Morgan
had gained his years before by experience on the South Sea sealing
grounds. Mr. Hutchinson represented a company of San Francisco or
California capitalists when he landed on St. Paul; Captain Morgan
represented another company of New London capitalists and whaling
merchants. They arrived almost simultaneously, Morgan a few days
or weeks anterior to Hutchinson. He had quietly enough commenced
to survey and pre-empt the rookeries on the islands, or, in other
words, the work of putting stakes down and recording the fact of
claiming the ground, as miners do in the mountains; but later agreed
to co-operate with Mr. Hutchinson. These two parties passed that
season of 1868 in exclusive control of those islands, and they took
an immense number of seals. They took so many that it occurred to
Mr. Hutchinson unless something was done to check and protect these
wonderful rookeries, which he saw here for the first time, and
which filled him with amazement, that they would be wiped out by the
end of another season; although he was the gainer then, and would
be perhaps at the end, if they should be thus eliminated, yet he
could not forbear saying to himself that it was wrong and should
not be. To this Captain Morgan also assented, and Captain Niebaum
joined with them cordially. In the fall of 1868 Mr. Hutchinson and
Captain Morgan, by their personal efforts, interested and aroused
the Treasury Department and Congress, so that a special resolution
was enacted declaring the Seal Islands a governmental reservation,
and prohibiting any and all parties from taking seals thereon until
further action by Congress. In 1869, seals were taken on those
islands, under the direction of the Treasury Department, for the
subsistence of the natives only; and in 1870 Congress passed the
present law, for the protection of the fur-bearing animals on those
islands, and under its provisions, and in accordance therewith, after
an animated and bitter struggle in competition, the Alaska Commercial
Company, of which Mr. Hutchinson was a prime organizer, secured the
award and received the franchise which it now enjoys and will enjoy
for some time yet. The company is an American corporation, with a
charter, rules, and regulations. They employ a fleet of vessels,
sail and steam: four steamers, a dozen or fifteen ships, barks, and
sloops. Their principal occupation and attention is given naturally
to the Seal Islands, though they have stations scattered over the
Aleutian Islands and that portion of Alaska west and north of Kadiak.
No post of theirs is less than five hundred or six hundred miles from
Sitka.

Outside of the Seal Islands all trade in this territory of Alaska
is entirely open to the public. There is no need of protecting the
fur-bearing animals elsewhere, unless it may be by a few wholesome
general restrictions in regard to the sea-otter chase. The country
itself protects the animals on the mainland and other islands by its
rugged, forbidding, and inhospitable exterior.

The treasury officials on the Seal Islands are charged with the
careful observance of every act of the company; a copy of the
lease and its covenant is conspicuously posted in their office; is
translated into Russian, and is familiar to all the natives. The
company directs its own labor, in accordance with the law, as it
sees fit; selects its time of working, etc. The natives themselves
work under the direction of their own chosen foremen, or “toyones.”
These chiefs call out the men at the break of every working-day,
divide them into detachments according to the nature of the service,
and order their working. All communications with the laborers on the
sealing-ground and the company passes through their hands, those
chiefs having every day an understanding with the agent of the
company as to his wishes, and they govern themselves thereby.

The company pays forty cents for the labor of taking each skin. The
natives take the skins on the ground, each man tallying his work and
giving the result at the close of the day to his chief or foreman.
When the skins are brought up and counted into the salt-houses,
where the agent of the company receives them from the hands of the
natives, the two tallies usually correspond very closely, if they
are not entirely alike. When the quota of skins is taken, at the
close of two, three, or four weeks of labor, as the case may be,
the total sum for the entire catch is paid over in a lump to the
chiefs, and these men divide it among the laborers according to
their standing as workmen, which they themselves have exhibited on
their special tally-sticks. For instance, at the annual divisions
or “catch” settlement, made by the natives on St. Paul Island among
themselves, in 1872, when I was present, the proceeds of their work
for that season in taking and skinning seventy-five thousand seals,
at forty cents per skin, with extra work connected with it, making
the sum of $30,637.37, was divided among them in this way: There were
seventy-four shares made up, representing seventy-four men, though
in fact only fifty-six men worked, but they wished to give a certain
proportion to their church, a certain proportion to their priest,
and a certain proportion to their widows; so they water their stock,
commercially speaking.[106]

It will be remembered that at the time the question of leasing
the islands was before Congress much opposition to the proposal
was made, on several grounds, by two classes, one of which argued
against a “monopoly,” the other urging that the Government itself
would realize more by taking the whole management of the business
into its own hands. At that time far away from Washington, in
the Rocky Mountains, I do not know what arguments were used in
the committee-rooms, or who made them; but, since my careful and
prolonged study of the subject on the ground itself, and of the trade
and its conditions, I am now satisfied that the act of June, 1870,
directing the Secretary of the Treasury to lease the seal-islands
of Alaska to the highest bidder, under the existing conditions and
qualifications, did the best and the only correct and profitable
thing that could have been done in the matter, both with regard to
the preservation of the seal-life in its original integrity, and the
pecuniary advantage of the treasury itself. To make this statement
perfectly clear, the following facts, by way of illustration, should
be presented:

First. When the Government took possession of these interests in
1868 and 1869, the gross value of a seal-skin laid down in the best
market, at London, was less in some instances and in others but
slightly above the present tax and royalty paid upon it by the Alaska
Commercial Company.

Second. Through the action of the intelligent business-men who took
the contract from the Government in stimulating and encouraging the
dressers of the raw material, and in taking sedulous care that
nothing but good skins should leave the island, and in combination
with leaders of fashion abroad, the demand for the fur, by this
manipulation and management, has been wonderfully increased.

Third. As matters now stand, the greatest and best interests of the
lessees are identical with those of the Government; what injures
one instantly injures the other. In other words, both strive to
guard against anything that shall interfere with the preservation
of the seal-life in its original integrity, and both having it to
their interest, if possible, to increase that life; if the lessees
had it in their power, which they certainly have not, to ruin these
interests by a few seasons of rapacity, they are so bonded and so
environed that prudence prevents it.

Fourth, The frequent changes in the office of the Secretary of the
Treasury, who has very properly the absolute control of the business
as it stands, do not permit upon his part that close, careful
scrutiny which is exercised by the lessees, who, unlike him, have
but their one purpose to carry out. The character of the leading
men among them is enough to assure the public that the business is
in responsible hands, and in the care of persons who will use every
effort for its preservation and its perpetuation, as it is so plainly
their best end to serve. Another great obstacle to the success of
the business, if controlled entirely by the Government, would be
encountered in disposing of the skins after they had been brought
down from the islands. It would not do to sell them up there to the
highest bidder, since that would license the sailing of a thousand
ships to be present at the sale. The rattling of their anchor-chains
and the scraping of their keels upon the beaches of the two little
islands would alone drive every seal away and over to the Russian
grounds in a remarkably short space of time. The Government would
therefore need to offer them at public auction in this country:
that would be simple history repeating itself—the Government would
be at the mercy of any well-organized combination of buyers. Its
agents conducting the sale could not counteract the effect of such a
combination as can the agents of a private corporation, who may look
after their interest in all the markets of the world in their own
time and in their own way, according to the exigencies of the season
and the demand, and who are supplied with money which they can use,
without public scandal, in the manipulation of the market. On this
ground I feel confident in stating that the Treasury of the United
States receives more money, net, under the system now in operation
than it would by taking the exclusive control of the business. Were
any capable government officer supplied with, say, $100,000, to
expend in “working the market,” and intrusted with the disposal of
one hundred thousand seal-skins wherever he could do so to the best
advantage of the Government, and were this agent a man of first-class
ability and energy, I think it quite likely that the same success
might attend his labor in the London market that distinguishes the
management of the Alaska Commercial Company. But imagine the cry of
fraud and embezzlement that would be raised against him, however
honest he might be! This alone would bring the whole business into
positive disrepute, and make it a national scandal. As matters
are now conducted there is no room for scandal—not one single
transaction on the islands but what is as clear to investigation
and accountability as the light of the noonday sun; what is done is
known to everybody, and the tax now laid by the Government upon, and
paid into the treasury every year by the Alaska Commercial Company
yields alone a handsome rate of interest on the entire purchase-money
expended for the ownership of all Alaska.

It is frequently urged with great persistency, by misinformed and
malicious authority, that the lessees can and do take thousands of
skins in excess of the law, and this catch in excess is shipped _sub
rosa_ to Japan from the Pribylov Islands. To show the folly of such
a move on the part of the Company, if even it were possible, I will
briefly recapitulate the conditions under which the skins are taken.
The natives of St. Paul and St. George do themselves, in the manner
I have indicated, all the driving and skinning of the seals for the
company. No others are permitted or asked to land upon the islands
to do this work, so long as the inhabitants of the islands are equal
to it. They have been equal to it and they are more than equal to
it. Every skin taken by the natives is counted by themselves, as
they get forty cents per pelt for that labor, and, at the expiration
of each day’s work in the field, the natives know exactly how many
skins have been taken by them, how many of these skins have been
rejected by the company’s agent because they were carelessly cut and
damaged in skinning—usually about three-fourths of one per cent. of
the whole catch—and they have it recorded every evening by those
among them who are charged with the duty. Thus, were one hundred and
one thousand skins taken, instead of one hundred thousand allowed by
law, the natives would know it as quickly as it was done, and they
would, on the strength of their record and their tally, demand the
full amount of their compensation for the extra labor; and were any
ship to approach the islands, at any hour, these people would know it
at once, and would be aware of any shipment of skins that might be
attempted. It would then be the common talk among the three hundred
and ninety-eight inhabitants of the two islands, and it would be a
matter of record, open to any person who might come upon the ground
charged with investigation.

Furthermore, these natives are constantly going to and from
Oonalashka, visiting their relations in the Aleutian settlements,
hunting for wives, etc. On the mainland they have intimate
intercourse with bitter enemies of the company, with whom they
would not hesitate to talk over the whole state of affairs on the
islands, as they always do; for they know nothing else and think of
nothing else and dream of nothing else. Therefore, should anything
be done contrary to the law, the act could and would be reported by
these people. The Government, on its part, through its four agents
stationed on these islands, counts these skins into the ship, and
one of their number goes down to San Francisco upon her. There the
collector of the port details experts of his own, who again count
them all out of the hold, and upon that record the tax is paid and
the certificate signed by the Government.

It will therefore at once be seen, by examining the state of affairs
on the islands, and the conditions upon which the lease is granted,
that the most scrupulous care in fulfilling the terms of the contract
is compassed, and that this strict fulfilment is the most profitable
course for the lessees to pursue; and that it would be downright
folly in them to deviate from the letter of the law, and thus lay
themselves open at any day to discovery, the loss of their contract,
and forfeiture of their bonds. Their action can be investigated at
any time, any moment, by Congress; of which they are fully aware.
They cannot bribe these three hundred and ninety-eight people on the
islands to secrecy, any more successfully than they could conceal
their action from them on the sealing fields; and any man of average
ability could go, and can go, among these natives and inform himself
as to the most minute details of the catch, from the time the lease
was granted up to the present hour, should he have reason to suspect
the honesty of the Treasury agents. The road to and from the islands
is not a difficult one, though it is travelled only once a year.


FOOTNOTES:

[85] It was with peculiar pleasure that the writer undertook, at
the suggestion of Professor Baird, who is the honored and beloved
secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the task of examining into
and reporting upon this subject; and it is also gratifying to add,
that the statements of fact and the hypotheses evolved therefrom
by him in 1874 have, up to the present time, been verified by an
inflexible sequence of events on the ground itself. The concurrent
testimony of the numerous agents of the Treasury Department and
the Government generally, who have trodden in his footsteps, amply
testifies to their stability.

[86] Pribylov, the discoverer of the Seal Islands, was a native of
“old Russia.” His father was one of the surviving sailors of the
_St. Peter_, which was wrecked, with Bering in command, November
4, 1741, on Bering Island. The only reference which I can find
to him is the vague incidental expressions, used here and there
throughout an extended series of lengthy Russian letters published
by Techmainov, as illustrative of the condition of affairs in regard
to the Russian American Company. Pribylov was, when cruising in
1783-86 for the rumored seal-grounds, merely the first mate of the
sloop _St. George_. The captain and part owner was one M. Subov, who
was a member of a trading association then well organized in Alaska,
and widely known as the “_Laybaidev Lastochin_” Company. It does not
appear that Pribylov took any part in the business of sealing other
than that of remaining in charge of the company’s vessels. He died
while in discharge of these duties at Sitka, March, 1796, on his ship
_The Three Saints_.

Pribylov himself called these islands of his discovery after Subov;
but the Russians then, and soon after unanimously, indicated the
group by its present well-deserved title, “_Ostrovie Pribylova_.”

[87] Veniaminov says that he does feel inclined to believe this
story, as the peaks of Oonimak can be seen occasionally from St.
Paul. I have no hesitation in saying that they were never observed
by any mortal eye from the Pribylov group. The wide expanse of
water between these points, and the thick, foggy air of Bering Sea,
especially so at the season mentioned in this story above, will
always make the mountains of Oonimak invisible to the eye from Saint
Paul Island. A _mirage_ is almost an impossibility. It may have
been much more probable if the date was a winter one.—Veniaminov:
Zapieskie ob Oonalashkenskaho Otdayla, etc., 1842.

[88] A large amount of information in regard to the climate of these
islands has been collected and recorded by the signal service, United
States Army, and similar observations are still continued by the
agents of the Alaska Commercial Company.

[89] The rise and fall of tide at the Seal Islands I carefully
watched one whole season at St. Paul. The irregularity, however,
of ebb and flow is the most prominent feature of the matter. The
highest rise in the spring-tides was a trifle over four feet, while
that of the neap-tides not much over two. Owing to the nature of the
case, it is impossible to prepare a tidal calendar for Alaska, above
the Aleutian Islands, which will even faintly foreshadow a correct
registration in advance.

[90] The mosses at Kamminista, St. Paul, are the finest examples of
their kind on the islands; they are very perfect, and many species
are beautiful.

[91] That spruce-trees can be made to live transplanted from
indigenous localities to the barren slopes of the Aleutian Islands,
has been demonstrated; but in living these trees do nothing else,
and scarcely grow to any appreciable degree. A few spruce were
transferred to Oonalashka when Veniaminov was at work there in
1830-35. They are still standing and keep green, but the change
which such a long lapse of time should produce by growth has been
as difficult to determine as it is to find evidence of increased
altitude to the mountains around them since these Sitkan trees were
planted with pious hope at their feet fifty years ago. Though I can
readily understand why the salmon-berries of Oonalashka should not
do well on the Seal Islands (though I think they would at the Garden
Cove of St. George), yet I believe that the huckleberries of that
section would thrive at many places if carefully transplanted to
these localities: the southern slopes of Cemetery Ridge at Zapadnie;
the southern slopes of Telegraph Hill, and eastern fall of Tolstoi
peninsula down to the shore of the lagoon. They might also do well
set out at picked places around the Big Lake and on Northeast Point,
around the little lake thereon. If these bushes really throve here,
they would be the means of adding greatly to the comfort of the
inhabitants; for the Oonalashka huckleberry is an exceeding pleasant,
juicy fruit, large and well adapted for canning and preserving.
Having less sunshine here than at Illoolook, it may not ripen up as
well flavored, but will, I think, succeed. The roots of the bushes
when brought up from Oonalashka in April or early May should be kept
moist by wet-moss wrappings from the moment they are first taken up
until they are reset, with the tops well pruned back, on the Pribylov
Islands. The experiment is surely worth all the trouble of making,
and I hope it will be done.

[92] Blue foxes were also, and are, natives of the Commander Islands.
Steller describes their fearlessness when the shipwrecked crew of the
_St. Peter_ landed there, November 6, 1741.

In regard to these foxes the Pribylov natives declare that when the
islands were first occupied by their ancestors, 1786-87, the fur
was invariably _blue_; that the present smoky blue, or ashy indigo
color, is due to the coming of white foxes across on the ice from the
mainland to the eastward. The white-furred _vulpes_ is quite numerous
on the islands to-day. I should judge that perhaps one-fifth of the
whole number were of this color; they do not live apart from the blue
ones, but evidently breed “in and in.” I notice that Veniaminov,
also, makes substantially the same statement; only differing by
charging this deterioration of the blue foxes’ fur to a deportation
from outside of red foxes, on ice-floes, and adds that the natives
always hunted down these “krassnie peeschee” as soon as their
presence was known; hence my inability, perhaps, to see any sign of
their posterity in 1872-76.

The presence of these animals on the Pribylov Islands is a real
source of happiness to the natives, especially so to the younger
ones. The little pup-foxes make pets and playfellows for the
children, while hunting the adults during the winter gives wholesome
employment to the mind and body of the native who does so. They are
trapped in common dead-falls, steel spring-clips, or beaver traps,
and shot. A very large portion of the gossip on the islands is in
relation to this business.

[93] The temerity of the fox is wonderful to contemplate, as it goes
on a full run or stealthy tread up and down and along the faces of
almost inaccessible bluffs, in search of old and young birds and
their nests and eggs, for which the “peeschee” have a keen relish.
The fox always brings an egg up in its mouth, and, carrying it back
a few feet from the brink of the precipice, leisurely and with gusto
breaks the larger end and sucks the contents from the shell. One
of the curious sights of my notice, in this connection, was the
sly, artful, and insidious advances of Reynard at Tolstoi Mees, St.
George, where, conspicuous and elegant in its fluffy white dress, it
cunningly stretched on its back as though dead, making no sign of
life whatever, save to gently hoist its thick brush now and then;
whereupon many dull, curious sea-birds, _Graculus bicristatus_, in
their intense desire to know all about it, flew in narrowing circles
overhead, lower and lower, closer and closer, until one of them came
within the sure reach of a sudden spring and a pair of quick snapping
jaws, while the gulls and others, rising safe and high above,
screamed out in seeming contempt for the struggles of the unhappy
“shag,” and rendered hideous approbation.

[94] Using the egg of our domestic fowl, the hen, as a standard, the
following note made in regard to the size and quality of the eggs
of the sea-birds of these waters may not be uninteresting to many.
When daily served on St. George, during June and July, with eggs of
indigenous sea-fowl, I recorded my gastronomic comparisons which
occurred then as I ate them. Here follows a recapitulation:

Fresh-laid eggs of “lupus,” or _F. glacialis_: Best eggs known to the
islands; can be soft-boiled or fried, etc., and are as good as our
own hens’ eggs; the yolk is light and clear; the size thereof is in
shape and bulk like a duck’s egg; it has a white shell. Season: June
1st to 15th, inclusive; scarce on St. Paul, and not abundant on St.
George.

Fresh-laid eggs of “arrie,” or _L. arra_: Very good; can be
soft-boiled or fried; are best scrambled; yolks are dark; no strange
taste whatever to them; pyriform in shape; large as a goose-egg;
shell gayly-colored; they are exceedingly abundant on Walrus Island
and St. George; tons of them. Season: June 25th to July 10th,
inclusive.

Fresh-laid eggs of gulls, _Laridæ_: Perceptibly strong; cannot be
relished unless in omelettes; yolks very dark; size and shape of
our hen’s egg; shell dark, clay-colored ground, mottled. Season:
June 5th to July 20th, inclusive; they are in moderate supply only.
The other eggs in the list, such as those of the “choochkie,” the
“shag,” and the several varieties of water-fowl which breed here,
are never secured in sufficient quantity to be of any consideration
as articles of diet. It is, perhaps, better that a scarcity of their
kind continue, judging from the strong smack of the choochkie’s, the
repulsive taint of the shag’s, and the “twang” of the sea-parrot’s,
all of which I tasted as a matter of investigation.

[95] The St. George natives have caught codfish just off the Tolstoi
Head early in June; but it is a rare occurrence. By going out two
or three miles from the village at either island during July and
August the native fisherman usually captures large halibut—not in
abundance, however. The St. Paul people, as well as their relatives
on St. George, fish in small “two-hole” bidarkies. They go out
together in squads of four to six. One man alone in the kyack is not
able to secure a “bolshoi poltoos.” The method, when the halibut is
hooked, is to call for your nearest neighbor in his bidarka, who
paddles swiftly up. You extend your paddle to him, retaining your own
hold, and he grasps it, while you seize his in turn, thus making it
impossible to capsize, while the large and powerfully struggling fish
is brought to the surface between the canoes and knocked on the head.
It is then towed ashore and carried in triumph to its lucky captor’s
house.

[96] _Gasterosteus cataphractus_; and _pungitius_; _beautiful
sticklebacks_.

[97] United States Revenue-marine cutter _Reliance_, June to October,
1874.

[98] To visit Walrus Island in a boat, pleasantly and successfully,
it is best to submit to the advice and direction of the natives. They
leave the village in the evening, and, taking advantage of the tide,
proceed along the coast as far as the bluffs of Polavina, where they
rest on their oars, doze, and smoke until the dawning of daylight, or
later, perhaps, until the fog lifts enough for them to get a glimpse
of the islet which they seek. They row over then in about two hours
with their bidarrah. They leave, however, with perfect indifference
as to daylight or fog. Nothing but a southeaster can disturb their
tranquillity when they succeed in landing on Walrus Island. They
would find it as difficult to miss striking the extended reach of
St. Paul on their return, as they found it well-nigh impossible to
push off from Polavina and find “Morzovia” in a thick, windy fog and
running sea.

Otter Island, or “Bobrovia,” is easily reached in almost any weather
that is not very stormy, for it looms up high above the water. It
takes the bidarrah about two hours to row over from the village,
while I have gone across once in a whale-boat with less than one
hour’s expenditure of time, sail, and oars _en route_.

[99] That profile of the south shore, between the village hill and
Southwest Point, taken from the steamer’s anchorage off the village
cove, shows its characteristic and remarkable alternation of rookery
slope and low sea-level flats. This point of viewing is slightly more
than half a mile true west of the village hill, to a sight which
brings Bogaslov summits and Tolstoi Head nearly in line. At Zapadnie
is the place where the Russian discoverers first landed in 1787,
July 10th. With the exception of that bluffy west-end Einahnuhto
cliffs, the whole coast of St. Paul is accessible, and affords an
easy landing, except at the short reach of “Seethah” and the rookery
points, as indicated. The great sand beach of this island extends
from Lukannon to Polavina, thence to Webster’s house, Novastoshnah;
from there over, and sweeping back and along the north shore to
Nahsayvernia headland, then between Zapadnie and Tolstoi, together
with the beautiful though short sand of Zoltoi. This extensive and
slightly broken sandy coast is not described as peculiar to any other
island in Alaska, or of Siberian waters.

There are no running streams at any season of the year on St. Paul;
but an abundance of fresh water is plainly afforded by the numerous
lakes, all of which are “svayjoi,” save the lagoon estuary. The four
big reefs which I have located are each awash in every storm that
blows from seaward over them; they are all rough, rocky ledges. That
little one indicated in English Bay caused the wrecking of a large
British vessel in 1847, which was coming in to anchor just without
Zapadnie; a number of the crew were “masslucken,” so my native
informant averred. Most of the small amount of drift-wood that is
found on this island is procured at Northeast Point and Polavina; the
north shore from Maroonitch to Tsammanah has also been favored with
sea-waif logs in exceptional seasons, to the exclusion of all other
sections of the coast. The natives say that the St. George people
get much more drift-wood every year, as a rule, than they do on St.
Paul. From what I could see during my four seasons of inspection,
they never have got much, under the best of circumstances, on either
island. They pay little attention to it now, and gather what they do
during the winter season, going to Polavina and the north shore with
sleds, on which they hoist sails after loading there, and scud home
before strong northerly blasts.

Captain Erskine informs me that the water is free and bold all around
the north shore, from Cross Hill to Southwest Point; no reefs or
shoals up to within half a mile of land anywhere. English Bay is very
shallow, and no sea-going vessel should attempt to enter it that
draws over six feet.

[100] The profile of the coast of St. George’s Island, which I
give on the map, presents clearly an idea of its characteristic,
bold, abrupt elevation from the sea. From the Garden Cove around to
Zapadnie beach there is no natural opportunity for a man to land;
then, again, from Zapadnie beach round to Starry Arteel there is not
a sign of a chance for an agile man to come ashore and reach the
plateau above. From Starry Arteel to the Great Eastern rookery there
is an alternation, between the several breeding-grounds, of three low
and gradual slopes of the land to sea-level; these, with the landing
at Garden Cove and at Zapadnie, are the only spots of the St. George
coast where we can come ashore. An active person can scramble up at
several steep places between the Sea Lion rookery and Tolstoi Mees,
but the rest of that extended bluffy sea-wall, which I have just
defined, is wholly inaccessible from the water. A narrow strip of
rough, rocky shingle, washed over by every storm-beaten sea, is all
that lies beneath the mural precipices.

In the spring, when snow melts on the high plateau, a beautiful
cascade is seen at Waterfall Head; its feathery, filmy, silver
ribbon of plunging water is thrown out into exquisite relief by
the rich background of that brownish basalt and tufa over which it
drops. Another pretty little waterfall is to be seen just west of
the village, at this season only, where it leaps from a low range of
bluffs to the sea. The first-named cascade is more than four hundred
feet in sheer unbroken precipitation.

One or two small, naked, pinnacle rocks, standing close in, and
almost joined to the beach at the Sea Lion rookery, constitute the
only outlying islets or rocks; a stony kelp-bed at Zapadnie, and one
off the Little Eastern rookery, both of limited reach seaward, are
the only hindrances to a ship’s sailing boldly round the island, even
to scraping the bluffs, at places, safely with her yard-arms. I have
located the Zapadnie shoal by observation from the bluffs above;
while Captain Baker, of the _Reliance_, sounded out the other.

[101] Surprise has often been genuine among those who inquire, over
the fact that there is no law officer here at either village, and
wonder is expressed why such provision is not made by the Government.
But when the following facts relative to this subject are understood,
it is at once clear that a justice of the peace and his constabulary
would be entirely useless if established on the seal-islands. As
these natives live here, they live as a single family in each
settlement, having one common purpose in life and only one; what
one native does, eats, wears, or says, is known at once to all the
others, just as whatsoever any member of our household may do will
soon be known to us all who belong to its organization; hence if they
steal or quarrel among themselves, they keep the matter wholly to
themselves, and settle it to their own satisfaction. Were there rival
villages on the islands and diverse people and employment, then the
case would be reversed, and the need of legal machinery apparent.

[102] The population of St. Paul in 1880 was 298. Of these, 14 were
whites (13 males and 1 female), 128 male Aleutians, and 156 females.
On St. George we have 92 souls: 4 white males, 35 male Aleutians, and
53 females, a total population on these islands of 390. This is an
increase of between thirty and forty people since 1873. Prior to 1873
they had neither much increased nor diminished for fifty years, but
would have fallen off rapidly (since the births were never equal to
the deaths) had not recruits been regularly drawn from the mainland
and other islands every season when the ships came up.

[103] This evil of habitual and gross intoxication under Russian
rule was not characteristic of these islands alone. It was universal
throughout Alaska. Sir George Simpson, speaking of the subject when
in Sitka, April, 1842, says: “Some reformation certainly was wanted
in this respect, for of all the drunken as well as of all the dirty
places that I had visited, New Archangel (Sitka) was the worst. On
the holidays in particular, of which, Sundays included, there are one
hundred and sixty-five in the year, men, women, and even children
were to be seen staggering about in all directions.”—Simpson: Journey
Around the World, 1841-42, p. 88.

[104] I was told by a very bright Russian, who spent a season here,
1871-72, as special agent of the Treasury Department, that the
Aleutian ancestors of these people when they were converted and
baptized into the Greek Catholic Church received their names, brand
new, from the fertile brains of priests, who, after exhausting the
common run of Muscovitic titles, such as our Smiths and Joneses, were
compelled to fall back upon some personal characteristics of the new
claimant for civilized nomenclature. Thus we have to-day on the Seal
Islands a “Stepan Bayloglazov,” or, “Son of a White Eye,” “Oseep
Baizyahzeekov,” or “Son of Man without a Tongue.” A number of the old
Russian governors and admirals of the imperial navy are represented
here by their family names, though I do not think, from my full
acquaintance with the namesakes, that the distinguished owners in the
first place had anything to do with their physical embodiment on the
Pribylov Islands.

[105] Living as the Seal-islanders do, and doing what they do, the
seal’s life is naturally their great study and objective point. It
nourishes and sustains them. Without it they say they could not live,
and they tell the truth. Hence, their attention to the few simple
requirements of the law, so wise in its provisions, is not forced
or constrained, but is continuous. Self-interest in this respect
appeals to them keenly and eloquently. They know everything that
is done and everything that is said by anybody and by everybody in
their little community. Every seal-drive that is made, and every
skin that is taken, is recorded and accounted for by them to their
chiefs and their church, when they make up their tithing-roll at
the close of each day’s labor. Nothing can come to the islands,
by day or by night, without being seen by them and spoken of. I
regard the presence of these people on the islands at the transfer,
and their subsequent retention and entailment in connection with
the seal-business, as an exceedingly good piece of fortune, alike
advantageous to the Government, to the company, and to themselves.

[106]

  37 first-class shares, at            $451 22 each.
  23 second-class shares, at            406 08 each.
   4 third-class shares, at             360 97 each.
  10 fourth-class shares, at            315 85 each.

These shares do not represent more than fifty-six able-bodied men.

In August, 1873, while on St. George Island, I was present at a
similar division, under similar circumstances, which caused them to
divide among themselves the proceeds of their work in taking and
skinning twenty-five thousand seals, at forty cents a skin, $10,000.
They made the following subdivision:

                                   Per share.
  17 shares each, 961 skins         $384 40
   2 shares each, 935 skins          374 00
   3 shares each, 821 skins          328 40
   1 share each,  820 skins          328 00
   3 shares each, 770 skins          308 00
   3 shares each, 400 skins          160 00

These twenty-nine shares referred to, as stated above, represent only
twenty-five able-bodied men; two of them were women. This method of
division as above given is the result of their own choice. It is an
impossible thing for the company to decide their relative merits
as workmen on the ground, so they have wisely turned its entire
discussion over to them. Whatever they do they must agree to—whatever
the company might do they possibly and probably would never clearly
understand, and hence dissatisfaction and suspicion would inevitably
arise. As it is, the whole subject is most satisfactorily settled.




CHAPTER X.

AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.

  Difference between a Hair-seal and a Fur-seal.—The Fur-seal
  the most Intelligent of all Amphibians.—Its singularly Free
  Progression on Land.—Its Power in the Water.—The Old Males
  the First Arrivals in the Spring.—Their Desperate Battles one
  with Another for Position on the Breeding Grounds.—Subsequent
  Arrival of the Females.—Followed by the “Bachelors.”—Wonderful
  Strength and Desperate Courage of the Old Males.—Indifference
  of the Females.—Noise of the Rookeries Sounds like the Roar of
  Niagara.—Old Males fast from May to August, inclusive; neither Eat
  nor Drink, nor Leave their Stations in all that Time.—Graceful
  Females.—Frolicsome “Pups.”—They have to Learn to Swim!—How they
  Learn.—Astonishing Vitality of the Fur-seal.—“Podding” of the
  Pups.—Beautiful Eyes of the Fur-seal.—How the “Holluschickie,” or
  Bachelor Seals, Pass the Time.—They are the only ones Killed for
  Fur.—They Herd alone by Themselves in spite of their Inclination;
  Obliged to. —They are the Champion Swimmers of the Sea.—A Review
  of the Vast Breeding Rookeries.—Natives Gathering a Drove.—Driving
  the Seals to the Slaughtering Fields.—No Chasing—no Hunting of
  Seals.—The Killing Gang at Work: Skinning, Salting, and Shipping
  the Pelts.—All Sent Direct to London.—Reasons Why.—How the Skins
  are Prepared for Sacks, Muffs, etc.

    “The web-footed seals forsake the stormy swell,
    And, sleeping in herds, exhale nauseous smell.”—HOMER.


A vivid realism of the fact that often truth is far stranger
than fiction is strikingly illustrated in the life-history of
the fur-seal: as it is the one overshadowing and superlatively
interesting subject of this discussion, I shall present all its
multitudinous details, even at the risk of being thought tedious.
That aggregate of animal life shadowed every summer out upon the
breeding grounds of the Seal Islands is so vast, so anomalous, so
interesting, and so valuable, that it deserves the fullest mention;
and even when I shall have done, it will be but feebly expressed.

[Illustration: THE HARBOR SEAL

  Adult Male and Female      Young, 2 months

[_Phoca vitulina_: a Life Study made at Zapadnie, St. Paul’s Island.
July 10, 1872]]

Great as it is, yet a short schedule[107] embraces the titles of
all the pinnipeds found in, on, and around the island-group. Of
this list the hair-seal[108] is the animal which has done so much
to found that erroneous popular and scientific opinion as to what a
fur-seal appears like. _Phoca vitulina_ has, in this manner, given
to the people of the world a false idea of its relatives. It is so
commonly distributed all over the littoral salt waters of the earth,
seen in the harbors of nearly every marine port, or basking along the
loneliest and least inhabited of desolate coasts far to the north,
that everybody has noticed it, if not in life, then in its stuffed
skins at the museums, sometimes very grotesquely mounted. This copy,
set everywhere before the eye of the naturalist, has rendered it so
difficult for him to correctly discriminate between the _Phocidæ_
and the _Otariidæ_, that the synonymy of the _Pinnipedia_ has been
expanded until it is replete with meaningless description and surmise.

Although the hair-seal belongs to the great group of pinnipeds, yet
it does not have even a generic affinity with those seals with which
it has been so persistently grouped, namely, the fur-seal and the
sea-lion. It no more resembles them, than does the raccoon a black or
grizzly bear.

I shall not enter into a detailed description of this seal; it is
wholly superfluous, for excellent, and, I believe, trustworthy
accounts have been repeatedly published by writers who have treated
of the subject as it was spread before their eyes on the coasts
of Labrador, Newfoundland, and Greenland; to say nothing of the
researches and notes made by European scientists. It differs
completely in shape and habit from its congeners on these islands.
Here, where I have studied its biology, it seldom comes up from the
water more than a few rods at the farthest; generally hauling and
resting at the margin of the surf-wash. It takes up no position on
land to hold and protect a family or harem, preferring the detached
water-worn rocks, especially those on the lonely north shore of
St. Paul, although I have seen it resting at “Gorbatch,” near the
sea-margin of the great seal-rookery of that name, on the Reef Point
of St. Paul; its cylindrical, supine, gray and white body marked in
strong contrast with the erect, black, and ochre-colored forms of the
_Callorhinus_, which swarmed round about it. On such small spots of
rock, wet and isolated from the mainland, and in secluded places of
the north shore, the “nearhpah” brings forth its young, a single pup,
perfectly white, covered with long woolly hair, and weighing from
three to seven pounds. This pup grows rapidly, and after the lapse of
four or five months it tips the scales at fifty pounds; by that time
it has shed its infant coat and donned the adult soft steel-gray hair
over the head, limbs, and abdomen, with its back most richly mottled
and barred lengthwise, by dark brown and brown-black streaks and
blotches, suffused at their edges into the light steel-gray ground of
the body. When they appear in the spring following, this bright gray
tone to their color has ripened into a dingy ochre, and the mottling
spread well over the head and down on the upper side or back of the
flippers, but fades out as it progresses. It has no appreciable
fur or under-wool. There is no noteworthy difference as to color
or size between the sexes. So far as I have observed, they are not
polygamous. They are exceedingly timid and wary at all times, and in
this manner and method they are diametrically opposed, not by shape
alone, but by habit and disposition, to the fashion of the fur-seal
in especial, and the sea-lion. Their skin is of little value,
comparatively, but their chief merit, according to the natives, is
the relative greater juiciness and sweetness of their flesh, over
even the best steaks of sea-lion or fur-seal pup meat.

One common point of agreement among all authors was, by my
observations of fact, so strikingly refuted, that I will here correct
a prevalent error made by naturalists who, comparing the hair-seal
with the fur-seal, state that in consequence of the peculiar
structure of their limbs, their progression on land is “mainly
accomplished by a wriggling, serpentine motion of the body, slightly
assisted by the extremities.” This is not so in any respect; for,
whenever I have purposely surprised these animals, a few rods from
the beach-margin, they would awake and excitedly scramble, or rather
spasmodically exert themselves, to reach the water instantly, by
striking out quickly with both fore-feet simultaneously, lifting in
this way alone, and dragging the whole body forward, without any
“wriggling motion” whatever to their back or posterior parts, moving
from six inches to a foot in advance every time their fore-feet were
projected forward, and the body drawn along according to the violence
of the effort and the character of the ground; the body of the seal
then falls flat upon its stomach, and the fore-feet or flippers
are free again for another similar motion. This action of _Phoca_
is effected so continuously and so rapidly, that in attempting to
head off a young “nearhpah” from the water, at English Bay, I was
obliged to leave a brisk walk and take to a dog trot to do it. The
hind-feet are not used when exerted in this rapid movement at all;
they are dragged along in the wake of the body, perfectly limp and
motionless. But they do use those posterior parts, however, when
leisurely climbing up and over rocks undisturbed, or playing one with
another; still it is always a weak, trembling terrestrial effort,
and particularly impotent and clumsy. In their swift swimming the
hind-feet of _Phocidæ_ evidently do all the work; the reverse is a
remarkable characteristic of the _Otariidæ_.

These remarks of mine, it should be borne in mind, apply directly to
the _Phoca vitulina_, and I presume indirectly with equal force to
all the rest of its more important generic kindred, be they as large
as the big maklok, _Erignathus barbata_, or less.

This hair-seal is found around these islands at all seasons of
the year, but in very small numbers. I have never seen more than
twenty-five or thirty at any one time, and I am told that its
occidental distribution, although everywhere found, above and below,
from the arctic to the tropics, and especially general over the North
Pacific coast, nowhere exhibits any great number at any one place;
but we know that it and its immediate kindred form a vast majority of
the multitudinous seal-life peculiar to our North Atlantic shores,
ice-floes, and contiguous waters. The scarcity of this species, and
of all its generic allies, in the waters of the Pacific, is notable
as compared with those of the circumpolar Atlantic, where these
hair-seals are the seals of commerce: they are found in such immense
numbers between Greenland and Labrador, and thence to the eastward at
certain seasons of every year, that employment is given to a fleet
of about sixty sailing and steam vessels, which annually goes forth
from St. John, Newfoundland, and elsewhere, fitted for seal-fishing:
taking in all this cruising over three hundred thousand of these
animals each season. The principal object of value, however, is
the oil rendered from them: the skins have a very small commercial
importance.

The fur-seal, _Callorhinus ursinus_, which repairs to these islands
to breed and to shed its hair and fur, in numbers that seem almost
fabulous, is the highest organized of all the _Pinnipedia_, and,
indeed, for that matter, when land and water are weighed in the
account together, there is no other animal known to man which may be
truly classed as its superior, from a purely physical point of view.
Certainly there are few, if any, creatures in the animal kingdom that
can be said to exhibit a higher order of instinct, approaching even
our intelligence.

[Illustration: GROUP OF FUR SEALS

  Young Females
  2 years

  Old Male
  18 years

  Young Male
  6 years

  Mother Seal
  and Pup nursing

  Old Male “Roaring”

  Young Males
  2 years

I wish to draw attention to a specimen of the finest of this race—a
male in the flush and prime of his first maturity, six or seven
years old, and full grown. When it comes up from the sea early in
the spring, out to its station for the breeding season, we have an
animal before us that will measure six and a half to seven and a
quarter feet in length from tip of nose to the end of its abbreviated
abortive tail. It will weigh at least four hundred pounds, and I have
seen older specimens much more corpulent, which, in my best judgment,
could not be less than six hundred pounds in weight.[109] The
head of this animal now before us appears to be disproportionately
small in comparison with an immensely thick neck and shoulders; but,
as we come to examine it, we will find it is mostly all occupied by
the brain. The light frame-work of its skull supports an expressive
pair of large bluish-hazel eyes, alternately burning with revengeful,
passionate light, then suddenly changing to the tones of tenderness
and good-nature. It has a muzzle and jaws of about the same size
and form observed in any full-blooded Newfoundland dog, with this
difference, that the lips are not flabby and overhanging; they are as
firmly lined and pressed against one another as our own. The upper
lips support a yellowish-white and gray mustache, composed of long,
stiff bristles, which, when not torn out and broken off in combat,
sweeps down and over the shoulders as a luxuriant plume. Look at it
as it comes leisurely swimming on toward the land; see how high above
the water it carries its head, and how deliberately it surveys the
beach, after having stepped upon it (for it may be truly said to step
with its fore-flippers, as they regularly alternate when it moves
up), carrying the head well above them, erect and graceful, at least
three feet from the ground. The fore-feet, or flippers, are a pair
of dark bluish-black hands, about eight or ten inches broad at their
junction with the body, and the metacarpal joint, running out to an
ovate point at their extremity, some fifteen to eighteen inches from
this union—all the rest of the forearm, the ulna, radius, and humerus
being concealed under the skin and thick blubber-folds of the main
body and neck, hidden entirely at this season, when it is so fat.
But six weeks to three months after this time of landing, when that
superfluous fat and flesh is consumed by self-absorption, then those
bones will show plainly under its shrunken skin. On the upper side of
these flippers the hair of the body straggles down finer and fainter
as it comes below to a point close by, and slightly beyond that spot
of junction where the phalanges and the metacarpal bones unite,
similar to that point on our own hand where our knuckles are placed;
and here the hair ends, leaving the rest of the skin to the end of
the flipper bare and wrinkled in places at the margin of the inner
side; showing, also, five small pits, containing abortive nails,
which are situated immediately over the union of the phalanges with
their cartilaginous continuations to the end of the flipper.

On the under side of the flipper the skin is entirely bare from its
outer extremity up to the body-connection. It is sensibly tougher
and thicker than elsewhere on the body; it is deeply and regularly
wrinkled with seams and furrows, which cross one another so as to
leave a kind of sharp diamond-cut pattern. When they are placed by
the animal upon the smoothest rocks, shining and slippery from algoid
growths and the sea-polish of restless waters, they seldom fail to
adhere.

When we observe this seal moving out on the land, we notice that,
though it handles its fore-feet in a most creditable manner, it
brings up its rear in quite a different style: for, after every
second step ahead with the anterior limbs it will arch its spine,
and in arching, it drags and lifts up, and together forward, the
hind-feet, to a fit position under its body, giving it in this manner
fresh leverage for another movement forward by the fore-feet, in
which the spine is again straightened out, and then a fresh hitch
is taken up on the posteriors once more, and so on as the seal
progresses. This is the leisurely and natural movement on land, when
not disturbed, the body all the time being carried clear of and never
touching the ground; but if the creature is frightened, this method
of progression is radically changed. It launches into a lope and
actually gallops so fast that the best powers of a man in running are
taxed to head it off. Still, it must be remembered that it cannot run
far before it sinks, trembling, gasping, breathless, to the earth.
Thirty or forty yards of such speed marks the utmost limit of its
endurance.

The radical difference in the form and action of the hind-feet cannot
fail to strike the eye at once. They are one-seventh longer than the
fore-hands and very much lighter and more slender; they resemble,
in broad terms, a pair of black-kid gloves, flattened out and
shrivelled, as they lie in their box.

There is no suggestion of fingers on the fore-hands; but the
hind-feet seem to be toes run into ribbons, for they literally flap
about involuntarily from that point where the cartilaginous processes
unite with the phalangeal bones. The hind-feet are also merged in the
body at their junction with it, like those anterior. Nothing can be
seen of the leg above the tarsal joint.

The shape of the hind flipper is strikingly like that of a human
foot, provided the latter were drawn out to a length of twenty or
twenty-two inches, the instep flattened down and the toes run out
into thin, membranous, oval-tipped points, only skin-thick, leaving
three strong cylindrical, grayish, horn-colored nails, half an inch
long each, back six inches from these skinny toe-ends, without any
sign of nails to mention on the outer big and little toes.

On the upper side of this hind-foot the body-hair comes down to
that point where the metatarsus and phalangeal bones join and fade
out. From that junction the phalanges, about six inches down to the
nails above mentioned, are entirely bare and stand ribbed up in bold
relief on the membrane which unites them, as the web to a duck’s
foot. The nails just referred to mark the ends of the phalangeal
bones and their union in turn with the cartilaginous processes, which
run rapidly tapering and flattening out to the ends of the thin
toe-points. Now, as we are looking at this fur-seal’s motion and
progression, that which seems most odd is the gingerly manner (if I
may be allowed to use the expression) in which it carries these hind
flippers. They are held out at right angles from the body directly
opposite the pelvis, the toe-ends or flaps slightly waving, curled,
and drooping over, supported daintily, as it were, above the earth,
the animal only suffering its weight behind to fall upon its heels,
which are themselves opposed to each other, scarcely five inches
apart.

We shall, as we see this seal again later in the season, have to
notice a different mode of progression and bearing, both when it is
lording over its harem or when it grows shy and restless at the end
of the breeding season, then faint, emaciated, and dejected. But
we will now proceed to observe him in the order of his arrival and
that of his family. His behavior during the long period of fasting
and unceasing activity and vigilance, and other cares which devolve
upon him as the most eminent of all polygamists in the brute world,
I shall carefully relate, and to fully comprehend the method of this
exceedingly interesting animal it will be frequently necessary for
the reader to refer to my sketch-maps of its breeding grounds or
rookeries, and the islands.

The adult males are the first examples of the _Callorhinus_ to arrive
in the spring on the seal-ground, which has been deserted by all of
them since the close of the preceding year.[110]

Between May 1st and 5th, usually, a few males will be found scattered
over the rookeries pretty close to the water. They are at this time
quite shy and sensitive, seeming not yet satisfied with the land,
and a great many spend day after day idly swimming out among the
breakers a little distance from the shore before they come to it,
perhaps somewhat reluctant at first to enter upon the assiduous
duties and the grave responsibilities before them of fighting for and
maintaining their positions in the rookeries.

The first arrivals are not always the oldest bulls, but may be
said to be the finest and most ambitious of their class. They are
full grown and able to hold their places on the rookeries or the
breeding flats, which they immediately take up after coming ashore.
Their method of landing is to come collectively to those breeding
grounds where they passed the prior season; but I am not able to say
authoritatively, nor do I believe it, strongly as it has been urged
by many careful men who were with me on the islands, that these
animals come back to and take up the same position on their breeding
grounds that they individually occupied when there last year. From
my knowledge of their action and habit, and from what I have learned
of the natives, I should say that very few, if any, of them make
such a selection and keep these places year after year. Even did the
seal itself intend to come directly from the sea to that spot on the
rookery which it left last summer, what could it do if it came to
that rookery margin a little later and found that another “see-catch”
had occupied its ground? The bull could do nothing. It would either
have to die in its tracks, if it persisted in attaining this supposed
objective point, or do what undoubtedly it does do—seek the next best
locality which it can secure adjacent.

[Illustration: “OLD JOHN”

A Life Study of an aged Fur Seal-Bull or “See-catch.”—Gorbatch
Rookery, July 2, 1872]

One aged “see-catch” was pointed out to me at the “Gorbatch” section
of the Reef rookery, as an animal that was long known to the natives
as a regular visitor, close by or on the same rock, every season
during the past three years. They called him “Old John,” and they
said they knew him because he had one of his posterior digits
missing, bitten off, perhaps, in a combat. I saw him in 1872, and
made careful drawings of him in order that I might recognize his
individuality, should he appear again in the following year, and when
that time rolled by, I found him not; he failed to reappear, and the
natives acquiesced in his absence. Of course it was impossible to
say that he was dead when there were ten thousand rousing, fighting
bulls to the right, left, and below us, under our eyes, for we could
not approach for inspection. Still, if these animals came each to a
certain place in any general fashion, or as a rule, I think there
would be no difficulty in recognizing the fact; the natives certainly
would do so; as it is, they do not I think it very likely, however,
that the older bulls come back to the same common rookery ground
where they spent the previous season; but they are obliged to take
up their position on it just as the circumstances attending their
arrival will permit, such as finding other seals which have arrived
before them, or of being whipped out by stronger rivals from their
old stands.

It is entertaining to note, in this connection, that the Russians
themselves, with the object of testing that mooted query, during the
later years of their possession of the islands, drove up a number of
young males from Lukannon, cut off their ears, and turned them out
to sea again. The following season, when the droves came in from the
“hauling-grounds” to the slaughtering-fields, quite a number of those
cropped seals were in the drives, but instead of being found all at
one place—the place from whence they were driven the year before—they
were scattered examples of croppies from every point on the island.
The same experiment was again made by our people in 1870 (the natives
having told them of such prior undertaking), and they went also
to Lukannon, drove up one hundred young males, cut off their left
ears, and set them free in turn. Of this number, during the summer
of 1872, when I was there, the natives found in their driving of
seventy-five thousand seals from the different hauling-grounds of St.
Paul up to the village killing-grounds, two on Novastoshnah rookery,
ten miles north of Lukannon, and two or three from English Bay and
Tolstoi rookeries, six miles west by water; one or two were taken on
St. George Island, thirty-six miles to the southeast, and not one
from Lukannon was found among those that were driven from there;
probably, had all the young males on the two islands this season been
examined, the rest of the croppies that had returned from the perils
of the deep, whence they sojourned during the winter, would have
been distributed quite equally about the Pribylov hauling-grounds.
Although the natives say that they think the cutting off of the
animal’s ear gives the water such access to its head as to cause its
death, yet I noticed that those examples which we had recognized by
this auricular mutilation, were normally fat and well developed.
Their theory does not appeal to my belief, and it certainly requires
confirmation.

These experiments would tend to prove very cogently and conclusively
that when the seals approach the islands in the spring they have
nothing in their minds but a general instinctive appreciation of
the fitness of the land as a whole, and no special fondness or
determination to select any one particular spot, not even the
place of their birth. A study of my map of the distribution of the
seal-life on St. Paul, clearly indicates that the landing of the
seals on the respective rookeries is influenced greatly by the
direction of the wind at the time of their approach to the islands
in the spring and early summer. The prevailing airs, blowing, as
they do at that season, from the north and northwest, carry far out
to sea the odor of the old rookery flats, together with a fresh
scent of the pioneer bulls which have located themselves on these
breeding grounds three or four weeks in advance of their kind. The
seals come up from the great North Pacific, and hence it will be
seen that the rookeries of the south and southeastern shores of St.
Paul Island receive nearly all the seal-life, although there are
miles of perfectly eligible ground at Nahsayvernia or north shore.
To settle this matter beyond all argument, however, I know is an
exceedingly difficult task, since the identification of individuals,
from one season to another, among the hundreds of thousands, and even
millions, that come under your eye on one of these great rookeries,
is well-nigh impossible. From the time of the first arrival in May up
to the beginning of June, or as late as the middle of that month, if
the weather be clear, is an interval in which everything seems quiet.
Very few seals are added to the pioneers that have landed, as we
have described. About June 1st, however, sometimes a little before,
and never much later, the seal-weather—the foggy, humid, oozy damp
of summer—sets in; and with it, as the gray banks roll up and shroud
the islands, old bull-seals swarm from the depths by hundreds and
thousands, and locate themselves in advantageous positions for the
reception of the females, which are generally three weeks or a month
later than this date in arrival.

It appears from my surrey of these breeding grounds that a
well-understood principle exists among the able-bodied males, to-wit:
that each one shall remain undisturbed on his own ground, which is
usually about six to eight feet square: provided, that at the start,
and from that time until the arrival of the females, he is strong
enough to hold this ground against all comers; inasmuch as the
crowding in of fresh arrivals often causes a removal of those which,
though equally able-bodied at first, have exhausted themselves by
fighting earlier and constantly, they are finally driven by these
fresher animals back farther and higher up on the rookery, and
sometimes off altogether.

The labor of locating and maintaining a position on the rookery
is real, terrible and serious business for these bulls which come
in last, and it is so all the time to those males that occupy the
water-line of the breeding grounds. A constantly sustained fight
between the new-comers and the occupants goes on morning, noon, and
night, without cessation, frequently resulting in death to one, or
even both, of the combatants. The “seecatchie” under six years of
age, although hovering about the sea-margins of the breeding grounds,
do not engage in much fighting there; it is the six and seven
year old males, ambitious and flushed with a full sense of their
reproductive ability, that swarm out and do battle with the older
males of these places. A young male of this latter class is, however,
no match for any fifteen or twenty year old bull, provided that an
old “seecatchie” retains his teeth; for, with these weapons, his
relatively harder thews and sinews give him the advantage in almost
every instance among the hundreds of combats that I have witnessed.
These trials of strength between the old and the young are incessant
until the rookeries are mapped out; since, by common consent, the
males of all classes recognize the coming of the females. After their
arrival and settlement over the whole extent of the breeding grounds,
about July 15th at the latest, very little fighting takes place.

Many of those bulls exhibit wonderful strength and desperate courage.
I marked one veteran at Gorbatch, who was the first to take up his
position early in May, and that position, as usual, directly on
the water-line. This male seal had fought at least forty or fifty
desperate battles, and beaten off his assailants every time—perhaps
nearly as many different seals each of which had coveted his
position—when the fighting season was over (after the cows are
mostly all hauled up), I saw him still there, covered with scars and
frightfully gashed—raw, festering, and bloody, one eye gouged out—but
lording it bravely over his harem of fifteen or twenty females, which
were all huddled together around him on the same spot of his first
location.

This fighting between the old and adult males (for none others fight)
is mostly, or rather entirely, done with the mouth. The opponents
seize one another with their teeth, and thus clinching their jaws,
nothing but the sheer strength of the one and the other tugging to
escape can shake them loose; then, that effort invariably leaves an
ugly wound, for the sharp canines tear out deep gutters in the skin
and furrows in the blubber, or shred the flippers into ribbon-strips.

They usually approach each other with comically averted heads, just
as though they were ashamed of the rumpus which they are determined
to precipitate. When they get near enough to reach one another, they
enter upon the repetition of many feints or passes before either one
or the other takes the initiative by gripping. The heads are darted
out and back as quick as a flash; their hoarse roaring and shrill,
piping whistle never ceases, while their fat bodies writhe and swell
with exertion and rage; furious lights gleam in their eyes, their
hair flies in the air, and their blood streams down,—all combined
makes a picture so fierce and so strange that, from its unexpected
position and its novelty, it is perhaps one of the most extraordinary
brutal contests which a man can witness.

In these battles of the seals the parties are always distinct;
the one is offensive, the other, defensive. If the latter proves
the weaker, he withdraws from the position occupied, and is never
followed by his conqueror, who complacently throws up one of his hind
flippers, fans himself, as it were, to cool his fevered wrath and
blood from the heat of the conflict, sinks into comparative quiet,
only uttering a peculiar chuckle of satisfaction or contempt, with a
sharp eye open for another covetous bull or “see-catch.”[111]

[Illustration: OLD BULLS FIGHTING

Fur Seals in Deadly Combat: a Thousand such Conflicts are in
simultaneous Action during every Minute of the Breeding Season on the
Pribylov Islands]

That period occupied by the males in taking and holding their
positions on a rookery offers a very favorable opportunity to study
them in the thousand and one different attitudes and postures
assumed between the two extremes of desperate conflict and deep
sleep—sleep so profound that one can, if he keeps to the leeward,
approach close enough, stepping softly, to pull the whiskers of any
old male taking a nap on a clear place. But after the first touch to
these mustaches the trifler must jump back with electrical celerity,
if he has any regard for the sharp teeth and tremendous shaking which
will surely overtake him if he does not. The younger seals sleep far
more soundly than the old ones, and it is a favorite pastime for
the natives to surprise them in this manner—favorite, because it is
attended with no personal risk. The little beasts, those amphibious
sleepers, rise suddenly, and fairly shrink to the earth, spitting and
coughing out in their terror and confusion.

The neck, chest, and shoulders of a fur-seal bull comprise more than
two-thirds of his whole weight; and in this long, thick neck and the
powerful muscles of the fore-limbs and shoulders is embodied the
larger portion of his strength. When on land, with the fore-hands he
does all climbing over rocks and grassy hummocks back of the rookery,
or shuffles his halting way over smooth parades—the hind-feet are
gathered up as useless trappings after every second step forward,
which we have described at the outset of this chapter. These anterior
flippers are also the propelling power when in water, and exclusive
machinery with which they drive their rapid passage—the hinder ones
float behind like the steering sweep to a whale-boat, and are used
evidently as rudders, or as the tail of a bird is, while its wings
sustain and force its rapid flight.

The covering to its body is composed of two coats, one being a short,
crisp, glistening over-hair, and the other a close, soft, elastic
pelage or fur, which gives a distinctive value to the pelt. I can
call it readily to the mind of my readers when I say to them that the
down and feathers on the breast of a duck lie relatively as the fur
and hair do upon the skin of the seal.

At this season of first “hauling up”[112] in the spring the
prevailing color of the bulls, after they dry off and have been
exposed to the weather, is a dark, dull brown, with a sprinkling
in it of lighter brown-black, and a number of hoary or grizzled
gray coats peculiar to the very old males. On the shoulders of
all of them—that is, the adults—the over-hair is either a gray or
rufous-ochre or a very emphatic “pepper and salt.” This is called the
“wig.” The body-colors[113] are most intense and pronounced upon the
back of the head, neck, and spine, fading down on the flanks lighter,
to much lighter ground on the abdomen; still never white or even a
clean gray, so beautiful and peculiar to them when young, and to the
females. The skin of the muzzle and flippers is a dark bluish-black,
fading in the older examples to a reddish and purplish tint. The
color of the ears and tail is similar to that of the body, perhaps
a trifle lighter. The ears on a bull fur-seal are from one inch to
an inch and a half in length. The pavilions or auricles are tightly
rolled up on themselves, so that they are similar in shape to and
exactly the size of the little finger on the human hand, cut off at
the second phalangeal joint—a trifle more cone-shaped, however—as
they are greater at the base than they are at the tip. They are
haired and furred as the body is.

I think it probable that this animal is able to and does exert the
power of compressing or dilating this scroll-like pavilion to its
ear, just according as it dives deeper or rises in the water, and
also I am quite sure that the hair-seal has this control over its
_meatus externus_, from what I have seen of it. I have not been
able to verify it in either case by actual observation; yet such
opportunity as I have had gives me undoubted proof of the fact that
the hearing of a fur-seal is wonderfully keen and surpassingly acute.
If you make any noise, no matter how slight, an alarm will be given
instantly by these insignificant-looking auditors, and the animal,
awaking from profound sleep, assumes, with a single motion, an erect
posture, gives a stare of stupid astonishment, at the same time
breaking out into incessant, surly roaring, growling, and “spitting,”
if it be an old male.

This spitting, as I call it, is by no means a fair or full expression
of a most characteristic sound or action, so far as I have observed,
peculiar to fur-seals alone, the bulls in particular. It is the usual
prelude to all their combats, and it is their signal of astonishment.
It follows somewhat in this way: when the two disputants are nearly
within reaching or striking distance, they make a number of feints
or false passes, as fencing-masters do, at one another, with the
mouth wide open, lifting the lips or snarling so as to exhibit
their glistening teeth; with each pass of the head and neck they
expel the air so violently through the larynx as to cause a rapid
_choo-choo-choo_ sound, like steam-puffs as they escape from the
smoke-stack of a locomotive when it starts a heavy train, especially
while the driving-wheels slip on the rail.

All of the bulls have the power and frequent inclination to utter
four distinct calls or notes. This is not the case with the sea-lion,
whose voice is confined to a single bass roar, or that of the walrus,
which is limited to a dull grunt, or that of the hair-seal, which
is almost inaudible. This volubility of the adult male is decidedly
characteristic and prominent. He utters a hoarse, resonant roar,
loud and long; he gives vent to a low, entirely different gurgling
growl; he emits a chuckling, sibilant, piping whistle, of which it
is impossible to convey an adequate idea, for it must be heard to
be understood, and this spitting or _choo_ sound just mentioned.
The cow[114] has but one note—a hollow, prolonged, bla-a-ting call,
addressed only to her pup: on all other occasions she is usually
silent; it is something strangely like the cry of a calf or an
old sheep. She also makes a spitting sound or snort when suddenly
disturbed—a kind of cough, as it were. The pups “blaat” also, with
little or no variation, their sound being somewhat weaker and
hoarser after birth than their mother’s. They, too, comically spit
or cough when aroused suddenly from a nap or driven into a corner,
opening their little mouths (like young birds in a nest) when at bay,
backed up in some crevice or against grassy tussocks.

Indeed, so similar is that call of the female to the bleating of
sheep that a number of the latter, which the Alaska Commercial
Company had brought up from San Francisco to St. George Island during
the summer of 1873, were constantly attracted to the rookeries, and
were running in among the “holluschickie” so much that they neglected
better pasturage on the uplands beyond, and a small boy had to be
regularly employed to herd them where they would feed to advantage.
These transported _Ovidæ_, though they could not possibly find
anything in their eyes suggestive of companionship among the seals,
had their ears so charmed by those sheep-like accents of the female
pinnipeds as to persuade them in spite of their senses of vision and
smell.

The sound which arises from these great breeding grounds of the
fur-seal, where thousands upon tens of thousands of angry, vigilant
bulls are roaring, chuckling, and piping, and multitudes of
seal-mothers are calling in hollow, bleating tones to their young,
that in turn respond incessantly, is simple defiance to verbal
description. It is, at a slight distance, softened into a deep
booming, as of a cataract; and I have heard it, with a light, fair
wind to the leeward, as far as six miles out from land on the sea;
even in the thunder of the surf and the roar of heavy gales, it will
rise up and over to your ear for quite a considerable distance away.
It is a monitor which the sea-captains anxiously strain their ears
for, when they run their dead reckoning up, and are lying to for
the fog to rise, in order that they may get their bearings of the
land. Once heard, they hold on to the sound, and feel their way in
to anchor. The seal-roar at “Novastoshnah” during the summer of 1872
saved the life of a surgeon,[115] and six natives belonging to the
village, who had pushed out on an egging trip from Northeast Point
to Walrus Island. I have sometimes thought, as I have listened all
night long to this volume of extraordinary sound, which never ceases
with the rising or the setting of the sun throughout the entire
period of breeding, that it was fully equal to the churning boom
of the waves of Niagara. Night and day, belonging to that season,
vibrates with this steady and constant din upon the rookeries.

[Illustration: Fur-seals Scratching Themselves.

[_Off the Black Bluffs, St. Paul’s Island._]]

The most casual observer will notice that these seals seem to suffer
great inconvenience and positive misery from a comparatively low
degree of heat I have often been surprised to observe that, when
the temperature was 46° and 48° Fahr. on land during the summer,
they would show everywhere signs of distress, whenever they made
any exertion in moving or fighting, evidenced by panting and the
elevation of their hind flippers, which they used incessantly
as so many fans. With the thermometer again higher, as it is at
rare intervals, standing at 55° and 60°, they are then oppressed
even when at rest; and at such times the eye is struck by the
kaleidoscopic appearance of a rookery—in any of these rookeries
where the seals are spread out in every imaginable position their
lithesome bodies can assume, all industriously fan themselves:
they use sometimes the fore flippers as ventilators, as it were,
by holding them aloft motionless, at the same time fanning briskly
with the hinder ones, according as they sit or lie. This wavy motion
of fanning or flapping gives a hazy indistinctness to the whole
scene, which is difficult to express in language; but one of the
most prominent characteristics of the fur-seal, and perhaps the most
unique feature, is this very fanning manner in which they use their
flippers, when seen on the breeding grounds at this season. They
also, when idle, as it were, off-shore at sea, lie on their sides
in the water with only a partial exposure of the body, the head
submerged, and then hoist up a fore or hind flipper clear out of the
water, at the same time scratching themselves or enjoying a momentary
nap; but in this position there is no fanning. I say “scratching,”
because the seal, in common with all animals, is preyed upon by
vermin, and it has a peculiar species of louse, or parasitic tick,
which annoys it.

Speaking of seals as they rest in the water leads me to remark
that they seem to sleep as sound and as comfortably, bedded on the
waves or rolled by the swell, as they do on the land. They lie on
their backs, fold the fore flippers down across the chest, and turn
the hind ones up and over, so that the tips rest on their necks
and chins, thus exposing simply the nose and the heels of the hind
flippers above water, nothing else being seen. In this position,
unless it is very rough, the seal sleeps as serenely as did the
prototype of that memorable song, who was “rocked in the cradle of
the deep.”

All the bulls, from the very first, that have been able to hold their
positions, have not left them from the moment of their landing for
a single instant, night or day; nor will they do so until the end
of the rutting season, which subsides entirely between August 1st
and 10th—it begins shortly after the coming of the cows in June. Of
necessity, therefore, this causes them to fast, to abstain entirely
from food of any kind, or water, for three months at least; and a few
of them actually stay out four months, in total abstinence, before
going back into the ocean for the first time after “hauling up” in
May. They then return as so many bony shadows of what they were only
a few months previously; covered with wounds, abject and spiritless,
they laboriously crawl back to the sea to renew a fresh lease of life.

Such physical endurance is remarkable enough alone; but it is simply
wonderful when we come to associate this fasting with the unceasing
activity, restlessness, and duty devolved upon the bulls as the heads
of large families. They do not stagnate like hibernating bears in
caves; there is not one torpid breath drawn by them in the whole
period of their fast. It is evidently sustained and accomplished
by the self-absorption of their own fat, with which they are so
liberally supplied when they first come out from the sea and take
up their positions on the breeding grounds, and which gradually
disappears, until nothing but the staring hide, protruding tendons
and bones mark the limit of their abstinence. There must be some
remarkable provision made by nature for the entire torpidity of the
seals’ stomachs and bowels, in consequence of their being empty and
unsupplied during this long period, coupled with the intense activity
and physical energy of the animals throughout that time, which,
however, in spite of the violation of a supposed physiological law,
does not seem to affect them, for they come back just as sleek, fat,
and ambitious as ever, in the following season. That the seals drink
or need fresh water, I doubt; but they cool their mouths incessantly
by swimming with them wide open through the waves, laving as it were
their hot throats and lips in the flood.[116]

Between June 12th and 14th, the first of the cow-seals, as a rule,
come up from the sea; then that long agony of the waiting bulls is
over, and they signalize it by a period of universal, spasmodic,
desperate fighting among themselves. Though they have quarrelled all
the time from the moment they first landed, and continue to do so
until the end of the season, in August, yet that fighting which takes
place at this date is the bloodiest and most vindictive known to the
seal. I presume that the heaviest percentage of mutilation and death
among the old males from these brawls, occur in this week of the
earliest appearance of the females.

A strong contrast now between the males and females looms up, both
in size and shape, which is heightened by an air of exceeding
peace and dove-like amiability which the latter class exhibit, in
contradistinction to the ferocity and saturnine behavior of the
former.[117] The cows are from four to four and a half feet in length
from head to tail, and much more shapely in their proportions than
the bulls; there is no wrapping around their necks and shoulders
of unsightly masses of blubber; their lithe, elastic forms, from
the first to the last of the season, are never altered; they are,
however, enabled to keep such shape, because, in the provision of
seal economy, they sustain no protracted fasting period; for, soon
after the birth of their young they leave it on the ground and go
to the sea for food, returning perhaps to-morrow, may be later, or
even not for several days in fact, to again suckle and nourish it;
having in the meantime sped far off to distant fishing banks, and
satiated a hunger which so active and highly organized an animal must
experience, when deprived of sustenance for any length of time.

As the females come up wet and dripping from the water, they are at
first a dull, dirty-gray color, dark on the back and upper parts, but
in a few hours the transformation in their appearance made by drying
is wonderful. You would hardly believe that they could be the same
animals, for they now fairly glisten with a rich steel and maltese
gray lustre on the back of the head, the neck, and along down the
spine, which blends into an almost snow-white over the chest and on
the abdomen. But, this beautiful coloring in turn is again altered by
exposure to the same weather; for, after a few days it will gradually
change, so that by the lapse of two or three weeks it is a dull,
rufous-ochre below, and a cinereous brown and gray mixed above. This
color they retain throughout the breeding season, up to the time of
shedding their coats in August.

The head and eye of the female are exceedingly beautiful; the
expression is really attractive, gentle, and intelligent; the large,
lustrous, blue-black eyes are humid and soft with the tenderest
expression, while the small, well-formed head is poised as gracefully
on her neck as can be well imagined; she is the very picture of
benignity and satisfaction, when she is perched up on some convenient
rock, and has an opportunity to quietly fan herself, the eyes
half-closed and the head thrown back on her gently-swelling shoulders.

The females land on these islands, not from the slightest desire
to see their uncouth lords and masters, but from an accurate and
instinctive appreciation of the time in which their period of
gestation ends. They are in fact driven up to the rookeries by
this cause alone; the young cannot be brought forth in the water,
and, in all cases marked by myself, the pups were born soon after
landing, some in a few hours, but, most usually, a day or so elapses
before delivery. They are noticed and received by the males at the
water-line stations with attention; they are alternately coaxed
and urged up on to the rocks, as far as these beach-masters can
do so, by chuckling, whistling, and roaring, and then they are
immediately under the most jealous supervision; but, owing to the
covetous and ambitious nature of those bulls which occupy these
stations to the rear of the water-line and away back, the little
cows have a rough-and-tumble time of it, when they begin to arrive
in small numbers at first; for no sooner is the pretty animal fairly
established on the station of male number one, who has welcomed
her there, than he, perhaps, sees another one of her style in the
water from whence she has come, and, in obedience to his polygamous
feeling, devotes himself anew to coaxing the later arrival, by that
same winning manner so successful in the first case; then when bull
number two, just back, observes bull number one off guard, he reaches
out with his long strong neck and picks up the unhappy but passive
cow by the scruff of hers, just as a cat does a kitten, and deposits
her upon his seraglio ground; then bulls number three and four,
and so on, in the vicinity, seeing this high-handed operation, all
assail one another, especially number two, and for a moment have a
tremendous fight, perhaps lasting half a minute or so, and during
this commotion the little cow is generally moved, or moves, farther
back from the water, two or three stations more, where, when all
gets quiet again, she usually remains in peace. Her last lord and
master, not having that exposure to such diverting temptation as her
first, gives her such care that she not only is unable to leave, did
she wish, but no other bull can seize upon her: this is only a faint
and (I fully appreciate it) wholly inadequate description of the
hurly-burly and that method by which the rookeries are filled up,
from first to last, when the females arrive—it is only one instance
of the many trials and tribulations which both parties on the rookery
subject themselves to, before the harems are filled.[118]

[Illustration: SUNDRY SEAL SKETCHES FROM THE AUTHOR’S PORTFOLIO

On St. Paul’s Island, 1872-’76]

Far back, fifteen or twenty “see-catchie” stations deep from the
water-line, and sometimes more, but generally not over an average of
ten or fifteen, the cows crowd in at the close of the season for
arriving, which is by July 10th or 14th; then they are able to go
about very much as they please, for the bulls have become so greatly
enfeebled by this constant fasting, fighting, and excitement during
the past two months, that they are quite content now with only one or
two partners, even if they should have no more.

The cows seem to haul up in compact bodies from the water, covering
in the whole ground to the rear of the rookeries, never scattering
about over the surface of this area; they have mapped out, from the
first, their chosen resting-places, and they will not lie quietly
in any position outside of the great mass of their kind. This is
due to their intensely gregarious nature, and is especially adapted
for their protection. And here I should call attention to the fact
that they select this rookery ground with all the skill of civil
engineers. It is preferred with special reference to drainage, for
it must slope so that the produce of constantly dissolving fogs and
rain-clouds shall not lie upon it, since they have a great aversion
to, and a firm determination not to rest on water-puddled ground.
This is admirably exhibited, and will be understood by a study of my
sketch-maps which follow, illustrative of these rookeries and the
area and position of the seals upon them. Every one of those breeding
grounds rises up gently from the sea, and on no one of them is there
anything like a muddy flat.

I found it an exceedingly difficult matter to satisfy myself as to
a fair general average number of cows to each bull on the rookery,
but, after protracted study, I think it will be nearly correct when
I assign to each male a specific ratio of from fifteen to twenty
females at the stations nearest the water, and for those back, in
order, from that line to the rear, from five to twelve; but there are
many exceptional cases, and many instances where forty-five and fifty
females are all under the charge of one male: and then, again, where
there are only two or three females: hence this question was and is
not entirely satisfactory in its settlement to my mind.

Near Ketavie Point, and just above it to the north, is an odd
wash-out of basalt by the surf, which has chiselled, as it were, from
the foundation of the island, a lava table, with a single roadway
or land passage to it. Upon the summit of this footstool I counted
forty-five cows, all under the charge of one old veteran. He had them
penned on this table-rock by taking his stand at the gate, as it
were, through which they passed up and passed down—a Turkish brute
typified.

At the rear of all these rookeries there is invariably a large number
of able-bodied males which have come late, and wait patiently, yet in
vain, for families; most of them having had to fight as desperately
for the privilege of being there as any of their more fortunately
located neighbors, who are nearer the water, and in succession from
there to where they are themselves; but the cows do not like to be in
any outside position. They cannot be coaxed out where they are not
in close company with their female mates and masses. They lie most
quietly and contentedly in the largest harems, and cover the surface
of the ground so thickly that there is hardly moving or turning room
when they cease to come from the sea. The inaction on the part of
those males in the rear during the breeding season only serves to
well qualify them for moving into the places which are necessarily
vacated by disabled males that are, in the meantime, obliged to
leave from virile exhaustion, or incipient wounds. All the surplus
able-bodied bulls, which have not been successful in effecting a
landing on the rookeries cannot be seen at any one time, however, in
the season, on this rear line. Only a portion of their number are in
sight; the others are either loafing at sea, adjacent, or are hauled
out in morose squads between the rookeries on the beaches. The cows,
during the whole season, do great credit to their amiable expression
by their manner and behavior on the rookery. They never fight or
quarrel one with another, and never or seldom utter a cry of pain or
rage when they are roughly handled by the bulls, which frequently
get a cow between them and actually tear the skin from her back with
their teeth, cutting deep gashes in it as they snatch her from mouth
to mouth. If sand does not get into these wounds it is surprising how
rapidly they heal; and, from the fact that I never could see scars
on them anywhere except the fresh ones of this year, they must heal
effectually and exhibit no trace the next season.

The cows, like the bulls, vary much in weight, but the extraordinary
disparity in the adult size of the sexes is exceedingly striking.
Two females taken from the rookery nearest to St. Paul village,
right under the bluffs (and almost beneath the eaves of the natives’
houses) called “Nah Speel,” after they had brought forth their
young, were weighed by myself, and their respective returns on the
scales were fifty-six and one hundred pounds each; the former being
about three or four years old, and the latter over six—perhaps ten.
Both were fat, or rather, in good condition—as good as they ever
are. Thus the female is just about one-sixth the size of the male.
Among the sea-lions the proportion is just one-half the bulk of
the male, while the hair-seals, as I have before stated, are not
distinguishable in this respect, as far as I could observe, but my
notice was limited to a few specimens only.

The courage with which the fur-seal holds his position as the head
and guardian of a family is of the highest order. I have repeatedly
tried to drive them from their harem-posts, when they were fairly
established on their stations, and have, with very few exceptions,
failed. I might use every stone at my command, making all the noise
I could. Finally, to put this courage to its fullest test, I have
walked up to within twenty feet of an old veteran, toward the extreme
end of Tolstoi, who had only four cows in charge, and commenced with
my double-barrelled fowling-piece to pepper him all over with fine
mustard-seed shot, being kind enough, in spite of my zeal, not to put
out his eyes. His bearing, in spite of the noise, smell of powder,
and painful irritation which the fine shot must have produced, did
not change in the least from the usual attitude of determined, plucky
defence (which nearly all of the bulls assume) when he was attacked
with showers of stones and noise. He would dart out right and left
with his long neck and catch the timid cows that furtively attempted
to run after each report of my gun, fling and drag them back to their
places under his head; and then, stretching up to his full height,
look me directly and defiantly in the face, roaring and chuckling
most vehemently. The cows, however, soon got away from him: they
could not endure my racket, in spite of their dread of him. But he
still stood his ground, making little charges on me of ten or fifteen
feet in a succession of gallops or lunges, spitting furiously, and
then comically retreating, with an indescribable leer and swagger, to
the old position, back of which he would not go, fully resolved to
hold his own or die in the attempt.

This courage is all the more noteworthy from the fact that, in regard
to man, it is invariably of a defensive character. The seal is always
on the defensive; he never retreats, and he will not assail. If
he makes you return when you attack him he never follows you much
farther than the boundary of his station, and then no aggravation
will compel him to take the offensive, so far as I have been able to
observe. I was very much impressed by this trait.

It is quite beyond my power—indeed, entirely out of the question—to
give a fair idea of the thousand and one positions in which seals
compose themselves and rest when on land. They may be said to assume
every possible attitude which a flexible body can be put into, no
matter how characteristic or seemingly forced or constrained. Their
joints seem to be double-hinged—in fact, fitted with ball and socket
union of the bones. One favorite position, especially with the
females, is to perch upon a point or edge-top of some rock, and throw
their heads back upon their shoulders, with the nose held directly
up and aloft; and then, closing their eyes, take short naps without
changing their attitude, now and then softly lifting one or the other
of their long, slender hind flippers, which they slowly wave with
that peculiar fanning motion to which I have alluded heretofore.
Another attitude, and one of the most common, is to curl themselves
up just as a dog does on a hearth-rug, bringing the tail and nose
close together. They also stretch out, laying the head close to the
body, and sleep an hour or two without rising, holding one of the
hind flippers up all the time, now and then gently moving it, the
eyes being tightly closed.

I ought, perhaps, to define the anomalous tail of the fur-seal here.
It is just about as important as the caudal appendage to a bear;
even less significant. It is the very emphasis of abbreviation. In
the old males it is positively only four or five inches in length,
while among the females only two and a half to three inches, wholly
inconspicuous, and not even recognized by the casual observer: they
never wag or move it at all.

I come now to speak of another feature which interested me nearly, if
not quite, as much as any other characteristic of this creature, and
that is their fashion of slumber. The sleep of the fur-seal, seen on
land, from the old male down to the youngest, is always accompanied
by an involuntary, nervous, muscular twitching and slight shifting
of the flippers, together with ever and anon quivering and uneasy
rollings of the body, accompanied by a quick folding anew of the
fore flippers; all of which may be signs, as it were, in fact, of
their simply having nightmares, or of sporting, in a visionary way,
far off in some dreamland sea. But, it may be that as an old nurse
said in reference to the smiles on a sleeping child’s face, they are
disturbed by their intestinal parasites. I have studied hundreds of
such somnolent examples. Stealing softly up so closely that I could
lay my hand upon them from the point where I was sitting, did I wish
to, and watching the sleeping seals, I have always found their sleep
to be of this nervous description. The respiration is short and
rapid, but with no breathing (unless the ear is brought very close).
The quivering, heaving of the flanks only indicates the action of
the lungs. I have frequently thought that I had succeeded in finding
a snoring seal, especially among the pups; but a close examination
always gave some abnormal reason for it—generally a slight distemper;
never anything more severe, however, than some trifle by which the
nostrils were stopped to a greater or less degree.

The cows on the rookeries sleep a great deal, but the bulls have
the veriest cat-naps that can be imagined. I never could time the
slumber of any old male on the breeding grounds which lasted, without
interruption, longer than five minutes, day or night. While away
from these places, however, I have known them to lie sleeping in
the manner I have described, broken by such fitful, nervous, dreamy
starts, yet without opening the eyes, for an hour or so at a time.

With an exception of the pups, the fur-seal seems to have very little
rest, awake or sleeping. Perpetual motion is well-nigh incarnate with
its being. I naturally enough, when beginning my investigation of
these seal-rookeries, expected to find the animals subdued at night,
or early morning, on those breeding grounds; but a few consecutive
nocturnal watches satisfied me that the family organization and
noise was as active at one time as at another, throughout the whole
twenty-four hours. If, however, the day preceding had chanced to be
abnormally warm, I never failed then to find the rookeries much more
noisy and active during the night than they were by daylight. The
seals, as a rule, come and go to and from the sea, fight, roar, and
vocalize as much during midnight moments as they do at noonday times.
An aged native endeavored to satisfy me that the “seecatchie” could
see much better by twilight and night than by daylight. I am not
prepared to prove to the contrary, but I think that the fact of his
not being able to see so well himself at that hour of darkness was a
true cause of most of his belief in the improved nocturnal vision of
the seals.[119]

As I have said before, the females, soon after landing, are delivered
of their young. Immediately after the birth of the pup (twins are
rare, if ever) the little creature finds its voice—a weak, husky
blaat—and begins to paddle about with its eyes wide open from the
start, in a confused sort of way for a few minutes, until the mother
turns round to notice her offspring and give it attention, and still
later, to suckle it; and for this purpose she is supplied with four
small, brown nipples, almost wholly concealed in the fur, and which
are placed about eight inches apart, lengthwise with the body, on the
abdomen, between the fore and hind flippers, with about four inches
of space between them transversely. These nipples are seldom visible,
and then faintly seen through the hair and fur. The milk is abundant,
rich, and creamy. The pups nurse very heartily, almost gorging
themselves; so much so, that they often have to yield up the excess
of what they have taken down, mewling and puking in a most orthodox
manner.

The pup at birth, and for the next three months, is of a jet-black
color, hair and flippers, save a tiny white patch just back of each
forearm. It weighs from three to four pounds, and is twelve to
fourteen inches long. It does not seem to nurse more than once every
two or three days; but in this I am very likely mistaken, for it may
have received attention from its mother in the night, or other times
in the day when I was unable to keep up my watch over the individual
which I had marked for this supervision.

The apathy with which the young are treated by the old on the
breeding grounds, especially by the mothers, was very strange to
me, and I was considerably surprised at it. I have never seen a
seal-mother caress or fondle her offspring; and should it stray to
a short distance from the harem, I could step to and pick it up,
and even kill it before the mother’s eye, without causing her the
slightest concern, as far as all outward signs and manifestations
should indicate. The same indifference is also exhibited by the male
to all that may take place of this character outside of the boundary
of his seraglio; but the moment the pups are inside the limits of
his harem-ground he is a jealous and a fearless protector, vigilant
and determined. But if the little animals are careless enough to
pass beyond this boundary, then I can go up to them and carry them
off before the eye of the old Turk without receiving from him the
slightest attention in their behalf—a curious guardian, forsooth!

It is surprising to me how few of these young pups get crushed to
death while the ponderous bulls are floundering over them, engaged
in fighting and quarrelling among themselves. I have seen two bulls
dash at each other with all the energy of furious rage, meeting right
in the midst of a small “pod” of forty or fifty pups, tramp over
them with all their crushing weight, and bowling them out right and
left in every direction by the impetus of their movements, without
injuring a single one, as far as I could see. Still, when we come to
consider the fact that, despite the great weight of the old males,
their broad, flat flippers and yielding bodies may press down heavily
on these little fellows without actually breaking bones or mashing
them out of shape, it does seem questionable whether more than one
per cent. of all the pups born each season on these great rookeries
of the Pribylov Islands are destroyed in this manner on the breeding
grounds.[120]

The vitality of a fur-seal is simply astonishing. Its physical
organization passes beyond the fabled nine lives of the cat. As a
slight illustration of its tenure of life, I will mention the fact
that one morning Philip came to me with a pup in his arms, which had
just been born and was still womb-moist, saying that the mother had
been killed at Tolstoi by accident, and he supposed that I would like
to have a “choochil.” I took it up into my laboratory, and, finding
that it could walk about and make a great noise, I attempted to feed
it, with the idea of having a comfortable subject to my pencil for
life-study of the young in varied attitudes of sleep and motion. It
refused everything that I could summon to its attention as food,
and, alternately sleeping and walking in its clumsy fashion about
the floor; it actually lived nine days, spending the half of every
one in floundering over the floor, accompanying all movements with a
persistent, hoarse, blasting cry, and I do not believe it ever had a
single drop of its mother’s milk.

In a pup the head is the only disproportionate feature at birth when
it is compared with an adult form, the neck being also relatively
shorter and thicker. The eye is large, round, and full; but, almost
a “navy blue” at times, it soon changes into the blue-black of
adolescence.

The females appear to go to and come from the water feeding and
bathing quite frequently after bearing their young and an immediate
subsequent coitus with the male: they usually return to the spot or
its immediate neighborhood, where they leave their pups, crying out
for them and recognizing the individual replies; though ten thousand
around, all together, should blaat at once, they quickly single out
their own and nurse them. It would certainly be a very unfortunate
matter if the mothers could not identify their young by sound, since
these pups get together like a great swarm of bees, and spread out
upon the ground in what the sealers call “pods,” or clustered groups,
while they are young and not very large; thus, from the middle or
end of September until they leave the islands for the dangers of the
great Pacific in the winter, along by the first of November, they
gather in this manner, sleeping and frolicking by tens of thousands,
bunched together at various places all over the islands contiguous
to the breeding grounds, and right on them. A mother comes up from
the sea, whither she has been to wash, and perhaps to feed, for the
last day or two, feeling her way along to about where she thinks
her pup should be—at least, where she left it last; but perhaps she
misses it, and finds instead a swarm of pups in which it has been
incorporated, owing to its great fondness for society. The mother,
without first entering into a crowd of thousands, calls just as a
sheep does for a lamb, and out of all the din she—if not at first, at
the end of a few trials—recognizes the voice of her offspring, and
then advances, striking out right and left toward the position from
which it replies; but if the pup happens at this time to be asleep,
it gives, of course, no response, even though it were close by. In
the event of such silence the cow, after calling for a time without
being answered, curls herself up and takes a nap or lazily basks, to
be usually more successful, or wholly so, when she calls again.

The pups themselves do not know their own mothers, a fact which I
ascertained by careful observation; but they are so constituted that
they incessantly cry out at short intervals during the whole time
they are awake, and in this way the mother can pick out from the
monotonous blaating of thousands of pups her own, and she will not
permit any other one to suckle her. But the “kotickie” themselves
attempt to nose around every seal-mother that comes in contact with
them. I have repeatedly watched young pups as they made advances to
nurse from another pup’s mother, the result invariably being that,
while the “matkah” would permit her own offspring to suckle freely,
yet when these little strangers touched her nipples she would either
move abruptly away or else turn quickly down upon her stomach, so
that the maternal fountains were inaccessible to alien and hungry
“kotickie.” I have witnessed so many examples of the females turning
pups away to suckle only some particular other one, that I feel
sure I am entirely right in saying that the seal-mothers know their
own young, and that they will not permit any others except them to
nurse. I believe that this maternal recognition is due chiefly to the
mother’s scent and hearing.

Between the end of July and August 5th or 8th of every year the
rookeries are completely changed in appearance. The systematic and
regular disposition of the families or harems over the whole extent
of breeding-ground has disappeared. All that clock-work order which
has heretofore existed seems to be broken up. The breeding season
closed, those bulls which have held their positions since May 1st
leave, most of them thin in flesh and weak, and of their number
a very large proportion do not come out again on land during the
season; but such as are seen at the end of October and November are
in good shape. They have a new coat of rich, dark, gray-brown hair
and fur, with gray or grayish-ochre “wigs” of longer hair over the
shoulders, forming a fresh, strong contrast to the dull, rusty, brown
and umber dress in which they appeared to us during the summer, and
which they had begun to shed about August 1st, in common with the
females and the “holluschickie.” After these males leave at the end
of their season’s work, and of the rutting for the year, those of
them that happen to return to land in any event do not come back
until the end of September and do not haul up on the rookery grounds
again. As a rule, they prefer to herd altogether, like younger males,
upon the sand-beaches and rocky points close to the water.

The cows and pups, together with those bulls which we have noticed
in waiting at the rear of the rookeries, and which have been in
retirement throughout the whole of the breeding season, now take
possession, in a very disorderly manner, of these rookeries; also,
a large number of young, three, four, and five year old males come,
which have been prevented by the menacing threats of stronger bulls
from an earlier landing among the females during the breeding season.

Before the middle of August three-fourths, at least, of the cows
at this date are off in the water, only coming ashore at irregular
intervals to nurse and look after their pups a short time. They
presented to my eye, from the summits of the bluffs round about,
a picture more suggestive of entire comfort and enjoyment than
anything I have ever seen presented by animal life. Here, just out
and beyond the breaking of the rollers, they idly lie on the rocks or
sand-beaches, ever and anon turning over and over, scratching their
backs and sides with their fore and hind flippers. The seals on the
breeding ground appear to get very lousy.[121]

Frequent winds and showers will drive and spatter sand into their
fur and eyes, often making the latter quite sore. This occurs when
they are obliged to leave the rocky rookeries and follow their pups
out over the sand-ridges and flats, to which they always have a
natural aversion. On the hauling-grounds they pack the soil under
their feet so hard and tightly in many places that it holds water in
shallow surface-depressions, just like so many rock-basins. Out of
and into these puddles the pups and the females flounder and patter
incessantly, until evaporation slowly abates the nuisance for a time
only, inasmuch as the next day, perhaps, brings more rain and the
dirty pools are replenished.

The pups sometimes get so thoroughly plastered in these muddy, slimy
puddles, that the hair falls off in patches, giving them, at first
sight, the appearance of being troubled with scrofula or some other
plague: from my investigations directed to this point, I became
satisfied that they were not permanently injured, though evidently
very much annoyed. With reference to this suggestion as to sickness
or distemper among these seals, I gave the subject direct and
continued attention, and in no one of the rookeries could I discover
a single seal, no matter how old or young, which appeared to be
suffering in the least from any physical disorder other than that
which they themselves had inflicted, one upon the other, by fighting.
The third season, passing directly under my observation, failed to
reward my search with any manifestation of disease among the seals
which congregate in such mighty numbers on those rookeries of St.
Paul and St. George. That remarkable freedom from all such complaints
enjoyed by these animals is noteworthy, and a most trenchant and
penetrating cross-questioning of the natives also failed to give me
any history or evidence of an epidemic in the past.

The observer will, however, notice every summer, gathered in
melancholy squads of a dozen to one hundred or so (scattered
along the coast where the healthy seals never go), those sick and
disabled bulls which have, in the earlier part of the season, been
either internally injured or dreadfully scarred by the teeth of
their opponents in fighting. Sand is blown by strong wind into
their fresh wounds, causing inflammation and sloughing which very
often finishes the life of a victim. The sailors term these invalid
gatherings “hospitals,” a phrase which, like the most of their homely
expressions, is quite appropriate.

Early in August, usually by the 8th or 10th, I noticed one of the
remarkable movements of the season. I refer to the pup’s first essay
in swimming. Is it not odd—paradoxical—that the young seal, from the
moment of his birth until he is a month or six weeks old, is utterly
unable to swim? If he is seized by the nape of the neck and pitched
out a rod into the water from shore, his bullet-like head will drop
instantly below the surface, and his attenuated posterior extremities
flap impotently on it. Suffocation is the question of only a few
minutes, the stupid little creature not knowing how to raise his
immersed head and gain the air again. After they have attained the
age indicated above, their instinct drives them down to the margin of
the surf, where an alternate ebbing and flowing of its wash, covers
and uncovers the rocky or sandy beaches. They first smell and then
touch the moist pools, and flounder in the upper wash of the surf,
which leaves them as suddenly high and dry as it immersed them at
first. After this beginning they make slow and clumsy progress in
learning the knack of swimming. For a week or two, when overhead
in depth, they continue to flounder about in the most awkward
manner, thrashing the water as little dogs do with their fore feet,
making no attempt whatever to use the hinder ones. Look at that pup
now, launched out for the first time beyond his depth; see how he
struggles—his mouth wide open, and his eyes fairly popping. He turns
instantly to the beach, ere he has fairly struck out from the point
whence he launched in, and, as the receding swell which at first
carried him off his feet and out, now returning, leaves him high and
dry, for a few minutes he seems so weary that he weakly crawls up,
out beyond its swift returning wash, and coils himself immediately
to take a recuperative nap. He sleeps a few minutes, perhaps half
an hour, then awakes as bright as a dollar, apparently rested, and
at his swimming lesson he goes again. By repeated and persistent
attempts, this young seal gradually becomes familiar with the water
and acquainted with his own power over that element, which is to be
his real home and his whole support. Once boldly swimming, the pup
fairly revels in a new happiness. He and his brethren have now begun
to haul and swarm along the entire length of St. Paul coast, from
Northeast Point down and around to Zapadnie, lining the alternating
sand-beaches and rocky shingle with their chunky, black forms. How
they do delight in it! They play with a zest, and chatter like our
own children in the kindergartens—swimming in endless evolutions,
twisting, turning, or diving—and when exhausted, drawing their plump,
round bodies up again on the beach. Shaking themselves dry as young
dogs would do, they now either go to sleep on the spot or have a lazy
terrestrial frolic among themselves.

Why an erroneous impression ever got into the mind of any man as to
this matter of a pup’s learning to swim, I confess that I am wholly
unable to imagine. I have not seen any “driving” of the young
pups into the water by the old ones, in order to teach them this
process, as certain authors have positively affirmed. There is not
the slightest supervision by the mother or father of the pup, from
the first moment of his birth, in this respect, until he leaves for
the North Pacific, full-fledged with amphibious power. At the close
of the breeding season, every year, the pups are restlessly and
constantly shifting back and forth over the rookery ground of their
birth, in large squads, sometimes numbering thousands upon thousands.
In the course of this change of position they all sooner or later
come in contact with the sea; they then blunder into the water for
the first time, in a most awkward, ungainly manner, and get out as
quick as they can; but so far from showing any fear or dislike of
this, their most natural element, as soon as they rest from their
exertion they are immediately ready for a new trial, and keep at it,
provided the sea is not too stormy or rough. During all this period
of self-tuition they seem thoroughly to enjoy the exercise, in spite
of their repeated and inevitable discomfitures at the beginning.

That “podding” of these young pups in the rear of the great rookeries
of St. Paul, is one of the most striking and interesting phases of
this remarkable exhibition of highly-organized life. When they first
bunch together they are all black, for they have not begun to shed
the natal coat; they shine with an unctuous, greasy reflection, and
grouped in small armies or great regiments on the sand-dune tracts at
Northeast Point, they present a most extraordinary and fascinating
sight. Although the appearance of the “holluschickie” at English Bay
fairly overwhelms the observer with an impression of its countless
multitudes, yet I am free to declare that at no one point in this
evolution of the seal-life, during its reproductive season, have I
been so deeply impressed by a sense of overwhelming enumeration, as
I have when, standing on the summit of Cross Hill, I looked down to
the southward and westward over a reach of six miles of alternate
grass and sand-dune stretches, mirrored upon which were hundreds
of thousands of these little black pups, spread in sleep and sport
within this restricted field of vision. They appeared as countless as
the grains of that sand upon which they rested!

By September 15th, all the pups born during the year have become
familiar with the water; they have all learned to swim, and are now
nearly all down by the water’s edge, skirting in large masses the
rocks and beaches hitherto unoccupied by seals of any class this
year. Now they are about five or six times their original weight,
or, in other words, they are thirty to forty pounds avoirdupois, as
plump and fat as butter-balls, and they begin to take on their second
coat, shedding their black pup-hair completely. This second coat does
not vary in color, at this age, between the sexes. They effect such
transformation in dress very slowly, and cannot, as a rule, be said
to have ceased their moulting until the middle or 20th of October.

That second coat, or sea-going jacket, of the pup, is a uniform,
dense, light gray over-hair, with an under-fur which is slightly
grayish in some, but is, in most cases, of a soft light brown hue.
The over-hair is fine, close and elastic, from two-thirds of an inch
to an inch in length, while the fur is not quite half an inch long.
Thus the coarser hair shingles over and conceals the soft under-wool
completely, giving the color by which, after the second year, the
sex of the animal is recognized. A pronounced difference between
the sexes is not effected, however, by color alone until the third
year of the animal’s life. This over-hair of the pup’s new jacket
on its back, neck, and head, is a dark chinchilla-gray, blending
into stone-white, just tinged with a grayish tint on the abdomen
and chest. The upper lip, upon which the whiskers or mustaches
take root, is covered with hair of a lighter gray than that of the
body. This mustache consists of fifteen or twenty longer or shorter
bristles, from half an inch to three inches in length, some brownish,
horn-colored, and others whitish-gray and translucent, on each side
and back and below the nostrils, leaving the muzzle quite prominent
and hairless. The nasal openings and their surroundings are, as I
have before said when speaking of this feature, hairless and similar
to those of a dog.[122]

The most attractive feature about the fur-seal pup, and that which
holds this place as it grows on and older, is the eye. That organ
is exceedingly clear, dark, and liquid, with which, for beauty and
amiability, together with real intelligence of expression, those of
no other animal that I have ever seen, or have ever read of, can be
compared; indeed, there are few eyes in the orbits of men and women
which suggest more pleasantly the ancient thought of their being
“windows to the soul.” The lids to that eye are fringed with long,
perfect lashes, and the slightest irritation in the way of dust or
sand, or other foreign substances, seems to cause them exquisite
annoyance, accompanied by immoderate weeping. This involuntary
tearfulness so moved Steller that he ascribed it to the processes of
a mind, and declared that seal-mothers actually “shed tears”!

I do not think a seal’s range of vision on land, or out of the water,
is very great. I have frequently experimented with adult fur-seals,
by allowing them to catch sight of my person, so as to distinguish
it as of foreign character, three and four hundred paces off, taking
the precaution of standing quietly to the leeward when the wind was
blowing strong, and then walking unconcernedly up to them. I have
invariably noticed that they would allow me to approach quite close
before recognizing my strangeness; then, as it occurred to them,
they at once made a lively noise, a medley of coughing, spitting,
snorting, and blaating, and plunged in spasmodic lopes and shambled
to get away from my immediate neighborhood. As to the pups, they
all stupidly stare at the form of a human being until it is fairly
on them, when they also repeat in miniature these vocal gymnastics
and physical efforts of the older ones, to retreat or withdraw a
few rods, sometimes only a few feet, from the spot upon which you
have cornered them, after which they instantly resume their previous
occupation of either sleeping or playing, as though nothing had
happened. Perhaps it is safe to say that the greatest activity
displayed by any one of the five senses of the seal is evidenced in
its power of scent. This faculty is all that can be desired in the
line of alertness. I never failed to awaken an adult seal from the
soundest sleep, when from a half to a quarter of a mile distant, no
matter how softly I proceeded, if I got to the windward, though they
sometimes took alarm when I was a mile off.

They leave evidences of their being on these great reproductive
fields, chiefly at the rookeries, in the hundreds of dead carcasses
which mark the last of those animals that had been rendered infirm,
sick, and killed by fighting among themselves in the early part of
the season, or of those which have crawled far away from the scene
of battle to die from death-wounds received in bitter struggles for
a harem. On the rookeries, wherever these lifeless bodies rest, the
living, old and young, clamber and patter backward and forward over
and on the putrid remains: thus such constant stirring up of decayed
matter, gives rise to an exceedingly disagreeable and far-reaching
“funk.” This has been, by all writers who have dwelt on the subject,
referred to as the smell which those animals emit for another
reason—erroneously called the “rutting odor.” If these creatures have
any odor peculiar to them when in this condition, I will frankly
confess that I am unable to distinguish it from the fumes which are
constantly being stirred up and arising out of those putrescent
carcasses so disturbed, as well as from the bodies of the few pups
which have been killed accidentally by heavy bulls fighting over
them, charging back and forth against one another, so much of the
time.

They have, however, a very characteristic and peculiar smell when
they are driven and get heated; their breath-exhalations possess a
disagreeable, faint, sickly odor, and when I have walked within its
influence at the rear of a seal-drive, I could almost fancy, as it
entered my nostrils, that I stood beneath an ailantus-tree in full
bloom; but this odor can by no means be confounded with what is
universally ascribed to another cause. It is also noteworthy that if
your finger is touched ever so lightly to a little fur-seal blubber,
it will smell very much like that which I have appreciated and
described as peculiar to their breath, which arises from them when
they are driven, only it is a little stronger. Both the young and old
fur-seals have this same breath-taint at all seasons of the year.

With the precision of clock-work and the regularity of the precession
of the seasons, fur-seals have adopted and enforced the following
method of life on these islands of Pribylov. In this system millions
of those highly organized animals sustain themselves.

_First._—The earliest bulls land in a negligent, indolent way, at
the opening of the season, soon after the rocks at the water’s edge
are free from ice, frozen snow, etc. This is, as a rule, about the
1st to the 5th of every May. They land from the beginning to the end
of the season in perfect confidence and without fear; they are very
fat, and will weigh on an average five hundred pounds each; some stay
at the water’s edge, some go to the tier back of them again, and
so forth, until the whole rookery is mapped out by them, weeks in
advance of the arrival of the first female.

_Second._—That by the 10th or 12th of June, all the male stations
on the rookeries have been mapped out and fought for, and held in
waiting by the “see-catchie.” These males are, as a rule, bulls
rarely ever under six years of age; most of them are over that age,
being sometimes three, and occasionally doubtless four or five times
as old.

_Third._—That the cows make their first appearance, as a class, on or
after the 12th or 15th of June, in very small numbers, but rapidly
after the 23d and 25th of this month, every year, they begin to flock
up in such numbers as to fill the harems very perceptibly, and by the
8th or 10th of July they have all come, as a rule—a few stragglers
excepted. The average weight of the females now will not be much more
than eighty to ninety pounds each.

_Fourth._—That the breeding season is at its height from the 10th to
the 15th of July every year, and that it subsides entirely at the end
of this month and early in August; also, that its method and system
are confined entirely to the land, never effected in the sea.

_Fifth._—That the females bear their first young when they are three
years old, and that the period of gestation is nearly twelve months,
lacking a few days only of that lapse of time.

_Sixth._—That the females bear a single pup each, and that this is
born soon after landing. No exception to this rule as ever been
witnessed or recorded.

_Seventh._—That the “see-catchie” which have held the harems from
the beginning to the end of the season, leave for the water in a
desultory and straggling manner at its close, greatly emaciated,
and do not return, if they do at all, until six or seven weeks have
elapsed, when the regular systematic distribution of the families
over the rookeries is at an end for this season. A general medley
of young males now are free: they come out of the water, and wander
over all these rookeries, together with many old males, which have
not been on seraglio duty, and great numbers of the females. An
immense majority over all others present are pups, since only about
twenty-five per cent. of the mother-seals are out of the water now at
any one time.

_Eighth._—That the rookeries lose their compactness and definite
boundaries of true breeding limit and expansion by the 25th to the
28th of July every year; then, after this date, the pups begin to
haul back, and to the right and left, in small squads at first, but
as the season goes on, by the 18th of August, they depart without
reference to their mothers; and when thus scattered, the males,
females and young swarm over more than three and four times the area
occupied by them when breeding and born on the rookeries. The system
of family arrangement and uniform compactness of the breeding classes
breaks up at this date.

_Ninth._—That by the 8th or 10th of August the pups born nearest the
water first begin to learn to swim; and that by the 15th or 20th of
September they are all familiar, more or less, with the exercise.

_Tenth._—That by the middle of September the rookeries are entirely
broken up; confused, straggling bands of females are seen among
bachelors, pups, and small squads of old males, crossing and
recrossing the ground in an aimless, listless manner. The season is
now over.

_Eleventh._—That many of the seals do not leave these grounds of St.
Paul and St. George before the end of December, and some remain even
as late as the 12th of January; but that by the end of October and
the beginning of November every year, all the fur-seals of mature
age—five and six years, and upward—have left the islands. The younger
males go with the others; many of the pups still range about the
islands, but are not hauled to any great extent on the beaches or the
flats. They seem to prefer the rocky shore-margin, and to lie as high
up as they can get on such bluffy rookeries as Tolstoi and the Reef.
By the end of this month, November, they are, as a rule, all gone.

I now call the attention of the reader to another very remarkable
feature in the economy of the seal-life on these islands. The great
herds of “holluschickie,”[123] numbering from one-third to one-half,
perhaps, of the whole aggregate of near five million seals known to
the Pribylov group, are never allowed by the old “seecatchie” (which
threaten frightful mutilation or death) to put their flippers on or
near the rookeries.

By reference to my map, it will be observed that I have located a
large extent of ground—markedly so on St Paul—as that occupied by
the seals’ “hauling-ground”; this area, in fact, represents those
portions of the island upon which the “holluschickie” roam in heavy
squadrons, wearing away and polishing the surface of the soil,
stripping every foot, which is indicated on the chart as such, of its
vegetation and mosses, leaving a margin as sharply defined on those
bluffy uplands and sandy flats as it is on the map itself.

The reason that so much more land is covered by the “holluschickie”
than by the breeding seals—ten times as much at least—is due to
the fact that, though not as numerous, perhaps, as the breeding
seals, yet they are tied down to nothing, so to speak—are wholly
irresponsible, and roam hither and thither as caprice and the weather
may dictate. Thus they wear off and rub down a much larger area than
the rookery seals occupy; wandering aimlessly, and going back, in
some instances, notably at English Bay, from one-half to a whole mile
inland, not travelling in desultory files along winding, straggling
paths, but sweeping in solid platoons, they obliterate every spear of
grass and rub down nearly every hummock in their restless marching.

All the male seals, under six years of age, are compelled to herd
apart by themselves and away from the breeding grounds, in many cases
far away; the large hauling-grounds at Southwest Point being about
two miles from the nearest rookery. This class of seals is termed
“holluschickie” or the “bachelors” by the people: a most fitting and
expressive appellation.

The seals of this great subdivision are those with which the
natives on the Pribylov group are the most familiar: naturally and
especially so, since they are the only ones, with the exception of
a few thousand pups, and occasionally an old bull or two, taken
late in the fall for food and skins, which are driven up to the
killing-grounds at the village for slaughter. The reasons for this
exclusive attention to the “bachelors” are most cogent, and will be
given hereafter when the “business” is discussed.

Since the “holluschickie” are not permitted by their own kind to
land on the rookeries and stop there, they have the choice of two
methods of locating, one of which allows them to rest in the rear of
the rookeries, and the other on the free beaches. The most notable
illustration of the former can be witnessed on Reef Point, where a
pathway is left for their ingress and egress through a rookery—a
path left by common consent, as it were, between the harems. On these
trails of passage they come and go in steady files all day and all
night during the season, unmolested by the jealous bulls which guard
the seraglios on either side as they travel—all peace and comfort
to the young seal if he minds his business and keeps straight on up
or down, without stopping to nose about right or left; all woe and
destruction to him, however, if he does not, for in that event he
will be literally torn in bloody gripping, from limb to limb, by
vigilant “see-catchie.”

Since the two and three year old “holluschickie” come up in small
squads with the first bulls in the spring, or a few days later,
such common highways as those between the rookery ground and the
sea are travelled over before the arrival of the cows, and get well
defined. A passage for the “bachelors,” which I took much pleasure
in observing day after day at Polavina, another at Tolstoi, and two
on the Reef, in 1872, were entirely closed up by the “sea-catchie”
and obliterated when I again searched for them in 1874. Similar
passages existed, however, on several of the large rookeries of St.
Paul. One of those at Tolstoi exhibits this feature very finely, for
here the hauling-ground extends around from English Bay, and lies up
back of the Tolstoi rookery, over a flat and rolling summit, from
one hundred to one hundred and twenty feet above the sea-level. The
young males and yearlings of both sexes come through and between the
harems at the height of the breeding season on two of these narrow
pathways, and before reaching the ground above, are obliged to climb
up an almost abrupt bluff, which they do by following and struggling
in the water-runs and washes that are worn into its face. As this
is a large hauling-ground, on which, every favorable day during the
season, fifteen or twenty thousand commonly rest, a view of skilful
seal-climbing can be witnessed here at any time during that period;
and the sight of such climbing as this of Tolstoi is exceedingly
novel and interesting. Why, verily, they ascend over and upon
places where a lively man might, at first thought, say with great
positiveness that it was utterly impossible for him to climb!

[Illustration: ARRIVAL OF THE FUR SEAL MILLIONS

Holluschickie hauling on Lukannon Sands: Myriads come out from the
Sea in a single cool foggy night by this manner of progression]

The other method of coming ashore, however, is the one most followed
and favored. In this case they avoid the rookeries altogether, and
repair to unoccupied beaches between them; and then extend themselves
out all the way back from the sea, as far from the water, in some
cases, as a quarter and even half of a mile. I stood on the
Tolstoi sand-dunes one afternoon, toward the middle of July, and had
under my eyes, in a straightforward sweep from my feet to Zapadnie,
a million and a half of seals spread out on those hauling-grounds.
Of these I estimated that fully one-half, at that time, were pups,
yearlings, and “holluschickie.” The rookeries across the bay, though
plainly in sight, were so crowded that they looked exactly as I have
seen surfaces appear upon which bees had swarmed in obedience to
that din and racket made by the watchful apiarian when he desires to
secure a hive of restless honey-makers.

The great majority of yearlings and “holluschickie” are annually
hauled out, scattered thickly over the sand-beach and upland
hauling-grounds which lie between the rookeries on St. Paul Island.
At St. George there is nothing of this extensive display to be seen,
for here is only a tithe of the seal-life occupying St. Paul, and no
opportunity whatever is afforded for an amphibious parade.

Descend with me from this sand-dune elevation of Tolstoi, and walk
into that drove of “holluschickie” below us. We can do it. You do not
notice much confusion or dismay as we go in among them. They simply
open out before us and close in behind our tracks, stirring, crowding
to the right and left as we go, twelve or twenty feet away from us
on each side. Look at this small flock of yearlings—some one, others
two, and even three years old—which are coughing and spitting around
us now, staring up in our faces in amazement as we walk ahead. They
struggle a few rods out of our reach, and then come together again
behind us, showing no further sign or notice of ourselves. You could
not walk into a drove of hogs at Chicago without exciting as much
confusion and arousing an infinitely more disagreeable tumult; and
as for sheep on the plains, they would stampede far quicker. Wild
animals, indeed! You can now readily understand how easy it is for
two or three men, early in the morning, to come where we are, turn
aside from this vast herd in front of and around us two or three
thousand of the best examples, and drive them back, up, and over
to the village. That is the way they get the seals. There is no
“hunting,” no “chasing,” no “capturing” of fur-seals on these islands.

While the young male seals undoubtedly have the power of going for
lengthy intervals without food, they, like the female seals on
the breeding grounds, certainly do not maintain any long fasting
periods on land. Their coming and going from the shore is frequent
and irregular, largely influenced by the exact condition of the
weather from day to day. For instance, three or four thick, foggy
days seem to call them out from the water by hundreds of thousands
upon the different hauling-grounds (which the reader observes
recorded on my map). In some cases I have seen them lie there so
close together that scarcely a foot of ground, over whole acres, is
bare enough to be seen. Then a clear and warmer day follows, and
this seal-covered ground, before so thickly packed with animal life,
will soon be almost deserted—comparatively so, at least—to be filled
up immediately as before, when favorable weather shall again recur.
They must frequently eat when here, because the first yearlings and
“holluschickie” that appear in the spring are no fatter, sleeker, or
livelier than they are at the close of the season. In other words,
their condition, physically, seems to be the same from the beginning
to the end of their appearance here during the summer and fall. It is
quite different, however, with the “see-catch.” We know how and where
it spends two to three months, because we find it on the ground at
all times, day or night, during that period.

A small flock of the young seals, one to three years old generally,
will often stray from these hauling-ground margins up and beyond
over the fresh mosses and grasses, and there sport and play one
with another just as little puppy-dogs do: but, when weary of this
gambolling, a general disposition to sleep is suddenly manifested,
and they stretch themselves out and curl up in all the positions
and all the postures that their flexible spines and ball-and-socket
joints will permit. They seem to revel in the unwonted vegetation,
and to be delighted with their own efforts in rolling down and
crushing the tall stalks of grasses and umbelliferous plants. One
will lie upon its back, hold up its hind flippers, and lazily wave
them about, while it scratches, or rather rubs, its ribs with the
fore-hands alternately, the eyes being tightly closed during the
whole performance. The sensation is evidently so luxurious that
it does not wish to have any side-issue draw off its blissful
self-attention. Another, curled up like a cat on a rug, draws its
breath, as indicated by the heaving of its flanks, quickly, but
regularly, as though in heavy sleep. Another will lie flat upon its
stomach, its hind flippers covered and concealed, while it tightly
folds its fore-feet back against its sides, just as a fish carries
its pectoral fins, and so on to no end of variety, according to the
ground and the fancy of the animals.

These “bachelor” seals are, I am sure, without exception, the most
restless animals, in the whole brute creation, which can boast of a
high organization. They frolic and lope about over the grounds for
hours without a moment’s cessation, and their sleep after this is
exceedingly short, and it is ever accompanied by nervous twitchings
and uneasy muscular movements. They seem to be fairly brimful and
overrunning with spontaneity, to be surcharged with fervid, electric
life.

Another marked feature observed among the multitudes of
“holluschickie” which have come under my personal observation and
auditory, and one very characteristic of this class, is that nothing
like ill-humor appears in all of their playing together. They never
growl or bite or show even the slightest angry feeling, but are
invariably as happy, one with another, as can be imagined. This is a
very singular trait. They lose it, however, with astonishing rapidity
when their ambition and strength develops and carries them in due
course of time to the rookery.

The pups and yearlings have an especial fondness for sporting on
rocks which are just at the water’s level and awash, so as to be
covered and uncovered as the surf rolls in. On the bare summit of
these wave-worn spots they will struggle and clamber, in groups of
a dozen or two at a time, throughout the whole day in endeavoring
to push off that one of their number which has just been fortunate
enough to secure a landing. The successor has, however, but a brief
moment of exultation in victory, for the next roller that comes
booming in, together with that pressure by its friends, turns the
table, and the game is repeated, with another seal on top. Sometimes,
as well as I could see, the same squad of “holluschickie” played for
an entire day and night, without a moment’s cessation, around such a
rock as this off “Nah Speel” rookery; still, in this observation I
may be mistaken, because those seals could not be told apart.

That graceful unconcern with which fur-seals sport safely in, among,
and under booming breakers, during the prevalence of numerous wild
gales at the islands, has afforded me many consecutive hours of
spell-bound attention to them, absorbed in watching their adroit
evolutions within the foaming surf, that seemingly every moment
would, in its fierce convulsions, dash these hardy swimmers, stunned
and lifeless, against those iron-bound foundations of the shore which
alone checked the furious rush of the waves. Not at all. Through
the wildest and most ungovernable mood of a roaring tempest and
storm-tossed waters attending its transit I never failed, on creeping
out and peering over the bluffs in such weather, to see squads of
these perfect watermen, the most expert of all amphibians, gambolling
in the seething, creamy wake of mighty rollers which constantly
broke in thunder-tones over their alert, dodging heads. The swift
succeeding waves seemed every instant to poise those seals at the
very verge of death; yet the _Callorhinus_, exulting in his skill and
strength, bade defiance to their wrath and continued his diversions.

[Illustration: Fur-seals rising to breathe and look around.

[_Characteristic pelagic attitude of the “holluschickie.”_]]

The “holluschickie” are the champion swimmers of all the seal tribe;
at least, when in the water around the islands, they do nearly every
fancy tumble and turn that can be executed. The grave old males
and their matronly companions seldom indulge in any extravagant
display, as do these youngsters, which jump out of the water like
so many dolphins, describing beautiful elliptic curves sheer above
its surface, rising three and even four feet from the sea, with the
back slightly arched, the fore flippers folded tightly against the
sides, and the hinder ones extended and pressed together straight
out behind, plumping in head first, to reappear in the same manner,
after an interval of a few seconds of submarine swimming, swift as
the flight of a bird on its course. Sea-lions and hair-seals never
leap in this manner.

All classes will invariably make these dolphin-jumps when they are
surprised or are driven into the water, curiously turning their heads
while sailing in the air, between the “rises” and “plumps,” to take
a look at the cause of their disturbance. They all swim rapidly,
with the exception of the pups, and may be said to dart under the
water with the velocity of a bird on the wing. As they swim they are
invariably submerged, running along horizontally about two or three
feet below the surface, guiding their course with the hind flippers,
as by an oar, and propelling themselves solely by the fore feet,
rising to breathe at intervals which are either very frequent or else
so wide apart that it is impossible to see the speeding animal when
he rises a second time.[124]

How long they can remain under water without taking a fresh breath
is a problem which I had not the heart to solve, by instituting a
series of experiments at the island; but I am inclined to think that,
if the truth were known in regard to their ability of going without
rising to breathe, it would be considered astounding. On this point,
however, I have no data worth discussing, but will say that in all
their swimming which I have had a chance to study, as they passed
under the water, mirrored to my eyes from the bluff above by the
whitish-colored rocks below the rookery waters at Great Eastern
rookery, I have not been able to satisfy myself how they used their
long, flexible hind-feet, other than as steering media. If these
posterior members have any perceptible motion, it is so rapid that my
eye is not quick enough to catch it; but the fore flippers, however,
can be most distinctly seen as they work in feathering forward and
sweeping flatly back, opposed to the water, with great rapidity and
energy. They are evidently the sole propulsive power of the fur-seal
in the water, as they are its main fulcrum and lever combined for
progression on land. I regret that the shy nature of the hair-seal
never allowed me to study its swimming motions, but it seems to be
a general point of agreement among authorities on the _Phocidæ_,
that all motion in water by them arises from that power which they
exert and apply with the hind-feet. So far as my observations on the
hair-seal go, I am inclined to agree with this opinion.

All their movements in water, no matter whether travelling to some
objective point or merely in sport, are quick and joyous, and nothing
is more suggestive of intense satisfaction and pure physical comfort
than is that spectacle which we can see every August a short distance
at sea from any rookery, where thousands of old males and females are
idly rolling over in the billows side by side, rubbing and scratching
with their fore and hind flippers, which are here and there stuck
up out of the water by their owners, like so many lateen-sails of
Mediterranean feluccas, or, when their hind flippers are presented,
like a “cat-o’-nine tails.” They sleep in the water a great deal,
too, more than is generally supposed, showing that they do not come
ashore to rest—very clearly not.

How fast the fur-seal can swim, when doing its best, I am naturally
unable to state. I do know that a squad of young “holluschickie”
followed the _Reliance_, in which I was sailing, down from the
latitude of the Seal Islands to Akootan Pass with perfect ease;
playing around the vessel while she was logging, straight ahead,
fourteen knots to the hour.

When the “holluschickie” are up on land they can be readily separated
into their several classes, as to age, by the color of their coats
and size, when noted: thus, as yearlings, two, three, four, and five
years old males. When the yearlings, or the first class, haul out,
they are dressed just as they were after they shed their pup-coats
and took on the second covering, during the previous year in
September and October; and now, as they come out in the spring and
summer, one year old, the males and females cannot be distinguished
apart, either by color or size, shape or action; the yearlings of
both sexes have the same steel-gray backs and white stomachs, and are
alike in behavior and weight.

Next year those yearling females, which are now trooping out with
these youthful males on the hauling-grounds, will repair to the
rookeries, but their male companions will be obliged to return alone
to this same spot.

About the 15th and 20th of every August they have become perceptibly
“stagey,” or, in other words, their hair is well under way in
shedding. All classes, with the exception of the pups, go through
this renewal at this time every year. The process requires about six
weeks between the first dropping or falling out of the old over-hair
and its full substitution by the new: this change takes place, as a
rule, between August 1st and September 28th.

The fur is shed, but it is so shed that the ability of a seal to
take to the water and stay there, and not be physically chilled or
disturbed during its period of moulting, is never impaired. The whole
surface of these extensive breeding-grounds, traversed over by me
after the seals had gone, was literally matted with shedded hair and
fur. This under-fur or pelage is, however, so fine and delicate,
and so much concealed and shaded by the coarser over-hair, that a
careless eye or a superficial observer might be pardoned in failing
to notice the fact of its dropping and renewal.

The yearling cows retain the colors of the old coat in the new, when
they shed for the first time, and so repeat them from that time on,
year after year, as they live and grow old. The young three-year-olds
and the mature cows look exactly alike, as far as color goes, when
they haul up at first and dry out on the rookeries, every June and
July.

The yearling males, however, make a radical change when they shed
for the first time, since they come out from their “staginess” in a
nearly uniform dark gray, and gray and black mixed, and lighter, with
dark ochre to whitish on the upper and under parts, respectively.
This coat, next year, when they appear as two-year-olds, shedding
for the three-year-old coat, is a very much darker gray, and so on
to the third, fourth, and fifth seasons; then after this, with age,
they begin to grow more gray and brown, with a rufous-ochre and
whitish-tipped “wig” on the shoulders. Some of the very old bulls
change in their declining years to a uniform shade, all over, of
dull-grayish ochre. The full glory and beauty of the seal’s mustache
is denied to him until he has attained his seventh or eighth year.

The male does not get his full growth and weight until the close of
his seventh year, but realizes most of it, osteologically speaking,
by the end of the fifth; and from this it may be perhaps truly
inferred that the male seals live to an average age of eighteen
or twenty years, if undisturbed in a normal condition, and that
the females exist ten or twelve seasons under the same favorable
circumstances. Their respective weights, when fully mature and fat,
in the spring, will, in regard to the male, strike an average of from
four to five hundred pounds, while the females will show a mean of
from seventy to eighty pounds.

The female does not gain a maximum size and weight until the end of
her fourth year, so far as I have observed, but she does most of
her longitudinal growing in the first two. After she has passed her
fourth and fifth years, she weighs from thirty to fifty pounds more
than she did in the days of her youthful maternity.[125] In the
table of these weights given below it will be observed that the adult
females correspond with the three years old males; also, that the
younger cows weigh frequently only seventy-five pounds, and many of
the older ones go as high as one hundred and twenty, but an average
of eighty to eighty-five pounds is the rule. Those specimens just
noted which I weighed were examples taken by me for transmission
to the Smithsonian Institution, otherwise I should not have been
permitted to make this record of their bulk, inasmuch as weighing
them means to kill them; and the law and the habit, or rather the
prejudice of the entire community up there, is unanimously in
opposition to any such proceeding, for they never touch females, and
never go near or disturb the breeding-grounds on such an errand. It
will be noticed, also, that I have no statement of the weights of any
exceedingly fat and heavy males which appear first on the breeding
grounds in the spring; those which I have referred to, in the table
above given, were very much heavier at the time of their first
appearance, in May and June, than at the moment when they were in my
hands, in July; but the cows, and the other classes, do not sustain
protracted fasting, and therefore their avoirdupois may be considered
substantially the same throughout the year.

Thus, from the fact that all the young seals and females do not vary
much in weight from the time of their first coming out in the spring,
till that of their leaving in the fall and early winter, I feel safe
in saying that they feed at irregular but not long intervals, during
this period when they are here under our observation, since they are
constantly changing from land to water and from water to land, day in
and day out. I do not think that the young males fast longer than a
week or ten days at a time, as a rule.

By the end of October and November 10th, a great mass of the
“holluschickie,” the trooping myriads of English Bay, Southwest
Point, Reef Parade, Lukannon Sands, the table-lands of Polavina, and
the mighty hosts of Novastoshnah, at St. Paul, together with the
quota of St. George, had taken their departure from these shores, and
had gone out to sea, feeding upon the receding schools of fish that
were now retiring to the deeper waters of the North Pacific, where,
in that vast expanse, over which rolls an unbroken billow, five
thousand miles from Japan to Oregon, they spend the winter and the
early spring, until they reappear and break up, with their exuberant
life, the dreary winter-isolation of the land which gave them birth.

A few stragglers remain, however, as late as the snow and ice will
permit them to, in and after December; then they are down by the
water’s edge, and haul up entirely on the rocky beaches, deserting
the sand altogether; but the first snow that falls in October makes
them very uneasy, and a large hauling-ground will be so disturbed by
a rainy day and night that its hundreds of thousands of occupants
fairly deserted it. The fur-seal cannot bear, and will not endure,
the spattering of sand into its eyes, which usually accompanies
the driving of a rain-storm; they take to the water, to reappear,
however, when that nuisance shall be abated.

The weather in which the fur-seal delights is cool, moist, foggy,
and thick enough to keep the sun always obscured, so as to cast no
shadows. Such weather, which is the normal weather of St. Paul and
St. George, continued for a few weeks in June and July, brings up
from the sea millions of fur-seals. But, as I have before said, a
little sunshine, which raises the temperature as high as 50° to 55°
Fahr., will send them back from the hauling-grounds almost as quickly
as they came. Fortunately, these warm, sunny days on the Pribylov
Islands are so rare that the seals certainly can have no ground of
complaint, even if we may presume they have any at all. Some curious
facts in regard to their selection of certain localities on these
islands, and their abandonment of others, are now on record.

I looked everywhere and constantly, when threading my way over acres
of ground which were fairly covered with seal-pups and older ones,
for specimens that presented some abnormity, _i.e._, monstrosities,
albinos, and the like, such as I have seen in our great herds of
stock; but I was, with one or two exceptions, unable to note anything
of the kind. I have never seen any malformations or “monsters” among
the pups and other classes of the fur-seals, nor have the natives
recorded anything of the kind, so far as I could ascertain from them.
I saw only three albino pups among the multitudes on St. Paul, and
none on St. George. They did not differ, in any respect, from the
normal pups in size and shape. Their hair, for the first coat, was
a dull ochre all over; the fur whitish, changing to a rich brown,
the normal hue; the flippers and muzzle were a pinkish flesh-tone in
color, and the iris of the eye sky-blue. After they shed, during the
following year, they have a dirty, yellowish-white color, which makes
them exceedingly conspicuous when mixed in among a vast majority of
black pups, gray yearlings, and “holluschickie” of their kind.

Undoubtedly some abnormal birth-shapes must make their appearance
occasionally; but at no time while I was there, searching keenly for
any such manifestation of malformation on the rookeries, did I see a
single example. The morphological symmetry of the fur-seal is one of
the most salient of its characteristics, viewed as it rallies here in
such vast numbers; but the osteological differentiation and asymmetry
of this animal is equally surprising.

It is perfectly plain that a large percentage of this immense number
of seals must die every year from natural limitation of life. They do
not die on these islands; that much I am certain of. Not one dying a
natural death could I find or hear of on the grounds. They evidently
lose their lives at sea, preferring to sink with the _rigor mortis_
into that cold, blue depth of the great Pacific, or beneath the green
waves of Bering Sea, rather than to encumber and disfigure their
summer haunts on the Pribylov Islands.

Prior to the year 1835, no native on the islands seemed to have any
direct knowledge, or was even acquainted with a legendary tradition,
in relation to the seals, concerning their area and distribution on
the land here; but they all chimed in after that date with great
unanimity, saying that the winter preceding this season (1835-36) was
one of frightful severity; that many of their ancestors who had lived
on these islands in large barraboras just back of the Black Bluffs,
near the present village, and at Polavina, then perished miserably.

They say that the cold continued far into the summer; that immense
masses of clearer and stronger ice-floes than had ever been known to
the waters about the islands, or were ever seen since, were brought
down and shoved high up on to all the rookery margins, forming an icy
wall completely around the island, and loomed twenty to thirty feet
above the surf. They further state that this frigid cordon did not
melt or in any way disappear until the middle or end of August, 1836.

They affirm that for this reason the fur-seals, when they attempted
to land, according to their habit and their necessity, during June
and July, were unable to do so in any considerable numbers. The
females were compelled to bring forth their young in the water and
at the wet, storm-beaten surf-margins, which caused multitudes of
mothers and all of the young to perish. In short, the result was a
virtual annihilation of the breeding-seals. Hence, at the following
season, only a spectral, a shadowy imitation of former multitudes
could be observed upon the seal-grounds of St. Paul and St. George.

On the Lagoon rookery, now opposite the village of St. Paul, there
were then only two males, with a number of cows. At Nah Speel,
close by and right under the village, there were then only some
two thousand. This the natives know, because they counted them. On
Zapadnie there were about one thousand cows, bulls, and pups; at
Southwest Point there were none. Two small rookeries were then on
the north shore of St. Paul, near a place called “Maroonitch;” and
there were seven small rookeries running round Northeast Point, but
on all of these there were only fifteen hundred males, females, and
young; and this number includes the “holluschickie,” which, in those
days, lay in among the breeding-seals, there being so few old males
that they were gladly permitted to do so. On Polavina there were
then about five hundred cows, bulls, pups, and “holluschickie;” on
Lukannon and Keetavie, about three hundred; but on Keetavie there
were only ten bulls and so few young males lying in altogether that
these old natives, as they told me, took no note of them on the
rookeries just cited. On the Reef, and Gorbatch, were about one
thousand only. In this number last mentioned some eight hundred
“holluschickie” may be included, which laid with the breeding-seals.
There were only twenty bulls on Gorbatch, and about ten old males on
the Reef.

Such, briefly and succinctly, is the sum and the substance of all
information which I could gather prior to 1835-36; and while I do not
entirely credit these statements, yet the earnest, straightforward
agreement of the natives has impressed me so that I narrate it here.
It certainly seems as though this enumeration of the old Aleutes was
painfully short.

Then, again, with regard to the probable truth of the foregoing
statement of the natives, perhaps I should call attention to the fact
that the entire sum of seal-life in 1836, as given by them, is just
four thousand one hundred, of all classes, distributed as I have
indicated above. Now, on turning to Bishop Veniaminov, by whom was
published the only statement of any kind in regard to the killing on
these islands from 1817 to 1837 (the year when he finished his work),
I find that he makes a record of slaughter of seals in the year 1836
of four thousand and fifty-two, which were killed and taken for their
skins; but if the natives’ statements are right, then only fifty
seals were left on the island for 1837, in which year, however,
four thousand two hundred and twenty were again killed, according to
the bishop’s table, and according to which there was also a steady
increase in the size of this return from that date along up to 1850,
when the Russians governed their catch by the market alone, always
having more seals than they knew what to do with.

Again, in this connection, the natives say that until 1847 the
practice on these islands was to kill indiscriminately both females
and males for skins; but after this year, 1847, that strict respect
now paid to the breeding-seals, and exemption of all females, was
enforced for the first time, and has continued up to date.

In attempting to form an approximate conception of what the seals
were or might have been in those early days, as they spread
themselves over the hauling and breeding grounds of these remarkable
islands, I have been thrown entirely upon the vague statements given
to me by the natives and one or two of the first American pioneers
in Alaska. The only Russian record which touches ever so lightly
upon the subject[126] contains a remarkable statement which is,
in the light of my surveys, simply ridiculous now—that is, that
the number of fur-seals on St. George during the first years of
Russian occupation was nearly as great as that on St. Paul. A most
superficial examination of the geological character portrayed on the
accompanying maps of those two islands will satisfy any unprejudiced
mind as to the total error of such a statement. Why, a mere tithe
only of the multitudes which repair to St. Paul in perfect comfort
over the sixteen or twenty miles of splendid landing ground found
thereon could visit St. George, when all of the coast-line fit for
their reception on this island is a scant two and a half miles; but,
for that matter, there was at the time of my arrival and in the
beginning of my investigation a score of equally wild and incredible
legends afloat in regard to the rookeries of St. Paul and St. George.
Finding, therefore, that the whole work must be undertaken _de novo_,
I went about it without further delay.

Thus it will be seen that there is, frankly stated, nothing that
serves as a guide to a fair or even an approximate estimate as to the
numbers of the fur-seals on these two islands, prior to the result of
my labor.

At the close of my investigation during the first season of my work
on the ground in 1872 the fact became evident that the breeding
seals obeyed implicitly an imperative and instinctive natural law
of distribution—a law recognized by each and every seal upon the
rookeries prompted by a fine consciousness of necessity to its own
well-being. The breeding-grounds occupied by them were, therefore,
invariably covered by the seals in exact ratio, greater or less, as
the area upon which they rested was larger or smaller. They always
covered the ground evenly, never crowding in at one place here to
scatter out there. The seals lie just as thickly together where
the rookery is boundless in its eligible area to their rear and
unoccupied by them as they do in the little strips which are abruptly
cut off and narrowed by rocky walls behind. For instance, on a rod
of ground under the face of bluffs which hem it in to the land from
the sea there are just as many seals, no more and no less, as will
be found on any other rod of rookery ground throughout the whole
list, great and small—always exactly so many seals, under any and all
circumstances, to a given area of breeding-ground. There are just as
many cows, bulls, and pups on a square rod at Nah Speel, near the
village, where in 1874, all told, there were only seven or eight
thousand, as there are on any square rod at Northeast Point, where a
million of them congregate.

This fact being determined, it is evident that just in proportion
as the breeding-grounds of the fur-seal on these islands expand or
contract in area from their present dimensions, so the seals will
increase or diminish in number.

That discovery at the close of the season of 1872 of this law of
distribution gave me at once the clue I was searching for, in order
to take steps by which I could arrive at a sound conclusion as to the
entire number of seals herding on the Pribylov group.

I noticed, and time has confirmed my observation, that the period for
taking these boundaries of the rookeries, so as to show this exact
margin of expansion at the week of its greatest volume, or when they
are as full as they are to be for the season, is between July 10th
and 20th of every year—not a day earlier and not many days later.
After July 20th the regular system of compact, even organization,
breaks up. The seals then scatter out in pods or clusters, the pups
leading the way, straying far back: the same number then instantly
cover twice and thrice as much ground as they did the day or week
before, when they laid in solid masses and were marshalled on the
rookery ground proper.

There is no more difficulty in surveying these seal-margins during
this week or ten days in July than there is in drawing sights along
and around the curbs of a stone fence surrounding a field. The
breeding-seals remain perfectly quiet under your eyes all over the
rookery and almost within your touch, everywhere on the outside of
their territory that you may stand or walk. The margins of massed
life, which are indicated on the topographical surveys of these
breeding-grounds of St. Paul and St. George, are as clean cut and as
well defined against the soil and vegetation as is the shading on my
maps. There is not the least difficulty in making such surveys, and
in making them correctly.

Without following such a system of enumeration, persons may look over
these swarming myriads between Southwest Point and Novastoshnah,
guessing vaguely and wildly, at any figure from one million up to
ten or twelve millions, as has been done repeatedly. How few people
know what a million really is! It is very easy to talk of a million,
but it is a tedious task to count it off: this makes a statement as
to “millions” decidedly more conservative when the labor has been
accomplished. After a thorough survey of all these great areas of
reproduction the following presentation of the actual number of seals
massed upon St. Paul is a fair one:

  “Reef rookery” has 4,016 feet of sea-margin, with 150 feet
    of average depth, making ground for                         301,000

  “Gorbotch rookery” has 3,660 feet of sea-margin, with 100
    feet of average depth, making ground for                    183,000

  “Lagoon rookery” has 750 feet of sea-margin, with 100 feet
    of average depth, making ground for                          37,000

  “Nah Speel rookery” has 400 feet of sea-margin, with 40
    feet of average depth, making ground for                      8,000

  “Lukannon rookery” has 2,270 feet of sea-margin, with 150
    feet of average depth, making ground for                    170,000

  “Keetavie rookery” has 2,200 feet of sea-margin, with 150
    feet of average depth, making ground for                    165,000

  “Tolstoi rookery” has 3,000 feet of sea-margin, with 150
    feet of average depth, making ground for                    225,000

  “Zapadnie rookery” has 5,880 feet of sea-margin, with 150
    feet of average depth, making ground for                    441,000

  “Polavina rookery” has 4,000 feet of sea-margin, with 150
    feet of average depth, making ground for                    300,000

  “Novastoshnah, or Northeast Point” has 15,840 feet of
    sea-margin, with 150 feet of average depth, making
    ground for                                                1,200,000
                                                              —————————
    A grand total of breeding-seals and young for St. Paul
        Island in 1874 of                                     3,030,000

The rookeries of St. George are designated and measured as below:

  “Zapadnie rookery” has 600 feet of sea-margin, with 60
    feet of average depth, making ground for                     18,000

  “Starry Arteel rookery” has 500 feet of sea-margin, with
    125 feet of average depth, making ground for                 30,420

  “North rookery” has 750 feet of sea-margin, with 150 feet
    of average depth, and 2,000 feet of sea-margin, with 25
    feet of average depth, making ground in all for              77,000

  “Little Eastern rookery” has 750 feet of sea-margin, with
    40 feet of average depth, making ground for                  13,000

  “Great Eastern rookery” has 900 feet of sea-margin, with
    60 feet of average depth, making ground for                  25,000
                                                                ———————
    A grand total of the seal-life for St. George Island,
        breeding-seals and young, of                            163,420
                                                              —————————
    Grand sum total for the Pribylov Islands (season of
        1873), breeding-seals and young                       3,193,420

The figures thus given show a grand massing of 3,193,420
breeding-seals and their young. This enormous aggregate is entirely
exclusive of the great numbers of the non-breeding-seals that, as we
have pointed out, are never permitted to come up on those grounds
which have been surveyed and epitomized by the table just exhibited.
That class of seals, the “holluschickie,” in general terms (all
males, and those to which the killing is confined), come up on the
land and sea-beaches between the rookeries, in immense straggling
droves, going to and from the sea at irregular intervals, from the
beginning to the closing of an entire season. The method of the
“holluschickie” on these hauling-grounds is not systematic—it is
not distinct, like the manner and law prescribed and obeyed by the
breeding-seals—therefore it is impossible to arrive at a definite
enumeration, and my estimate for them is purely a matter of my
individual judgment. I think they may be safely rated at 1,500,000;
thus, we have the wonderful number of 4,700,000 fur-seals assembled
every summer on the rocky rookeries and sandy hauling-grounds of the
Pribylov Islands!

No language can express adequately your sensations when you first
stroll over the outskirts of any one of those great breeding grounds
of the fur-seal on St. Paul’s Island. There is no impression on my
mind more fixed than is the one stamped thereon during the afternoon
of a July day when I walked around the inner margins of that immense
rookery at Northeast Point—indeed, while I pause to think of this
subject, I am fairly rendered dumb by the vivid spectacle which rises
promptly to my view—I am conscious of my inability to render that
magnificent animal-show justice in definition. It is a vast camp of
parading squadrons which file and deploy over slopes from the summit
of a lofty hill a mile down to where it ends on the south shore—a
long mile, smooth and gradual from the sea to that hill-top; the
parade-ground lying between is also nearly three-quarters of a mile
in width, sheer and unbroken. Now, upon that area before my eyes,
this day and date of which I have spoken, were the forms of not less
than three-fourths of a million seals—pause a moment—think of the
number—three-fourths of a million seals, moving in one solid mass
from sleep to frolicsome gambols, backward, forward, over, around,
changing and interchanging their heavy squadrons, until the whole
mind is so confused and charmed by the vastness of mighty hosts
that it refuses to analyze any further. Then, too, I remember that
the day was one of exceeding beauty for that region—it was a swift
alternation overhead of those characteristic rain-fogs, between the
succession of which the sun breaks out with transcendent brilliancy
through misty halos about it. This parade-field reflected the light
like a mirror, and the seals, when they broke apart here and there
for a moment, just enough to show its surface, seemed as though they
walked upon the water. What a scene to put upon canvas—that amphibian
host involved in those alternate rainbow lights and blue-gray shadows
of the fog!

[Illustration: Survey Showing the Immense Breeding Area of
Novastoshnah.

[_The shaded belt is that ground wholly covered by Fur-Seal
Rookeries._]]

While Novastoshnah is the largest, yet in some respects I consider
Tolstoi, with its bluffs and its long sweep which takes in the sands
of English Bay, to be the most picturesque, though it be not the most
impressive rookery—especially when that parade-ground belonging to it
is reached by the climbing seals.

From Tolstoi at this point, circling around three miles to Zapadnie,
is the broad sand-beach of English Bay, upon which and back over
its gently rising flats are the great hauling-grounds of the
“holluschickie,” which I have indicated on the general map, and to
which I made reference in a previous section of this chapter. Gazing
at these myriads of “bachelor-seals” spread out in their restless
hundreds and hundreds of thousands upon this ground, one feels the
utter impotency of verbal description, and reluctantly shuts his note
and sketch books to view it with renewed fascination and perfect
helplessness.

[Illustration: LAGOON ROOKERY

Survey Showing the Close Contact of Village, Slaughter-Field and
Breeding Grounds.]

Looking from the village across the cove and down upon the lagoon,
still another strange contradiction appears—at least it seems a
natural contradiction to one’s usual ideas. Here we see the Lagoon
rookery, a reach of ground upon which some twenty-five or thirty
thousand breeding-seals come out regularly every year during the
appointed time, and go through their whole elaborate system of
reproduction, without showing the slightest concern for or attention
to the scene directly east of them and across that shallow slough
not eighty feet in width. There are the great slaughtering fields of
St. Paul Island; there are the sand-flats where every seal has been
slaughtered for years upon years back, for its skin; and even as we
take this note, forty men are standing there knocking down a drove
of two or three thousand “holluschickie” for their day’s work, and
as they labor, the whacking of their clubs and the sounds of their
voices must be as plain to those breeding-seals, which are not one
hundred feet from them, as it is to us, a quarter of a mile distant!
In addition to this enumeration of disturbances, well calculated to
amaze, and dismay, and drive off every seal within its influence, are
the decaying bodies of the last year’s catch—seventy-five thousand
or eighty-five thousand unburied carcasses—that are sloughing away
into the sand which, two or three seasons from now, nature will, in
its infinite charity, cover with the greenest of all green grasses.
The whitened bones and grinning skulls of over three million seals
have bleached out on that slaughtering-spot, and are buried below its
surface.

Directly under the north face of the village hill, where it falls to
the narrow flat between its feet and the cove, the natives have sunk
a well. It was excavated in 1857, they say, and subsequently deepened
to its present condition in 1868. It is twelve feet deep, and the
diggers said that they found bones of the sea-lion and fur-seal
thickly distributed every foot down, from top to bottom. How much
lower these osteological remains of prehistoric pinnipeds can be
found no one knows as yet. The water here, on that account, has never
been fit to drink, or even to cook with, but, being soft, was and is
used by the natives for washing clothes, etc. Most likely, it records
a spot upon which the Russians, during the heyday of their early
occupation, drove the unhappy visitors of Nah Speel to slaughter.
There is no Golgotha known to man elsewhere in the world as extensive
as this one of St. Paul.

Yet, the natives say that this Lagoon rookery is a new feature in
the distribution of the seals; that when the people first came here
and located a part of the present village, in 1824 up to 1847, there
never had been a breeding-seal on that Lagoon rookery of to-day; so
they have hauled up here from a small beginning, not very long ago,
until they have attained their present numerical expansion, in spite
of all these exhibitions of butchery of their kind, executed right
under their eyes, and in full knowledge of their nostrils, while the
groans and low moanings of their stricken species, stretched out
beneath the clubs of the sealers, must have been and are far plainer
in their ears than they are in our own!

Still they come—they multiply, and they increase—knowing so well
that they belong to a class which intelligent men never did molest.
To-day at least they know it, or they would not submit to these
manifestations which we have just cited, so close to their knowledge.

The Lagoon rookery, however, never can be a large one, on account of
the very nature of this ground selected by the seals; it is a bar
simply pushed up beyond the surf-wash of boulders, water-worn and
rounded, which has almost enclosed and cut away the Lagoon from its
parent sea. In my opinion, the time is not far distant when that
estuary will be another inland lake of St. Paul, walled out from salt
water and freshened by rain and melting snow, as are the other pools,
lakes, and lakelets on the island.

Zapadnie, in itself, is something like the Reef plateau on its
eastern face, for it slopes up gradually and gently to the
parade-plateau above—a parade-ground not so smooth, however, being
very rough and rocky, but which the seals enjoy. Just around the
point, a low strip of rocky bar and beach connects it with the
ridge-walls of Southwest Point, a very small breeding rookery, so
small that it is not worthy of a survey, is located here. I think,
probably, on account of the nature of the ground, that it will never
hold its own, and is more than likely abandoned by this time.

One of the prehistoric villages, the village of Pribylov’s time, was
established here between that point and the cemetery ridge, on which
the northern wing of Zapadnie rests. An old burying-ground, with its
characteristic Russian crosses and faded pictures of the saints, is
plainly marked on the ridge. It was at this little bight of sandy
landing that Pribylov’s men first came ashore and took possession of
the island, while others in the same season proceeded to Northeast
Point and to the north shore to establish settlements of their own
order. When the indiscriminate sealing of 1868 was in progress, one
of the parties lived here, and a salt-house which was then erected
by them still stands. It is in a very fair state of preservation,
although it has never been occupied since, except by the natives who
come over here from the village in the summer to pick those berries
of the _Empetrum_ and _Rubus_, which abound in the greatest profusion
around the rough and rocky flats that environ a little lake adjacent.
The young people of St. Paul are very fond of this berry-festival,
so-called among themselves, and they stay there every August, camping
out, a week or ten days at a time, before returning to their homes in
the village.

So abundant have been the seals that no driving of animals from
the parade-grounds of Zapadnie has ever been made since 1869. It is
easily reached, however, if it were desirable to do so.

Polavina has also been an old settlement site, and, for the reason
cited at Zapadnie, no “holluschickie” have been driven from this
point since 1872, though it is one of the easiest worked. It was in
the Russian times a pet sealing-ground with them. The remains of an
old village have nearly all been buried in the sand near the lake,
and there is really no mark of its early habitation, unless it be
the singular effect of a human graveyard being dug out and despoiled
by the attrition of seal bodies and flippers. The old cemetery just
above and to the right of the barrabkie, near the little lake, was
originally established, so the natives told me, far away from the
hauling of the “holluschickie.” It was, when I saw it in 1876, in a
melancholy state of ruin. A thousand young seals (at least) moved off
from its surface as I came up, and they had actually trampled out
many sandy graves, rolling the bones and skulls of Aleutian ancestry
in every direction. Beyond this ancient demesne which the natives
established long ago, as a house of refuge during the winter when
they were trapping foxes, looking to the west over the lake, is a
large expanse of low, flat swale and tundra, which is terminated by
the rocky ridge of Kamminista. Every foot of it has been placed there
subsequent to the original elevation of the island by direct action
of the sea, beyond question. It is covered with a thick growth of the
rankest sphagnum, which quakes and trembles like a bog under one’s
feet, but over which the most beautiful mosses ever and anon crop
out, including that characteristic floral display before referred to
in speaking of the island. Most of the way from the village up to
the Northeast Point, as will be seen by a cursory glance at the map,
with the exception of this bluff of Polavina and the terraced table
setting back from its face to Polavina Sopka, the whole island is
slightly elevated above the level of the sea, and its coast-line is
lying just above and beyond the reach of the surf, where great ridges
of sand have been piled up by the wind, capped with sheafs and tufts
of rank-growing _Elymus_.

Near the village, at that little bight mapped as Zoltoi, is a famous
rendezvous for the “holluschickie,” and from this place during the
season the natives make regular drives, having only to step out
from their houses in the morning and walk a few rods to find their
fur-bearing quarry.

Passing over Zoltoi on our way down to the point, we quickly come
to a basaltic ridge or back-bone over which the sand has been rifted
by strong winds, and which supports a rank and luxuriant growth of
the _Elymus_ and other grasses, with beautiful flowers. A few hundred
feet farther along our course brings us in full view, as we look to
the south, of one of the most entrancing spectacles that seals afford
to man. We glance below upon and survey a full sweep of the Reef
rookery along a grand promenade ground, which slopes gently to the
eastward and trends southward down to the water from its abrupt walls
bordering on the sea to the west; it is a parade plateau as smooth
as the floor of a ball-room, 2,000 feet in length, from 500 to 1,000
feet in width, over which multitudes of “holluschickie” are filing in
long strings or deploying in vast platoons, hundreds abreast, in an
unceasing march and countermarch. The breath that rises into the cold
air from a hundred thousand hot throats hangs like clouds of white
steam in the gray fog itself; indeed, it may be said to be a seal-fog
peculiar to such a spot, while the din, the roar arising over all,
defies adequate description.

We notice to our right and to our left an immense solid mass of the
breeding-seals at Gorbotch, and another stretching and trending
nearly a mile from our feet, far around to the Reef Point below and
opposite that parade-ground, with here and there a neutral passage
left open for the “holluschickie” to go down and come up from the
waves.

The adaptation of this ground of the Reef rookery to the requirements
of the seal is perfect. It so lies that it falls gently from its high
Zoltoi Bay margin, on the west, to the sea on the east, and upon
its broad expanse not a solitary puddle of mud-spotting is to be
seen, though everything is reeking with moisture, and the fog even
dissolves into rain as we view the scene. Every trace of vegetation
upon this parade has been obliterated. A few tufts of grass, capping
the summits of those rocky hillocks, indicated on the eastern and
middle slope, are the only signs of botanical life which the seals
have suffered to remain.

A small rock, “Seevitchie Kammin,” five or six hundred feet right
to the southward and out at sea, is also covered with the black
and yellow forms of fur-seals and sea-lions. It is environed by
shoal-reefs, rough and kelp-grown, which navigators prudently avoid.

At Lukannon and Ketavie there is a joint blending of two large
breeding-grounds, their continuity broken by a short reach of
sea-wall right under and at the eastern foot of Lukannon Hill. The
appearance of these rookeries is, like all the others, peculiar to
themselves. There is a rounded, bulging hill, at the foot of Lukannon
Bay, which rises perhaps one hundred and sixty or one hundred and
seventy feet from the sea, abruptly at the point, but swelling out
gently up from the sand-dunes in Lukannon Bay to its summit at
the northwest and south. The big rookery rests upon its northern
slope. Here is a beautiful adaptation of the finest drainage, with a
profusion of those rocky nodules scattered everywhere over it, upon
which the female seals so delight in resting.

Standing on the bald summit of Lukannon Hill, we turn to the south,
and look over Ketavie[127] Point, where another large aggregate of
rookery life rests under our eye. The hill falls away into a series
of faintly terraced tables, which drop down to a flat that again
abruptly descends to the sea at Ketavie Point. Between us and Ketavie
rookery is the parade-ground of Lukannon,—a sight almost as grand
as is that on the Reef which we have feebly attempted to portray.
The sand-dunes to the west and to the north are covered with the
most luxuriant grass, abruptly emarginated by sharp abrasions of
the hauling-seals: this is shown very clearly on my general map.
Ketavie Point is a solid basaltic shelf. Lukannon Hill, the summit
of it, is composed of volcanic tufa and cement, with irregular cubes
and fragments of pure basalt scattered all over its flipper-worn
slopes. This is that place, down along the flat shoals of Lukannon
Bay, where the sand-dunes are most characteristic, as they rise in
their wind-whirled forms just above surf-wash. Here also is where the
natives come from the village during the early mornings of the season
for driving, to get any number of “holluschickie” required.

It is a beautiful sight, glancing from the summit of this great
rookery hill, up to the north over that low reach of the coast to
Tonkie Mees, where the waves seem to roll in with crests which
rise in unbroken ridges for a mile in length each, ere they break
so grandly and uniformly on the beach. In these rollers the
“holluschickie” are playing like sea-birds, seeming to sport the most
joyously at the very moment when a heavy billow breaks and falls upon
them.

The precipitous shore-line of St. George is enough in itself to
explain the small number of seals found there, when contrasted with
the swarming myriads of her more favorably adapted sister island.
Nevertheless that Muscovitic sailor, Pribylov, not knowing then
of the existence of St. Paul, was as well satisfied as if he had
possessed the boundless universe when he first found it. As in the
case of St. Paul Island, I have been unable to learn much here in
regard to the early status of the rookeries, none of the natives
having any real information. The drift of their sentiment goes to
show that there never was a great assemblage of fur-seals on St.
George—in fact, never as many as there are to-day, insignificant
as the exhibit is, compared with that of St. Paul. They say that
at first the sea-lions owned this island, and that the Russians,
becoming cognizant of the fact, made a regular business of driving
off the “seevitchie,” in order that fur-seals might be encouraged to
land. Touching this statement, with my experience on St. Paul, where
there is no conflict at all between the fifteen or twenty thousand
sea-lions which breed around on the outer edge of the seal rookeries
there and at Southwest Point, I cannot agree to the St. George
legend. I am inclined to believe, however—indeed, it is more than
probable—that there were a great many more sea-lions on and about St.
George before it was occupied by men—a hundredfold greater, perhaps,
than now, because a sea-lion is an exceedingly timid, cowardly
creature when it is in the proximity of man, and will always desert
any resting-place where it is constantly brought into contact with
him.[128]

The rookeries on this island, being so much less in volume, are not
especially noted—still, one of them, “Starry Arteel,” is unique
indeed, lying as it does in a bold sweep from the sea up a very
steep slope to a point where the bluffs bordering it seaward are
over four hundred feet in vertical declination. The seals crowd
just as closely to the edge of this precipice along its entire face
as they do at the tide-level. It is a very strange sight for that
visitor who may sail under these bluffs with a boat in fair weather
for landing, and, as you walk the beach, above which the cliff-wall
frowns a sheer five hundred feet, there, directly over your head,
the craning necks and twisting forms of restless seals, appear as
if ready to launch out and fall below, ever and anon, as you glance
upward, so closely and boldly do they press to the very edge of
the precipice. I have been repeatedly astonished at an amazing
power possessed by the fur-seal of resistance to shocks which would
certainly kill any other animal. To explain clearly, the reader will
observe by reference to the maps that there are a great many cliffy
places between the rookeries on the shore-lines of the islands. Some
of these bluffs are more than one hundred feet in abrupt elevation
above the surf and rocks awash below. Frequently “holluschickie,” in
ones, or twos, or threes, will stray far away back from the great
masses of their kind and fall asleep in the thick grass and herbage
which covers these mural reaches. Sometimes they will repose and
rest very close to the edge, and then as you come tramping along you
discover and startle them and yourself alike. They, blinded by their
first transports of alarm, leap promptly over the brink, snorting,
coughing, and spitting as they go. Curiously peering after them and
looking down upon the rocks, fifty to one hundred feet below, instead
of seeing their stunned and motionless bodies, you will invariably
catch sight of them rapidly scrambling into the water, and, when in
it, swimming off like arrows from the bow. Three “holluschickie” were
thus inadvertently surprised by me on the edge of the west face to
Otter Island. They plunged over from an elevation there not less than
two hundred feet in sheer descent, and I distinctly saw them fall;
in scrambling, whirling evolutions, down, thumping upon the rocky
shingle beneath, from which they bounded as they struck, like so many
rubber balls. Two of them never moved after the rebound ceased; but
the third one reached the water and swam away swift as a bird on the
wing.

While they seem to escape without bodily injury incident to such
hard falls as ensue from dropping fifty or sixty feet upon pebbly
beaches and rough boulders below, and even greater elevations, yet
I am inclined to think that some internal injuries are necessarily
sustained in almost every case, which soon develop and cause death.
The excitement and the vitality of the seal at the moment of the
terrific shock are able to sustain and conceal a real injury for the
time being.

Driving the “holluschickie” on St. George, owing to the relative
scantiness of hauling area for those animals there, and consequent
small numbers found upon these grounds at any one time, is a very
arduous series of daily exercises on the part of the natives who
attend to it. Glancing at the map, the marked considerable distance
over an exceedingly rough road will be noticed between Zapadnie and
the village, yet in 1872 eleven different drives across the island of
four hundred to five hundred seals each were made in the short four
weeks of that season.

The peculiarly rough character to this trail is given by large,
loose, sharp-edged basaltic boulders which are strewn thickly over
all those lower levels that bridge the island between the high bluffs
at Starry Arteel and the slopes of Ahluckeyak Hill. The summits of
the two broader, higher plateaux, east and west respectively, are
comparatively smooth and easy to travel over, and so is the sea-level
flat at Zapadnie itself. On the map of St. George a number of very
small ponds will be noticed. They are the fresh-water reservoirs
of the island. The two largest of these are near the summit of
this rough divide. The seal-trail from Zapadnie to the village
runs just west of them and comes out on the north shore, a little
to the eastward of the hauling-grounds of Starry Arteel, where it
forks and unites with that path. A direct line between the village
and Zapadnie, though nearly a mile shorter on the chart, is equal
to five miles more of distance by reason of its superlative rocky
inequalities.

One question is always sure to be asked in this connection. The
query is: “At the present rate of killing seals it will not be
long ere they are exterminated—how much longer will they last?” My
answer is now as it was then: “Provided matters are conducted on the
Seal Islands in the future as they are to-day, 100,000 male seals
under the age of five years and over one may be safely taken every
year from the Pribylov Islands without the slightest injury to the
regular birth-rate or natural increase thereon; provided also that
the fur-seals are not visited by plagues or by pests, or any such
abnormal cause for their destruction, which might be beyond the
control of men, and to which, like any other great body of animal
life, they must ever be subjected to the danger of.”[129] From my
calculations given above it will be seen that 1,000,000 pups or
young seals, in round numbers, are born upon these islands of the
Pribylov group every year. Of this million, one-half are males.
These 500,000 young males, before they leave the islands for sea
during October and November, and when they are between five or six
months old, fat, and hardy, have suffered but a trifling loss in
numbers—say one per cent.—while on and about the islands of their
birth, surrounding which and upon which they have no enemies whatever
to speak of; but after they get well down to the Pacific, spread out
over an immense area of watery highways in quest of piscatorial food,
they form the most helpless of their kind to resist or elude the
murderous teeth and carnivorous attacks of basking sharks[130] and
killer-whales.[131] By these agencies, during their absence from the
islands until their reappearance in the following year, and in July,
they are so perceptibly diminished in number that I do not think,
fairly considered, more than one-half of the legion which left the
ground of their birth last October come up the next July to these
favorite landing-places—that is, only 250,000 of them return out
of the 500,000 born last year. The same statement in every respect
applies to the going and the coming of the 500,000 female pups, which
are identical in size, shape, and behavior.

As yearlings, however, these 250,000 survivors of last year’s birth
have become strong, lithe, and active swimmers, and when they again
leave the hauling grounds, as before, in the fall, they are fully as
able as are the older class to take care of themselves, and when they
reappear next year, at least 225,000 of them safely return in the
second season after birth. From this on I believe that they live out
their natural lives of fifteen to twenty years each, the death-rate
now caused by the visitation of marine enemies affecting them in the
aggregate but slightly. And, again, the same will hold good touching
the females, the average natural life of which, however, I take to be
only nine or ten years each.

Out of these two hundred and twenty-five thousand young males we
are required to save only one-fifteenth of their number to pass
over to the breeding-grounds, and meet there the two hundred and
twenty-five thousand young females; in other words, the polygamous
habit of this animal is such that, by its own volition, I do not
think that more than one male annually out of fifteen born is needed
on the breeding-grounds in the future; but in my calculations, to be
within the margin and to make sure that I save two-year-old males
enough every season, I will more than double this proportion, and
set aside every fifth one of the young males in question. That will
leave one hundred and eighty thousand seals, in good condition, that
can be safely killed every year, without the slightest injury to
the perpetuation of the stock itself forever in all of its original
integrity.

In the above showing I have put a very extreme estimate upon that
loss sustained at sea by the pup-seals—too large, I am morally
certain; but, in attempting to draw this line safely, I wish to place
the matter in the very worst light in which it can be put, and to
give the seals the full benefit of every doubt. Surely I have clearly
presented the case, and certainly no one will question the premises
after they have studied the habit and disposition of the rookeries;
hence, it is a positive and tenable statement, that no danger of
the slightest appreciable degree of injury to the interests of the
Government on the Seal Islands of Alaska exists, as long as the
present law protecting it, and the management executing it, continues.

These fur-seals of the Pribylov group, after leaving the islands in
the autumn and early winter, do not visit land again until the time
of their return, in the following spring and early summer, to these
same rookery and hauling-grounds, unless they touch, as they are
navigating their lengthened journey back, at the Russian Islands,
Copper and Bering, seven hundred miles to the westward of the
Pribylov group. They leave our islands by independent squads, each
one looking out for itself. Apparently all turn by common consent
to the south, disappearing toward the horizon, and are soon lost in
the vast expanse below, where they spread themselves over the entire
Pacific as far south as the 48th and even the 47th parallels of
north latitude: within this immense area between Japan and Oregon,
doubtless, many extensive submarine fishing-shoals and banks are
known to them; at least, it is definitely understood that Bering
Sea does not contain them long when they depart from the breeding
rookeries and the hauling-grounds therein. While it is carried in
mind that they sleep and rest in the water with soundness and with
the greatest comfort on its surface, and that even when around the
land, during the summer, they frequently put off from the beaches to
take a bath and a quiet snooze just beyond the surf, we can readily
agree that it is no inconvenience whatever, when the reproductive
functions have been discharged, and their coats renewed, for them
to stay the balance of the time in their most congenial element—the
briny deep.

That these animals are preyed upon extensively by killer-whales
(_Orca gladiator_), in especial, and by sharks, and probably other
submarine foes now unknown, is at once evident; for, were they not
held in check by some such cause, they would, as they exist to-day
on St. Paul, quickly multiply, by arithmetical progression, to so
great an extent that the island, nay, Bering Sea itself, could not
contain them. The present annual killing of one hundred thousand out
of a yearly total of over a million males does not, in an appreciable
degree, diminish the seal-life, or interfere in the slightest with
its regular, sure perpetuation on the breeding-grounds every year.
We may, therefore, properly look upon this aggregate of four and
five millions of fur-seals, as we see them every season on these
Pribylov Islands, as that maximum limit of increase assigned to them
by natural law. The great equilibrium which nature holds in life upon
this earth must be sustained at St. Paul as well as elsewhere.

Think of the enormous food-consumption of these rookeries and
hauling-grounds; what an immense quantity of finny prey must pass
down their voracious throats as every year rolls by! A creature so
full of life, strung with nerves, muscles like bands of steel, cannot
live on air, or absorb it from the sea. Their food is fish, to the
practical exclusion of all other diet. I have never seen them touch,
or disturb with the intention of touching it, one solitary example in
the flocks of water-fowl which rest upon the surface of the water all
about the islands. I was especially careful in noting this, because
it seemed to me that the canine armature of their mouths must suggest
flesh for food at times as well as fish; but fish we know they eat.
Whole windrows of the heads of cod and wolf-fishes, bitten off by
these animals at the nape, were washed up on the south shore of St.
George during a gale in the summer of 1873. This pelagic decapitation
evidently marked the progress and the appetite of a band of fur-seals
to the windward of the island, as they passed into and through a
stray school of these fishes.

How many pounds per diem is required by an adult seal, and taken
by it when feeding, is not certain in my mind. Judging from the
appetite, however, of kindred animals, such as sea-lions fed in
confinement at Woodward’s Gardens, San Francisco, I can safely say
that forty pounds for a full-grown fur-seal is a fair allowance,
with at least ten or twelve pounds per diem to every adult female,
and not much less, if any, to the rapidly growing pups and young
“holluschickie.” Therefore, this great body of four and five millions
of hearty, active animals which we know on the Seal Islands, must
consume an enormous amount of such food every year. They cannot
average less than ten pounds of fish per diem, which gives the
consumption, as exhibited by their appetite, of over six million
tons of fish every year! What wonder, then, that nature should do
something to hold these active fishermen in check.[132]

During the winter solstice—between the lapse of the autumnal and
the verging of the vernal equinoxes—in order to get this enormous
food-supply, the fur-seals are necessarily obliged to disperse over
a very large area of fishing-ground, ranging throughout the North
Pacific, five thousand miles across between Japan and the Straits
of Fuca. In feeding, they are brought to the southward all this
time; and, as they go, they come more and more in contact with those
natural enemies peculiar to the sea of these southern latitudes,
which are almost strangers and are really unknown to the waters of
Bering Sea; for I did not observe, with the exception of ten or
twelve perhaps, certainly no more, killer-whales, a single marine
disturbance, or molestation, during the three seasons which I passed
upon the islands, that could be regarded in the slightest degree
inimical to the peace and life of the _Pinnipedia_; and thus, from my
observation, I am led to believe that it is not until they descend
well to the south of the Aleutian Islands, and in the North Pacific,
that they meet with sharks to any extent, and are diminished by the
butchery of the killer whales.

But I did observe a very striking exhibition, however, of this
character one afternoon while looking over Lukannon Bay. I saw a
“killer” chasing the alert “holluschickie” out beyond the breakers,
when suddenly, in an instant, the cruel cetacean was turned toward
the beach in hot pursuit, and in less time than this is read the ugly
brute was high and dry upon the sands. The natives were called, and a
great feast was in prospect when I left the carcass.

But this was the only instance of the orca in pursuit of seals that
came directly under my observation; hence, though it does undoubtedly
capture a few here every year, yet it is an insignificant cause of
destruction, on account of its rarity.

The young fur-seals going out to sea for the first time, and
following in the wake of their elders, are the clumsy members of
the family. When they go to sleep on the surface of the water, they
rest much sounder than the others; and their alert and wary nature,
which is handsomely developed ere they are two seasons old, is in
its infancy. Hence, I believe that vast numbers of them are easily
captured by marine foes, as they are stupidly sleeping, or awkwardly
fishing.

I must not be understood as saying that fish alone constitute the
diet of the Pribylov pinnipeds; I know that they feed, to a limited
extent, upon crustaceans and upon the squid (_Loligo_), also eating
tender algoid sprouts; I believe that the pup-seals live for the
first five or six months at sea largely, if not wholly, upon
crustaceans and squids; they are not agile enough, in my opinion, to
fish successfully, in any great degree, when they first depart from
the rookeries.

In this connection I wish to record an impression very strongly
made upon my mind, in regard to their diverse behavior when out at
sea away from the islands, and when congregated thereon. As I have
plainly exhibited in the foregoing, they are practically without fear
of man when he visits them on the land of their birth and recreation;
but the same seal that noticed you with quiet indifference at St.
Paul, in June and July, and the rest of the season while he was
there, or gambolled around your boat when you rowed from the ship
to shore, as a dog will play about your horses when you drive from
the gate to the house, that same seal, when you meet him in one of
the passes of the Aleutian chain, one hundred or two hundred miles
away from here, as the case may be, or to the southward of that
archipelago, is the shyest and wariest creature your ingenuity can
define. Happy are you in getting but a single glimpse of him, first;
you will never see him after, until he hauls out, and winks and
blinks across Lukannon sands.

But the companionship and the exceeding number of the seals, when
assembled together annually, makes them bold; largely due, perhaps,
to their fine instinctive understanding, dating, probably, back
many years, seeming to know that man, after all, is not wantonly
destroying them; and what he takes, he only takes from the ravenous
maw of the killer-whale or the saw-tipped teeth of the Japan shark.
As they sleep in the water, off the Straits of Fuca, and the
northwest coast as far as Dixon’s Sound, the Indians belonging to
that region surprise them with spears and rifle, capturing quite a
number every year, chiefly pups and yearlings.

When fur-seals were noticed, by myself, far away from these islands,
at sea, I observed that then they were as shy and as wary as the
most timorous animal would be, in dreading man’s proximity—sinking
instantly on apprehending the approach or presence of the ship,
seldom to reappear to my gaze. But, when gathered in such immense
numbers at the Pribylov Islands, they are suddenly metamorphosed
into creatures wholly indifferent to my person. It must cause a very
curious sentiment in the mind of him who comes for the first time,
during a summer season, to the Island of St. Paul—where, when the
landing boat or lighter carries him ashore from the vessel, this
whole short marine journey is enlivened by the gambols and aquatic
evolutions of fur-seal convoys to the “bidarrah,” which sport
joyously and fearlessly round and round his craft, as she is rowed
lustily ahead by the natives; the fur-seals then, of all classes,
“holluschickie” principally, pop their dark heads up out of the sea,
rising neck and shoulders erect above the surface, to peer and ogle
at him and at his boat, diving quickly to reappear just ahead or
right behind, hardly beyond striking distance from the oars. These
gymnastics of _Callorhinus_ are not wholly performed thus in silence,
for it usually snorts and chuckles with hearty reiteration.

The sea-lion up here also manifest much the same marine interest,
and gives the voyager an exhibition quite similar to the one which I
have just spoken of, when a small boat is rowed in the neighborhood
of its shore rookery; it is not, however, so bold, confident, and
social as the fur-seal under the circumstances, and utters only a
short, stifled growl of surprise, perhaps; its mobility, however,
of vocalization is sadly deficient when compared with the scope and
compass of its valuable relative’s polyglottis.

The hair-seals (_Phoca vitulina_) around these islands never
approached our boats in this manner, and I seldom caught more than a
furtive glimpse of their short, bull-dog heads when traversing the
coast by water.

The walrus (_Rosmarus obesus_) also, like _Phoca vitulina_, gave
undoubted evidence of sore alarm over the presence of my boat and
crew anywhere near its proximity in similar situations, only showing
itself once or twice, perhaps, at a safe distance, by elevating
nothing but the extreme tip of its muzzle and its bleared, popping
eyes above the water; it uttered no sound except a dull, muffled
grunt, or else a choking, gurgling bellow.

What can be done to promote the increase of fur seals? We cannot
cause a greater number of females to be born every year than are
born now; we do not touch or disturb these females as they grow up
and live; and we never will, if the law and present management is
continued. We save double—we save more than enough males to serve;
nothing more can be done by human agency; it is beyond our power to
protect them from their deadly marine enemies as they wander into the
boundless ocean searching for food.

[Illustration: NATIVES GATHERING A “DRIVE”

Aleutes selecting Holluschickie for the day’s killing at English
Bay, St. Paul’s Island]

In view, therefore, of all these facts, I have no hesitation
in saying, quite confidently, that under the present rules and
regulations governing the sealing interests on these islands, the
increase or diminution of the seal-life thereon will amount to
nothing in the future; that the seals will exist, as they do exist,
in all time to come at about the same number and condition recorded
by this presentation of the author.

By reference to the habit of the fur-seal, which I have discussed at
length, it is now plain and beyond doubt that two-thirds of all the
males which are born, and they are equal in numbers to the females
born, are never permitted by the remaining third, strongest by
natural selection, to land upon the same breeding-ground with the
females, which always herd thereupon _en masse_. Hence this great
band of “bachelor” seals, or “holluschickie,” so fitly termed, when
it visits the island, is obliged to live apart wholly—sometimes and
in some places, miles away from the rookeries; and, by this admirable
method of nature are those seals which can be killed without injury
to the rookeries selected and held aside of their own volition, so
that the natives can visit and take them without disturbing, to the
least degree, that entire quiet of those breeding-grounds where the
stock is perpetuated.

The manner in which the natives capture and drive up “holluschickie”
from the hauling-grounds to the slaughter-fields near the two
villages of St. Paul and St. George, and elsewhere on the islands,
cannot be improved upon. It is in this way: At the beginning of
every sealing-season, that is, during May and June, large bodies
of the young “bachelor” seals do not haul up on land very far from
the water—a few rods at the most—and, when these first arrivals are
sought after, the natives, to capture them, are obliged to approach
slyly and run quickly between the dozing seals and the surf, before
they can take alarm and bolt into the sea; in this manner a dozen
Aleutes, running down the sand beach of English Bay, in the early
morning of some June day, will turn back from the water thousands
of seals, just as the mould-board of a plough lays over and back a
furrow of earth. When the sleeping seals are first startled, they
arise, and, seeing men between them and the water, immediately turn,
lope and scramble rapidly back up and over the land; the natives
then leisurely walk on the flanks and in the rear of this drove thus
secured, directing and driving it over to the killing-grounds, close
by the village. The task of getting up early of a morning, and going
out to the several hauling-grounds, closely adjacent, is really all
there is of that labor expended in securing the number of seals
required for a day’s work on the killing-grounds. The two, three, or
four natives upon whom, in rotation, this duty is devolved by the
order of their chief, rise at first glimpse of dawn, between one and
two o’clock, and hasten over to Lukannon, Tolstoi, or Zoltoi, as the
case may be, “walk out” their “holluschickie,” and have them duly on
the slaughtering field before six or seven o’clock, as a rule, in the
morning. In favorable weather the “drive” from Tolstoi consumes from
two and a half to three hours’ time; from Lukannon, about two hours,
and is often done in an hour and a half; while Zoltoi is so near by
that the time is merely nominal.

A drove of seals on hard or firm grassy ground, in cool and moist
weather, may be driven with safety at the rate of half a mile an
hour; they can be urged along, with the expenditure of a great many
lives, however, at the speed of a mile or a mile and a quarter per
hour; but that is seldom done. An old bull-seal, fat and unwieldy,
cannot travel with the younger ones, though it can lope or gallop as
it starts across the ground as fast as an ordinary man can run, over
one hundred yards—then it fails utterly, falls to the earth supine,
entirely exhausted, hot, and gasping for breath.

The “holluschickie” are urged along over paths leading to the
killing-ground with very little trouble, and require only three or
four men to guide and secure as many thousand at a time. They are
permitted frequently to halt and cool off, as heating them injures
their fur. These seal-halts on the road always impressed me with a
species of sentimentalism and regard for the creatures themselves.
When the men drop back for a few moments, that awkward shambling
and scuffling of the march at once ceases, and the seals stop in
their tracks to fan themselves with their hind flippers, while their
heaving flanks give rise to subdued panting sounds. As soon as they
apparently cease to gasp for want of breath, and are cooled off
comparatively, the natives step up once more, clatter a few bones,
with a shout along the line, and this seal-shamble begins again—their
march to death and the markets of the world is taken up anew.[133]

I was also impressed by the singular docility and amiability of
these animals when driven along the road. They never show fight any
more than a flock of sheep would do; if, however, a few old seals
get mixed in, they usually grow so weary that they prefer to come
to a stand-still and fight rather than move; otherwise no sign
whatever of resistance is made by the drove from the moment it is
intercepted, and turned up from the hauling-grounds, to the time of
its destruction at the hands of the sealing-gang.

This disposition of the old seals to fight rather than endure the
panting torture of travel, is of great advantage to all parties
concerned, for they are worthless commercially, and the natives are
only too glad to let them drop behind, where they remain unmolested,
eventually returning to the sea. The fur on them is of little or no
value; their under-wool being very much shorter, coarser, and more
scant than in the younger; especially so on the posterior parts along
the median line of the back.

This change for the worse or deterioration of the pelage of the
fur-seal takes place, as a rule, in the fifth year of their age—it
is thickest and finest in texture during the third and fourth year
of life; hence, in driving the seals on St. Paul and St. George up
from the hauling-grounds the natives make, as far as practicable,
a selection only from males of that age. It is quite impossible,
however, to get them all of one age without an extraordinary amount
of stir and bustle, which the Aleutes do not like to precipitate;
hence the drive will be found to consist usually of a bare
majority of three and four-year-olds, the rest being two-year-olds
principally, and a very few, at wide intervals, five-year-olds, the
yearlings seldom ever getting mixed up in it.

As this drove progresses along that path to those
slaughtering-grounds, the seals all move in about the same way;
they go ahead with a kind of walking step and a sliding, shambling
gallop. The progression of the whole caravan is a succession of
starts, spasmodic and irregular, made every few minutes, the seals
pausing to catch their breath, making, as it were, a plaintive survey
and mute protest. Every now and then a seal will get weak in the
lumbar region, then drag its posteriors along for a short distance,
finally drop breathless and exhausted, quivering and panting, not to
revive for hours—days, perhaps—and often never. During the driest
driving-days, or those days when the temperature does not combine
with wet fog to keep the earth moist and cool, quite a large number
of the weakest animals in the drove will be thus laid out and left on
the track. If one of these prostrate seals is not too much heated at
the time, the native driver usually taps the beast over the head and
removes its skin.

[Illustration: NATIVES DRIVING “HOLLUSCHICKIE”

The Drove passing over the Lagoon Flats to the Killing Grounds under
the Village of St. Paul. Looking S. W. over the Village Cove and the
Lagoon Rookery]

This prostration from exertion will always happen, no matter how
carefully they are driven; and in the longer drives, such as two
and a half and five miles from Zapadnie on the west, or Polavina on
the north, to the village at St. Paul, as much as three or four per
cent. of the whole drive will be thus dropped on the road; hence
I feel satisfied, from my observation and close attention to this
feature, that a considerable number of those that are thus rejected
from the drove, and are able to rally and return to the water,
die subsequently from internal injuries sustained on the trip,
superinduced by this over-exertion. I therefore think it highly
improper and impolitic to extend drives of the “holluschickie” over
any distance on St. Paul Island exceeding a mile, or a mile and
a half—it is better for all parties concerned, and the business
too, that salt-houses be erected, and killing-grounds established
contiguous to all of the great hauling-grounds, two miles distant
from the village on St Paul Island, should the business ever be
developed above the present limit, or should the exigencies of the
future require a quota from all these places in order to make up the
hundred thousand which may be lawfully taken.

As matters are to-day, one hundred thousand seals alone on St. Paul
can be taken and skinned in less than forty working days, within
a radius of one mile and a half from the village, and from the
salt-house at Northeast Point; hence the driving, with the exception
of two experimental droves which I witnessed in 1872, has never been
made from longer distances than Tolstoi to the eastward, Lukannon to
the northward, and Zoltoi to the southward of the killing-grounds
at St Paul village. Should, however, an abnormal season recur, in
which the larger portion of days during the right period for taking
the skins be warmish and dry, it might be necessary, in order to get
even seventy-five thousand seals within the twenty-eight or thirty
days of their prime condition, for drives to be made from the other
great hauling-grounds to the westward and northward, which are now,
and have been for the last ten years, entirely unnoticed by our
sealers.[134]

[Illustration: Peter Peeshenkov: Pribylov Sealer.

[_Attired in the costume of the killing gang, when at work in wet
weather._]]

The seals, when finally driven up on those flats between the east
landing and the village, and almost under the windows of the
dwellings, are herded there until cool and rested. Such drives are
usually made very early in the morning, at the first breaking of
day, which is half-past one to two o’clock of June and July in these
latitudes. They arrive, and cool off on the slaughtering-grounds,
so that by six or seven o’clock, after breakfast, the able-bodied
male population turn out from the village and go down to engage in
the work of killing them. These men are dressed in their ordinary
laboring-garb of thick flannel shirts, stout cassimere or canvas
pants, over which the “tarbosar” boots are drawn. If it rains they
wear their “kamlaykas,” made of the intestines and throats of the
sea-lion and fur-seal. Thus dressed, they are each armed with a club,
a stout oaken or hickory bludgeon, which has been made particularly
for the purpose at New London, Conn., and imported here for this
especial service. Those sealing-clubs are about five or six feet in
length, three inches in diameter at their heads, and the thickness of
a man’s forearm where they are grasped by the hands. Each native
also has his stabbing-knife, his skinning-knife and his whetstone:
these are laid upon the grass convenient, when the work of braining
or knocking the seals down is in progress: this is all the apparatus
which they employ for killing and skinning.

[Illustration: THE KILLING GANG AT WORK

Method of slaughtering Fur Seals on the Grounds near the Village of
St. Paul Sealers Knocking Down a “Pod”

  The Drove in Waiting           Natives Skinning

When the men gather for work they are under the control of their
chosen foremen or chiefs; usually, on St. Paul, divided into two
working parties at the village, and a sub-party at Northeast Point,
where another salt-house and slaughtering-field is established.
At the signal of the chief the labor of the day begins by the men
stepping into that drove corralled on the flats and driving out from
it one hundred or one hundred and fifty seals at a time, making what
they call a “pod,” which they surround in a circle, huddling the
seals one on another as they narrow it down, until they are directly
within reach and under their clubs. Then the chief, after he has
cast his experienced eye over the struggling, writhing “kautickie”
in the centre, passes the word that such and such a seal is bitten,
that such and such a seal is too young, that such and such a seal
is too old; the attention of his men being called to these points,
he gives the word “Strike!” and instantly the heavy clubs come down
all around, and every animal eligible is stretched out stunned and
motionless, in less time, really, than I take to tell it. Those seals
spared by order of the chief now struggle from under and over the
bodies of their insensible companions and pass, hustled off by the
natives, back to the sea.

The clubs are dropped, the men seize the prostrate seals by the hind
flippers and drag them out so they are spread on the ground without
touching each other, then every sealer takes his knife and drives
it into the heart at a point between the fore flippers of each
stunned form; its blood gushes forth, and the quivering of the animal
presently ceases. A single stroke of a heavy oak bludgeon, well
and fairly delivered, will crush in at once the slight, thin bones
of a fur-seal’s skull, and lay the creature out almost lifeless.
These blows are, however, usually repeated two or three times with
each animal, but they are very quickly done. The bleeding, which is
immediately effected, is so speedily undertaken in order that the
strange reaction, which the sealers call “heating,” shall be delayed
for half an hour or so, or until the seals can all be drawn out and
laid in some disposition for skinning.

I have noticed that within less than thirty minutes from the time a
perfectly sound seal was knocked down, it had so “heated,” owing
to the day being warmer and drier than usual, that, when touching
it with my foot, great patches of hair and fur scaled off. This is
rather exceptionally rapid metamorphosis—it will, however, take place
in every instance, within an hour, or an hour and a half on these
warm days, after the first blow is struck, and the seal is quiet
in death; hence no time is lost by a prudent toyone in directing
the removal of the skins as rapidly as the seals are knocked down
and dragged out. If it is a cool day, after bleeding the first
“pod” which has been prostrated in the manner described, and after
carefully drawing the slain from the heap in which they have fallen,
so that the bodies will spread over the ground just free from
touching one another, they turn to and strike down another “pod;” and
so on, until a whole thousand or two are laid out, or the drove, as
corralled, is finished. The day, however, must be raw and cold for
this wholesale method. Then, after killing, they turn to work and
skin; but if it is a warm day every pod is skinned as soon as it is
knocked down.

The labor of skinning is exceedingly severe, and is trying even to
an expert, demanding long practice ere the muscles of the back and
thighs are so developed as to permit a man to bend down to, and
finish well, a fair day’s work. The knives used by the natives for
skinning are ordinary kitchen or case-handle butcher-knives. They are
sharpened to cutting edges as keen as razors, but something about the
skins of the seal, perhaps fine comminuted sand along the abdomen,
so dulls these knives, as the natives work, that they are obliged to
whet them constantly.

The body of the seal, preparatory to skinning, is rolled over and
balanced squarely on its back; then the native makes a single swift
cut through the skin down along the neck, chest, and belly, from the
lower jaw to the root of the tail: he uses for this purpose his long
stabbing-knife.[135] The fore and hind flippers are then successively
lifted, as the man straddles a seal and stoops down to his work
over it, and a sweeping circular incision is made through the skin
on them just at the point where the body-fur ends; then, seizing a
flap of the hide on either one side or the other of the abdomen, the
man proceeds with his smaller, shorter butcher-knife, rapidly to cut
the skin, clean and free from the body and blubber, which he rolls
over and out from the hide by hauling up on it as he advances with
his work, standing all this time stooped over the carcass so that
his hands are but slightly above it, or the ground. This operation
of skinning a fair-sized “holluschak” takes the best men only one
minute and a half, but the average time made by the gang on the
ground is about four minutes to the seal. Nothing is left of the
skin upon the carcass, save a small patch of each upper lip on which
the coarse mustache grows, the skin on the tip of the lower jaw, and
its insignificant tail. After removal of the skin from the body of a
fur-seal, the entire surface of the carcass is covered with a more
or less dense layer, or envelope, of soft, oily blubber, which in
turn completely conceals the muscles or flesh of the trunk and neck.
This fatty substance, which we now see, resembles that met with in
such seals everywhere, only possessing that strange peculiarity not
shared by any other of its kind, of being positively overbearing and
offensive in odor to an unaccustomed human nostril. The rotting,
sloughing carcasses around about did not, when stirred up, affect
me more unpleasantly than did this strong, sickening smell of the
fur-seal blubber. It has a character and appearance intermediate
between those belonging to the adipose tissue found on the flesh of
cetacea and some carnivora.

[Illustration: The Carcass after Skinning—The Skin as taken therefrom.]

This continuous envelope of blubber to the bodies of the
“holluschickie” is thickest in deposit at those points upon the
breast between the fore flippers, reaching entirely around and over
the shoulders, where it is from one inch to a little over in depth.
Upon the outer side of the chest it is not half an inch in thickness,
frequently not more than a quarter, and it thins out considerably
as it reaches the median line of the back. The neck and head are
clad by an unbroken continuation of the same material, which varies
from one-half to one-quarter of an inch in depth. Toward the middle
line of the abdominal region there is a layer of relative greater
thickness. This is coextensive with the sterno-pectoral mass; but it
does not begin to retain its volume as it extends backward, where
this fatty investment of the carcass upon the loins, buttocks, and
hinder limbs fades out finer than on the pectoro-abdominal parts, and
assumes a thickness corresponding to its depth on the cervical and
dorsal regions. As it descends on the limbs this blubber thins out
very perceptibly; and, when reaching the flippers, it almost entirely
disappears, giving way to a glistening aureolar tissue, while the
flipper skin finally descends in turn to adhere closely and firmly to
the tendinous ligamentary structures beneath, which constitute the
tips of the swimming-palms.

The flesh and the muscles are not lined between or within by fat
of any kind: this blubber envelope contains it all, with one
exception—that which is found in the folds of the small intestine and
about the kidneys, where there is an abundant secretion of a harder,
whiter, though still offensive-smelling fat.

It is quite natural for our people when they first eat a meal on the
Pribylov Islands to ask questions in regard to what seal-meat looks
and tastes like. Some of the white residents will answer, saying
that they are very fond of it cooked so and so; others will reply
that in no shape or manner can they stomach the dish. An inquirer
must himself try the effect on his own palate. I frankly confess
that I had a slight prejudice against seal-meat at first, having
preconceived ideas that it would be fishy in flavor; but I soon
satisfied myself to the contrary, and found that the flesh of young
seals not over three years old was as appetizing and toothsome as
some of the beef, mutton, and pork I was accustomed to at home. The
following precautions must be rigidly observed, however, by the cook
who prepares fur-seal steaks and sausage-balls for our delectation
and subsistence. He will fail if he does not:

1. The meat must be perfectly cleaned of every vestige of blubber or
fat, no matter how slight.

2. Cut the flesh then into very thin steaks or slices and soak them
from six to twelve hours in salt and water, a tablespoon of fine salt
to a quart of fresh water. This whitens the meat and removes the
residuum of dark venous blood that will otherwise give a slightly
disagreeable taste, hardly definable, though existing.

3. Fry these steaks, or stew them _à la mode_, with a few thin slices
of sweet “breakfast” bacon, seasoning with pepper and salt. A rich
brown gravy follows the cooking of the meat. Serve hot, and it is,
strictly judged, a very excellent meat for the daintiest feeder, and
I hereby recommend it confidently as a safe venture for any newcomer
to make.

The flesh of young sea-lions is still better than that of the
fur-seal, while the natives say that the meat of the hair-seal
(_Phoca vitulina_) is superior to both, being more juicy. Fur-seal
meat is exceedingly dry; hence the necessity of putting bacon into
the frying-pan or stew-pot with it. Sea-lion flesh is an improvement
in this respect, and also that its fat, strange to say, is wholly
clear, white, and inodorous, while the blubber of the “holluschickie”
is sickening to the smell, and will, nine times out of ten, cause any
civilized stomach to throw it up as quickly as it is swallowed. The
natives, however, eat a great deal of it, simply because they are too
lazy to clean their fur-seal cuts and not because they really relish
it.

In this connection it may be well to add that the liver of both
_Callorhinus_ and _Eumetopias_ is sweet and wholesome; or, in other
words, it is as good as liver usually is in Fulton Market. The
tongues are small, white, and fat. They are regularly cut out to
some extent and salted in ordinary water-buckets for exportation to
curious friends. They have but slight claim to gastronomic favor.
The natives are, however, very partial to the liver; but though they
like the tongues, yet they are too lazy to prepare them. A few of
them, in obedience to pressing and prayerful appeals from relatives
at Oonalashka, do exert themselves enough every season to undergo the
extra labor of putting up several barrels of fresh salted seal-meat,
which, being carried down to Illoolook by the company’s vessels,
affords a delightful variation to the steady and monotonous codfish
diet of those Aleutian Islanders.

[Illustration: Interior of Salt House, Village of St. Paul.

[_Showing the method of receiving, selecting, kenching and salting
“green” fur-seal skins._]]

The final acts of curing and shipping pelts of fur-seals from
the warehouses of the villages, rapidly follow work upon the
killing-grounds. The skins are taken from the field to the
salt-house, where they are laid out, after being again carefully
examined, one upon another, “hair to fat,” like so many sheets
of paper, with salt profusely spread upon the fleshy sides as
they are piled up in the “kenches,” or bins. The salt-house is a
large barn-like frame structure, so built as to afford one-third
of its width in the centre, from end to end, clear and open as a
passage-way: while on each side are rows of stanchions, with sliding
planks, which are taken down and put up in the form of deep bins or
boxes—“kenches,” the sealers call them. As the pile of skins is laid
up from the bottom of an empty “kench” and salt thrown in on the
outer edges, these planks are also put in place, so that the salt may
be kept intact until that bin is filled as high up as a man can toss
the skins. After lying two or three weeks in this style they become
“pickled,” and they are suited then at any time to be taken up and
rolled into bundles of two skins to the package, with the hairy side
out, tightly corded, ready for shipment from the islands.

The average weight of a two-year-old skin is five and one-half
pounds; of a three-year-old skin, seven pounds, and of a
four-year-old skin, twelve pounds, so that, as the major portion
of the catch is two or three year olds, these bundles of two skins
each have a general weight of from twelve to fifteen pounds. In this
form they go into the hold of the company’s steamer at St. Paul, and
are counted out from it in San Francisco. Then they are either at
once shipped to London by the Isthmus of Panama in the same shape,
only packed up in large hogsheads of from twenty to forty bundles to
the package, or expressed by railroad, via New York, to a similar
destination.

The work of bundling the skins is not usually commenced by the
natives until the close of the last week’s sealing; or, in other
words, those skins which they first took, three weeks ago, are now
so pickled by the salt in which they have been lying ever since, as
to render them eligible for this operation and immediate shipment.
The moisture of the air dissolves and destroys a very large quantity
of that saline preservative which the company brings up annually in
the form of rock-salt, principally obtained at Carmen Island, Lower
California.

The Alaska Commercial Company, by the provisions of law under which
they enjoy their franchise, are permitted to take one hundred
thousand male seals annually, and no more, from the Pribylov Islands.
This they do in June and July of every year. After that season the
skins rapidly grow worthless, as the animals enter into shedding,
and, if taken, would not pay for transportation and the tax.

The bundled skins are carried from the salt-houses to the beach, when
an order for shipment is given, pitched into a bidarrah, one by one,
and rapidly stowed; seven hundred to twelve hundred bundles make an
average single load; then, when alongside the steamer, they are again
tossed up from the lighter and onto her deck, whence they are stowed
in the hold.[136]

The method of air-drying which the old settlers employed is well
portrayed by the practice of the natives now, who treat a few hundred
sea-lion skins to that process every fall, preparing them thus for
shipment to Oonalashka, where they are used by brother Aleutes in
covering their bidarkies or kayaks.

The natives, in speaking to me of this matter, said that whenever
the weather was rough and the wind blowing hard, these air-dried
seal-skins, as they were tossed from the bidarrah to the ship’s deck,
numbers of them, would frequently turn in the wind and fly clean over
the vessel into the water beyond, where they were lost.

Under the old order of affairs, prior to the present management,
the skins were packed up and carried on the backs of the boys and
girls, women and old men, to the salt-houses, or drying-frames. When
I first arrived, season of 1872, a slight variation was made in this
respect by breaking a small Siberian bull into harness and hitching
it to a cart, in which the pelts were hauled. Before the cart was
adjusted, however, and the “buik” taught to pull, it was led out to
the killing-grounds by a ring in its nose, and literally covered with
the green seal-hides, which where thus packed to the kenches. The
natives were delighted with even this partial assistance; but now
they have no further concern about it at all, for several mules and
carts render prompt and ample service.

The common or popular notion in regard to seal-skins is, that they
are worn by those animals just as they appear when offered for sale;
that the fur-seal swims about, exposing the same soft coat with
which our ladies of fashion so delight to cover their tender forms
during inclement winter. This is a very great mistake; few skins
are less attractive than a seal-skin is when it is taken from the
creature. The fur is not visible; it is concealed entirely by a coat
of stiff over-hair, dull, gray-brown, and grizzled. It takes three
of them to make a lady’s sack and boa; and in order that a reason
for their costliness may be apparent, I take great pleasure in
submitting a description of the tedious and skilful labor necessary
to their dressing by the furriers ere they are fit for use: a leading
manufacturer, writing to me, says:—

“When the skins are received by us in the salt, we wash off the salt,
placing them upon a beam somewhat like a tanner’s beam, removing the
fat from the flesh side with a beaming-knife, care being required
that no cuts or uneven places are made in the pelt. The skins are
next washed in water and placed upon the beam with the fur up, and
the grease and water removed by the knife. The skins are then dried
by moderate heat, being tacked out on frames to keep them smooth.
After being fully dried, they are soaked in water and thoroughly
cleansed with soap and water. In some cases they can be unhaired
without this drying process, and cleansed before drying. After the
cleansing process they pass to the picker, who dries the fur by
stove-heat, the pelt being kept moist. When the fur is dry he places
the skin on a beam, and while it is warm he removes the main coat
of hair with a dull shoeknife, grasping the hair with his thumb and
knife, the thumb being protected by a rubber cob. The hair must be
pulled out, not broken. After a portion is removed the skin must be
again warmed at the stove, the pelt being kept moist. When the outer
hairs have been mostly removed, he uses a beaming-knife to work
out the fine hairs (which are shorter), and the remaining coarser
hairs. It will be seen that great care must be used, as the skin
is in that soft state that too much pressure of the knife would
take the fur also; indeed, bare spots are made. Carelessly cured
skins are sometimes worthless on this account. The skins are next
dried, afterward dampened on the pelt side, and shaved to a fine,
even surface. They are then stretched, worked, and dried, afterward
softened in a fulling-mill, or by treading them with the bare feet
in a hogshead, one head being removed and the cask placed nearly
upright, into which the workman gets with a few skins and some fine,
hardwood sawdust, to absorb the grease while he dances upon them to
break them into leather. If the skins have been shaved thin, as
required when finished, any defective spots or holes must now be
mended, the skin smoothed and pasted with paper on the pelt side, or
two pasted together to protect the pelt in dyeing. The usual process
in the United States is to leave the pelt sufficiently thick to
protect them without pasting.

“In dyeing, the liquid dye is put on with a brush, carefully covering
the points of the standing fur. After lying folded, with the points
touching each other, for some time, the skins are hung up and dried.
The dry dye is then removed, another coat applied, dried, and
removed, and so on, until the required shade is obtained. One or two
of these coats of dye are put on much heavier and pressed down to the
roots of the fur, making what is called the ground. From eight to
twelve coats are required to produce a good color. The skins are then
washed clean, the fur dried, the pelt moist. They are shaved down to
the required thickness, dried, working them some while drying, then
softened in a hogshead, and sometimes run in a revolving cylinder
with fine sawdust to clean them. The English process does not have
the washing after dyeing.”

On account of the fact that all labor in this country, especially
skilled labor, commands so much more per diem in the return of wages
than it does in London or Belgium, it is not practicable for the
Alaska Commercial Company, or any other company here, to attempt to
dress and put upon the market its catch of Bering Sea, which is in
fact the entire catch of the whole world. Our people understand the
theory of dressing these skins perfectly; but they cannot compete
with the cheaper labor of the Old World. Therefore, nine-tenths,
nearly, of the fur-seal skins taken every year are annually purchased
and dressed in London, and from thence distributed all over the
civilized world where furs are worn and prized.

The great variation in the value of seal-skin sacks, ranging from
seventy-five dollars up to three hundred and fifty dollars, and even
five hundred dollars, is not often due to a variance in the quality
of the fur originally; but it is due to that quality of the work
whereby the fur was treated and prepared for wear. For instance,
cheap sacks are so defectively dyed that a little moisture causes
them to soil the collars and cuffs of their owners, and a little
exposure makes them speedily fade and look ragged. A properly dyed
skin, one that has been conscientiously and laboriously finished (for
it is a labor requiring great patience and great skill), will not
rub off or “crock” the whitest linen when moistened; and it will wear
the weather, as I have myself seen it on the form of a sea-captain’s
wife, for six and seven successive seasons, without showing the least
bit of dimness or raggedness. I speak of dyeing alone; I might say
the earlier steps of unhairing, in which the over-hair is deftly
combed out and off from the skin, heated to such a point that the
roots of the fur are not loosened, while those to the coarser hirsute
growth are. If this is not done with perfect uniformity, the fur will
never lie smooth, no matter how skilfully dyed; it will always have
a rumpled, ruffled look. Therefore the hastily-dyed sacks are cheap;
and are enhanced in order of value just as the labor of dyeing is
expended upon them.

Another singular and striking characteristic of the Island of St.
Paul, is the fact that this immense slaughtering-field, upon which
seventy-five thousand to ninety thousand fresh carcasses lie every
season, sloughing away into the sand beneath, does not cause any
sickness among the people who live right over them, so to speak. A
cool, raw temperature, and strong winds, peculiar to the place, seem
to prevent any unhealthy effect from that fermentation of decay.
An _Elymus_ and other grasses once more take heart and grow with
magical vigor over the unsightly spot, to which the sealing-gang
again return, repeating their work upon this place which we have
marked before, three years ago. In that way this strip of ground,
seen on my map between the village, the east landing, and the lagoon,
contains the bones and the oil-drippings and other fragments thereof,
of more than three million seals slain since 1786 thereon, while the
slaughter-fields at Novastoshnah record the end of a million more!

I remember well those unmitigated sensations of disgust which
possessed me when I first landed, April 28, 1872, on the Pribylov
Islands, and passed up from the beach, at Lukannon, to the village
over the killing-grounds; though there was a heavy coat of snow on
the fields, yet each and every one of seventy-five thousand decaying
carcasses was there, and bare, having burned, as it were, their
way out to the open air, polluting the same to a sad degree. I was
laughed at by the residents who noticed my facial contortions, and
assured that this state of smell was nothing to what I should soon
experience when the frost and snow had fairly melted. They were
correct; the odor along by the end of May was terrific punishment to
my olfactories, and continued so for several weeks until my sense of
smell became blunted and callous to such stench by long familiarity.
Like the other old residents I then became quite unconscious of the
prevalence of this rich “funk,” and ceased to notice it.

Those who land here, as I did, for the first time, nervously and
invariably declare that such an atmosphere must breed a plague or a
fever of some kind in the village, and hardly credit the assurance
of those who have resided in it for the whole period of their lives,
that such a thing was never known to St. Paul, and that the island
is remarkably healthy. It is entirely true, however, and, after
a few weeks’ contact, or a couple of months’ experience, at the
longest, the most sensitive nose becomes used to that aroma, wafted
as it is hourly, day in and out, from decaying seal-flesh, viscera,
and blubber; and, also, it ceases to be an object of attention. The
cool, sunless climate during the warmer months has undoubtedly much
to do with checking too rapid decomposition and consequent trouble
therefrom, which would otherwise arise from those killing-grounds.

The freshly-skinned seal bodies of this season do not seem to rot
substantially until the following year; then they rapidly slough away
into the sand upon which they rest; the envelope of blubber left
upon each body seems to act as an air-tight receiver, holding most
of the putrid gases that evolved from the decaying viscera until
their volatile tension causes it to give way; fortunately the line of
least resistance to that merciful retort is usually right where it
is adjacent to the soil, so both putrescent fluids and much of the
stench within is deodorized and absorbed before it can contaminate
the atmosphere to any great extent. The truth of my observation will
be promptly verified, if the sceptic chooses to tear open any one
of the thousands of gas-distended carcasses in the fall, that were
skinned in the killing-season; if he does so, he will be smitten by
the worst smell that human sense can measure; and should he chance to
be accompanied by a native, that callous individual, even, will pinch
his grimy nose and exclaim, it is a “keeshla pahknoot!”

At the close of the third season after skinning, a seal’s body will
have so rotted and sloughed down, as to be marked only by the bones
and a few of the tendinous ligaments; in other words, it requires
from thirty to thirty-six months’ time for such a carcass to rot
entirely away, so that nothing but whitened bones remain above
ground. The natives govern their driving of the seals and laying
out of the fresh bodies according to this fact—they can, and do,
spread this year a whole season’s killing out over the same spot of
the field previously covered with such fresh carcasses three summers
ago; by alternating with the seasons thus, the natives are enabled to
annually slaughter all of the “holluschickie” on a relatively small
area, close by the salt-houses and the village, as I have indicated
on my map of St. Paul.

The St. Paul village site is located wholly on the northern slope of
the village hill, where it drops from its greatest elevation, at the
flagstaff of one hundred and twenty-five feet, gently down to those
sandy killing-flats below and between it and the main body of the
island. The houses are all placed facing north at regular intervals
along the terraced streets, which run southeast and northwest. There
are seventy-four or eighty native houses, ten large and smaller
buildings of the company, a Treasury agent’s residence, a church,
cemetery crosses, and a school building which are all standing here
in coats of pure white paint. No offal or decaying refuse of any kind
is allowed to rest around the dwellings or lie in the streets. It
required much determined effort on the part of the whites to effect
this sanitary reform; but now most of the natives take equal pride in
keeping their surroundings clean and unpolluted. The killing-ground
of St. Paul is a bottomless sand-flat only a few feet above high
water, and which unites the village hill and the reef with the island
itself. It is not a stone’s throw from the heart of the settlement;
in fact, it is right in town, not even suburban.

The site of the St. George settlement is more exposed and bleak
than is the one we have just referred to on St. Paul. It is planted
directly on a rounded summit of one of the first low hills that rise
from the sea on the north shore. Indeed, it is the only hill that
does slope directly and gently to the salt water on the island. Here
are twenty-four to thirty native cottages, laid with their doors
facing the opposite sides of a short street between, running also
east and west, as at St. Paul. There, however, each house looks down
upon the rear of its neighbor in front and below—here the houses face
each other on the top of the hill. The Treasury agent’s quarters, the
company’s six or seven buildings, the school-house, and the church,
are all neatly painted: therefore this settlement, by its prominent
position, shows from the sea to a much better advantage than the
larger one of St. Paul does. The same municipal sanitary regulations
are enforced here. Those who may visit the St. George and St. Paul
of to-day will find their streets dry and hard as floors for they
have been covered with a thick layer of volcanic cinders on both
islands.

On St. George the “holluschickie” are regularly driven to that
northeast slope of the village hill which drops down gently to the
sea, where they are slaughtered, close by and under the houses, as at
St Paul. Those droves which are brought in from the North rookery to
the west, and also Starry Arteel, are frequently driven right through
the village itself. This killing-field of St. George is hard tufa
and rocky, but it slopes away to the ocean rapidly enough to drain
itself well; hence the constant rain and humid fogs of summer carry
off that which would soon clog and deprive the natives from using the
ground year after year in rotation, as they do. Several seasons have
occurred, however, when this natural cleansing of the place, above
mentioned, has not been as thorough as must be, so as to be used
again immediately: then the seals were skinned back of the village
hill and in that ravine to the westward on the same slope from its
summit.

This village site of St. George to-day, and the killing-grounds
adjoining, used to be, during early Russian occupation, in Pribylov’s
time, a large sea-lion rookery, the finest one known to either
island, St. Paul or St. George. Natives are living now, who told me
that their fathers had been employed in shooting and driving these
sea-lions, so as to deliberately break up a breeding-ground, and thus
rid the island of what they considered a superabundant supply of the
_Eumetopias_, and thereby to aid and encourage a fresh and increased
accession of fur-seals from the vast majority peculiar to St. Paul,
which could not ensue while big sea-lions held the land.


FOOTNOTES:

[107] The seal-life on the Pribylov Islands may be classified under
the following heads, namely: (1) The fur-seal, _Cattorhinus ursinus_,
the “kautickie” of the Russians; (2) the sea-lion, _Eumetopias
stelleri_, the “seevitchie” of the Russians; (3) the hair-seal,
_Phoca vitulina_, the “nearhpahsky” of the Russians; (4) the walrus,
_Odobænus obesus_, the “morsjee” of the Russians.

[108] The inconsequential numbers of the hair-seal around and on the
Pribylov Islands seem to be characteristic of all Alaskan waters
and the northwest coast; also, the phocidæ are equally scant on the
Asiatic littoral margins. Only the following four species are known
to exist throughout the entire extent of that vast marine area, viz.:

_Phoca vitulina_—Everywhere between Bering Straits and California.

_Phoca fœtida_—Plover Bay, Norton’s Sound, Kuskokvim mouth, and
Bristol Bay, of Bering Sea; Cape Seartze Kammin, Arctic Ocean, to
Point Barrow.

_Erignathus barbatus_—Kamchatkan coast, Norton’s Sound, Kuskokvim
mouth and Bristol Bay, of Bering Sea.

_Histriophoca equestris_—Yukon mouth and coast south to Bristol Bay,
of Bering Sea.

[109] Those extremely heavy adult males which arrive first in the
season and take their stations on the rookeries, are so fat that they
do not exhibit a wrinkle or a fold of the skins enveloping their
blubber-lined bodies. Most of this fatty deposit is found around the
shoulders and the neck, though a warm coat of blubber covers all the
other portions of the body save the flippers. This blubber-thickening
of the neck and chest is characteristic of the adult males only,
which are, by its provisions, enabled to sustain the extraordinary
protracted fasting periods incident to their habit of life and
reproduction.

When those superlatively fleshy bulls first arrive, a curious
body-tremor seems to attend every movement which the animals make on
land; their fat appears to ripple backward and forward under their
hides, like waves. As they alternate with their flippers in walking,
the whole form of the “see-catchie” fairly shakes as a bowl full of
jelly does when agitated on the table before us.

[110] The distances at sea, away from the Pribylov Islands, in
which fur-seals are found during the breeding season, are very
considerable. Scattered records have been made of seeing large
bands of them during August as far down the northwest coast as they
probably range at any season of the year, viz., well out at sea in
the latitude of Cape Flattery, 47° to 49° south latitude. In the
winter and spring, up to middle of June, all classes are found here
spread out over wide areas of ocean. Then by June 15th they will have
all departed, the first and the latest, _en route_ for the Pribylov
Islands. Then, when seen again in this extreme southern range, I
presume the unusually early examples of return toward the end of
August are squads of the yearlings of both sexes, for this division
is always the last to land on and the first to leave the Seal Islands
annually.

[111] “See-catch,” is the native name for a bull on the rookeries,
especially one which is able to maintain its position.

[112] “Hauling up,” is a technical term applied to the action of
seals when they land from the surf and haul up or drag themselves
over the beach. It is expressive and appropriate, as are most of the
sealing phrases.

[113] There is also perfect uniformity in the coloration of the
breeding coats of fur-seals, which is strikingly manifest while
inspecting the rookeries late in July, when they are solidly massed
thereon. At a quarter-mile distance the whole immense aggregate of
animal life seems to be fused into a huge homogeneous body that
is alternately roused up in sections and then composed, just as a
quantity of iron-filings covering the bottom of a saucer will rise
and fall when a magnet is passed over and around the dish.

[114] Without explanation I may be considered as making use of
paradoxical language by using these terms of description, since the
inconsistency of talking of “pups,” with “cows,” and “bulls,” and
“rookeries,” on the breeding grounds of the same, cannot fail to
be noticed; but this nomenclature has been given and used by the
American and English whaling and sealing parties for many years,
and the characteristic features of the seals themselves so suit the
naming that I have felt satisfied to retain the style throughout as
rendering my description more intelligible, especially so to those
who are engaged in the business or may be hereafter. The Russians are
more consistent, but not so “pat.” They call the bull “see-catch,” a
term implying strength, vigor, etc.; the cow, “matkah,” or mother;
the pups, “kotickie,” or little seals; the non-breeding males under
six and seven years, “holluschickie,” or bachelors. The name applied
collectively to the fur-seal by them is “morskie-kot,” or sea-cat.

[115] Dr. Otto Cramer: The suddenness with which fog and wind shut
down and sweep over the sea here, even when the day opens most
auspiciously for a short boat-voyage, has so alarmed the natives in
times past that a visit is now never made by them from island to
island, unless on one of the company’s vessels Several bidarrahs have
never been heard from, which, in earlier times, attempted to sail,
with picked crews of the natives, from one island to the other.

[116] “Do these seals drink?” is a question doubtless often uppermost
and suggested to the observer’s eye, as he watches those animals
going to the water from the hauling-grounds and the rookeries; at
least it was in mine. I never could detect a _callorhinus_ or a
_eumetopias_ lapping, either in the fresh-water pools and lakes,
or in the brackish lagoon, or the sea; but it plunges at times
into the rollers with its jaws wide open as it dives, reappearing
quickly in the same manner to dip and rise again, many times in rapid
succession, as it swims along, the water running in little streams
from the corners of the open mouth whenever its head pops above the
surface. Whether this action was simply to cool itself, or that of
drinking, I am not prepared to assert positively. I think it was to
meet both purposes.

[117] The old males, when grouped together by themselves, indulge
in no humor or frolicsome festivities whatsoever. On the contrary,
they treat each other with surly indifference. The mature females,
however, do not appear to lose their good nature to anything like so
marked a degree as do their lords and masters, for they will at all
seasons of their presence on the islands be observed, now and then,
to suddenly unbend from severe matronly gravity by coyly and amiably
tickling and gently teasing one another, as they rest in the harems,
or later, when strolling in September. There is no sign given,
however, by these seal-mothers of a desire or attempt to fondle or
caress their pups; nor do the young appear to sport with any others
than the pups themselves, when together. Sometimes a yearling and a
five or six months old pup will have a long-continued game between
themselves. They are decidedly clannish in this respect—creatures of
caste, like Hindoos.

[118] When the females first come ashore there is no sign whatever
of affection manifested between the sexes. The males are surly and
morose, and the females entirely indifferent to such reception. They
are, however, subjected to very harsh treatment sometimes in progress
of battles between the males for their possession, and a few of them
are badly bitten and lacerated every season.

One of the cows that arrived at Nahspeel, St. Paul’s Island, early
in June, 1872, was treated to a mutilation in this manner, under my
eyes. When she had finally landed on the barren rocks of one of the
numerous “see-catchie” at the water-front of this small rookery, and
while I was carefully making a sketch of her graceful outlines, a
rival bull, adjacent, reached out from his station and seized her
with his mouth at the nape of the neck, just as a cat lifts a kitten.
At the same instant, almost simultaneously, the old male that was
rightfully entitled to her charms, turned, and caught her in his
teeth by the skin of her posterior dorsal region. There she was,
lifted and suspended in mid-air, between the jaws of the furious
rivals, until, in obedience to their powerful struggles, the hide
of her back gave way, and, as a ragged flap of the raw skin more
than six inches broad and a foot in length was torn up and from her
spine, she passed, with a rush, into the possession of the bull which
had covetously seized her. She uttered no cry during this barbarous
treatment, nor did she, when settled again, turn to her torn and
bleeding wound to notice it in any way whatsoever that I could
observe.

I may add here that I never saw the seals under such, or any
circumstances, lick or nurse their wounds as dogs or cats do;
but, when severe inflammation takes place, they seek the water,
disappearing promptly from scrutiny.

[119] This old Aleut, Philip Vollkov, passed to his final rest—“un
konchielsah”—in the winter of 1878-79. He was one of the real
characters of St. Paul. He was esteemed by the whites on account of
his relative intelligence, and beloved by the natives, who called
him their “wise man,” and who exulted in his piety. Philip, like
the other people there of his kind, was not much comfort to me when
I asked questions as to the seals. He usually answered important
inquiries by crossing himself and replying, “God knows.” There was no
appeal from this.

[120] The only danger which these little fellows are subject to up
here is being caught by an October gale down at the surf-margin,
when they have not fairly learned to swim. Large numbers have been
destroyed by sudden “nips” of this character.

[121] The fur-seal spends a great deal of time, both at sea and on
land, in scratching its hide; for it is annoyed by a species of
louse, a _pediculus_, to just about the same degree and in the same
manner that our dogs are by fleas. To scratch, it sits upon its
haunches, and scrapes away with the toe-nails of first one and then
the other of its hind flippers, by which action it reaches readily
all portions of its head, neck, chest and shoulders, and with either
one or the other of its fore flippers it rubs down its spinal region
back of the shoulders to the tail. By that division of labor with
its feet it can promptly reduce, with every sign of comfort, any
lousy irritation wheresoever on its body. This _pediculus_ peculiar
to the fur-seal attaches itself almost exclusively to the pectoral
regions; a few also are generally found at the bases of the auricular
pavilions.

When the fur-seal is engaged in this exercise it cocks its head and
wears exactly the same expression that our common house-dog does
while subjugating and eradicating fleas; the eyes are partly or
wholly closed; the tongue lolls out; and the whole demeanor is one of
quiet but intense satisfaction.

The fur-seal appears also to scratch itself in the water with the
same facility and unction so marked on land, only it varies the
action by using its fore-hands principally in its pelagic exercise,
while its hind-feet do most of the terrestrial scraping.

[122] It has been suggested to me that the exquisite power of scent
possessed by these animals enables them to reach the breeding grounds
at about the place where they left them the season previously: surely
the nose of the fur-seal is endowed to a superlative degree with
those organs of smell, and its range of appreciation in this respect
must be very great.

I noticed in all sleeping and waking seals that the nasal apertures
were never widely expanded; and that they were at intervals rapidly
opened and closed with inhalation and exhalation of each breath; the
nostrils of the fur-seal are, as a rule, well opened when the animal
is out of water, and remain so while it is on land.

[123] The Russian term “holluschickie” or “bachelors” is very
appropriate, and is usually employed.

[124] If there is any one faculty better developed than the others
in the brain of the intelligent _Callorhinus_, it must be its “bump”
of locality. The unerring directness with which it pilots its annual
course back through thousands of miles of watery waste to these
spots of its birth—small fly-dots of land in the map of Bering Sea
and the North Pacific—is a very remarkable exhibition of its skill
in navigation. While the Russians were established at Bodega and
Ross, Cal., seventy years ago, they frequently shot fur-seals at
sea when hunting the sea-otter off the coast between Fuca Straits
and the Farallones. Many of these animals, late in May and early in
June, were so far advanced in pregnancy that it was deemed certain by
their captors that some shore must be close at hand upon which the
near-impending birth of the pup took place. Thereupon the Russians
searched over every rod of the coast-line of the mainland and the
archipelago between California and the peninsula of Alaska, vainly
seeking everywhere there for a fur-seal rookery. They were slow
to understand how animals so close to the throes of parturition
could strike out into the broad ocean to swim fifteen hundred or
two thousand miles within a week or ten days ere they landed on the
Pribylov group, and, almost immediately after, give birth to their
offspring.

[125] I did not permit myself to fall into error by estimating this
matter of weight, because I early found that the apparent huge bulk
of a sea-lion bull or fur-seal male, when placed upon the scales,
shrank far below my notions: I took a great deal of pains, on several
occasions, during the killing-season, to have a platform scale carted
out into the field, and as the seals were knocked down, and before
they were bled, I had them carefully weighed, constructing the
following table from my observations:

  ————————————+————————+—————————+—————————+———————+————————————————————
              |        |         |  Gross  | Weight|
       Age.   | Length.| Girth.  |weight of|   of  |    Remarks.
              |        |         |  body.  | skin. |
  ————————————+————————+—————————+—————————+———————+————————————————————
              | Inches.| Inches. | Pounds. |Pounds.|
              |        |         |         |       |
  One week    |12 to 14|10 to 10½|  6 to 7½|     1¼|A male and female,
              |        |         |         |       | being the only
              |        |         |         |       | ones of the class
              |        |         |         |       | handled, June 20,
              |        |         |         |       | 1873.
              |        |         |         |       |
  Six months  |      24|      25 |      39 |     3 |A mean of ten
              |        |         |         |       | examples, males
              |        |         |         |       | and females, alike
              |        |         |         |       | in size, November
              |        |         |         |       | 28, 1872.
              |        |         |         |       |
  One year    |      38|      25 |      39 |     4½|A mean of six
              |        |         |         |       | examples, males
              |        |         |         |       | and females, alike
              |        |         |         |       | in size, July 14,
              |        |         |         |       | 1873.
              |        |         |         |       |
  Two years   |      45|      30 |      58 |     5½|A mean of thirty
              |        |         |         |       | examples, all
              |        |         |         |       | males, July 24,
              |        |         |         |       | 1873.
              |        |         |         |       |
  Three years |      52|      36 |      87 |     7 |A mean of thirty-two
              |        |         |         |       | examples, all
              |        |         |         |       | males, July 24,
              |        |         |         |       | 1873.
              |        |         |         |       |
  Four years  |      58|      42 |     135 |    12 |A mean of ten
              |        |         |         |       | examples, all
              |        |         |         |       | males, July 24,
              |        |         |         |       | 1873.
              |        |         |         |       |
  Five years  |      65|      52 |     200 |    16 |A mean of five
              |        |         |         |       | examples, all
              |        |         |         |       | males, July 24,
              |        |         |         |       | 1873.
              |        |         |         |       |
  Six years   |      72|      64 |     280 |    25 |A mean of three
              |        |         |         |       | examples, all
              |        |         |         |       | males, July 24,
              |        |         |         |       | 1873.
              |        |         |         |       |
  Eight to    |75 to 80|70 to 75 |400      |45     |An estimate only,
   twenty     |        |         | to 500  | to 50 | calculating on the
   years      |        |         |         |       | weight (when fat,
              |        |         |         |       | and early in the
              |        |         |         |       | season), of old
              |        |         |         |       | bulls.
  ————————————+————————+—————————+—————————+———————+————————————————————

[126] Veniaminov: Zapieskie ob Oonalashkenskaho Otdayla, 2 vols., St.
Petersburg, 1842. This work of Bishop Innocent Veniaminov is the only
one which the Russians can lay claim to as exhibiting anything like a
history of Western Alaska, or of giving a sketch of its inhabitants
and resources, that has the least merit of truth or the faintest
stamp of reliability. Without it we should be simply in the dark as
to much of what the Russians were about during the whole period of
their occupation and possession of that country. He served, chiefly
as a priest and missionary, for nineteen years, from 1823 to 1842,
mainly at Oonalashka, having the Seal Islands in his parish, and was
made Bishop of all Alaska. He was soon after recalled to Russia,
where he became the primate of the national church, ranking second to
no man in the Empire save the Czar. He was advanced in life, being
more than ninety years of age when he died at Moscow, April 22, 1879.
He must have been a man of fine personal presence, judging from the
following description of him, noted by Sir George Simpson, who met
him at Sitka in 1842, just as he was about to embark for Russia: “His
appearance, to which I have already alluded, impresses a stranger
with something of awe, while in further intercourse the gentleness
which characterizes his every word and deed insensibly moulds
reverence into love, and at the same time his talents and attainments
are such as to be worthy of his exalted station. With all this, the
bishop is sufficiently a man of the world to disdain anything like
cant. His conversation, on the contrary, teems with amusement and
instruction, and his company is much prized by all who have the honor
of his acquaintance.” Sir Edward Belcher, who saw him at Kadiak in
1837, said: “He is a formidable-looking man, over six feet three
inches in his boots, and athletic. He impresses one profoundly.”

[127] DEFINITIONS FOR RUSSIAN NAMES OF THE ROOKERIES, ETC.—The
several titles on my map that indicate the several breeding-grounds,
owe their origin and have their meaning as follows:

ZAPADNIE signifies “_westward_,” and is so used by the people who
live in the village.

ZOLTOI signifies “_golden_,” so used to express a metallic shimmering
of the sand there.

KETAVIE signifies “_of a whale_” so used to designate that point
where a large right whale was stranded in 1849 (?); from Russian
“_keet_,” or “_whale_.”

LUKANNON—so named after one Lukannon, a pioneer Russian, that
distinguished himself, with one Kaiecov, a countryman, who captured
a large number of sea-otters at that point, and on Otter Island, in
1787-88.

TONKIE MEES signifies “_small_ (or “_slender_”) _cape_” [tonkie,
“thin”; mees, “cape”].

POLAVINA literally signifies “_half way_” so used by the natives
because it is practically half way between the salt-houses at
Northeast Point and the village. POLAVINA SOPKA, or “_half-way
mountain_,” gets its name in the same manner.

NOVASTOSHNAH, from the Russian “_novaite_,” or “_of recent growth_,”
so used because this locality in pioneer days was an island to
itself; and it has been annexed recently to the mainland of St. Paul.

VESOLIA MISTA, or “_jolly place_,” the site of one of the first
settlements, and where much carousing was indulged in.

MAROONITCH, the site of a pioneer village, established by one Maroon.

NAHSAYVERNIA, or “_on the north shore_” from Russian, “_sayvernie_.”

BOGASLOV, or “_word of God_,” indefinite in its application to the
place, but is, perhaps, due to the fact that the pious Russians,
immediately after landing at Zapadnie, in 1787, ascended the hill
and erected a huge cross thereon. EINAHNUHTO, an Aleutian word,
signifying the “_three mammæ_.”

TOLSTOI, a Russian name, signifying “_thick_”; it is given to at
least a hundred different capes and headlands throughout Alaska,
being applied as indiscriminately as we do the term “Bear Creek” to
little streams in our Western States and Territories.

[128] One of the natives, “stareek,” Zachar Oostigov, told me that
the “Russians, when they first landed, came ashore in a thick fog” at
Tolstoi Mees, near the present sea-lion rookery site. As the water
is deep and “bold” there, Pribylov’s sloop, the _St. George_, must
have jammed her bowsprit against those lofty cliffs ere the patient
crew had intimation of their position. The old Aleut then showed
me that steep gully there, up which the ardent discoverers climbed
to a plateau above: and, to demonstrate that he was not chilled or
weakened by age, he nimbly scrambled down to the surf below, some
three hundred and fifty vertical feet, and I followed, half stepping
and half sliding over Pribylov’s path of glad discovery and proud
possession, trodden one June day by him nearly a hundred years ago.

[129] The thought of what a deadly epidemic would effect among these
vast congregations of _Pinnipedia_ was one that was constant in my
mind when on the ground and among them. I have found in the “British
Annals” (Fleming’s), on page 17, an extract from the notes of Dr.
Trail: “In 1833 I inquired for my old acquaintances, the seals of the
Hole of Papa Westray, and was informed that about four years before
they had totally deserted the island, and had only within the last
few months begun to reappear.... About fifty years ago multitudes
of their carcasses were cast ashore in every bay in the north of
Scotland, Orkney, and Shetland, and numbers were found at sea in a
sickly state.” This note of Trail is the only record which I can find
of a fatal epidemic among seals. It is not reasonable to suppose that
the Pribylov rookeries have never suffered from distempers in the
past, or are not to in the future, simply because no occasion seems
to have arisen during the comparatively brief period of their human
domination.

[130] _Somniosus microcephalus._ Some of these sharks are of very
large size, and when caught by the Indians of the northwest coast,
basking or asleep on the surface of the sea, they will, if transfixed
by the natives’ harpoons, take a whole fleet of canoes in tow and run
swiftly with them several hours before exhaustion enables the savages
to finally despatch them. A Hudson Bay trader, William Manson (at
Fort Alexander in 1865), told me that his father had killed one in
the smooth waters of Millbank Sound which measured twenty-four feet
in length, and its liver alone yielded thirty-six gallons of oil. The
_Somniosus_ lies motionless for long intervals in calm waters of the
North Pacific, just under and at the surface, with its dorsal fin
clearly exposed above. What havoc such a carnivorous fish would be
likely to effect in a “pod” of young fur-seals can be better imagined
than described.

[131] _Orca gladiator._ While revolving this particular line of
inquiry in my mind when on the ground and among the seals, I
involuntarily looked constantly for some sign of disturbance in the
sea which would indicate the presence of an enemy, and, save seeing
a few examples of the _Orca_, I never detected anything. If the
killer-whale was common here, it would be patent to the most casual
eye, because it is the habit of this ferocious cetacean to swim so
closely at the surface as to show its peculiar sharp dorsal fin high
above the water. Possibly a very superficial observer could and would
confound that long trenchant fluke of the _Orca_ with the stubby node
upon the spine of a humpback whale, which that animal exhibits only
when it is about to dive. Humpbacks feed around the islands, but not
commonly; they are the exception. They do not, however, molest the
seals in any manner whatever, and little squads of these pinnipeds
seem to delight themselves by swimming in endless circles around and
under the huge bodies of those whales, frequently leaping out and
entirely over the cetacean’s back, as witnessed on one occasion by
myself and the crew of the _Reliance_ off the coast of Kadiak, June,
1874.

[132] I feel confident that I have placed this average of fish eaten
per diem by each seal at a starvation allowance, or, in other words,
it is a certain minimum of the whole consumption. If the seals can
get double the quantity which I credit them with above, startling
as it seems, still I firmly believe that they eat it every year.
An adequate realization by icthyologists and fishermen as to what
havoc the fur-seal hosts are annually making among the cod, herring,
and salmon of the northwest coast and Alaska, would disconcert and
astonish them. Happily for the peace of political economists who may
turn their attention to the settlement and growth of the Pacific
coast of America, it bids fair to never be known with anything like
precision. The fishing of man, both aboriginal and civilized, in the
past, present, and prospective, has never been, is not, nor will it
be, more than a drop in the bucket contrasted with those piscatorial
labors of these icthyophagi in the waters adjacent to their birth.
What catholic knowledge of fish and fishing-banks any one of those
old “seecatchie” must possess, which we observe hauled out on the
Pribylov rookeries each summer! It has, undoubtedly, during the
eighteen or twenty years of its life, explored every fish-eddy, bank,
or shoal throughout the whole of that vast immensity of the North
Pacific and Bering Sea. It has had more piscine sport in a single
twelvemonth than Izaak Walton had in his whole life.

An old sea-captain, Dampier, cruising around the world just about two
hundred years ago, wrote diligently thereof (or, rather, one Funnel
is said to have written for him), and wrote well. He had frequent
reference to meeting hair-seals and sea-lions, fur-seals, etc., and
fell into repeating this maxim, evidently of his own making: “For
wherever there be plenty of fysh, there be seals.” I am sure that,
unless a vast abundance of good fishing-ground was near by, no
such congregation of seal-life as is that under discussion on the
Seal Islands could exist. The whole eastern half of Bering Sea, in
its entirety, is a single fish-spawning bank, nowhere deeper than
fifty to seventy-five fathoms, averaging, perhaps, forty; also,
there are great reaches of fishing-shoals up and down the northwest
coast, from and above the Straits of Fuca, bordering the entire
southern, or Pacific coast, of the Aleutian Islands. The aggregate
of cod, herring, and salmon which the seals find upon these vast
icthyological areas of reproduction, must be simply enormous, and
fully equal to a most extravagant demand of the voracious appetites
of _Callorhini_.

When, however, the fish retire from spawning here, there, and
everywhere over these shallows of Alaska and the northwest coast,
along by the end of September to the 1st of November, every year,
I believe that the young fur-seal, in following them into the
depths of the great Pacific, must have a really arduous struggle
for existence—unless it knows of fishing-banks unknown to us.
The yearlings, however, and all above that age, are endowed with
sufficient muscular energy to dive rapidly in deep soundings, and to
fish with undoubted success. The pup, however, when it goes to sea,
five or six months old, is not lithe and sinewy like the yearling;
it is podgy and fat, a comparatively clumsy swimmer, and does not
develop, I believe, into a good fisherman until it has become pretty
well starved after leaving the Pribylovs.

[133] I heard a great deal of talk among the white residents of St.
Paul, when I first landed and the sealing-season opened, about the
necessity of “resting” the hauling-grounds; in other words, they
said if the seals were driven in repeated daily rotation from any
one of the hauling-grounds, that this would so disturb these animals
as to prevent their coming to any extent again thereon, during the
rest of the season. This theory seemed rational enough to me at the
beginning of my investigations, and I was not disposed to question
its accuracy; but subsequent observation directed to this point
particularly satisfied me, and the sealers themselves with whom I
was associated, that the driving of the seals had no effect whatever
upon the hauling which took place soon or immediately after the
field, for the hour, had been swept clean of seals by the drivers.
If the weather was favorable for landing, _i. e._, cool, moist, and
foggy, the fresh hauling of the “holluschickie” would cover the bare
grounds again in a very short space of time: sometimes in a few
hours after the driving of every seal from Zoltoi sands over to the
killing-fields adjacent, those dunes and the beach in question would
be swarming anew with fresh arrivals. If, however, the weather is
abnormally warm and sunny, during its prevalence, even if for several
consecutive days, no seals to speak of will haul out on the emptied
space; indeed, if these “holluschickie” had not been taken away by
man from Zoltoi or any other hauling-ground on the islands when
“tayopli” weather prevailed, most of those seals would have vacated
their terrestrial loafing-places for the cooler embraces of the sea.

The importance of clearly understanding this fact as to the readiness
of the “holluschickie” to haul promptly out on steadily “swept”
ground, provided the weather is inviting, is very great; because,
when not understood, it was deemed necessary, even as late as the
season of 1872, to “rest” the hauling-grounds near the village
(from which all the driving has been made since), and make trips to
far-away Polavina and distant Zapadnie—an unnecessary expenditure
of human time, and a causeless infliction of physical misery upon
phocine backs and flippers.

[134] The fur-seal, like all of the pinnipeds, has no sweat-glands;
hence, when it is heated, it cools off by the same process of
panting which is so characteristic of the dog, accompanied by the
fanning that I have hitherto fully described; the heavy breathing
and low grunting of a tired drove of seals, on a warmer day than
usual, can be heard several hundred yards away. It is surprising how
quickly the hair and fur will come out of the skin of a blood-heated
seal—literally rubs bodily off at a touch of the finger. A fine
specimen of a three-year-old “holluschak” fell in its tracks at the
head of the lagoon while being driven to the village killing-grounds.
I asked that it be skinned with special reference to mounting;
accordingly a native was sent for, who was on the spot, knife in
hand, within less than thirty minutes from the moment that this seal
fell in the road, yet soon after he had got fairly to work patches
of the fur and hair came off here and there wherever he chanced to
clutch the skin.

[135] When turning the stunned and senseless carcasses, the only
physical danger of which the sealers run the slightest risk, during
the whole circuit of their work, occurs thus: at this moment the
prone and quivering body of the “holluschak” is not wholly inert,
perhaps, though it is nine times out of ten; and as the native takes
hold of a fore flipper to jerk the carcass over on to its back,
the half-brained seal rouses, snaps suddenly and viciously, often
biting the hands or legs of unwary skinners: they then come leisurely
and unconcernedly up into the surgeon’s office at the village, for
bandages, etc. A few men are bitten every day or two daring the
season on the islands, in this manner, but I have never learned of
any serious result following any case.

The sealers, as might be expected, become exceedingly expert in
keeping their knives sharp, putting edges on them as keen as razors,
and in an instant detect any dulness by passing the balls of their
thumbs over the suspected edges to such blades.

The white sealers of the Antarctic always used an orthodox butcher’s
“steel” in sharpening their knives, but these natives never have, and
probably never will abandon those little whetstones above referred to.

During the Russian management, and throughout the strife in killing
by our own people in 1868, a very large number of the skins were cut
through, here and there, by the slipping of the natives’ knives, when
they were taking them from the carcasses, and “flensing” them from
the superabundance, in spots, of blubber. These knife-cuts through
the skin, no matter how slight, give great annoyance to the dresser,
hence they are always marked down in price. The prompt scrutiny
of each skin on the islands by an agent of the Alaska Commercial
Company, who rejects every one of them thus injured, has caused the
natives to exercise greater care, and the number now so damaged,
every season, is absolutely trifling.

Another source of small loss is due to a habit which the
“holluschickie” have of occasionally biting each other when they are
being urged along in the drives, and thus crowded once in a while one
upon the other. Usually these examples of “zoobäden” are detected by
the natives prior to the “knocking down,” and spared; yet those which
have been nipped on the chest or abdomen cannot be thus noticed, and,
until the skin is lifted, the damage is not apprehended.

The aim and force with which the native directs his blow determines
the death of a fur-seal. If struck direct and violently, a single
stroke is enough. The seals’ heads are stricken so hard sometimes
that those crystalline lenses to their eyes fly out from the orbital
sockets like hail-stones, or little pebbles, and frequently struck me
sharply in the face, or elsewhere, while I stood near by watching a
killing-gang at work.

[Illustration: The Carcass after Skinning—The Skin as taken
therefrom.]

A singular lurid green light suddenly suffuses the eye of a fur-seal
at intervals when it is very much excited; as the “podding” for the
clubbers is in progress and at the moment when last raising its
head it sees the uplifted bludgeons on every hand above, fear seems
then for the first time to possess it and to instantly gild its
eye in this strange manner. When the seal is brained in this state
of optical coloration I have noticed that the opalescent tinting
remained well defined for many hours or a whole day after death.
These remarkable flashes are very characteristic to the eyes of the
old males during their hurly-burly on the rookeries, but never appear
in the younger classes unless as just described, as far as I could
observe.

[136] The shallow depths of Bering Sea give rise to a very bad surf,
and though none of the natives can swim, as far as I could learn,
yet they are quite creditable surfmen, and work the heavy “baidar”
in and out from the landing adroitly and circumspectly. They put a
sentinel upon the bluffs over Nah Speel, and go and come between
the rollers as he signals. They are not graceful oarsmen under any
circumstances, but can pull heartily and coolly together when in a
pinch. The apparent ease and unconcern with which they handled their
bidarrah here in the “baroon” during the fall of 1869 so emboldened
three or four sailors of the United States Revenue Marine cutter
_Lincoln_ that they lost their lives in such surf through sheer
carelessness. The “gig” in which they were coming ashore “broached
to” in the breakers just outside the cove, and their lifeless forms
were soon after thrown up by merciless waves on the Lagoon rookery.
Three graves of these men are plainly marked on a western slope of
the Black Bluffs.

There is a false air of listlessness and gentleness about an open
sea, or roadstead roller, that is very apt to deceive even watermen
of good understanding. The crushing, overwhelming power with which an
ordinary breaker will hurl a large ship’s boat on rocks awash, must
be personally experienced ere it is half appreciated.




CHAPTER XI.

THE ALASKAN SEA-LION.

  A Pelagic Monarch.—Marked Difference between the Sea-lion and
  the Fur-seal.—The Imposing Presence and Sonorous Voice of the
  “Sea-king.”—Terrible Combats between old Sea-lion Bulls.—Cowardly
  in the Presence of Man, however.—Sea-lions Sporting in the Fury
  of Ocean Surf.—It has no Fur on its Huge Hide.—Valuable only to
  the Natives, who Cover their “Bidarrah” with its Skin.—Its Sweet
  Flesh and Inodorous Fat.—Not such Extensive Travellers as the
  Fur-seals.—The Difficulty of Capturing Sea-lions.—How the Natives
  Corral them.—The Sea-lion “Pen” at Northeast Point.—The Drive of
  Sea-lions.—Curious Behavior of the Animals.—Arrival of the Drove at
  the Village.—A Thirteen-mile Jaunt with the Clumsy Drove.—Shooting
  the old Males.—The Bloody “Death-whirl.”—The Extensive Economic Use
  made of the Carcass by the Natives.—Chinese Opium Pipes Picked with
  Sea-lion Mustache bristles.


The sea-lion is also a characteristic pinniped of the Pribylov
Islands, but ranks much below the fur-seal in perfected physical
organization and intelligence. It can, as well as its more sagacious
and valuable relative, the _Callorhinus_, be seen, perhaps, to better
advantage on these islands than elsewhere in the whole world that I
know of. The marked difference between a sea-lion and the fur-seal up
here is striking, the former being twice the size of its cousin.

The size and strength of a northern sea-lion, _Eumetopias stelleri_,
its perfect adaptation to its physical surroundings, unite with
a singular climatic elasticity of organization. It seems to be
equally well satisfied with the ice-floes of the Kamchatka Sea to
the northward, or with the polished boulders and the hot sands of
the coast of California. It is an animal as it appears upon its
accustomed breeding grounds at Northeast Point, where I first saw it,
that commanded my involuntary admiration by its imposing presence and
sonorous voice, as it reared itself before me, with head, neck, and
chest upon its powerful forearms, over six feet in height, while its
heavy bass voice drowned the booming of the surf that thundered on
the rocks beneath its flanks.

[Illustration: A GROUP OF SEA-LIONS

  Young      Adult Male and Female      Old Bull Roaring

[_Eumetopias stelleri_: a Life Study made at St. Paul’s Island. July
16, 1872]]

The bulk and power of the adult sea-lion male will be better
appreciated when I say that it has an average length of ten and
eleven feet osteologically, with an enormous girth of eight to nine
feet around the chest and shoulders; but while the anterior parts
of its frame are as perfect and powerful on land as in sea, those
posterior are ridiculously impotent when the huge beast leaves
its favorite element. Still, when hauled up beyond the reach of
the brawling surf, as it rears itself, shaking the spray from its
tawny chest and short grizzly mane, it has a leonine appearance
and bearing, greatly enhanced as the season advances by a rich
golden-rufous color of its coat; the savage gleam of its expression
is due probably, to the sinister muzzle, and cast of its eye. This
optical organ is not round and full, soft and limpid, like the
fur-seal’s, but it is an eye like that of a bull-dog: it is small
and clearly shows under its heavy lids the white or sclerotic coat,
with a light-brown iris. Its teeth gleam and glisten in pearly
whiteness against a dark tongue and the shadowy recesses of its wide,
deep mouth. The long, sharp, broad-based canines, when bared by the
wrathful snarling of its gristled lips, glittered more wickedly, to
my eye, than the keenest sword ever did in the hand of man.

With these teeth alone, backed by the enormous muscular power of a
mighty neck and broad shoulders, the sea-lion confines its battles
to its kind, spurred by terrible energy and heedless and persistent
brute courage. No animals that I have ever seen in combat presented a
more savage or more cruelly fascinating sight than did a brace of old
sea-lion bulls which met under my eyes near the Garden Cove at St.
George.

Here was a sea-lion rookery the outskirts of which I had trodden
upon for the first time. Two aged males, surrounded by their meek,
polygamous families, were impelled towards each other by those latent
fires of hate and jealousy which seemed to burst forth and fairly
consume the angry rivals. Opening with a long, round, vocal prelude,
they gradually came together, as the fur-seal bulls do, with averted
heads, as though the sight of each other was sickening—but fight
they must. One would play against the other for an unguarded moment
in which to assume the initiative, until it had struck its fangs
into the thick skin of its opponent’s jowl; then, clinching its
jaws, was not shaken off until the struggles of its tortured victim
literally tore them out, leaving an ugly, gaping wound—for the sharp
eye-teeth cut a deeper gutter in the skin and flesh than would have
held my hand; fired into almost supernatural rage, the injured lion
retaliated, quick as a flash, in kind; the hair flew from both of
them into the air, the blood streamed down in frothy torrents, while
high above the boom of the breaking waves, and shrill deafening
screams of water-fowl over head, rose the ferocious, hoarse, and
desperate roar of these combatants.

Though provided with flippers, to all external view, as the fur-seal
is, the sea-lion cannot, however, make use of them at all in the
same free manner. The fur-seal may be driven five or six miles in
twenty-four hours under the most favorable conditions of cool, moist
weather; the “seevitchie,” however, can only go two miles, the
weather and roadway being the same. When driven, a sea-lion balances
and swings its long and heavy neck, as a lever, to and fro, with
every hitching up behind of its posterior limbs, which it seldom
raises from the ground, drawing them up after the fore-feet with a
sliding drag over the grass or sand and rocks, as the case may be,
ever and anon pausing to take a sullen and savage survey of the field
and the natives who are urging it.

The sea-lion is polygamous, but it does not maintain any regular
system and method in preparing for and attending to its harem, like
that so finely illustrated on the breeding-grounds of the fur-seal;
and it is not so numerous, comparatively speaking. There are not,
according to my best judgment, over ten or twelve thousand of
these animals altogether on the breeding-grounds of the Pribylov
Islands. It does not haul more than a few rods anywhere or under any
circumstances back from the sea. It cannot be visited and inspected
by men as the fur-seals are, for it is so shy and suspicious that on
the slightest warning of such an approach, a stampede into the water
is sure to result.

That noteworthy, intelligent courage of a fur-seal, though it does
not possess half the size nor one-quarter of the muscular strength
of a sea-lion, is entirely wanting in the huge bulk and brain of the
_Eumetopias_. A boy with a rattle or a pop-gun could stampede ten
thousand sea-lion bulls in the height of a breeding-season to the
water, and keep them there for the rest of the time.[137]

Old males come out and locate themselves over the narrow belts
of rookery-grounds (sometimes, as at St. Paul, on the immediate
sea-margin of fur-seal breeding-places), two or three weeks in
advance of the females, which arrive later, _i.e._, between the 1st
to the 6th of June; and these females are never subjected to that
intense, jealous supervision so characteristic of the fur-seal harem.
Big sea-lion bulls, however, fight savagely[138] among themselves,
and turn off from the breeding-ground all younger and weaker males.

A cow sea-lion is not quite half the size of an adult male; she will
measure from eight to nine feet in length osteologically, with a
weight of four or five hundred pounds; she has the same general cast
of countenance and build of the bull; but, as she does not sustain
any fasting period of over a week or ten days consecutively, she
never comes out so grossly fat as he does. With reference to the
weight of the latter, I was particularly unfortunate in not being
able to get one of those big bulls on the scales before it had
been bled, and in bleeding I know that a flood of blood poured out
which should have been recorded in the weight. Therefore I can only
estimate this aggregate avoirdupois of one of the finest-conditioned
adult male sea-lions at fourteen to fifteen hundred pounds; an
average weight, however, might safely be recorded as touching twelve
hundred pounds.[139]

You will notice that if you disturb and drive off any portion of the
rookery, by walking up in plain sight, those nearest to you will take
to the water instantly, swim out to a distance of fifty yards or
so, leaving their pups behind, helplessly sprawled around and about
the rocks at your feet. Huddled up all together in the surf in two
or three packs or squads, the startled parents hold their heads and
necks high out of the sea, and peer keenly at you: then, all roaring
in an incessant concert, they make an orchestra to which those deep
sonorous tones of the organ in that great Mormon tabernacle, at Salt
Lake City, constitute the fittest and most adequate resemblance.

You will witness an endless tide of these animals travelling to the
water, and a steady stream of their kind coming out, if you but keep
in retirement and do not disturb them. When they first issue from the
surf they are a dark chocolate brown-and-black, and glisten; but, as
their coats dry off, the color becomes an iron-gray, passing into
a bright golden rufous, which covers the entire body alike—shades
of darker brown on the pectoral patches and sterno-pectoral region.
After getting entirely dry, they seem to grow exceedingly uneasy,
and act as though oppressed by heat, until they plunge back into the
sea, never staying out, as the fur-seal does, day after day, and week
after week. The females and the young males frolic in and out of
the water, over rocks awash, incessantly, one with another, just as
puppies play upon a green sward; and, when weary, stretch themselves
out in any attitude that will fit the character of that rock, or the
lava-shingle upon which they may happen to be resting. The movements
of their supple spines, and ball-and-socket joint attachments, permit
of the most extraordinary contortions of a trunk and limbs, all of
which, no matter how distressing to your eyes, they seem actually to
relish. But the old battle-scarred bulls of the harem stand or lie at
their positions day and night without leaving them, except to take a
short bath when the coast is clear, until the end of the season.

[Illustration: SEA-LION ROOKERY, AT TOLSTOI

A view of the great Sea-lion breeding ground under the high bluffs of
St. George’s Island, between Garden Cove and Tolstoi Mees. June, 1873]

When swimming, the sea-lion lifts its head only above the surface
long enough to take a deep breath, then drops down a few feet
below, and propels itself, for about ten or fifteen minutes, like a
cigar-steamer, at the rate of six or seven knots, if undisturbed;
but, if chased or alarmed, it seems fairly to fly under water, and
can easily maintain for a long time a speed of fourteen or fifteen
miles per hour. Like the fur-seal, its propulsion through water
is the work entirely of its powerful fore-flippers, which are
simultaneously struck out, both together, and back against the water,
feathering forward again to repeat, while the hind flippers are
simply used as a rudder oar in deflecting an ever-varying swift and
abrupt course of the animal. On land its hind flippers are employed
just as a dog uses its feet in scratching fleas—the long peculiar
toe-nails thereof seeming to reach and comb those spots affected by
vermin, which annoys it, as the fur-seal is, to a great extent, and
causes them both to enjoy a protracted scratching.

Again, both genera, _Callorhinus_ and _Eumetopias_, are happiest when
the surf is strongest and wildest. Just in proportion to the fury of
a gale, so much the greater joy and animation of these animals. They
delight in riding on the crests of each dissolving breaker up to a
moment when it fairly foams over iron-bound rocks. At that instant
they disappear like phantoms beneath the creamy surge, to reappear on
the crown of the next mighty billow.

When landing, they always ride on the surf, so to speak, to an
objective point: and, it is marvellous to see with what remarkable
agility they will worm themselves up steep, rocky landings, having
an inclination greater than forty-five degrees, to flat bluff-tops
above, which have an almost perpendicular drop to water.

As the sea-lion is without fur, its skin has little or no commercial
value.[140] The hair is short, an inch to an inch and a half in
length, being longest over the nape of the neck; straight, and
somewhat coarse, varying in color as the season comes and goes. For
instance, when the _Eumetopias_ makes its first appearance in the
spring and dries out after landing, it has then a light-brownish
rufous tint, with darker shades back and under the fore flippers and
on the abdomen. By the expiration of a month or six weeks, about
June 15th, generally, this coat will then be weathered into a glossy
rufous, or ochre yellow; this tinting remains until shed along by
the middle of August, or a little earlier. After a new coat has
fairly grown, and just before an animal leaves the island rookery in
November, it is a light sepia or Vandyke brown, with deeper shades,
almost black, upon its abdomen. The cows after shedding never color
up so darkly as the bulls; but when they come back to the land next
year they return identically the same in tinting; so that the eye,
in glancing over a sea-lion rookery during June and July, cannot
discern any dissimilarity in color, at all noteworthy, existing
between the coats of the bulls and the cows; also, the young males
and yearlings appear in that same golden-brown and ochre, with here
and there an animal which is noted as being spotted somewhat like
a leopard—a yellow rufous ground predominating, with patches of
dark-brown, blotched and mottled, irregularly interspersed over the
anterior regions down to those posterior. I have never seen any of
the old bulls or cows thus mottled, and this is likely due to some
irregularity of shedding in the younger animals; for I have not
noticed it early in the season, and it seems to fairly fade away so
as not to be discerned on the same animal at the close of its summer
solstice. Many of the old bulls have a grizzled or “salt and pepper”
look during the shedding period, which is from August 10th up to
November 10th or 20th. The pups, when born, are a rich dark-chestnut
brown. This coat they shed in October, and take one much lighter in
its stead, still darker, however, than their parents.

The time of arrival at, stay on, and departure from the islands, is
about the same as that which I have recorded as characteristic of
the fur-seal; but, if a winter is an open, mild one, some of the
sea-lions will frequently be seen about the shores during the whole
year; and then the natives occasionally shoot them, long after the
fur-seals have entirely disappeared. Again, it does not confine its
landing to the Pribylov Islands alone, as the fur-seal unquestionably
does, with reference to such terrestrial location in our own country.
On the contrary, it is a frequent visitor to almost all of the
Aleutian Islands: it ranges, as I have said before, over the mainland
coast of Alaska, south of Bristol Bay, and about the Siberian shores
to the westward, throughout the Kuriles and the Japanese northern
waters.[141]

When I first returned, in 1873, from the Seal Islands, those authors,
whose conclusions were accepted prior to my studies there, had
agreed in declaring that the sea-lion, so common off the port of
San Francisco, was the same animal also common in Alaska, and the
Pribylov Islands in especial; but my drawings from life, and studies,
quickly pointed out the error, for it was seen that the creature most
familiar to the Californians was an entirely different animal from my
subject of study on the Seal Islands. In other words, while scattered
examples of the _Eumetopias_ were, and are, unquestionably about and
off the harbor of San Francisco, yet nine tenths of the sea-lions
there observed were a different animal—they were the _Zalophus
californianus_. This _Zalophus_ is not much more than half the size
of _Eumetopias_, relatively; it has the large, round, soft eye of
the fur-seal, and the more attenuated Newfoundland-dog-like muzzle;
and it never roars, but breaks out incessantly with a _honk, honk,
honking_ bark, or howl.

No example of _Zalophus_ has ever been observed in the waters of
Bering Sea, nor do I believe that it goes northward of Cape Flattery,
or really much above Mendocino, Cal.

According to the natives of St. George, some sixty or seventy years
ago the _Eumetopias_ held almost exclusive possession of that
island being there in great numbers, some two or three hundred
thousand strong; and they aver, also, that the fur-seals then were
barely permitted to land by these animals, and in no great number;
therefore, they assert they were directed by the Russians (_i.e._,
their own ancestry) to hunt and worry the sea-lions off from the
island: the result was that, as the sea-lions left, the fur-seals
came, so to-day _Callorhinus_ occupies nearly the same ground which
_Eumetopias_ alone covered sixty years ago. I call attention to this
statement of the people because it is, or seems to be, corroborated
in the notes of a French naturalist and traveller, who, in his
description of the Island of St. George, which he visited sixty years
ago, makes substantially the same representation.[142]

That great intrinsic value to the domestic service of the Aleutes
rendered by the flesh, fat, and sinews of this animal, together
with its skin, arouses the natives of St. Paul and St. George, who
annually make drives of “seevitchie,” by which they capture two
or three hundred, as the case may be. On St. George driving is
positively difficult, owing to the character of the land itself:
hence, a few only are secured there; but at St Paul unexceptional
advantages are found on Northeast Point for the capture of these shy
and timid brutes. The natives of St. Paul, therefore, are depended
upon to secure the necessary number of skins required by both islands
for their boats and other purposes. This capture of the sea-lion
is the only serious business which the people have on St. Paul. It
is a labor of great care, industry, and some physical risk for the
Aleutian hunters.[143]

By reference to my sketch-map of Northeast Point rookery the reader
will notice a peculiar neck or boot-shaped point, which I have
designated as Sea-lion Neck. That area is a spot upon which a large
number of sea-lions are always to be found during the season. As they
are so shy and sure to take to water upon the appearance or presence
of man near by, the natives adopt this plan: Along by the middle
or end of September, as late sometimes as November, and after the
fur-seal rookeries have broken up for the year, fifteen or twenty of
the very best men in the village are selected by one of their chiefs
for a sea-lion rendezvous at Northeast Point. They go up there with
their provisions, tea, and sugar, and blankets, and make themselves
at home in the _barrabora_ and house which I have located on the
sketch-map of Novastoshnah, prepared to stay, if necessary, a month,
or until they shall get the whole drove together of two or three
hundred sea-lions.

The “seevitchie,” as the natives call those animals, cannot be
approached successfully by daylight, so these hunters lie by in
this house of Webster’s until a favorable night comes along, one
in which the moon is partially obscured by drifting clouds and the
wind blows over them from the rookery where the sea-lions lie. Such
an opportunity being afforded, they step down to the beach at low
water and proceed to creep on all fours across surf-beaten sand and
boulders up between the dozing herd, and the high-water mark where
it rests. In this way a small body of natives, crawling along in
Indian file, may pass unnoticed by sea-lion sentries, which doubtless
in that uncertain light see, but confound the forms of their human
enemies with those of seals. When the creeping Aleutes have all
reached the strip of beach that is left bare by ebb-tide, and is
between the surf and those unsuspecting animals, at a given signal
from their crawling leader they at once leap to their feet, shout,
yell, brandishing their arms and firing off pistols, while the
astonished and terrified lions roar, and flounder in every direction.

[Illustration: ALEUTES CAPTURING SEA-LIONS

Natives creeping up between a herd of dozing Sea-lions and the water,
at low tide during a moonlight night, at Garden Cove, St. George’s
Island; getting into position for “springing the alarm”]

[Illustration: THE SEA-LION PEN

Method of corralling Sea-lions at Novastoshnah, St. Paul’s Island,
while the Natives are getting a Drove together for driving to the
Village]

If at the moment of surprise seevitchie are sleeping with their heads
pointed toward the water, as they rise up in fright they charge
straight on in that direction, right over the men themselves; but
those which have been resting at this instant, when startled, pointed
landward, up they rise and follow that course just as desperately,
and nothing will turn them either one way or the other. These
sea-lions which charged for the water are lost, of course;[144]
but the natives promptly follow up the land-turned animal with a rare
combination of horrible noises and demoniacal gesticulations until
the first frenzied spurt and exertions of the terrified creatures so
completely exhaust them that they fall panting, gasping, prone upon
the earth, extended in spite of their bulk and powerful muscles,
helpless, and at the mercy of their cunning captors, who, however,
instead of slaying them as they lie, rudely rouse them up again and
urge the herd along to the house in which they have been keeping
watch during the several days past.

Here at this point is a curious stage in such proceeding. The
natives drive up to that “Webster’s” house those twenty-five or
thirty or forty sea-lions, as the case may be, which they have just
captured—they seldom get more at any one time—and keep them in a
corral or pen close by the barrabora, on the flattened surface of a
sand-ridge, in the following comical manner: When they have huddled
up the “pod,” they thrust stakes down around it at intervals of ten
to twenty feet, to which strips of cotton cloth are fluttering as
flags, and a line or two of sinew-rope or thong of hide is strung
from pole to pole around the group, making a circular cage, as it
were. Within this flimsy circuit the stupid sea-lions are securely
imprisoned, and, though they are incessantly watched by two or
three men, the whole period of caging and penning which I observed,
extending over nine or ten days and nights, passed without a single
effort being made by the “seevitchie” to break out of their flimsy
bonds, and it was passed by these animals, not in stupid quiescence,
but in alert watchfulness, roaring, writhing, twisting, turning one
upon and over the other.

By this method of procedure, after the lapse usually of two or three
weeks, a succession of favorable nights will have occurred: then the
natives secure their full quota, which, as I have said before, is
expressed by a herd of two or three hundred of these animals.

[Illustration: The Sea-lion Caravan.

[_Natives driving a drove over the plain of Polavina, en route from
Northeast Point to St. Paul._]]

When that complement is filled, the natives prepare to drive their
herd back to the village over the grassy and mossy uplands and
intervening stretches of sand-dune tracts, fully eleven miles:
preferring thus to take the trouble of prodding such clumsy brutes,
wayward and obstinate as they are, rather than to pack their heavy
hides in and out of boats, making in this way each sea-lion carry
its own skin and blubber down to the doors of their houses in the
village. If the weather is normally wet and cold, this drive or
caravan of sea-lions can be driven to its point of destination in
five or six days; but should it be dry and warmer than usual, three
weeks, and even longer, will elapse before the circuit is traversed.

[Illustration: SPRINGING THE ALARM

Natives surprising a Herd of Sea-lions at Tolstoi, St. George’s
Island. August 3, 1673]

When the drive is started, the natives gather around the herd on all
sides, save an opening which they leave pointing to that direction
they desire the animals to travel; in this manner they escort and
urge the “seevitchie” along to their final resting and slaughter near
the village. The young lions and the females, being much lighter than
old males, less laden with fat or blubber, take the lead, for they
travel twice and thrice as easy and as fast as the latter; these, by
reason of their immense avoirdupois, are incapable of moving ahead
more than a few rods at a time, then they are completely checked by
sheer loss of breath, though the vanguard of the females allures them
on; but when an old sea-lion feels his wind coming short, he is sure
to stop, sullenly and surlily turning upon the drivers, not to move
again until his lungs are clear.

In this method and manner of direction the natives stretch a herd out
in extended file, or as a caravan, over the line of march, and as the
old bulls pause to savagely survey the field and catch their breath,
showing their wicked teeth, the drivers have to exercise every art
and all their ingenuity in arousing them to fresh efforts. This
they do by clapping boards and bones together, firing fusees, and
waving flags; and of late, and best of all, the blue gingham umbrella
repeatedly opened and closed in the face of an old bull has been a
more effective starter than all the other known artifices or savage
expedients of the natives.[145]

The procession of sea-lions, managed in this strange manner day and
night—for the natives never let up—is finally brought to rest within
a stone’s throw of the village, which has pleasurably anticipated for
days and for weeks its arrival, and rejoices in its appearance. The
men get out their old rifles and large sea-lion lances, and sharpen
their knives, while the women look well to their oil-pouches, and
repair to the field of slaughter with meat-baskets on their heads.

No attempt is made, even by the boldest Aleut, to destroy an adult
bull sea-lion by spearing the enraged, powerful beast, which, now
familiar with man and conscious, as it were, of his puny strength,
would seize the lance between its jaws and shake it from the hands of
the stoutest one in a moment. Recourse is had to a rifle. The herd
is started up those sloping flanks of the Black Bluff hillside; the
females speedily take the front, while the old males hang behind.
Then the marksmen, walking up to within a few paces of each animal,
deliberately draw gun-sight upon their heads and shoot them just
between the eye and the ear. The old males thus destroyed, the cows
and females are in turn surrounded by the natives, who, dropping
their rifles, thrust big heavy iron lances into their trembling
bodies at a point behind the fore flippers, touching the heart with
a single lunge. It is an unparalleled spectacle, dreadfully cruel and
bloody.[146]

This surrounding of the cows is, perhaps, the strangest procedure on
the islands. To fully appreciate this subject the reader must first
call to his mind’s eye the fact that these female sea-lions, though
small beside the males, are yet large animals; seven and eight feet
long and weighing each as much as any four or five average men. But,
in spite of their strength and agility, fifteen or twenty Aleutes,
with rough, iron-tipped lances in their hands, will surround a
drove of fifty or one hundred and fifty of them by forming a noisy,
gesticulating circle, gradually closing up, man to man, until the
sea-lions are literally piled in a writhing, squirming, struggling
mass, one above the other, three or four deep, heads, flippers,
bellies, backs, all so woven and interwoven in this panic-stricken
heap of terrified creatures that it defies adequate description. The
natives spear those cows on top, which, as they sink in death, are
mounted in turn by the live animals underneath; these meet the deadly
lance, in order, and so on until the whole herd is quiet and stilled
in the fatal ebbing of their hearts’ blood.

Although the sea-lion has little or no commercial value for us,
yet to the service of the natives themselves, who live all along
the Bering Sea coast of Alaska, Kamchatka, and the Kuriles, it is
invaluable; they set great store by it. It supplies them with its
hide, mustaches, flesh, fat, sinews, and intestines, which they make
up into as many necessary garments, food-dishes, etc. They have
abundant reason to treasure its skin highly, since it is the covering
to their neat _bidarkas_ and _bidarrahs_, the former being the small
_kayak_ of Bering Sea, while the latter is a boat of all work,
exploration and transportation. These skins are unhaired by sweating
in a pile, then they are deftly sewed and carefully stretched over
a light keel and frame of wood, making a perfectly water-tight boat
that will stand, uninjured, the softening influence of water for a
day or two at a time, if properly air-dried and oiled. After being
used during the day these skin boats are always drawn out on the
beach, turned bottom-side up and air-dried during the night—in this
way made ready for employment again on the morrow.

A peculiar value is attached to the intestines of the sea-lion,
which, after skinning, are distended with air and allowed to dry
in that shape; then they are cut into ribbons and sewed strongly
together into that most characteristic rain-proof garment of
the world, known as the “kamlayka,” which, while being fully as
water-repellant as india-rubber, has far greater strength, and is
never affected by grease and oil. It is also transparent in its
fitting over dark clothes. The sea-lions’ throats are treated in a
similar manner, and when cured, are made into boot tops, which are
in turn soled by very tough skin that composes the palms of this
animal’s fore flippers.

[Illustration: The “Bidarrah.”

[_Characteristic Alaskan boat, made by fitting sea-lion skins over a
wooden frame and keel._]]

The Aleutian name for this garment is unpronounceable in our
language, and equally so in the more flexible Russian; hence the
Alaskan “kamlayka,” derived from the Siberian “kamläia.” That is made
of tanned reindeer skin, unhaired, and smoked by larch bark until
it is colored a saffron yellow; and is worn over a reindeer-skin
undershirt, which has the hair next to its owner’s skin, and the
obverse side stained red by a decoction of alder-bark. The kamläia
is closed behind and before, and a hood, fastened to the back of
the neck, is drawn over the head, when leaving shelter; so is the
Aleutian kamlayka; only the one of Kolyma is used to keep out
piercing dry cold, while the garment of the Bering Sea is a perfect
water-tight affair.

Around the natives’ houses, on St. Paul and St. George, constantly
appear curious objects which, to an unaccustomed eye, resemble
overgrown gourds or enormous calabashes with attenuated necks;
examination proves them to be the dried, distended stomach-walls of a
sea-lion, filled with its oil—which (unlike the offensive blubber of
the fur-seal) boils out clear and inodorous from its fat. The flesh
of an old sea-lion, while not very palatable, is tasteless and dry;
but the meat of a yearling is very much like veal, and when properly
cooked I think it is just as good; but the superiority of sea-lion
meat over that of the fur-seal is decidedly marked. It requires some
skill in the _cuisine_ ere sausage and steaks of the _Callorhinus_
are accepted on the table; while it does not, however, require much
art, experience, or patience for good cooks to serve up the juicy
ribs of a young sea-lion so that the most fastidious palate will not
fail to relish it.

The carcass of a sea-lion, after it is stripped of its hide, and
disembowelled, is hung up in cool weather by its hind flippers,
over a rude wooden frame or “laabaas,” as the natives call such a
structure, where, together with many more bodies of fur-seals treated
in the same manner, it serves from November until the following
season of May, as the meat-house for an Aleut on St. Paul and St.
George. Exposed in this manner to open weather, the natives keep
their seal-meat almost any length of time, in winter, for use; and,
like our old duck and bird-hunters, they say they prefer to have this
flesh tainted rather than fresh, declaring that it is most tender and
toothsome when decidedly “loud.”

The tough, elastic mustache-bristles of a sea-lion are objects of
great commercial activity by the Chinese, who prize them highly as
pickers for their opium pipes, and several ceremonies peculiar to
their joss-houses. Such lip-bristles of the fur-seal are usually too
small and too elastic for this service. The natives, however, always
carefully pluck them out of the _Eumetopias_, and get their full
value in exchange.

The sea-lion also, as in the case of the fur-seal, is a fish-eater,
pure and simple, though he, like the latter, occasionally varies his
diet by consuming a limited amount of juicy sea-weed fronds, and
tender marine crustaceans; but he hunts no animal whatever for food,
nor does he ever molest, up here, the sea-fowl that incessantly hover
over his head, or sit in flocks without any fear on the surface of
the waters around him. He, like _Callorhinus_, is, without question,
a mighty fisherman, familiar with every submarine haunt of his
piscatorial prey; and, like his cousin, rejects the heads of all
those fish which have hard horny mouths or are filled with teeth or
bony plates.

Many authorities who are quoted in regard to the habits of hair-seals
and southern sea-lions speak with much fine detail of having
witnessed the capture of water-birds by _Phocidæ_ and _Otariidæ_. To
this point of inquiry on the Pribylov Islands I gave continued close
attention; because, off and around all of the rookeries, large flocks
of auks, arries, gulls, shags, and choochkies were swimming upon the
water, and shifting thereupon incessantly, day and night, throughout
the late spring, summer, and early fall. During the four seasons of
my observation I never saw the slightest motion made by a fur-seal or
sea-lion, a hair-seal or a walrus, toward intentionally disturbing a
single bird, much less of capturing and eating it. Had these seals
any appetite for sea-fowl, this craving could have been abundantly
satisfied at the expense of absolutely no effort on their part. That
none of these animals have any taste for water-birds I am thoroughly
assured.

In concluding this recitation of that wonderful seal life belonging
to those islets of Pribylov, it is well to emphasize the fact
that, with an exception of the Russian and American seal islands
of Bering Sea, there are none elsewhere in the world of the
slightest importance to-day; the vast breeding-grounds of fur-seals
bordering on the Antarctic have been, by the united efforts of all
nationalities—misguided, short-sighted, and greedy of gain—entirely
depopulated; only a few thousand unhappy stragglers are now to be
seen throughout all that southern area, where millions once were
found, and a small rookery, protected and fostered by the government
of a South American State, north and south of the mouth of the Rio
de la Plata. When, therefore, we note the eagerness with which our
civilization calls for seal-skin fur, the fact that in spite of
fashion and its caprices this fur is and always will be an article of
intrinsic value and in demand, the thought at once occurs that the
Government is exceedingly fortunate in having this great amphibious
stock-yard, far up and away in the quiet seclusion of Bering Sea,
from which it shall draw an everlasting revenue, and on which its
wise regulation and its firm hand can continue the seals forever.


FOOTNOTES:

[137] That the sea-lion bull should be so cowardly in the presence
of man, yet so ferocious and brave toward one another and other
amphibious animals, struck me as a line of singular contrast with
the undaunted bearing of a fur-seal “seecatch,” which, though being
not half the size or possessing muscular power to anything like its
development in the “seevitchie,” nevertheless will unflinchingly face
on its station at the rookery any man to the death. The sea-lion
bulls certainly fight as savagely and as desperately one with
another, as the fur-seal males do. There is no question about that,
and their superior strength and size only makes the result more
effective in the exhibition of gaping wounds and attendant bloodshed.
I have repeatedly seen examples of these old warriors of the sea
which were literally scarred from their muzzles to their posteriors
so badly and so uniformly as to have fairly lost all the color or
general appearance even of hair anywhere on their bodies.

[138] I recall in this connection the sight of an aged male sea-lion
which had been defeated by a younger and more lusty rival, perhaps.
It was hauled upon a lava shelf at Southwest Point, solitary and
alone; the rock around it being literally covered with pools of pus,
that was oozing out and trickling down from a score of festering
wounds; the victim stood planted squarely on its torn fore flippers,
with head erect and thrown back upon its shoulders; its eyes were
closed, and it gently swayed its sore neck and shoulders in a sort
of troubled, painful day-dreaming or dozing. Like the fur-seal, the
sea-lion never notices its wounds to nurse and lick them, as dogs do,
or other carnivora; it never pays the slightest attention to them, no
matter how grievously it may be injured.

[139] Often when the fur-seal and sea-lion bulls haul up in the
beginning of the season examples among them which are inordinately
fat will be seen; their extra avoirdupois renders them very
conspicuous, even among large gatherings of their kind; they seem to
exhibit a sense of self-oppression then, quite as marked as is that
subsequent air of depression worn when, later, they have starved out
this load of surplus blubber, and are shambling back to the sea, for
recuperation and rest.

[140] The sea-lion and hair-seals of Bering Sea, having no commercial
value in the eyes of civilized men, have not been subjects of
interest enough to the pioneers of those waters for mention in
particular; such record, for instance, as that given of the walrus,
the sea-otter, and the fur-seal. Steller was the first to draw the
line clearly between them and seals in general, especially defining
their separation from the fur-seal; still his description is far from
being definite or satisfactory in the light of our present knowledge
of the animal.

In the South Pacific and Atlantic the sea-lion has been curiously
confounded by many of our earliest writers with the sea-elephant,
_Macrorhinus leoninus_, and its reference is inextricably entangled
with the fur-seal at the Falklands, Kerguelen’s Land, and the
Crozettes. The proboscidean seal, however, seems to be the only
pinniped which visits the Antarctic continent; but that is a mere
inference of mine, because so little is known of those ice-bound
coasts, and Wilkes, who gives the only record made of the subject,
saw no other animal there save that one.

[141] The winter of 1872-73, which I passed on the Pribylov Islands,
was so rigorous that those shores were ice-bound, and the sea
covered with floes from January until May 28th; hence I did not
have an opportunity of seeing, for myself, whether the sea-lion
remains about its breeding-grounds there throughout that period. The
natives say that a few of them, when the sea is open, are always to
be found, at any day during the winter and early spring, hauled out
at Northeast Point, on Otter Island, and around St. George. They
are, in my opinion, correct; and, being in such small numbers, the
“seevitchie” undoubtedly find enough subsistence in local crustacea,
pisces, and other food. The natives, also, further stated that
none of the sea-lions which we observe on the islands during the
breeding-season leave the waters of Bering Sea from the date of their
birth to the time of their death. I am also inclined to agree with
this proposition, as a general rule, though it would be strange if
Pribylov sea-lions did not occasionally slip into the North Pacific,
through and below the Aleutian chain, a short distance, even to
travelling as far to the eastward as Cook’s Inlet. _Eumetopias
stelleri_ is well known to breed at many places between Attoo and
Kadiak Islands. I did not see it at St. Matthew, however, and I do
not think it has ever bred there, although this island is only two
hundred miles away to the northward of the Seal Islands—too many
polar bears. Whalers speak of having shot it in the ice-packs in a
much higher latitude, nevertheless, than that of St. Matthew. I can
find no record of its breeding anywhere on the islands or mainland
coast of Alaska north of the fifty-seventh parallel or south of the
fifty-third parallel of north latitude. It is common on the coast of
Kamchatka, the Kurile Islands, and the Commander group, in Russian
waters.

There are vague and ill-digested rumors of finding _Eumetopias_ on
the shores of Prince of Wales and Queen Charlotte Islands in breeding
rookeries; I doubt it. If it were so, it would be authoritatively
known by this time. We do find it in small numbers on the Farallones
Rocks, off the entrance to the harbor of San Francisco, where it
breeds in company with, though sexually apart from, an overwhelming
majority of _Zalophus_; and it is credibly reported as breeding
again to the southward, on the Santa Barbara, Guadaloupe, and other
islands of Southern and Lower California, consorting there, as on the
Farallones, with an infinitely larger number of the lesser-bodied
_Zalophus_.

There is no record made which shows that the fur-seals, even, have
any regular or direct course of travel up or down the northwest
coast. They are principally seen in the open sea, eight or ten miles
from land, outside the heads of the Straits of Fuca, and from there
as far north as Dixon Sound. During May and June they are aggregated
in greatest numbers here, though examples are reported the whole year
around. The only fur-seal which I saw, or was noted by the crew of
the _Reliance_, in her cruise, June 1st to 9th, from Port Townsend
to Sitka, was a solitary “holluschak” that we disturbed at sea well
out from the lower end of Queen Charlotte’s Islands; then, from
Sitka to Kadiak, we saw nothing of the fur-seal until we hauled off
from Point Greville, and coming down to Ookamok Islet, a squad of
agile “holluschickie” suddenly appeared among a school of humpback
whales, sporting in the most extravagant manner around, under, and
even leaping over the wholly indifferent cetacea. From this eastern
extremity of Kadiak Island clear up to the Pribylov group we daily
saw them here and there in small bands, or also as lonely voyageurs,
all headed for one goal. We were badly outsailed by them; indeed, the
chorus of a favorite “South Sea pirate’s” song, as incessantly sung
on the cutter’s “‘tween decks,” seemed to have special adaptation to
them:

    “For they bore down from the wind’wiard,
    A sailin’ seven knots to our four’n.”

[142] Choris: Voyage Pittoresque autour du Monde.

[143] A curious, though doubtless authentic, story was told me in
this connection illustrative of the strength and energy of the
sea-lion bull when at bay. Many years ago (1847), on St. Paul Island,
a drive of September sea-lions was brought down to the village in
the usual style; but when the natives assembled to kill them, on
account of a great scarcity at that time of powder on the island, it
was voted best to lance the old males also, as well as the females,
rather than shoot them in the customary style. The people had hardly
set to work at the task when one of their number, a small, elderly,
though tough, able-bodied Aleut, while thrusting his lance into
the “life” of a large bull, was suddenly seen to fall on his back
directly under that huge brute’s head. Instantly the powerful jaws
of the “seevitchie” closed upon the waistband, apparently, of the
native, and, lifting the yelling man aloft as a cat would a kitten,
the sea-lion shook and threw him high into the air, away over the
heads of his associates, who rushed up to the rescue and quickly
destroyed the animal by a dozen furious spear-thrusts; yet death did
not loosen its clinched jaws, in which were the tattered fragments of
Ivan’s clothing.

[144] The natives appreciate this peculiarity of the sea-lion very
keenly, for good and sufficient cause, though none of them have ever
been badly injured in driving or “springing the alarm.” I camped
with them for six successive nights of September, 1872, in order to
witness the whole procedure. During the several drives made while I
was with them I saw but one exciting incident. Everything went off in
an orthodox manner, as described in the text above. The exceptional
incident occurred during the first drive of the first night and
rendered those natives so cautious that it was not repeated. When
the alarm was sprung, old Luka Mandrigan was leading the van, and at
that moment down upon him, despite his wildly gesticulating arms and
vociferous yelling, came a squad of bull “seevitchie.” The native saw
instantly that they were pointed for the water, and, in his sound
sense, turned to run from under. His tarbosars slipped upon a slimy
rock awash; he fell flat as a flounder just as a dozen or more big
sea-lions plunged over and on to his prostrate form in the shallow
water. In less time than this can be written the heavy pinnipeds
had disappeared, while the bullet-like head of old Luka was quickly
raised, and he trotted back to us with an alternation of mirth and
chagrin in his voice. He was not hurt in the least.

[145] The curious behavior of sea-lions in the Big Lake when they
are _en route_ and driven from Novastoshnah to the village deserves
mention. After the drove gets over the sand-dunes and beach between
Webster’s house and the extreme northeastern head of the lake, a halt
is called and the drove “penned” on the bank there. Then, when the
sea-lions are well rested, they are started up and pell-mell into
the water. Two natives in a bidarka keep them from turning out from
shore into the broad bosom of Meesulkmahnee, while another bidarka
paddles in their rear and follows their swift passage right down the
eastern shore. In this method of procedure the drive carries itself
nearly two miles by water in less than twenty minutes from the time
the sea-lions are first turned in at the north end to that moment
when they are driven out at the southeastern elbow of the Big Pond.
The shallowness of the water here accounts probably for the strange
failure of these sea-lions to regain their liberty, and it so retards
their swimming as to enable the bidarka, with two men, to keep
abreast of their leaders easily, as they plunge ahead; and, “as one
goes, so all go sheep,” it is not necessary to pay attention to those
which straggle behind in the wake. They are stirred up by a second
bidarka, and none make the least attempt to diverge from that track
which the swifter mark out in advance. If they did, they could escape
“scot-free” in any one of the twenty minutes of this aquatic passage.

By consulting the map of St. Paul it will be observed that in a
direct line between the village and Northeast Point there are quite
a number of small lakes, including this large one of Meesulkmahnee.
Into all of these ponds the sea-lion drove is successively driven.
This interposition of fresh water at such frequent intervals serves
to shorten the time of that journey fully ten days in warmish
weather, and at least four or five under the best of climatic
conditions.

This track between Webster’s house and the village killing-grounds is
strewn with the bones of _Eumetopias_. They will drop in their tracks
now and then, even when carefully driven, from cerebral or spinal
congestion principally, and when they are hurried the mortality _en
route_ is very great. The natives when driving them keep them going
day and night alike, but give them frequent resting-spells after
every spurt ahead. The old bulls flounder along for a hundred yards
or so, then sullenly halt to regain breath, five or ten minutes being
allowed them; then they are stirred up again, and so on, hour after
hour, until the tedious transit is completed.

The younger sea-lions and the cows which are in the drove carry
themselves easily far ahead of the bulls, and, being thus always in
the van, serve unconsciously to stimulate and coax the heavy males
to travel. Otherwise I do not believe that a band of old bulls
exclusively could be driven down over this long road successfully.

[146] When slowly sketching, by measurements, the outlines of a fine
adult bull sea-lion which the ball from Booterin’s rifle had just
destroyed, an old “starooka” came up abruptly; not seeming to see
me, she deliberately threw down a large, greasy, skin meat-bag, and
whipping out a knife, went to work on my specimen. Curiosity prompted
me to keep still, in spite of the first sensations of annoyance, so
that I might watch her choice and use of the animal’s carcass. She
first removed the skin, being actively aided in this operation by an
uncouth boy; she then cut off the palms to both fore flippers; the
boy at the same time pulled out its mustache-bristles; she then cut
out its gullet, from the glottis to its junction with the stomach,
carefully divested it of all fleshy attachments and fat; she then
cut out the stomach itself, and turned it inside out, carelessly
scraping its gastric walls free of copious biliary secretions, the
inevitable bunch of _ascaris_; she then told the boy to take hold of
the duodenum end of the small intestine, and, as he walked away with
it, she rapidly cleared it of its attachments, so that it was thus
uncoiled to its full length of at least sixty feet; then she severed
it and then it was recoiled by the “melchiska,” and laid up with the
other members just removed, except the skin, which she had nothing
more to do with. She then cut out the liver and ate several large
pieces of that workhouse of the blood before dropping it into her
meat-pouch. She then raked up several handfuls of the “leaf-lard,” or
hard, white fat that is found in moderate quantity around the viscera
of all these pinnipeds, which she also dumped into the flesh-bag;
she then drew her knife through the large heart, but did not touch
it otherwise, looking at it intently, however, as it still quivered
in unison with the warm flesh of the whole carcass. She and the boy
then poked their fingers into the tumid lobes of the immense lungs,
cutting out portions of them only, which were also put into the grimy
pouch aforesaid; then she secured the gall-bladder and slipped it
into a small yeast-powder tin, which was produced by the urchin; then
she finished her economical dissection by cutting the sinews out of
its back in unbroken bulk from the cervical vertebra to the sacrum;
all these were stuffed into that skin bag, which she threw on her
back and supported it by a band over her head; she then trudged back
to the barrabkie from whence she sallied a short hour ago, like an
old vulture to the slaughter. She made the following disposition
of its contents: The palms were used to sole a pair of tarbosars,
or native boots, of which the uppers and knee-tops were made of
the gullets—one sea-lion gullet to each boot-top; the stomach was
carefully blown up and left to dry on the barrabkie roof, eventually
to be filled with oil rendered from sea-lion or fur-seal blubber.
The small intestine was carefully injected with water and cleansed,
then distended with air, and pegged out between two stakes, sixty
feet apart, with little cross-slats here and there between to keep
it clear of the ground. When it is thoroughly dry it is ripped up in
a straight line with its length and pressed out into a broad band of
parchment gut, which she cuts up and uses in making a water-proof
“kamlayka,” sewing it with those sinews taken from the back. The
liver, leaf-lard, and lobes of the lungs were eaten without further
cooking, and the little gall-bag was for some use in poulticing a
scrofulous sore. The mustache-bristles were a venture of the boy,
who gathers all that he can, then sends them to San Francisco, where
they find a ready sale to the Chinese, who pay about one cent apiece
for them. When the natives cut up a sea-lion carcass or one of a
fur-seal, on the killing-grounds for meat, they take only the hams
and the loins. Later in the season they eat the entire carcass, which
they hang up by its hind flippers on a “laabas” by their houses.




CHAPTER XII.

INNUIT LIFE AND LAND.

  “Nooshagak;” Wide Application of an Innuit Name.—The Post and
  River.—Countless Pools, Ponds, and Lakes of this District
  bordering Bristol Bay.—The Eskimo Inhabitants of the Coast.—The
  Features and Form of Alaskan Innuits.—Light-hearted,
  Inconstant, and Independent.—Their Dress, Manners, and
  Rude Dwellings.—Their Routine of Life.—Large and Varied
  Natural Food-supplies.—Indifferent Land Hunters, but Mighty
  Fishermen.—Limited Needs from Traders’ Stores.—Skilful Carvers
  in Ivory.—Their Town Hall, or “Kashga.”—They Build and Support
  no Churches here.—Not of a real Religious Cast, as the Aleutians
  are.—The Dogs and Sleds; Importance of Them here.—Great Interest
  of the Innuit in Savage Ceremonies.—The Wild Alaskan Interior.—Its
  Repellent Features alike Avoided by Savage and Civilized Man.—The
  Indescribable Misery of Mosquitoes.—The Desolation of Winter
  in this Region.—The Reindeer Slaughter-pen on the Kvichak
  River.—Amazing Improvidence of the Innuit.—The Tragic Death of
  Father Juvenals, on the Banks of the Great Ilyamna Lake, 1796.—The
  Queer Innuits of Togiak.—Immense Muskrat Catch.—The Togiaks are
  the Quakers of Alaska.—The Kuskokvim Mouth a Vast Salmon-trap.—The
  Ichthyophagi of Alaska.—Dense Population.—Daily Life of the
  Fish-eaters.—Infernal Mosquitoes of Kuskokvim; the Worst in
  Alaska.—Kolmakovsky; its History.


[Illustration: NOOSHAGAK, OR ALEXANDROVSK

Old Russian Central Trading Post for the Innuits of the Bristol Bay
Region—founded by Kolmakov, in 1834]

“Nooshagak” is not a very euphonious name, yet it is employed in
Alaska to express the whole of an immense area that backs the borders
of Bristol Bay; but, when strictly applied, it is the designation
of a small trading-post at the head of a large, brackish estuary
of the sea, into which the Nooshagak River pours its heavy flood.
A cruise of three hundred and eighty miles to the northeast from
Oonalashka in a trim little trading-schooner, which alone can make
the landing, takes you to this old and well-known Russian outpost;
but the mariner who pilots that vessel must be well acquainted with
those perilous shoals and tide-rips of Bristol Bay, or you will never
disembark at the foot of that staircase which leads up to the doors
of Alexandrovsk. The river here is a broad arm of the sea, full of
shifting sand-bars and mud-flats which try the temper of the most
patient and skilful navigator. It runs over these shallows at certain
turns of the tide, like the ebb and flow in the Bay of Fundy, with a
big, booming tidal wave, or “bore.” The current of this river may be
discerned for a long distance out into Bristol Bay, easily traced at
the season of high water by its turbidity.

Above the settlement of Nooshagak that river rapidly narrows into
a width of half a mile between banks for a long distance up its
winding course. It is very deep, with a succession of ripples, or
bars, that prevent navigation. When the northern bend is reached,
then it changes to a brawling, swift, and shoal current, with higher
rocky banks up to its source in the big lake which bears its guttural
name. It is clear and pure here, and is not muddy until it reaches
the shelving, alluvial banks of its lower course, which precipitate,
by their caving and washing out, large quantities of soil and timber
into the stream. Its shores are, and all the country back is, thickly
wooded by spruce forests, and parked with grassy slopes which reach
out here and there, planted sparsely with thickets and clumps of
graceful birch- and poplar-trees. These nod and wave their tremulous
foliage as the summer gusts sweep now and then over them. Countless
pools, ponds, and lakes nestle in the moors and in the forest
hollows, upon which flocks of geese, ducks, and all other kinds of
hardy water-fowl breed and moult their plumage during the short, hot
summer. The traders say that this river is the only one in Alaska,
of the least magnitude, which has banks on both sides of firm soil
throughout its entire course.

This site of Nooshagak village was an initial point of Russian
influence and trade among the great Innuit people of Alaska, who live
extended in their numerous settlements from the head of Bristol Bay
clear to the Arctic Ocean. Kolmakov established the post in 1834,
and named it Alexandrovsk. A simple cylindrical wooden shaft, twenty
feet high, surmounted with a globe, stands erected to his memory on
a small hillock overlooking the post below. The village itself is
located on the abrupt slopes of a steep, grassy hillside which rises
from the river’s edge. The trading-stores and the residence of the
priest, the church, log-huts of the natives and their barraboras
are planted on a succession of three earthen terraces, one rising
immediately behind the other. All communication from flat to flat
is by slippery staircases, which are fraught with great danger to a
thoughtless pedestrian, especially when fogs moisten the steps and
darkness obscures his vision.

The red-roofed, yellow-painted walls of the old Russian buildings,
the smarter, sprucer dwellings of our traders, with lazy, curling
wreaths of bluish smoke, are brought into very picturesque relief by
the verdant slopes of Nooshagak’s hillside, caught up and reflected
deeply by the swiftly flowing current of the river below. The natives
have festooned their long drying-frames with the crimson-tinted flesh
of salmon; bleached drift-logs are scattered in profusion upon a bare
sandy high-water bench that stretches like a buff-tinted ribbon just
beneath them, and above, the dark, turbid whirl of flood and eddy so
characteristic of a booming, rising river. A gleam of light falls
upon a broad expanse of the estuary beyond that point under which the
schooner lies at anchor, and brings out the thickly wooded banks of
an opposite shore, causing us to note the fact that, for some reason
or other, no timber seems ever to have spread down so far toward the
sea on this side of the stream, or where the settlement stands, since
nothing but scattered copses of alder- and willow-bushes grow on its
suburbs or anywhere else as far as an eye can range up the valley.

We notice a decided difference in bearing and expression among the
natives here—nothing like what we have studied at Oonalashka, Kadiak,
or Sitka. They are Innuits, or representatives of the most populous
savage family indigenous to Alaska, and are as nomadic as Bedouins.
They are the least changed or altered by contact with our race. They
are Eskimo, strictly speaking, and the natives of Kadiak are almost
strictly related to them. In portraying the physique, physiognomy,
and disposition of these people, we find in an average Innuit a man
who stands about five feet six or seven inches in his heelless boots;
his skin is fair, slightly Mongolian in its complexion and facial
expression; a broad face, prominent cheek-bones, a large mouth with
full lips, small black eyes, but prominently set in their sockets—not
under a lowering brow, as in the case of true Indian faces. The nose
is very insignificant and much depressed, having between the eyes
scarcely any bridge at all. He has an abundance of coarse black hair;
never any of a reddish hue, as frequently noted among the Aleutes
when first discovered and described by the Russians. Up to the age
of thirty years an Innuit usually keeps his hair cut pretty close to
his scalp; some of them shave the occiput, so that it shines like
a billiard-ball. After this period in life he lets it grow as it
will, wearing it in ragged, unkempt locks. He sometimes will sport a
well-developed mustache and chin-whisker, of which he is as proud as
though a Caucasian. He has shapely hands and feet; his limbs are well
made, formed, and muscled. An Innuit woman is proportionately smaller
than the man, and, when young, sometimes she is not unpleasant to
look at. The skin of her cheeks then will be faintly suffused with
blushes of natural color, her lips pouting and red, with small,
tapering hands and high-instepped feet. She rarely pierces her lips
or disfigures her nose; she lavishes upon her child or children a
wealth of affectionate attention—endows them with all her ornaments.
She allows her hair to grow to its full length, gathers it up behind
into thick braids, or else it is bound up in ropes lashed by copper
wire or sinews. She seldom tattooes her skin in any place; a faint
drawing of transverse blue lines upon the chin and cheeks is usually
made by her best friend when she is married.

[Illustration: An Innuit Woman.]

We are not reminded of the clothing stores of San Francisco when we
meet Innuits everywhere between Point Barrow and Nooshagak; they are
clad in the primitive garments of their remote ancestry, as a rule—a
few exceptions to this generalization being those individuals who
are living constantly about the widely scattered trading-posts, and
the chapels, or missions, located in their territory, where they act
as servants or interpreters. The conventional coat of these people
is the “parka,” made of marmot and muskrat-skins, or of tanned
reindeer-hides, with enormous winter hoods, or collars, of dog-hair
or fox-fur. This parka has sleeves, and compasses the body of the
wearer, without an opening either before or behind, from his neck
to his feet. His head is thrust through an aperture left for it,
with a puckering string which draws it up snugly around the neck. In
winter the heavy hood-collar, or cowl, is fitted so as to be drawn
over his entire head and pulled down to the eyes. This parka is worn
with singular ease and abandon; frequently the arms are withdrawn
from the big, baggy sleeves and stowed under the waist-slack of the
garment, leaving these empty appendages to dangle. Natives, as they
sit down, draw the parka out and over the knees, still keeping their
arms underneath; or, when on the trail, and the wet grass and bushes
make it imperative, the parka is gathered up and bound by a leather
thong-strap or girdle of sinews, so as to keep its bottom border dry
and as high as the knees of a tramping native; the baggy folds of it
then give its wearer a grotesque and clumsy figure as they bulge out
over his hips and abdomen. The most favored and valuable parka is
that one made out of alder-bark tanned reindeer-skin, for winter use;
the hair is worn inside, next to the skin. For summer styles those
fashioned out of the breasts of water-fowl, of marmot-and mink-skins,
are most common. The hood is never attached to the parka in the
warmer months of the year. It is a very capacious pouch which, when
not in service, is resting in thick folds back of the head and upon
the shoulders. It is ornamented in a variety of ways, but usually a
thick fringe of long-haired dog- or fox-fur forms its border, and
when drawn into position encircles the wearer’s face and gives it a
wild and unkempt air.

The only underwear which a Mahlemoöt affects is limited to that
garment which we call a shirt, made of light skins or of cheap cotton
drillings; if it is of skin, it is worn from father to son, and
becomes a real heirloom highly polished and redolent. Their trousers
are, for both sexes, a pair of thin skin or cotton drawers, puckered
at the ankles and bound about with the uppers of their moccasons,
or else enclosed by the tops to their reindeer-boots, which are the
prevalent covering for their feet. Such are the characteristics of a
costume worn by much more than half the entire aboriginal population
of Alaska; but when we come to inspect their dwellings we find a
greater variety of housing than indexed in dressing.

[Illustration: “CHAMI”

An Innuit Girl, about 14 years old]

[Illustration: AFTER DINNER—GOOD DIGESTION

Favorite position of Innuits]

A very great majority of the Innuits live in a house that outwardly
resembles a circular mound of earth, seven or eight feet high, and
thirty or forty feet in circumference. It is overgrown with rank
grasses, littered with all sorts of utensils, weapons, sleds, and
other Eskimo furniture. A small spiral coil of smoke rises from a
hole in its apex, a dog or two are crouching upon it, and children
climb up and roll down its sides, scattering bones and fragments of
fish and meat as they eat in the irregular fashion of these people.
A rude pole scaffolding stands close by, upon which, high above the
reach of dogs, is a wooden cache, containing all winter stores of
dried provision, “ukali,” and the like. This hut is usually right
down upon the sea-beach, just above high tide, or high-water mark,
on the river banks, for these savages draw their sustenance largely,
even wholly in many instances, from the piscine life of those
northern streams.

[Illustration: An Innuit Home on the Kuskokvim.]

All these tribes have summer dwellings distinct from those used
during the winter. For the winter houses a square excavation of about
ten feet or more is made, in the corners of which posts of drift-wood
or whale-ribs from eight to ten feet in height are set up; the
walls are formed by laying posts of drift-wood one above the other
against the corner-posts; outside of this another wall is built,
sometimes of stone, sometimes of logs, the intervals being filled
with earth or rubble; the whole of the structure, including the roof,
is covered with sods, leaving a small opening on top, that can be
closed by a frame over which a thin, transparent seal-skin is tightly
drawn. The entrance to one of these houses consists of a narrow,
low, underground passage from ten to twelve feet in length, through
which an entrance can only be accomplished on hands and knees. The
interior arrangement of such a winter house is simple, and is nearly
the same with all these tribes. A piece of bear-or reindeer-skin
is hung before an inner opening of the doorway; in the centre of
the enclosure is a fireplace, which is a square excavation directly
under that smoke-hole in the roof; the floor is rarely planked, and
frequently two low platforms, about four feet in width, extend along
the sides of the house from the entrance to the back, and covered
with mats and skins which serve as beds at night. In the larger
dwellings, occupied by more than one family, the sleeping-places of
each are separated from each other by suspended mats, or simply by a
piece of wood. All the bladders containing oil, the wooden vessels,
kettles, and other domestic utensils, are kept in the front part of
the dwelling, and before each sleeping-place there is generally a
block of wood upon which is placed the oil-lamp used for heating and
cooking.

The only ingress or egress is afforded by a small, low, irregularly
shaped aperture (it cannot rightfully be called a door), through
which the natives stoop and enter, passing down a foot or two
through a short, depressed passage that is created by the thickness
of the walls to the hut; the floor is hard-tramped earth, and the
ground-plan of it a rude circle, or square, twelve, fifteen, or
twenty feet in diameter, as the case may be, and in which the only
light of day comes feebly in from a small smoke-opening at the apex
of the roof, the ceiling of which rises tent-like from the floor. A
faint, smouldering fire is always made directly in the centre, and
the atmosphere of the apartment is invariably thick and surcharged
with its combustion.

Hard and rude are the beds of the Innuit—a clumsy shelf of poles
is slightly elevated above the earth, and placed close against the
walls; upon this staging the skins of bears and reindeer, seals, and
even walrus-hides, together with mats of plaited sedge and bark, are
laid; sometimes these bedsteads are mere platforms of sod and peat.
If the hut stands in a situation where it is exposed to the full
force of boisterous storms, then the architect builds a rough hallway
of earth and sods, with a bulging expansion, whereby room is given
in which to shelter his dogs and keep many utensils and traps under
cover. He also, in warm weather, lives outside of this winter hut,
to a great degree, when at home; and, for that purpose, he builds a
summer cook-house, or kitchen, which resembles the igloo itself, only
it is not more than five or six feet square, and no higher than a
stooping posture within warrants. This is also a great resort for his
dogs, which renders the place very offensive to us.

The summer houses are erected above ground, and are generally slight
pole frames, roofed with skins and open in front; fire is rarely
made in them, and therefore they have no opening in the roof, all
cooking being done in the open air during fine weather. They seldom
have flooring, but otherwise the interior arrangements resemble those
of the winter houses. The store-houses of all our Eskimo tribes are
set on posts at a height of from eight to ten feet above the ground,
to protect them from foxes, wolves, and dogs. They have generally
a small square opening in front that can be closed with a sliding
board, and which is reached by means of a notched stick of wood.
These boxes are seldom more than eight feet square by three or four
feet in height.

The routine of life which these natives of the Nooshagak and
Kuskokvim valleys and streams follow is one of much activity—they
are on the tramp or are paddling up and down the rivers pretty much
all of the time. A year is divided up by them about as follows: In
February they prepare to go to the mountains, and go then most of
them do, though some will be as late as April in getting away on
account of their children, or of sheer laziness. They move with the
entire family outfit, bag and baggage, dogs, sleds, and boats. They
settle down along by the small mountain streams, trap martens, shoot
deer, and dig out beaver. February and March are the best months for
marten, April and May for the beaver, bear, and land-otter.

By June 10th they return to their winter villages and visit the
trading-posts. They then begin their preparations for salmon-fishing,
getting their traps into shape so as to be used effectively when
those fish begin to run. They air-dry salmon on frames, and put the
heads in holes and allow them to rot slightly before eating; also
the spawn, which, however, is preserved in oil, and used as a great
delicacy during their own festivals in the midwinter season. The
salmon-fishing is all over about July 20th. By August 10th these
nomads return to the mountains, leaving the old women and youngest
children with their mothers in charge of the caches at the villages.
This time they go for reindeer, which have just shed their hair and
are in the full beauty of new, fine, sleek coats. They hunt these
animals from that time until the middle of September, when the fur
of the beaver is again in prime condition; then _Castor canadensis_
receives their undivided attention. They catch these giant rodents in
wooden “dead-falls,” and also by breaking open the dams, which causes
the water to suddenly leave the beavers fully exposed to the spears
of their savage human enemies.

When the first snow flies in October they rig up rude deer-skin
boats, like the “bull-boats” on the Missouri, and float all their
traps and rude equipage down the river back from whence they started.
They all return for the winter by the middle of October; then,
without going far from the vicinity of their settlements, they
renew and set up fresh dead-fall traps for marten—they never go any
distance from home for this little animal, and when ice forms on
the rivers, about the end of October or early in November, they put
their white-fish traps under it. The marten-trapping is abandoned in
December, because the intense, stormy, and cold weather then drives
these pine-weasels into winter holes, where they remain semi-dormant
until the end or middle of February. During this period of severe
wintry weather the Innuit gives himself up to unrestrained loafing
and vigorous dancing festivals, which last until the year is again
renewed by going out to the mountains in February.

These natives of the Nooshagak and Kuskokvim regions have a large and
varied natural food-supply. They have reindeer-meat, the flesh of
moose, of bears, and of all the smaller fur-bearing animals found in
this territory—the list is a full one, comprising land-otters, cross,
red, and black foxes, the mink, the marten, the marmot, and the
ground-squirrel, or “yeavrashka,” which last is the most abundant.
The bears are all brown in this country—no black ones. They also
secure large gray and white wolves, while those who live right on the
coast of Bering Sea get walrus, the big “mahklok” seal, and a little
harbor _phoca_, or “nearhpah.”

They have a great abundance of water-fowl, such as geese, ducks,
and the small waders, and they occasionally kill a beluga, or white
grampus, and at still more rare intervals they find a stranded whale,
which is set upon and eaten. They save carefully all the oil which
comes from marine mammals; they treasure it up in seal-skin bags
that are placed high up above the reach of dogs and foxes on a frame
scaffold which adjoins every hut. Fish-oil is also secured in the
same manner; it answers a threefold purpose—it serves for food, for
fuel, and for light, and it is a luxurious skin and hair dressing for
them all, old and young.

Fish they capture in the greatest abundance, and the variety is quite
fair. Salmon is the staff, and is found in all of the thousand and
one lakes and sluggish or rapid streams that run from them into the
greater rivers, where a mighty rush of the same fish is annually made
up in June and July from Bering Sea. In all of the deeper lakes, and
the big rivers, a variety of large white-fish and trout are found,
especially prized and searched for by these people in midwinter, when
they are trapped there in wicker-work baskets and pole weirs under
ice.

[Illustration: The Big Mahklok.]

In round numbers these Eskimo, or Innuits, of Alaska, number nearly
eighteen thousand souls; they inhabit the entire coast-line of Bering
Sea and the Arctic Ocean, with an exception of the Aleutian chain
and that portion of the peninsula west of Oogashik. The numerous
subdivisions of this great family are based wholly upon dialectic
differentiation, and as its elaboration would entail a dreary and
uninteresting chapter upon any reader save a studious ethnologist,
it will not be itemized here. These Eskimo are all hunters and
fishermen; those land animals to which we have made allusion are
pursued by them at the proper seasons of the year. They do not have
much, in the aggregate, of value to a trader; it is chiefly oil and
walrus-ivory. Their proximity to a relatively warm coast renders the
furs which they get of small value comparatively, since these pelts
are paler and lighter-haired than those brought in from the distant
interior, where the winters are vastly colder and longer. But an
Innuit does not require a great deal from the trader—he is very much
more independent than is his semi-civilized Aleutian brother; his
wants are only a small supply of lead and powder, of sugar and of
tobacco, a little red cloth and a small sack of flour which suffice
for a large Innuit family during the year. The flour he makes up
into pancakes and fries them in rancid oil; but, as a rule, all
cooking is a mere boiling or stewing of fish and meat in sheet-iron
or copper kettles. In those huts where they can afford to use tea, a
small number of earthenware cups and saucers will be found carefully
treasured in a little cupboard; but they never set a table or think
of such a thing, except those highly favored individuals who live as
servants about the trading-posts and missions, where they do boil a
“samovar” (tea-urn) and spread a cloth over the top of a box or rude
table upon which to place their teacups.

Down here at Nooshagak these natives have earned a distinction of
being the most skilful sculptors of the whole northern range. Their
carvings in walrus-ivory are exceedingly curious, and beautifully
wrought in many examples. The patience and fidelity with which
they cut from walrus-tusks delicate patterns furnished them by the
traders are equal in many respects to that remarkable display made
in the same line by the Chinese, and so much admired. Time to them,
at Nooshagak, is never reckoned, and it does not raise a ripple of
concern in the Innuit’s mind when, as he carves upon a tusk of white
ivory, he pauses to think whether he shall be six hours or six months
engaged upon the task. Shut up as he is from December until the end
of February in his dark and smoky hut, he welcomes the task as one
which enables him to “kill time” most agreeably, and bring in a
trifle, at least, to him from the trader in the way of credit or of
direct revenue.

All of these people, when they go hunting, use firearms of modern
patterns and many old flint-lock muskets; for fish and bird-capture
they never waste any precious ammunition; they employ spears and
arrows of most artful construction and effective service. But a large
number of those very primitive Eskimo, the Togiaks, just west and
north of Nooshagak, use nothing at all in the chase other than the
same antique bows and spears of a remote ancestry. The disposition
of these people is one of greater _bonhomie_ than that evidenced by
the Aleutes or the Koloshians, who are rather taciturn. The Innuit
is very independent in his bearing, without being at all vindictive
or ugly. He is light-hearted, enjoys conversation with his fellows,
tells jokes with great gusto, sings rude songs with much animation,
in excellent time but with no music, and dances with exceeding
exhilaration during the progress of those savage festivals which he
calls in to enliven a long dreary winter solstice.

[Illustration: The Kashga.]

Such a man is naturally quite sociable. Hence we find in every
Innuit settlement, big or little, a town hall, or “kashga.” This
is a building put up after the pattern of all winter houses in
the village, but of very much larger dimensions; some of the more
populous hamlets boast of a kashga which will measure as much as
sixty feet square, and be from twenty to thirty feet high under
its smoky rafters. A raised platform from the earth, of rough-hewn
planks, runs all around the walls of the interior, and in the largest
council-houses a series of three tiers of such staging is observed.
The fireplace in the centre is large, often three or four feet deep
and eight feet square; on ordinary days in the spring, and during the
summer and early fall, when no fire is wanted, it is covered with
planks. An underground tunnel-entrance to the kashga is made just
as it is into some of the family huts, only here it is divided at
the end; one branch leads to a fireplace below the flooring, and the
other rises to the main apartment. The natives are obliged to crawl
on all fours when they enter that underground passage or leave the
kashga through its dark opening.

This is the great and sole rendezvous of the men and older boys
of most settlements. The bachelors and widowers sleep here and
prepare their simple meals; the village guest and visitors of the
male sex are all quartered here; the discussion of all the town
affairs is conducted here; the tanning of skins, the plaiting and
weaving of wicker-work fish-traps, and the manufacture of sleds and
dog-harness, spear- and arrow-heads, and carving of wood and ivory—in
fact, everything done by these people under shelter, of that kind,
is executed on the platforms of a kashga. It is the theatre for the
absurd and vigorous masked dances and mummery of their festivals, and
above all, it is the spot chosen for that vile ammoniacal bath of the
Eskimo, the most popular of all their recreations.

[Illustration: Section showing Subterranean Entrance and Interior of
a Kashga.]

The daily routine of living as practised by an Innuit family is
exceedingly simple. The head of the household usually sleeps over
night in the kashga, as do all of his peers. His wife in the early
morning rolls out of her rude deer-skins, retucks her parka about her
hips, and starts up the smouldering fire which she banked with ashes
before going to sleep. A little meat or fish is soon half-boiled,
and a small kantag of oil is decanted, a handful of dried berries
thrown into it, and perhaps she has a modicum of rotten fish-roe
to add. This she takes out to her husband in the kashga, rousing
him, if he is not awake, with a gentle but firm admonition. A large
bowl of fresh water is also brought by her, and then everything is
before the husband for his breakfast. She returns to her hut after
he has finished, and feeds her children and herself. If she or her
husband has a male visitor, he is served in the same way. When the
evening meal is ready, sometimes the men go home and dine with their
families; but the women and children invariably eat at home, and when
they wait upon the males in the town hall they always turn their
backs to them while the men are dining, it being considered a gross
breach of good manners for a woman to look at a man when he is eating.

After breakfast the male Innuits start out, if the weather permits,
to hunt or fish, as the case may be. If a driving storm prevents
them, then indoor work is resumed or recourse to sleep again assumed.
At some time in the afternoon the fire is usually drawn from the hot
stoves on the hearth, the water and a kantag of chamber-lye poured
over them, which, arising in dense clouds of vapor, gives notice
(by its presence and its horrible ammoniacal odor) to the delighted
inmates that the bath is on. The kashga is heated to suffocation, it
is full of smoke, and the outside men run in from their huts, with
wisps of dry grass for towels, and bunches of alder-twigs to flog
their naked bodies. They throw off their garments; they shout and
dance and whip themselves into profuse perspiration as they caper in
the hot vapor. More of their disgusting substitute for soap is rubbed
on, and produces a lather which they rinse off with cold water; and,
to cap the full enjoyment of this satanic bath, these naked actors
rush out and roll in a snow-bank or plunge into the icy flood of some
lake or river adjoining, as the season warrants. This is the most
enjoyable occasion of an Innuit’s existence, so he solemnly affirms.
Nothing else affords him a tithe of the infinite pleasure which this
orgie gives him. To us, however, there is nothing so offensive about
him as that stench which such a performance arouses.

When a bath is over, the smoke-hole is reopened (it was closed during
the process!), and fresh air descends upon those men who sit around
upon the platforms stupefied by that smoke and weak from their
profuse perspiration. Slowly these terrible odors leave the kashga,
and only the minor ones remain, rendering it quite habitable once
more. Night comes on: the huge stone lamps are filled with seal-oil
and lighted; the men soon lop down for sleep in their reindeer-skins
or parkas, removing their trousers only, which they roll up and use
as pillows, tucking the parka snugly over and around their bended
knees, which are drawn up tightly to the abdomen. In the morning
whoever happens to awake first relights the lamp, if any of the fluid
remains over; if not, he goes to his own cache and gets a supply.
If he is a bachelor, he attends then to making a fresh fire in the
hearth below and prepares his coarse breakfast.

The women assist their husbands in harnessing and unharnessing the
dogs; they go out and gather the firewood, and employ themselves in
sewing, patching, and making thread from deer-tendons. They plait
grass mats and weave grass stockings, because nearly all of the coast
Innuits wear socks very skilfully made of dried grass. The boys and
girls scatter about the vicinity looking after their snares and
traps, or engage, in hilarious groups, playing at ball and leap-frog
games, tag, and jumping matches. They harness up the young dogs and
the pups, and sport for hours at a time with them.

[Illustration: “Tatlah,” an Innuit Dog.]

These people are savages, and not at all affected by the earnest and
persistent attempts of the Russian priests to Christianize them.
They are even less influenced by the teachings of missionaries than
the Siwashes of the Sitkan archipelago, and that is saying a great
deal for their hardness of heart. They are a brave race, and have
displayed the utmost physical courage in fighting their way up the
great rivers, Yukon, Kuskokvim, and Nooshagak, whereby they displaced
and destroyed the Indians who once lived there. The Koltchanes, or
Ingaleeks of the interior, who disputed that privilege with them,
bear cheerful witness to this fact. But all such strife between the
two great families is only known to us by legends which they recite
of ancient time. No trace of recent war can be found among them.

They have no ear for music; they are not fond of it like the Aleutes,
yet they keep perfect time to cultivated tunes and melodies of
our own order. The song of an Innuit is essentially like that of
his Sitkan relative: it is usually a weird dirge, monotonous, and
long-drawn out, accompanied by a regular and rhythmic beating of
a rude drum, or a dry stick, or resonant bag. Some of the native
Innuit chantings, when rendered intelligible to us, have a plaintive
pathos running through them which is attractive and are simple in
composition; but such ballads are very, very rare. The majority are
tedious and boastful recitations of a singer’s achievements on land
or water when engaged in hunting or fishing. Their mythology is the
rudest and the least ornate of all savage races, unless it be that
perfect vacuum of the Australasians and Terra del Fuegians.

These savages respect the dead, but they fear the sick. When death
invades an Innuit family, taking the husband, or the wife, or a
child, the survivors eat nothing, after the decease of the relative,
but sour or last year’s food, and refrain from going out or from
work of any sort for a period of twenty days. They seat themselves
in one corner of the hut, or “kahsime,” with their backs toward the
door. Every five days they wash themselves, otherwise death would
promptly come to them again. The body of the dead native is composed
in a sitting position, with its knees drawn up to the stomach and its
arms clasped around them. It is placed in one corner, with its head
against the wall. The inhabitants of that village where the dead man
has lived voluntarily bring to the hut dresses of reindeer-skin, in
one of which the corpse is shrouded. A coffin, or box, is prepared
at some selected spot outside of the village, set up a few feet
from the ground, on four stoutly driven posts, and in it the body
is deposited. Near by is planted a square board or smoothly hewn
plank, upon which rude figures are painted of the animals that the
deceased was most fond of hunting, such as a beaver, a deer, a fish,
or seal. A few of his most cherished belongings are laid in the
coffin with him, but the balance of his property is divided among his
family.[147]

A festival in honor of the spirits of land and sea, and in memory
of deceased kinsmen, is celebrated annually in the month of October
or November. Lieutenant Zagoskin,[148] who spent five years among
these people exploring the Yukon and Kuskokvim Rivers, has given us
full details of that strange mummery and capers which characterize
Innuit festivals and dances. What he saw between 1842 and 1845, and
so graphically narrated, is to be seen substantially the same now
everywhere among these people, who are almost wholly unchanged from
their primeval habits as they live to-day.

Of the tribal organization of these people but little is known:
yet, there seems to be no recognized chieftainship—each isolated
settlement generally contains one man who makes himself prominent by
superintending all intercourse and traffic with visitors. The profits
accruing to him from this position give him some slight influence
among his people; but the _oomailik_ (_oomuialik_ of Zagoskin),
as these middlemen or spokesmen are called, possess no authority
over the people of their village, who pay far more attention to the
advice or threats of sorcerers, shamans, or “medicine men.” In the
festivals, consisting of feasting, singing, and dancing, with which
these hyperboreans while away the long winter nights, the shamans
also play a prominent part, directing the order of the performances
and the manufacture of masks, costumes, etc., while the oomailik or
spokesman sinks back into insignificance for the time being.

All these games, both private and public, take place in the kashga.
At the public performances the dancers and singers, men and women,
stand around the fire-hole; and the men, to the time of the drum and
the singing, go through various contortions of the body, shifting
from one foot to the other without moving from the spot, the skill
of the dancer being displayed only in the endurance and flexibility
of his muscles. The women, on the other hand, with their eyes cast
down, motionless, with the exception of a spasmodic twitching of the
hands, stand around in a circle, forming, we may say, a living frame
to the animated picture within. The less motion a dancer displays
the greater his skill. There is nothing indecent in the dances of
our sea-board natives. The dancing dress of the men consists of
short tight drawers made of white reindeer-skin and the summer
boots of soft moose-hide, while the women on those occasions only
add ornaments, such as rings and bracelets and bead-pendants, to
their common dress, frequently weighting themselves down with ten or
fifteen pounds of these baubles.

An entertainment of the women was described by Zagoskin as follows:

“We entered the kashga by the common passage and found the guests
already assembled, but of the landladies nothing was to be seen. On
three sides of the apartment stone lamps were lighted; the fire-hole
was covered with boards, one of them having a circular opening,
through which the women were to make their appearance. Two other
burning lamps were placed in front of the fire-hole. The guests
then formed a chorus and began to sing to the sound of the drum,
two men keeping them in order by beating time with sticks adorned
with wolfs’ tails and gulls’ wings. Thus a good half-hour passed by.
Of the song my interpreter told me that it consisted of pleasantry
directed against the women; that it was evident they had nothing to
give, as they had not shown themselves for so long a time. Another
song praised the housewifely accomplishments of some woman whose
appearance was impatiently expected with a promised trencher of the
mixed mess of reindeer-fat and berries. No sooner was this song
finished than that woman appeared and was received with the greatest
enthusiasm. The dish was set before the men, and she retreated amid
vociferous compliments on her culinary skill. She was followed by
another woman. The beating of drums increased in violence and the
wording of the song was changed. Standing up in the centre of the
circle this woman began to relate, in mimicry and gesture, how she
obtained the fat, how she stored it in various receptacles, how she
cleansed and melted it, and then, placing a kantag upon her head,
she invited the spectators with gestures to approach. The song went
on, while eagerness to partake of the promised luxury lighted up the
faces of the crowd. At last the wooden spoons were distributed, one
to each man, and nothing was heard for a time but the guzzling of the
luscious fluid. Another woman advanced, followed still by another,
and luxuries of all kinds were produced in quick succession and
as quickly despatched, while the singers pointedly alluded to the
praiseworthy Russian custom of distributing tobacco. When the desired
article had been produced, a woman then represented with great skill
all the various stages of stupefaction resulting from smoking and
snuffing. The women dressed in men’s parkas.”

A man’s entertainment witnessed by Zagoskin took place in the same
village. The preparatory arrangements were similar; one of the
women, a sorceress, lead the chorus. Her first song on that occasion
praised a propensity of the Russian for making presents of tobacco,
rings, and other trifles to women, who, in their turn, were always
ready to oblige them. This, however, was only introductory, the
real entertainment beginning with a chorus of men concealed in the
fire-hole. The gist of their chant was that trapping, hunting, and
trade were bad, that nothing could be made, and that they could only
sing and dance to please their wives. To this the women answered
that they had long been aware of the laziness of their husbands,
who could do nothing but bathe and smoke, and that they did not
expect to see any food produced, such as the women had placed
before them, consequently it would be better to go to bed at once.
The men answered that they would go and hunt for something, and
shortly one of them appeared through the opening. This mimic, who
was attired in female apparel, with bead-pendants in his nose, deep
fringes of wolverine tails, bracelets, and rings, imitated in a
most admirable and humorous manner the motions and gestures of the
women in presenting their luxuries, and then gave imitations of
the various female pursuits and labor, the guests chuckling with
satisfaction. Suddenly the parka was thrown off, and the man began
to represent how he hunted the mahklok, seated in his kayak, which
performance ended with the production of a whole boiled mahklok,
of which Zagoskin received the throat as his portion. Others
represented a reindeer-hunt, the spearing of birds, the rendering of
beluga-blubber, the preparation of seal-intestines for water-proof
garments, the splitting of deer-tendons into thread, and so forth.
One young orphan who, possessing nothing wherewith to treat the
guests, brought on a kantag filled with water, which was drunk by the
women amid much merriment. It sometimes happens on these occasions
that lovers of fun sprinkle the women with oil, or with that fluid
which they use in place of soap, squirted from small bladders
concealed about their persons; and such jokes are never resented.

Another festival, in honor of the spirits of the sea (_ugiak_), is
celebrated by the coast tribes during a whole month. The preparations
for this gathering begin early in the autumn. Every hunter preserves
during an entire year the bladders from all such animals as he
kills with arrows; the mothers also save with the greatest care the
bladders of all rats, mice, ground-squirrels, or other small animals
killed by their children. At the beginning of December all these
bladders are inflated, painted in various colors, and suspended in
the kashga; and among them the men hang up a number of fantastically
carved figures of birds and fish. Some of the figures of birds are
quite ingeniously contrived, with movable eyes, heads, and legs,
and are able to flap their wings. Before the fireplace there is a
huge block wrapped up in dry grass. From morning until night these
carved figures are kept in motion by means of strings, and during the
whole time a chanting of songs continues, while dry grass and weeds
are burned to smoke the suspended bladders. This fumigating process
ends the day’s performances, which are begun anew in the morning. In
the evening of that culminating day of this festival those strings
of bladders are taken down and carried by men upon painted sticks
prepared for the occasion; the women, with torches in their hands,
accompany them to the sea-shore. Arrived there, the bladders are
tied to sticks and weighted with stones, and finally thrown into the
water, where they are watched with the greatest interest to see how
long they float upon the surface. From the time of sinking and the
number of rings upon the water where a bladder has disappeared the
shamans prophesy success or misfortune in hunting during the coming
year.

A final memorial feast in honor of a distinguished ancestor is
conducted as follows:

Eight old men clad in parkas enter the kashga, or council-house,
each carrying a stone lamp, which they deposit around the fire-hole.
They next produce three small mats and spread them upon the floor
in three corners of the building, and from the spectators three men
are selected who are willing to go to the grave. The three nearest
relatives of the deceased then seat themselves on the mats and
divest themselves of all their clothing, wash their bodies, and don
new clothes, girding themselves with belts manufactured several
generations back and preserved as heirlooms in the family. To each
of these men a staff is given, and they advance together to the
centre of the kashga, when the oldest among the invited guests sends
them forth to call the dead. These messengers leave the building,
followed by the givers of this feast. After an absence of ten
minutes the former return, and through the underground passage the
whole population of the village crowds in, from the old and feeble
down to children at the breast, and with them come the masters of
ceremonies, wearing long seal-skin gloves, and strings of sea-parrot
bills hanging about the breast and arms, with elaborate belts nearly
a foot in width, consisting of white bellies of unborn fawns trimmed
with wolverine tails. All such ornaments are carefully preserved and
handed down from generation to generation, some of them being made
of white sable—an exceedingly rare skin—for which high prices are
paid, as much as twenty or thirty beavers or otters for one small
skin. The women hold in their hands one or two eagle-feathers, and
tie around the head a narrow strip of white sable. Each family,
grouping itself behind its own stone lamp, chants in turn in mournful
measure a song composed for the occasion. These songs are almost
indefinitely prolonged by inserting the names of all the relatives
of the deceased, living and dead. The singers stand motionless in
their places, and many of those present are weeping. When a “song
of the dead” is concluded the people seat themselves, and their
usual feasting and gorging ensues. The next morning, after a bath
(indulged in by all the males), the multitude again assembles in this
kashga. The chanting around the fire-hole is renewed in the same
mournful tone, until one old man seizes a bladder drum and takes the
lead, accompanied by a few singers, and followed in procession by
all participants in the feast. They walk slowly to every sepulchre
in succession, halting before each to chant a mourning song; all
visitors not belonging to the bereaved families in the meantime crowd
upon the sodded roofs of the houses and watch these proceedings. In
the evening all that remains of food in the village is set before the
people, and when every kantag is scraped of the last remnant of its
contents the feast is ended; then those visitors at once depart for
their homes.

Occasionally the giver of such a feast, desiring to do special honor
to the object of it, passes three days sitting naked upon a mat in
a corner of his kashga, without food or drink, chanting a song in
praise of a dead relative. At the end of such a fast any or all
visitors present gifts to him; the story of his achievement is
carried abroad, and he is made famous for life among his fellows.

[Illustration: JEST OF AN INNUIT MOTHER

“Yes—me sell!—plenty tabak”]

[Illustration: THE SON OF AHGAAN

An Innuit boy, 6 or 7 years old]

It has already been mentioned that many individuals give away all
their property on such occasions. If it happens that during such a
memorial feast a visitor arrives from a distant village who bears
the same name with the subject of a celebration, he is at once
overwhelmed with gifts, clothed anew from head to foot with the most
expensive garments, and returns to his home a wealthy man.

The country in which the Innuit lives is one that taxes the utmost
hardihood of man when it is traversed by land or by sea. It is not
likely that it will ever be much frequented by white men—it will
remain to us as it has been to the Russians, an immense area of
desolate sameness, almost unknown to us, or to its savage occupants,
for that matter. The general contour of the great Alaskan mainland
interior is that of a vast undulating plain with high rounded
granitic hills and ridges scattered in all lines of projection; on
the flanks of which, and by its countless lakes and water-courses, a
growth, more or less abundant, of spruce, birch, willows, poplars,
and a large number of hardy shrubs, will be encountered. Its summers
are short, warm, and pleasant; its winters are long, and bitterly
cold and inclement.

The tundra, however, which fronts the whole of that extensive
coast-line of Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean, is indeed cheerless
and repellant at any season. In the summer it is a great flat swale,
full of bog-holes, shiny and decaying peat, innumerable sloughs,
shallow and stagnant, and from which swarms of malignant mosquitoes
rise to fairly torture and destroy a traveller unless he be clad in
a coat of mail. In the winter and early spring fierce gales of wind
at zero-temperature sweep over these steppes of Alaska in constant
succession, making travel exceedingly dangerous, and as painful even
as it is in the warmer months. During this period of the year all
approach to the coast is barred in Bering Sea by a system of shoals
and banks which extend so far seaward that a vessel drawing only ten
feet of water will be hard aground, beyond the sight of land, sixty
miles off the Yukon mouth.

At the head of the Bay of Bristol a small but deep and rapid river
empties a flood of pure, clear water into an intricate series of
sand and mud channels which belong there. The Kvichak is the name of
this stream, and it rises less than forty miles away in the largest
fresh-water lake known to Alaska—that inland sea of Ilyamna, over
ninety miles in its greatest length, varying in width from fifteen to
thirty. Those gusts and gales that sweep over its blue waters raise
a heavy surf which beats sonorously upon its pebbly shores and under
its cliffs, while the loud wailing cry of a great northern loon[149]
echoes from one lonely shore to the other when disturbed by the
unwonted passage of a native’s canoe. Against the eastern horizon
there springs from its bosom an abrupt and mighty wall of Alpine
peaks, which stand as an eternal barrier between its pure sweet
waters and the salt surges of the Pacific.

The ruins of an old Russian trading-post stand in the midst of a
small native village at the outlet of, and on the slope of, a lovely
grassy upland which rises from the lake. Its people are all living in
log houses like those we noticed in Cook’s Inlet; but nevertheless
they are true Innuits. The two other small hamlets on these Ilyamna
shores are all that exist. Their inhabitants live in the greatest
peace and solitary comfort that savages can understand. Two trails
over the divide are travelled by these natives, who trade with the
Cook’s Inlet people, and who range over the mountain sides in pursuit
of reindeer and of bears. A most noteworthy family of Russian Creoles
lived here on the first portage. The father was a man of gigantic
stature, and he reared four Anak-like sons, who are, as he was,
mighty hunters, and of great physical power. This family lives all
to itself in that beautiful wilderness of Ilyamna, a little way back
from the lake on a hillside, where they command passes over to Cook’s
Inlet. They control the trade of this entire region and rule without
a shadow of disputation.

A tragedy occurred in one of these small villages of Ilyamna, which
has been fitly memorized by the Russian Church. In 1796 a priest of
the Greek faith came over from Kadiak, and, enchanted by the scenery
and pleased by a warm, kindly welcome received from the natives, he
determined to tarry here with them and save their souls. He[150] was
a man of the most handsome presence and the sweetest address, and
for a moment prevailed. Then, as the heathenish rites and festivals
were postponed at his bidding, surly shamans fomented seeds of hate
and fear. Finally an hour arrived when, at a preconcerted signal,
the slumbering wrath of the savages was aroused, and they fell upon
and slew this unsuspecting missionary and destroyed every vestige
of his existence among them. The cause of Father Juvenal’s death
was his strong opposition to polygamy. It is said that when he was
attacked by savages he neither fled nor did he defend himself, either
of which he might have successfully done; but he delivered himself
unresistingly into the hands of his murderers, asking only for the
safety of his subordinates, which was granted. The natives say, in
their recitation of the event, that after the monk had been struck
down and left by the mob as dead, he “rose up once more, walked
towards them, and spoke.” They fell upon him again, and again, and
again, for he repeated this miracle several times, until at last, in
bewildered fury, they literally cut him into pieces.

Reindeer cross and recross the Kvichak River in large herds during
the month of September, as they range over to and from the Peninsula
of Alaska, feeding, and also to escape from mosquitoes. At the mouth
of this stream is one of the broadest deer-roads in the country. The
natives run along the banks of the river when reindeer are swimming
across, easily and rapidly spearing those unfortunate animals as
they rise from the water, securing in this way any number that fancy
or want may dictate. At one time a trader counted seven hundred
deer-carcasses as they lay here on the sands of the river’s margin,
untouched save by a removal of the hides; not a pound of that meat
out of the thousands putrefying had been saved by these lazy Innuits;
who, improvident wretches as they are, would be living, less than
five months later, in a state of starvation! But all this misery of
famine in March will have been forgotten again next September, when
the same surplus of food is within their reach, for they will not
store up against the morrow—the labor is too great—the shiftless
sentiment of a savage forbids that exertion.

There is a curious distinction drawn by nature between the Siberian
and Alaskan reindeer. Everybody is familiar with the fact that on
the Asiatic side these animals are domesticated and serve as a
mainstay and support of large tribes, both savage and civilized. But
the spirit of the Alaskan deer is such that it will not live under
the control of man, or even within his presence. If confined, it
refuses food, and then perishes of self-imposed starvation. The most
patient and extended trials have been made at Nooshagak by imported
Kamschadales, who were raised to the life of deer-driving over there;
yet, in no instance whatsoever were these experts able to overcome
the difficulty and accustom those timid animals to the sight, sound,
and smell of man. The Alaskan species is much larger than its Asiatic
cousin, but otherwise resembles it closely, being, if anything, more
uniformly gray in tint and less spotted with white over the back and
head.

Reindeer have a most extended range in Alaska, where an immense area
of tundra and upland moors yield an abundance of those mosses and
lichens which they most affect. Innumerable sloughs and lakes afford
these deer a harbor of refuge from cruel torments of mosquitoes, when
the wind does not blow briskly in summer; the wooded interior gives
them shelter from the driving fury of wintry snow-storms. Big brown
bears follow in the wake of travelling herds, and feed fat upon all
sickly or weaker members and imprudent fawns of the drove; so do
wolves and wolverines; and the lop-eared lynx is not missing.

Nooshagak is a trading centre for that entire Bristol Bay district,
which comprises the coast of Bering Sea from Cape Newenham, in the
north, to the peninsular extremity at Oonimak, in the south—an
immense expanse in which some four thousand Innuits abide, and live
largely upon fish and deer-meat. The Oogashik, Igageek, Nakneek,
Kvichak, Nooshagak, Igoosheek, and Togiak Rivers all empty into this
great shallow gulf. Up their swollen channels, after an opening of
the ice during the last half of May, salmon run from the sea in
irregular but constant travel until the end of August. Inferior
salmon run even as late as November, while the various kinds of
salmon-trout and white-fish exist under the ice of deep streams and
lakes all winter. By the middle of September hard frosts in the
mountains congeal all sources of innumerable rivulets which have
helped to swell the volume and raise the level of a river’s summer
flood, and then these streams which we have just named begin to fall
rapidly in their channels. If we chance to travel anywhere along
their banks at this time, we will find them covered with windrows
and heaps of dead salmon two and three feet in height. The gravelly
beaches of the lakes, the bars and shoals of every stream, are then
lined with decaying and putrid bodies of these fish, while every
overhanging bough and projecting rock is festooned with their
rotting forms—ah! the stench arising absolutely forbids the pangs of
hunger, even though we have no provision. These are the salmon that
have died from exhaustion and from bruises received in struggling
with swift and impetuous currents, and the rocks and snags that beset
their paths of annual reproduction.

North of the Togiak River are several small, rocky islets which,
having a nucleus of solid granite, are the cause of a large series of
sand and mud reefs. Upon those shoals the huge walrus of Bering Sea
is wont to crawl and lazily sun himself in herds of thousands. He is
practically secure here from attack, since the varying shifts of the
tide and its furious rush in ebb and flood make a trip to the islets
one of positive danger, even to a most hardy and well-acquainted
hunter. Stragglers, however, are frequently surprised on the mainland
shore opposite, and the southern coast of Hagenmeister Island toward
Cape Newenham to the westward.

The muskrat catch of Alaska is secured almost wholly in the Nooshagak
region—an immense number of these water-rodents are annually taken by
Innuits here. Traders, however, do not prize them very highly, but
to secure the natives’ custom they are obliged to appear satisfied
with all that these people bring in to the post. These skins are,
however, not sold in this country; they are all shipped to France and
Germany, where they meet with a ready sale, since the poor people
there are not above wearing them. Also, most of the good Alaskan
beaver peltries are from this district, where they have the best fur
and are consequently prized above all other catches outside of that
region. Land-otter is also in large quantity and fine quality, but
the mink and martens and foxes are inferior. During summer seasons,
on many lakes, flocks of big, white, trumpeting swans will be found
frequenting nearly every one of those bodies of water. The natives
hunt them at night, and capture unsuspecting birds as they sleep upon
the water, by paddling noiselessly upon them. The traders encourage
this industry for the sake of the swan’s down which it produces.
The most favored spot by swans is Lake Walker, which lies on the
Nakneek portage over to Cook’s Inlet. Perhaps its rare, unique beauty
charms these giant natatores as it does ourselves, for, without
question, it is incomparably the most lovely sheet of water, set in
a frame of glorious mountains, which the fancy of an artist could
possibly devise. It is an exceedingly fascinating spot, and language
is utterly inadequate to portray its vistas, which alternate from
absolute grandeur to that of quiet loveliness, as you sail around its
pebbly shores and yellow sands.

The immediate banks of the Nakneek River, through which Lake Walker
empties its surplus water into Bristol Bay, are low and flat, and
covered with a luxuriant growth of bushes, grasses, and amphibious
plants, semi-tropical in their verdant vigor of life. The timber on
hill-slopes that rise from the plain is principally clumps of birch
and poplar, quickly passing to solid masses of spruce as a higher
ascent is made to the rolling uplands and mountain sides. An old,
deserted settlement—ruins of Paugwik, marked by the decayed outlines
of its cemetery, still is visible at the debouchure of the Nakneek.
With a strange disrespect for the departed, those natives who live
at an adjoining village come over here to excavate salmon-holes in
that ancient graveyard, wherein they place their fish-heads, so that
a process of moist rotting shall take place prior to eating them! The
Innuits of Kenigayat have no fear of the “witching hour of night” in
this burial site of their ancestors.

The seal and walrus hunters of the Nooshagak district are those
hardy Innuits who live at Kulluk and Ooallikh Bays, in plain sight
of these walrus islets and shoals which we were taking notice of a
short time ago. The large mahklok and a smaller, but quaintly marked
“saddle-backed” seal are taken by these people in large numbers every
year. The oil is their great stock-in-trade, for those fur-bearing
animals that belong to the land here are away below par when brought
to a trader. The coast between their villages and the mouth of the
Togiak River is one of a most remarkable series of bluffy headlands,
seven of them, being all of sandstone which has weathered into queer,
fantastic pinnacles and towers, and is washed at the sea-level
into hundreds of huge caverns wherein the surf beats with a noise
like the distant roar of artillery. Screaming flocks of water-fowl
are breeding on their mural faces, and troops of foxes lurk in the
interstices, and roam incessantly for eggs and unwary birds.

[Illustration: THE SADDLE-BACK, OR HARLEQUIN HAIR SEAL

[_Histriophoca equestris_]

  Female           Male

The Togiak River never was ascended by a white man until the summer
of 1880.[151] It is a very remarkable region with respect to its
people. Though the course of the river is only one hundred miles in
length, yet we find upon it seven villages (one of them very large),
having an aggregate population of 1,826 souls. No other one section
of Alaska has so dense a population with reference to its inhabited
area. The river is, however, a broad one, being a mile and a half
in width, shoal and shallow, with deep pools and eddies here and
there. Its banks are low, and the valley through which it runs is low
and flat, with extensive bottom-lands that widen out at places to a
distance of fifteen miles between the ridges and hills which direct
its short course. Upon these flats grow most luxuriant and lofty
grasses, high as the heads of natives—literally concealing, as it
were, the dense human occupation of its extent.

The Togiaks are the Quakers of Alaska; they are the simplest and the
most unpretending of all her people; they seem to live entirely to
themselves, wholly indifferent as to what other folks have and they
have not. They seldom ever view a white man, and then it is only when
they go down to the river’s mouth and visit a trader in his sloop or
schooner. He never goes up to see them, for the best of reasons to
him—they never have anything fit for barter save a few inferior mink
and ground-squirrel skins to trade. They have no chiefs; each family
is a law unto itself, and it comes and goes with a sort of free and
easy abandon that must resemble the life and habit of primeval time.
What little these people want and cannot get from each other, they
do not go farther in search of, but do without, unless it be small
supplies of tobacco which they procure through other Innuits, second
or third hand.

Entire families of them, during the summer, leave their winter
huts and go out into the valley at such points as their fancy may
indicate, where they pass two and three months with absolutely no
shelter whatever erected during that entire lapse of time. When
it rains hard they simply turn their skin boats bottom side up,
stick their heads under, and consider themselves fully settled for
protection from tempestuous wind and sleet-storms, or any other
climatic unpleasantness. How insensible to extremes of weather do
these bodies of the Innuits become—their whole external form is as
insensible to heat or cold as their stolid features are! Were they
living under Italian skies, they could not affect a greater disregard
for the varying moods of that mild climate than they do for the
chilly, boisterous weather of Alaska. The Togiakers never go far
from the river upon which they build their rude winter villages,
and never venture out from its mouth; hence they are not so happy
in making the skin canoe or kayak, as their hardier brethren are:
these boats on the Togiak are clumsy, broad of beam in proportion
to length, and the hatch, or hole, so large that two persons can
sit in it back to back. When a family concludes to go out for the
summer camp, the man gets into his “kayak,” takes the children who
are under four or five years in with him, then pulls and paddles his
way up against the current, or floats down, as the case may be; the
women—wife, mother, and daughters—are turned ashore and obliged to
find their way up or down through long grass and over quaking bogs—to
toil in this manner from camp to camp, and as they plod along they
shout and sing at the top of their voices to apprise any bear or
bears, which may be in their path, of such coming, and thus stampede
them; otherwise they would be in continual danger of silently
stepping upon bruin as he lurked or slept in dense grassy jungles.
When a bear first takes notice of the approach of a human being it
invariably slinks away, rarely ever displaying, by the faintest
sound, its departure; but that same animal, if surprised suddenly at
close quarters, will turn and fight desperately, even unto death.

The bold, far-projected headland of Cape Newenham forms the southern
pier of that remarkable funnel-like sea-opening to the Kuskokvim
River—a river upon which the human ichthyophagi of the north do most
congregate: three thousand savages are living here in a string of
scattered hamlets that closely adjoin each other, and are nearly all
located on the right-hand bank of the river as we ascend it. They
are more like muskrat villages than human habitations—water, water
all around and everywhere: situated on little patches, or narrow
dikes, at the rim of the high tides, on the edge of the river proper,
which is here, and for a long distance up, bordered by a strikingly
desolate and forlorn country. A glance at our map will show to the
reader that great funnel-fashioned mouth of the Kuskokvim, through
which its strong and turbid, clay-white current is discharged into
Bering Sea. The tides, in this enormous estuary, run with a rise and
fall that simply beggars description—reaching an amazing vertical
flow and ebb of fifty feet at the entrance! Such extraordinary change
in tide-level is carried up, but much modified as it progresses,
until lost at Mumtrekhlagamute; the entire physical aspect of that
region, in which this sweeping daily change in a level of the
water prevails, is most repellant and discouraging.

[Illustration: THE KUSKOKVIM RIVER AND TUNTUH MOUNTAINS

Viewed from Toolookah, 30 miles below Kolmakovsky, a famous Moose and
Reindeer Hunting Grounds for the Innuits of that Region]

From the high-tide bank-rims of the Kuskokvim, as we go up, across
to the hills and to their rear in the east, extends a dreary expanse
of swale and watered moors forty to sixty miles in width, flat and
low as the surface of the sea itself. At high tide it appears to be
nearly all submerged. It shimmers then like an inland ocean studded
with myriads of small mossy islets. Again, when the tide in turn
runs out, great far-expanded flats of mud and ooze supplant the
waters everywhere, giving in this abrupt manner a striking shift
of scenic effect. The eastern river bank is a queer, natural dike,
formed by a rank and vigorous growth of coarse sedges, bulrushes, and
little sapling fringes of alders, willows, with birch and poplars
interspersed. Upon this natural dike these native villages range
in close continuity, each occupying all the dry land in its own
immediate limits, and occupying it so thoroughly that a traveller
cannot, without great difficulty, find bare land enough outside of
their sites upon which to pitch his tent. Mud, mud everywhere—a
whitish-clay silt, through which, at low tide, it is almost a
physical impossibility to walk from a stranded bidarka up to the
villages. Indeed, if you are unfortunate enough to reach a settlement
here when coming down or going up the river as the tide is out, you
are a wise man if you simply fold your arms, sit quietly in your
cramped position until the rising, roaring flood returns and carries
you forward and over to your destination.

On the Lower Kuskokvim the river width of itself is so great that the
people living on its eastern banks never can see an opposite shore
to the westward, for it is even more submerged there and swampy, if
anything, than where they reside; hence we find them located here on
the east bank, to a practical exclusion of all settlement over on
those occidental swales and bogs. The current of this singular stream
flows quite rapidly. It discharges a great volume of water, which
is colored a peculiar whitish tone by the contribution of a roiled
tributary that heads in the Nooshagak divide. At its source and down
to this muddy junction it is clear. It is a rapid stream in the
narrows, and dull and sluggish in flow through wide openings.

The density of aboriginal population so remarkably manifested as
we observe it on the Lower Kuskokvim does not, however, give all
the testimony, inasmuch as during every summer two thousand or
more natives from the Yukon delta come over here to fish with the
Kuskokvims, making a sum-total of six or seven thousand fish-eaters,
who catch, consume, and waste an astonishing quantity of salmon,
which would, if properly handled, be sufficient to handsomely feed
the entire number of native inhabitants of Alaska, four times over,
every year!

Snow lies deeply upon all this region, driven and packed in vast
drifts and fields by the wrath of furious wintry gales, and the
hunting of land animals is thus made impossible. Then a native of
the Kuskokvim Valley turns his attention to trapping white-fish[152]
just as soon as the ice becomes firmly established, usually early in
November. The traps are made of willow and alder wicker-work, and
nearly all in the same pattern as those employed for salmon, but of
somewhat smaller dimensions, so as to be easier to handle, since
they are not required to catch the huge “chowichie.” Every morning
at dawn on the river the men of its many villages can be seen making
their way out to these fish-traps, when it is not bitterly inclement,
and even then, sometimes. They carry curiously shaped ice-picks,
made or fashioned from walrus-teeth or deer-antlers, because every
night’s freezing covers the trap anew with a solid cap of ice, which
must be broken up and removed ere a savage can get at it, haul it
out, and empty its “pot.” Think of the physical hardihood required
of a man who goes out from his hut to visit such a trap when the
wind, away below zero, is blowing over an icy plain of the broad
river at the rate of sixty miles an hour, whirling snowy spiculæ,
like hot shot, into the faintest exposure which he dares to make of
his face or eyes! He does not often go when a “poorga” prevails in
this boisterous manner. Sometimes he feels as though he must, since
a storm may have raged in wild, bitter fury for a week without sign
of abatement. His children or his wife may be sick and half-starved;
then, only then, does he venture out to dare and endure the greatest
hardship of savage life in Alaska.

It frequently happens after an unusually cold night that a trap,
including its contents, is frozen solid. This is another dreaded
accident, for it involves great labor, since the trap itself must be
picked to pieces and built anew. In spite of all these difficulties,
the natives get enough fresh fish during each winter by such method
to eke out their scanty store of dried salmon and save themselves
from starvation. On the lower river course, within the influence
of that tremendous tidal action which has been described, a solid
covering of ice never envelops the surface of the Kuskokvim. Here the
natives hunt seals, the mahklok, and also the white whale or beluga,
which furnishes them a full supply of oil[153] and blubber. A school
of belugas puff and snort, like a fleet of tug-boats, as they push
between and under tide-broken masses of ice in hot pursuit of fish
that abound all over the broad estuary.

There is one particularly distressing and hideous feature that
belongs to this entire area of the Alaskan coast tundra and marshy
moors of the interior and its forests, its river-margins, and, in
fact, to every place except those spots where the wind blows hard.
It is the curse of mosquitoes—the incessant stinging of swarms of
these blood-thirsty insects, which come out from their watery pupæ
by May 1st (with the earliest growing of spring vegetation), and
remain in perfect clouds until withered and destroyed by severe
frosts in September and October. The Indians themselves do not dare
to go into the woods at Kolmakovsky during the summer, and the very
dogs themselves frequently die from effects of mere mosquito-biting
about their eyes and paws only, for that thick woolly hair of these
canines effectually shields all other portions of their bodies.
Close-haired beasts, like cattle or horses, would perish here in a
single fortnight at the longest, if not protected by man.

Universal agreement in Alaska credits the Kuskokvim mosquito
as being the worst. They do not appear elsewhere in the same
number or ferocity, but they are quite unendurable at the best
and most-favored stations. Breeding here, as they do, in these
vast extents of tundra sloughs and woodland swamps, they are able
to rally around and embarrass an explorer beyond all reasonable
description. Language is simply inadequate to portray that misery and
annoyance which the Alaskan mosquito-swarms inflict upon us in the
summer, whenever we venture out from the shelter of trading-posts,
where mosquito-bars envelop our couches and cross the doors and
windows to our living-room. Naturally, it will be asked, What do
the natives do? They, too, are annoyed and suffer; but it must be
remembered that their bodies are daily anointed with rancid oil,
and certain ammoniacal vapors constantly arise from their garments
which even the mosquito, venomous and cruel as it is, can scarcely
withstand the repellant power of. When the natives travel in this
season, they gladly avail themselves, however, of any small piece of
mosquito-netting that they can secure, no matter how small. Usually
they have to wrap cloths and skins about their heads, and they always
wear mittens in midsummer. The traveller who exposes his bare face
at this time of the year on the Kuskokvim tundra or woodlands will
speedily lose his natural appearance; his eyelids swell up and close;
his neck expands in fiery pimples, so that no collar that he ever
wore before can now be fastened around it, while his hands simply
become as two carbuncled balls. Bear and deer are driven into the
water by these mosquitoes. They are a scourge and the greatest curse
of Alaska.

Two hundred miles up from the Kuskokvim mouth is a focal centre of
the trade in this district. It is Kolmakovsky, established by the
Russians in 1839. It consists of seven large, roughly built frame
dwellings and log warehouses, and a chapel, which stand on a flat,
timbered mesa well above the river, on its right or southern shore.
Here the current of the stream has narrowed, and flows between high
banks over a gravelly bed. These terraces, which rise from the water,
are flat-topped, and covered with a tall growth of spruce. Mossy
tundras and grassy meadows roll in between forest patches. The timber
is much larger here than it is anywhere else in the great Alaskan
interior, and that scenery along this river is far wilder and more
agreeable than any which is so monotonous and characteristic of the
Upper Yukon. The desolate flatness and muddy wastes of the Lower
Kuskokvim are now replaced by this pleasing change, which we have
just mentioned, a short distance below Kolmakovsky.

[Illustration: KOLMAKOVSKY, ON THE KUSKOKVIM

Old Russian trading-post, established in 1839, two hundred miles up
the River: these houses were once surrounded with a stockade, but
such a defence has long been needless. This view is taken from the
opposite bank of the River, looking over to the high hills of the
Nooshagak divide, and Mount Tamahloopat in the distance]

Back of that post, and clearly defined against the horizon, are the
snowy-capped summits of those mountains that form a Nooshagak divide.
One of them rises in an oval-pointed crest to a very considerable
elevation[154] above all the rest, and is the landmark of every
traveller who comes over the Yukon divide to Kolmakov. The river
here, as it brawls swiftly in its course, is about seven hundred feet
in width, with bends above and below where it expands to fully twice
that distance.

While the Kuskokvim is the only considerable rival of the Yukon in
this whole Alaskan country, yet when seriously contrasted with the
great Kvichpak[155] itself, then the Kuskokvim bears about the same
resemblance to it that the Ohio River does to the Mississippi.

Kolmakovsky marks the limit of inland migration allotted to the
Innuit race on its banks, who are not permitted by those Tinneh
tribes of the interior to advance farther up the river. It is also
removed from that disagreeable influence of Bering Sea, where the
prevalence of rain and of furious protracted gales of wind make
life a burden to a white man on the Lower Kuskokvim. Its environing
forests break the force of these storms, and there is also less fog,
so that the sun usually shines out clear and hot, especially in July
and August.

In the winter season, when frost has locked up miry swales and
swamps, and snow lies in deep, limitless drifts, a white hunter at
Kolmakov can join the Kuskokvamoots in trailing and shooting giant
moose which come down from the mountains of the Nooshagak divide.
This animal is quickly apprehended by the native dogs, so that
whenever winter weather will permit, a native Innuit spends most of
his time, not employed by ice-fishing on the Kuskokvim, in this sport.

The fur-trade at Kolmakovsky is quite active, but it is almost
exclusively transacted with a few Indians up the river, and not
with the numerous Innuits below. The latter are, commercially
speaking, very poor, having not much of anything but little stores
of “mahklok” seal-oil. These big phocaceans are almost as great
fishermen as the Innuits are themselves, and find the mouth of the
Kuskokvim as attractive as it is to their human foes. In this frame
of mind the mahklok ventures on to those tidal banks of the estuary
below, and this rash habit enables the natives to capture a great
many of them there every year. Those Innuits below Kolmakovsky have
no land-furs whatever, save a few inferior mink-skins; but they trade
their surplus seal-oil with the Indians above and on the Yukon for
that ground-squirrel parka and tanned moose-skin shirt which they
universally wear. There is an exceeding rankness to an odor of rancid
fish-oil, but the aroma from a bag of putrescent seal-oil is simply
abominable and stifling to a Caucasian nose—an acrid funk, which
pervades everything, and hangs to it for an indefinite length of time
afterward in spite of every effort made to disinfect.

The Indians of the Upper Kuskokvim were once said to be a very
numerous tribe; but the severity of successive cold winters has so
destroyed them, as a people, that to-day they exist there as a feeble
remnant only of what they once were. An intelligent trader, Sipari,
who has traversed their entire country, in 1872-76, declares that
“forty tents,” or one hundred souls is an ample enumeration of their
number.

The Innuits of the Lower Kuskokvim are much better physical specimens
of humanity than are those of their race living on the Lower Yukon.
These latter are called by all traders the most clumsy and degraded
of Alaskan savages. The portage from Kolmakovsky to the Kvichpak
is only three days’ journey in winter, or five days by water in
canoes, during summer. It is a trip made by large numbers of the
natives of both streams, in the progress of their natural barter and
moose-hunting.

The forests of the Kuskokvim and the Nooshagak mountains and uplands
are frequently swept by terrible conflagrations, which utterly
destroy whole areas of timber as far as the eye can reach. This
ruin of fire, of course, absolutely extinguishes all trapping for
any fur-bearing animal hitherto found in those _brulé_ tracts, and
entails much privation upon the natives who have been accustomed to
gain their best livelihood largely by hunting in those sections. A
burnt district presents a desolate front for years after; the fire
does not, in its swift passage, do more, at first, than burn the
foliage and smaller limbs of trees in a dense spruce forest; but
it roasts the bark and kills a trunk, so that all sap-circulation
is forever at an end in it. As the years roll by, these trunks
gradually bleach out to almost a grayish white, the charred,
blackened bark is all weathered off, and gradually such trees fall,
as they decay at the stump, in every conceivable direction upon
the ground, across one another, like so many jack-straws, making
a perfectly impassable barricade to human travel without tedious
labor. A brisk growth of small poplars, birch, and willow springs
up in place of the original spruce forest, but none of these trees
and shrubs ever grow to any great size. At rare intervals a young
evergreen is seen to rise in sharp relief, towering over all
deciduous shrubbery, and in the lapse of long years it will succeed
in supplanting every growing thing around with its own kind again.

[Illustration: “Brulé” Desolation; Alaskan Interior.

[_A view on the Stickeen Divide: bears, in search of larvæ, ripping
open decayed logs._]]

The traders at Kolmakovsky make up their furs into snug bales and
descend the river in wooden and skin boats, every June, to a point
below, about one hundred and fifty miles, where they meet their
respective schooners, or go still lower to an anchorage of larger
vessels, and renew their annual supplies. These river-boats are then
poled and rope-walked up the river back to the post. The principal
trade here is beaver, red foxes, mink, marten, land-otter, and brown
and black bears.

The traders say it is exceedingly seldom that a white man ever
comes in contact with the natives of the Lower Kuskokvim, and that
there is nothing to call them there; also, that the labors of the
Russian missionaries of the Yukon never extended to this region,
though their registers and reports show quite a number of Christians
on the Kuskokvim River. The only trace of Christianity among this
tribe, outside of the immediate vicinity of a trading-station with
its chapel, consists of a few scattered crosses in burial-places
adjoining the settlement. At the village of Kaltkhagamute,
within three days’ travel of the Russian mission on the Yukon, a
graveyard there contains a remarkable collection of grotesquely
carved monuments and memorial posts, indicating very clearly the
predominance of old pagan traditions over such faint ideas of
Christianity as may have been introduced for these people. Among
monuments in this place the most remarkable is that of a female
figure with four arms and hands, resembling closely a Hindoo goddess,
even to its almond eyes and a general cast of features. Natural
hair is attached to its head, falling over the shoulders. The legs
of this figure are crossed in true oriental style, and two of the
hands, the lower pair, hold rusty tin plates, upon which offerings of
tobacco and scraps of cotton prints have been deposited. The whole is
protected by a small roof set upon posts.

Other burial posts are scarcely less remarkable in variety of feature
and coloring, and the whole collection would afford a rich harvest of
specimens to any museum. Nearly all these figures are human effigies,
though grotesque and misshapen, and drawn out of proportion. No
images of animals or birds, which would have indicated the existence
of totems and clans in the tribe, were to be seen; but here and
there, over apparently neglected graves, a stick, surmounted by a
very rude carving of a fish, a deer, or a beluga, indicative of the
calling of the deceased hunter, could be discovered.

Petroff, who has made the only hand-to-hand examination ever
conducted, by a white man, of the people of the Lower Kuskokvim,
says that they resemble in outward appearance their Eskimo neighbors
in the north and west, but their complexion is perhaps a little
darker. The men are distinguished from those of other Innuit tribes
by having more hair on the faces; mustaches being quite common, even
with youths of from twenty to twenty-five, while in other tribes
this hirsute appendage does not make its appearance until the age of
thirty-five or forty. Their hands and feet are small, but both sexes
are muscular and well developed, inclined rather to embonpoint. In
their garments they differ but little from their neighbors hitherto
described, with an exception of the male upper garment, or parka,
which reaches down to the feet, even dragging a little upon the
ground, making it necessary to gird it up for purposes of walking.
The female parkas are a little shorter. Both garments are made of the
skins of ground-squirrels, ornamented with pieces of red cloth
and bits of tails of that rodent. The women wear no head-covering
except in the depth of winter, when they pull the hoods of reindeer
parkas over their heads. The men wear caps, made of the skin of an
Arctic marmot, resembling in shape those famous Scotch “bonnets,” so
commonly worn by Canadians.

[Illustration: AN INNUIT TOMB

Characteristic Method of Eskimo Burial on the Kuskokvim River: this
Coffin contains the Bodies of a famous Reindeer Hunter, his Squaw,
and two Children]

Many young men wear a small band of fur around the head, into which
they insert eagle and hawk-feathers on festive occasions. A former
custom of this tribe, of inserting thin strips of bone or the quills
of porcupines through an aperture cut in the septum, seems to have
become obsolete, though the nasal slit can still be seen on all
grown male individuals. Their ears are also universally pierced
for an insertion of pendants, but these seem at present to be worn
by children only, who discard them as they grow up. In fact, all
ornamentation in the shape of beads, shells, etc., appears to be
lavished upon their little ones, who toddle about with pendants
rattling from ears, nose, and lower lip, and attired in frocks stiff
with embroidery of beads or porcupine-quills, while the older girls
and boys run almost naked, and the parents themselves are imperfectly
protected against cold and weather by a single fur garment.

The use of the true Eskimo kayak is universal among the
Kuskokvagmute, but in timbered regions of the upper river, in the
vicinity of Kolmakovsky, the birch-bark canoe also is quite common.
The latter, however, is not used for extended voyages or for hunting,
but is reserved chiefly for attending to fish-traps, for the use of
women in their berrying and fishing expeditions, and for crossing
rivers and streams.

The only indigenous fruit which this large population of the Lower
Kuskokvim can enjoy is that of the pretty little “moroshkie,” or red
raspberry,[156] which grows in great abundance on its short, tiny
stalks throughout all swales and over rolling tundra. These berries
are saturated in rancid oil, however, before they are eaten to any
great extent, being air-dried first and pressed into thin cakes;
then, as wanted, they are pounded up in mortars and boiled, or simply
thrown into a wooden basin (or kantag) of oil. Then the fingers, or
rude horn spoons, are dipped in by happy feeders, who apparently
relish this ill-savored combination just as keenly as one of our
Gothamitic gourmands appreciates the flavor of a Chesapeake terrapin
stewed in champagne.


FOOTNOTES:

[147] The Indians, or Koltchanes, of the Alaskan interior burn their
dead. If anyone dies in the winter, the relatives carry that corpse
everywhere with them, use it at night in the place of a pillow, and
only burn it at the commencement of warm weather.

[148] The Russian Imperial Government in 1841 ordered Governor
Etholin, of Sitka, to select a skilled engineer to make this
exploration, and accordingly, on July 10, 1842, Zagoskin was started
for St. Michael’s. His expedition was the most extended of any white
man ever made in Alaska prior to American search.

[149] _Colymbus arcticus._

[150] The Archimandrite Jeromonakh Juvenal. The second of the
priestly Russian service was Arch. Joassaf. He was drowned at sea
in 1797. He was succeeded by Arch. Afanassy, who remained Bishop of
Alaska until 1825, and he has been followed by many successors since.

[151] Visited then by Ivan Petroff, who made an extended trip for the
United States Census.

[152] _Coregonu ssp._

[153] The oil obtained from the beluga and the large seal (mahklok)
is a very important article of trade between the lowland people and
those of the mountains, the latter depending upon it entirely for
lighting their semi-subterranean dwellings during the winter, and
to supplement their scanty stores of food. It is manufactured by a
very simple process. Huge drift-logs are fashioned into troughs much
in the same manner as the Thlinket tribes make their wooden canoes.
Into these troughs filled with water the blubber is thrown in lumps
of from two to five pounds in weight. Then a large number of smooth
cobble-stones are thrown into a fire until they are thoroughly
heated, when they are picked up with sticks fashioned for the purpose
and deposited in the water, which boils up at once. After a few
minutes these stones must be removed and replaced by fresh ones, this
laborious process being continued until all oil has been boiled out
of the blubber and floats on the surface, when it is removed with
flat pieces of bone or roughly fashioned ladles, and decanted into
bladders or whole seal-skins, then cached on pole-frames until sold
or used by the makers.

[154] Mount Tamahloopat: two thousand eight hundred feet.

[155] The Russians and natives always called the Yukon River by this
name. Our change was first made by those Hudson Bay traders who came
over to it from the Mackenzie, and was subsequently universally
adopted.

[156] _Rubus chamæmorus._




CHAPTER XIII.

LONELY NORTHERN WASTES.

  The Mississippi of Alaska: the Yukon River, and its Thorough
  Exploration.—Its vast Deltoid Mouth.—Cannot be Entered by Sea-going
  Vessels.—Its Valley, and its Tributaries.—Dividing Line between
  the Eskimo and the Indian on its Banks.—The Trader’s Steamer; its
  Whistle in this Lone Waste of the Yukon.—Michaelovsky, the Trading
  Centre for this Extensive Circumpolar Area.—The Characteristic
  Beauties of an Arctic Landscape in Summer.—Thunder-storms on
  the Upper Yukon; never Experienced on the Coast and at its
  Mouth.—Gorgeous Arches of Auroral Light; Beautiful Spectacular
  Fires in the Heavens.—Unhappy Climate.—Saint Michael’s to the
  Northward.—Zagoskin, the Intrepid Young Russian Explorer,
  1842.—Snow Blizzards.—Golovin Bay; our People Prospecting
  there for Lead and Silver.—Drift-wood from the Yukon Strews
  the Beaches of Bering Sea.—Ookivok, and its Cliff-cave
  Houses.—Hardy Walrus-hunters.—Grantley Harbor; a Reminder of
  a Costly American Enterprise and its Failure.—Cape Prince of
  Wales—facing Asia, thirty-six miles away.—Simeon Deschnev, the
  first White Man to see Alaska, 1648. His Bold Journey.—The Diomede
  Islands; Stepping-stones between Asia and America in Bering
  Straits.—Kotzebue Sound; the Rendezvous for Arctic Traders; the
  Last Northern Station Visited by Salmon.—Interesting Features of
  the Place.

    Lo! to the wintry winds the pilot yields,
    His bark careering o’er unfathomed fields,
    Now far he sweeps, where scarce a summer smiles,
    On Behring’s rocks, or Greenland’s naked isles.
    —CAMPBELL.


Is it not a little singular that the lonely and monotonous course
of the Yukon River, reaching as it does to the very limits of the
pathless interior of a vast, unexplored region on either side, should
be that one section of all others in Alaska the best known to us?
An almost uninterrupted annual march has been made up and down its
dreary banks since 1865, by men[157] well qualified to describe its
varying moods and endless shoals—every turn in its flood, every
shelving bank of alluvium or rocky bluff that lines the margin of its
turbid current, has been minutely examined, named and renamed to suit
the occasion and character of a traveller.

The Yukon River is not reached by traders as any other stream of
size is in Alaska, by sailing into its mouth. No ocean-going craft
can get within sixty miles of its deltoid entrance. Were a sailor
foolhardy enough to attempt such a thing, he would be hard aground,
in soft silt or mud, a hundred miles from land in a direct line from
the point of his destination. Therefore it is the habit of mariners
to sail up as far north as Norton’s Sound, and then turn a little
to the southward and anchor their schooners or steamers under a
lee of Stuart’s and St. Michael’s Islands, where the old post of
Michaelovsky is established on the latter.

The “Rédoute Saint Michael” was founded here in 1835 by Lieutenant
Tebenkov, and has been ever since, and is to-day, the most important
post in the Alaskan North. This post is a shipping point for the
accumulated furs gathered by all traders from the Lower and Upper
Yukon, and the Tannanah, the annual yield from such points being the
largest and the most valuable catch of land-furs taken in Alaska.
A vessel coming into St. Michael’s at any time during the summer
will find, encamped around its warehouses many bands of Innuits and
Indians who have come in there, over long distances of hundreds of
miles, from the north, east, and south. They are there as traders and
middlemen. The fur-trading on the Yukon is very irregular as to its
annual time and place—the traders constantly moving from settlement
to settlement, because this year they may get only a thousand skins
where they got five thousand last season, and _vice versa_. It is
impossible to locate the best single spots for trade; the catch in
different sections will vary every winter according to the depth of
snow, the severity of climate, the prevalence of forest fires, or
starvation of whole villages, owing to unwonted absence of fish, and
so on.

In midsummer the Yukon is reached by small, light-draft, stern-wheel
steamers, which, watching their opportunity, run down from St.
Michael’s and enter its mouth, towing behind them a string of five
or six large wooden boats which are each laden with several tons
of merchandise. The scream of their whistles and puffing of these
little trading-steamers as they slowly drag such tows against a rapid
current, is the only enlivenment which the immense lonely solitudes
of the Yukon are subjected to by our people. That area of watery
waste is so wide and long, and the boats are so small and few in
number, that even this innovation must be watched for every year with
a hawk’s eye, or it will pass unobserved.

[Illustration: Trader’s Steamer towing Bateaux laden with Goods up
the Yukon.

[_The Kvichpak just below Mercier’s Station._]]

The waters of the Kvichpak are discharged into Bering Sea through a
labyrinth of blind, misleading channels, sloughs, and swamps, which
extend for more than one hundred miles up until they unite near
Chatinak with the main channel of that great river. This enormous
deltoid mouth of the Yukon is a most mournful and depressing
prospect. The country itself is scarcely above the level of tides,
and covered with a monotonous cloak of scrubby willows and rank
sedges. It is water, water—here, there, and everywhere—a vast inland
sea filled with thousands upon thousands of swale islets scarcely
peeping above its surface. Broader and narrower spaces between low
delta lands are where the whirl of its current is strongly marked by
a rippling rush and the drift-logs that it carries upon its muddy
bosom. These are the channels, the paths through the maze that leads
from the sea up to the river proper; and where they unite, at a point
above Andrievsky and Chatinak, the Yukon has a breadth of twenty
miles; and again, at many places, away on and up this impressive
stream as far as seven or eight hundred miles beyond, this same great
width will be observed, but the depth is very much decreased.

Myriads of breeding geese, ducks, and wading water-fowl resort
to this desolation of the deltoid mouth of the Yukon, where, in
countless pools and the thick covers of tall grass and sedge, they
are provided with a most lavish abundance of food and afforded the
happiest shelter from enemies; but the stolid Innuit does not affect
the place. The howling wintry gales and frightful curse of mosquitoes
in the summer are too much even for him. His people live in only six
or seven small wretched hamlets below Andrievsky and Chatinak—less
than five hundred souls in all, including the entire population
found right on the coast of the delta, between Pastolik in the north
and Cape Romiantzov on the south. Above Anvik on the main river the
Innuit does not like to go. He has no love for those Indians who
claim that region all to themselves and resent his appearance on
the scene. Whenever he does, however, he is always in company with
the traders, and he never gets out of their sight and protection,
even when making that overland portage from St. Michael’s by the
Oonalakleet trail.

As we emerge from those dreary, low and watery wastes of the delta at
Chatinak, the bluffs there, though desolate enough themselves, with
their rusty barren slopes, yet they give us cheerful assurance of
the fact that all Alaska is not under water, and that the borders of
its big river are at last defined on both sides. High rolling hills
come down boldly on the left bank as we ascend; but the right shore
is still low and but little removed from the flatness of a swale. The
channel of the river now zigzags from side to side (in the usual way
of running bodies of water which wash out and undermine), building
up bars and islets, and sweeping in its resistless flood an immense
aggregate of soil and timber far into Bering Sea. The alluvial banks,
wherever they are lifted above this surging current, which runs at
an average rate of eight miles an hour, are continually caving down,
undermined, and washed away. So sudden and precipitate are these
landslides, sometimes, that they have almost destroyed whole trading
expeditions of the Russians and natives, who barely had time to
escape with their lives as the earthy avalanches rolled down upon the
river’s edge and into its resistless current.

Above the delta large spruce and fir-trees, aspens, poplars, and
plats of alders and willows grow abundantly on the banks; but they do
not extend far back from the river on either side into any portions
of the country, which is low and marshy, and which embraces so large
a proportion of the entire landscape. Small larch-trees are also
interspersed. The river is filled with a multitude of long, narrow
islands, all timbered as the banks are, and which are connected one
with the other by sand and gravel bars, that are always dry and fully
exposed at low-water stages. Immense piles of bleached and splintered
drift-logs are raised on the upper ends of these islands, having
lodged there at intervals when high water was booming down.

Between Anvik and Paimoot are many lofty clay cliffs, entirely made
up of clean, pure earth of different bright colors—red, yellow,
straw-colored, and white, with many intermediate shades. The Yukon
runs down from its remote sources at the Stickeen divide in British
Columbia, down through a wild, semi-wooded country, a succession of
lakes and lakelets, through a region almost devoid of human life.
That extensive area, wherein we find such scant or utter absence
of population, is, south of the Yukon, very densely timbered with
spruce-trees on the mountains, and with poplars, birch, willow, along
the courses of the stream and margins of the lakes. Its immediate
recesses only are occasionally penetrated by roving parties of Indian
hunters, who now and then leave the great river and the Tannanah for
that purpose. It is a silent, gloomy wilderness. To the northward
of the Yukon this variety in timber still continues; indeed, it
reaches as far into the Arctic Circle and toward the ocean there as
the seaward slopes of those low and rolling mountains extend, which
rise in irregular ridges trending northeast and southwest. These
hills are between one hundred and one hundred and fifty miles from
the banks of the Kvichpak. Beyond this divide and water-shed of the
northern tributaries of the Yukon a forest seldom appears in any case
whatsoever, except where a low, straggling spur of hills stretches
itself down to the shores of an icy sea; but it is stunted and scant
in its hyperborean distribution thereon.

It is not necessary to enter into a description of the appearance and
disposition of these Yukon Indians who live on this great river above
Anvik, since they resemble those savages which we are so familiar
with in the British American interior, Oregon, and Dakota.

The Russians, in regarding them, at once took notice of their marked
difference from the more stolid Innuits, so that they were styled,
jocularly, by Slavonian pioneers, “Frenchmen of the North,” and
“Gens de Butte.” The Innuits called them “Ingaleeks,” and that is
their general designation on the river to-day. They differ from our
Plain Indians in this respect only: they are all dog-drivers. They
rely upon the river and its tributaries largely for food, using
birch-bark canoes—no skin-boats whatever. They have an overflowing
abundance of natural food-supply of flesh, and fowl also, and when
they suffer, as they often do, from starvation, it is due entirely
to their own startling improvidence during seasons of plenty, which
occur every year. A decided infusion of Innuit blood will be observed
in the faces of the Indians who live at Anvik, and some distance
up the river from that point of landed demarcation between Innuit
and Ingaleek. In olden times the latter were wont to raid upon
the settlements of the former, and carried off Innuit women into
captivity whenever they could do so, treating the Eskimo just as the
Romans raped the Sabines.

An Innuit is not thrifty at all, but when brought into comparison
with the Indian he is a bright and shining light in this respect.
Among the Ingaleeks of the Yukon a spring famine regularly prevails
every year during the months of April and May, or until the ice
breaks up and the salmon run. One would naturally think that the
bitter memories of gnawing hunger endured for weeks before an arrival
of abundant food, would stimulate that savage to glad exertion when
it did arrive so as to lay by of such abundance enough to insure
him and his family against recurring starvation next year. Strange
to say, it does not. The fish come; the famished natives gorge
themselves, and thus engorged, loaf and idle that time away which
should be employed in drying and preserving at least sufficient to
keep them in stock when the fish have left the stream. Often we will
actually see them lazily going to their slender store which they have
newly prepared, and eat thereof, while salmon are still running in
the river at their feet! Such improvidence and reckless disregard
of the need of the morrow is hard indeed for us to realize. Many of
the beasts of the field and forest with which the savage is well
acquainted set him annually, but in vain, a better example.

White traders during the last twenty years have so thoroughly
traversed the course of the Yukon, and, since our control of
Alaska, little stern-wheel steamers annually make trips from the
sea, accompanied with retinues of white men—these incidents have
thoroughly familiarized the Indians here with ourselves. But the
wilder Ingaleeks of the Tannanah, only six or seven hundred souls
in number, however, are as yet comparatively unknown to us. With an
exception of a white trader’s visit to their country in 1875,[158]
and the recent descent of the Tannanah by a plucky young officer
of the United States Army,[159] these Koltchanes have been unknown
at home and wholly undisturbed by us. There are less than sixteen
hundred Indians living over the entire Yukon region—a fact which
speaks eloquently for an exceeding scantiness of the population of
that vast landed expanse of this interior of the Alaskan mainland—a
great arctic moor north of the Kvichpak, which is a mere surface of
slightly thawed swale, swampy tundra, lakes and pools, sloughs and
sluggish rivers, in the summer solstice, while the wildest storms
of frigid winds, laden with snow and sleet, career in unchecked
fury over them during winter. Such an extreme climate is the full
secret of its marked paucity of human life. But that desolation of
winter does not prevent an immense migration of animal life to this
repellant section every summer from the south. Myriads of water-fowl,
such as geese, ducks, and the smaller forms, breed and moult here
then in all security, and free from molestation, while great herds of
reindeer troop over the lichen-bearing ridges. The musk-ox, however,
has never been known to range here or anywhere in Alaska within the
memory of man. Its fossil remains have been disinterred from the
banks of the Yukon, at several places (just as those of the mammoth
have), but that, with a few bleached skulls, is the only record of
this animal we can find which we would most naturally anticipate
meeting with on such ground, apparently so well adapted for it.

There is some difference of opinion as to whether the Yukon or the
Mississippi is the larger river, with respect to the volume of their
currents. The variation in this regard can hardly be very great,
either one way or the other. The Tannanah is the Missouri of the
Kvichpak, and swells the flood of that river very perceptibly below
its junction.

[Illustration: Michaeiovsky.

[_Extreme northern settlement of white Americans._]]

Michaeiovsky has been, and will continue to be, the chief rendezvous
of a small white residency of the Alaskan North. It is an irregularly
built _omnium_ of old Russian dwellings, warehouses, and a few of
our own structure. The stockade which once encircled it has long ago
been dispensed with, though the antique bastions and old brass cannon
still stand at one or two corners as they stood in early times,
well placed to overawe and intimidate a bold and hostile savage
people then surrounding them. The buildings are clustered together
on a small peninsula of an island, about twenty-five or thirty
feet above high-water mark; littered all around them are the small
outbuildings and the summer tents of Innuit and Indian tourists who
are loitering about for the double purpose of gratifying a little
curiosity, and of trading. An abundance of drift-wood from the Yukon
lies stranded on the beaches, and a large pile of picked, straight
logs have been hauled from the water and stacked upon one side of a
slope. The whole country, hill and plain, in every direction from
this post is a flat and alternately rolling moorland, or tundra, the
covering of which is composed principally of mosses and lichens, and
a sphagnous combination which produces in the short growing season
a yellowish-green carpet, with patches of pale lavender gray where
the lichens are most abundant. At sparse and irregular intervals
bunches of coarse sedge grasses rise, and the entire surface of moor
is crossed at various angles with lines of dwarf birches and an
occasional clump of alders and stunted willows. The most attractive
feature in such an arctic landscape, when summer has draped it
as we now behold it, is the nodding seed-plumes of the equisetum
grasses—they are tufts of a pure, fleecy white that, ruffled in the
breeze, light up the sombre russet swales with an almost electrical
beauty. Everywhere here, in less than eighteen inches or two feet
beneath this blossoming flora, will be found a solid foundation of
perpetual frost and ice—it never thaws lower. The flowers of that
tundra embrace a list of over forty beautiful species, chief among
them being phloxes, a pale-blue iris, white and yellow poppies,
several varieties of the red-flowered saxifrages, the broad-leaved
archangelica, and many delicately fronded ferns.

Twittering, darting flocks of barn-swallows hover and glide over
the old faded roofs and walls of Michaelovsky, and the bells of a
red-painted church, just beyond, come jangling sweetly across the
water, mingled with that homelike chattering of these swallows. But
a pious mission here is a practical failure in so far as any effect
upon the Innuit mind is concerned. During summer-time, in the Upper
Yukon country, thunder-showers are very common; down here, on the
coast, they are never experienced. The glory, however, of an auroral
display is divided equally between them, when from September until
March luminous waves and radii of pulsating rose, purple, green, and
blue flames light up and dance about the heavens—gorgeous arches of
yellow bands and pencil-points of crimson fire are hung and glitter
in the zenith. These exhibitions beggar description; they are weirdly
and surpassingly beautiful, far beyond all comparison with anything
else of a spectacular nature on earth.

In the autumn and in the early days of December, a low declination
of the sun tints up the clouds at sunrise and sunset into beautiful
masses of colors that rapidly come and go in their origination and
fading. Twilight is a lovely interval of the day in this latitude,
and is even enjoyed by the hard-headed traders themselves. Winter
is a weary drag here—about seven months—lasting from October until
well into May; but, in spite of its intense cold, there are many long
periods of its endurance characterized by clear, lovely weather,
while the warmer summer is rendered disagreeable by a large number of
cold misty days, rain, and gloomy palls of overhanging clouds which
shut down upon everything like a leaden cover.

We are accustomed to associate an occurrence of a real mirage with
dry, arid, desert countries, where the thirsty and sun-burned
traveller is mocked by illusions of clear lakes and a green oasis
just ahead. In truth, the mirage of an Alaskan tundra in midwinter
is fully as remarkable, and quite as tantalizing. When the trader
starts out with his dog-team, on an intensely still, cold day, the
vibrations of the air are so energetic that those blades of grass
which stick out from the snow, just ahead, seem to him like thickets
of willow- and birch-trees, around which he must make a painful
detour. Then, again, the ravines and valleys are transformed into
vast lakes, with the loftiest and most precipitous shores. On the
coast here, during cool, clear days in March, hills, which are thirty
or seventy-five miles away from the windows of Michaelovsky, are
lifted up and transported to the very beach of the island itself,
contorted and fantastic changes constantly taking place in the
picture, until suddenly a slight something, or a change perhaps in an
observer’s position, causes the singular delusion to vanish.

St. Michael’s is all by itself to-day; yet it, at one time, was not
the only settlement on the island; for, close by the fort, there were
two Mahlemoöt villages, Tahcik and Agahliak, whose inhabitants were
first to cordially invite the Russians to locate here in 1835. But
in 1842 the ravages of small-pox absolutely depopulated these native
towns, and a few survivors fled in dismay from the place—they never
came back, nor have their descendants returned. For some reason or
other the Russians made the most persistent and energetic attempt
to develop a successful vegetable garden in this region and to
keep cattle. But, beyond a small exhibit of eatable cabbages, good
radishes and turnips, and a few inferior potatoes, grown in the warm
sand-dunes of Oonalakleet, nothing more, substantially, ever resulted
from it.

Generally the snow falls, at Michaelovsky, as the beginning of its
hyemal season, about October 1st, and by October 20th ice has formed,
and has firmly locked up the Yukon by November 1st to 5th. These
icy fetters break away by June 5th, and in a week or ten days the
great river is entirely clear. The sea is usually covered by sludgy
floes as early as the middle or end of every October, which remain
opening and closing irregularly until next June. The months of July
and August are the warmest, ranging from 48° to 54° Fahr. during
daytime.[160]

From St. Michael’s to the westward a low basaltic chain of hills
borders the coast, and, parallel to it some thirty miles inland, a
few peaks attain an elevation of one thousand to fifteen hundred
feet. Jutting out at a sharp angle from this volcanic range stands
that low peninsula, tipped with the granitic headland named (by Cook
more than a century ago) Cape Denbigh. This point forms the southern
wall for that snug, tightly enclosed Bay of Norton, thus partitioned
off from a sound of the same title. The Oonalakleet River empties
into Norton’s Sound, at a point about midway between Michaelovsky
and Denbigh. The debouchure of this stream is marked by the richest
vegetation to be found anywhere in all of this entire region north
of Bristol Bay. It is due to the warm sand-dune flats which are
located here; and here is one of the liveliest Mahlemoöt villages of
that north. That river is an exclusive gateway to the Yukon during
the winter season, from and to Michaelovsky, and these Innuits are
the chief commission merchants of Alaska. In a village, now called
Kegohtowik, near by, Zagoskin received his first initiation into
the wild life which he led up here as an explorer, since it was the
first camp[161] he ever made among the Innuits after he had started
out from Michaelovsky. This young Russian was kindly received by the
wondering natives, who unharnessed his dogs and hung up his sleds
on the cache scaffolds as a token of their hospitality. Into their
kashga he was taken with every demonstration of regard and curiosity.
He happened to have arrived just as these people were preparing for
and celebrating a great festival of homage to an Eskimo sea-god who
rules the icy waters of Bering and the Arctic Ocean. He quaintly
records their proceeding in this language:

“I had an opportunity of observing the natives preparing for a great
festival called by them ‘drowning little bladders in the sea.’ In the
front part of the kashga, on a strip of moose or other skin, there
were suspended about a hundred bladders taken from animals killed
by arrows only. On these bladders are painted various fantastic
figures. At one end of the trap hangs an owl with a man’s head and a
gull carved from wood; at the other end are two partridges. By means
of threads running to the crop-beam these images are made to move
in imitation of life. Below the bladders is placed a stick six feet
in height, bound about with straw. After dancing in front of the
bladders a native takes from the stick a small wisp of straw, and
lighting it, passes it under the bladders and birds so that the smoke
rises around them. He then takes the stick and straw outside. This
custom of ‘drowning little bladders in the sea’ is in honor of the
sea-spirit called ‘Ug-iak;’ but I cannot discover,” says Lieutenant
Zagoskin, “how the custom originated, or why they use bladders from
animals killed by arrows in preference to those killed by other
means. To all questions upon the subject the natives answered: ‘It
is a custom which we took from our fathers and our grandfathers.’
It seems to be of great antiquity, as the natives can give no
information as to its origin or the reasons for its adoption.[162]
Before these bladders they dance all day in their holiday dress,
which consists of light parka, warm boots, and short underdress for
the men; and parkas, reindeer-trousers, colored in Innuit style, for
women, and ornamented with glass beads and rings.”

And again, in this connection, the pleasures of a dog-sled journey
overland to the Yukon are graphically narrated by the same traveller,
who resumed his trip, after spending the night as above related, on
snow-shoes and dog-sleds laden with his provisions and instruments.
On the morning of December 9, 1842, he struck the Oonalakleet River
and started up its frozen channel. He says:

“The weather was at first favorable, but it soon changed, and a
driving snow-storm set in, blinding our eyes so that we could not
distinguish the path. A blade of grass seventy feet distant had
the appearance of a shrub, and sloping valleys looked like lakes
with high banks, the illusion vanishing upon nearer approach. On
December 9th, at midnight, a terrible snow-storm began, and in the
short space of ten minutes covered men, dogs, and sledges, forming
a perfect hill above them. We sat at the foot of a hill, with the
wind from the opposite side, and our feet drawn under us to prevent
them from freezing, and covered with our parkas. When we were covered
by the snow, we made holes with sticks through to the open air. In
a short time the warmth of the breath and perspiration melted the
snow so that a man-like cave was formed about each individual. In
these circumstances our travellers passed five hours, calling to one
another at intervals to keep awake, it being certain death to sleep
in that intense cold. If we had been on the other side of the hill,
exposed to the full fury of the wind, we would have been buried in
the snow and suffocated.”

Such are the experiences of all travelling traders on the Yukon, who
encounter these wintry “poorgas” in the pursuit of their calling
every year of their lives spent in that great Alaskan moorland.
Familiarity with this subject never breeds contempt for it in the
minds of those hardy men—that pain and privation to which these
characteristic storms subject all human beings who are caught and
chained on a tundra, or in the mountains, by their wild rushing and
bitterly cold breath, is never forgotten.

On the shores of Norton’s Sound are many low clayey bluffs, which,
as they are annually undermined by the surf and chiselled by frost,
fall in heavy crumbled masses upon the beach. This exposes their
long-concealed deposit of the tusks and bones of those pre-glacial
elephants, the mammoth and the mastodon. Such fossil ivory has been
used by all Innuits from time immemorial in making their sleds and in
tipping their spears, lances, and arrows.

A party of Americans spent the summer of 1881 exploring the country
at the head of that deep indentation in the north shore of Norton’s
Sound called Golovin Bay. They were miners, and engaged in locating
the sources from which the Innuits had been bringing large masses
of lead-ore with a micaceous sparkle. The hope of a silver-mine had
allured these hardy prospectors, who had not reckoned, however, on
what they would have to face during the long winter, on the ice that
was always left in the soil. Still, in the summer this bay of Golovin
is an attractive anchorage—the most agreeable landscape presented
anywhere on our Arctic coast. Several rivers empty into it, and on
the slopes of the uplands of the northwest side is a growth of white
pines that reach a height of fifteen or twenty feet. These small
rounded conifers, scattered in clumps over the green and russet
tundra, an absence of underbrush, and the dark-green lines of stunted
willows and birches that fill the ravines on the sloping sides of
gently rising hills, suggest the parking of an old-country place
where the orchards are separated by hedges.

The beaches everywhere are profusely littered with drift-logs from
the Yukon, twenty to forty feet in length, thickly strewn. They
are pushed high above tides by the ice-floes in winter. What the
result would be of failure to gain that abundant supply of fuel, now
so easy of attainment, upon the natives of this entire region, is
not difficult to determine. As they live to-day they are steadily,
rapidly diminishing in number. The whalemen have substantially
exterminated their chief sources of life—the whale and the walrus.
Seals are not as abundant as on the Greenland coasts, and if, in
addition to their extra labor of securing food-supply, they were
obliged to do without wood, a practical depopulation of the Alaskan
coast of Bering Straits and the Arctic Ocean would be effected soon.

As the trader shapes his course from St. Michael’s for Port Clarence
and Kotzebue Sound, his little vessel skirts the low north shore
of Norton’s Sound very closely. He may stop for an hour or two, if
the weather permits, at Sledge Islet, standing “off and on” while
the Innuits come out to the schooner in their skin “oomiaks” or
bidarrahs. This barren rock was so named by Captain Cook, who,
when he landed on it, found nothing but a native’s hand-sled. Its
inhabitants were all sojourning on the mainland, berrying. It is only
about a mile in its greatest length, less than half a mile wide,
and raised almost perpendicularly from the sea to a height of five
or six hundred feet. When the modicum of walrus-oil and ivory which
these natives have to barter has been hoisted on board, the schooner
shapes her course for another islet—the curious “Ookivok,” or King’s
Island—which stands, a mere rock as it were, in the flood that
sweeps through Bering Straits. It is rugged, and strewn with immense
quantities of basaltic fragments, scoriæ, and rises so precipitately
from the sea that no place for a beach-landing can be found.

Here on the south side, clinging like nests of barn-swallows, are
the summer houses of the Ookivok walrus-hunters. They are from fifty
to one hundred feet above the brawling surf that breaks incessantly
beneath them, and secured to the perpendicular cliffs by lashings and
guys of walrus-thongs. The wooden poles thus fastened to the rocks
are covered with walrus-hides. On these unique brackets those hardy
Innuits spend the warmer weather. Their winter residences are mere
holes excavated in the interstices and fissures of the same bluff
to which their flimsy summer dwellings are attached, the entrances
to most of them being directly under the frail platforms upon which
these Mahlemoöt families are perched with all of their rude household
belongings. The nakedness of the island is so great as to forbid life
to even a spear of grass or moss—nothing but close, leathery lichens,
that grow so tightly to its weathered rocks that they appear to be
part and parcel of the splintered basaltic cubes or olivine bluffs
themselves. A more uninviting spot for human habitation could not be
found in all the savage solitudes of the north. But the Innuit is
here, not for the pleasure of location; he is here for that command
which this station gives him over all walrus-herds floating up and
down on the ice-floes of Bering Sea at the sport of varying moods of
wind and current.

[Illustration: Ookivok.]

From the rugged crests of King’s Island the natives can apprehend
drifting sea-horses as they sleep heavily on broad ice-cakes, and
make ample preparation for their capture. The violence of the wind
is so great that the small, flat summit of this islet cannot be
utilized as a place of residence—the winds that howl over and around
its rock-strewn head would hurl the Innuits, bag and baggage, into
those angry waves which thunder incessantly below. Long experience
at plunging through surf with their handsomely made kayaks, and
returning to land on these perilous shores of King’s Island, has made
the Ookivok people the boldest and the best watermen in the north.
Their little skin canoes are of the finest construction, and their
surplus time is largely passed in carving walrus-ivory into all
fashions of rude design for barter in the summer, when the ice shall
disappear and the sails of whaling-ships and fur-trading schooners
challenge their attention in the offing.

What a winter these people must witness! What a succession of furious
storms and snow-laden gales! When their summer comes it brings but
little sunlight to their rocky retreat; for, standing, as it does, in
the full sweep of that warmer flood which flows up from the Japanese
coast into the Arctic, cold, chilly fogs and obstinate clouds
envelope them most of the time. But sympathy is utterly wasted; were
they to be transported to California, and surrounded with all the
needs of a creature existence, they would soon entreat, beg, implore
us to return them to the inhospitable rock from which they were
taken. The whalers have, at various intervals during the last twenty
years, carried Innuits down to spend the winter with them at the
Sandwich Islands, under an idea that these people would be delighted
with the soft, warm climate there, and such fruits and flowers, and
be grateful for the trip. But in no instance did an individual of
this hyperborean race fail to sigh for his home in Bering Sea, or
the Arctic Ocean, soon after landing at Hawaii. Those Innuits who
were without kith or kin became just as homesick and forlorn as any
natives did who had relatives behind awaiting their return.

A few hours’ sailing, with a free wind, to the north from King’s
Island, brings you into full view of a bold headland at the
entrance to Port Clarence. Cape York is a noted landmark in this
well-travelled highway to the Arctic Ocean—well travelled by
the whaling fleets of the whole world until recently; now, an
elimination of cetacean life from these waters has caused their
substantial abandonment by those vessels, and no others come,
save a trading-schooner ever and anon at wide intervals. A roomy
harbor, sheltered from the south by a long pier of alluvium, is Port
Clarence. Leading beyond it is an immense inner basin, walled in all
about by steep slate precipices: this is Grantley Harbor. High hopes
and great expectations were centred here in 1865-66, by the location
of that short cable-end which, underrunning Bering Straits, was to
unite an overland telegraph wire from St. Petersburg with that one we
were to build, in the same fashion, from Portland, Ore., thus to span
the Old and New Worlds by this short submarine link. Naturally, then,
it made this point of its beginning a most interesting locality. In
obedience to an order of a few wealthy, energetic capitalists, who
did not then believe in the practicability of the Atlantic cable,
many stately ships, freighted with men and goods, left San Francisco
in the summer of 1865, and, again, in the succeeding season of 1866,
for divers points in Alaska and Siberia. These men were to build
the line overland. They were landed at St. Michael’s and at Port
Clarence, and at several harbors on the Asiatic coast. They had
fairly got to work, when, late in 1866, the success of the submarine
cable between Newfoundland and Ireland was assured. That success
compelled an abandonment of the Collins Overland Telegraph, and
these men were consequently recalled, and sailed back to California
in those handsome vessels of the telegraph fleet. How the Innuits
of Port Clarence marvelled when these smart, richly dressed men
disembarked, and put up houses in which to store their treasures of
food and telegraph materials, as well as to actually live in—to stay
there with them, in their own rude country, where no such thing had
ever been even dreamed of before. After the ships had squared their
yards and filled away, without calling the Americans on board, then
the Mahlemoöt heart was filled with unknown and strange emotions of
joy and curiosity—both of these passions were fully satisfied ere the
white men left Grantley Harbor.

With Cape York just astern, you pass under the lee of those sheer and
lofty walls of that shoulder to our continent, Cape Prince of Wales.
Its bold front stands in full but silent recognition of an Asiatic
coast westward, just thirty-six miles away, over the shallow flood of
Bering Straits. What changes in a great northland and seas would have
been wrought had a tithe of such volcanic energy which raised up the
Aleutian archipelago been only exerted here in throwing a basaltic
dike across from continent to continent! Had the upheaval and power
that elevated the large island of Oonimak alone been focused here,
we should have no division of the Old World and the New. That
ocean-river which flows steadily into the icy wastes of a known and
unknown polar basin above Alaska and Siberia would not now give that
life which it so freely grants both animals and vegetables in the
wide reach of the North Pacific. A dam of adamantine rock or basalt
across the Straits of Bering would cause a startling revision of
all the natural order of life in Bering Sea and our Arctic Ocean.

[Illustration: CAPE PRINCE OF WALES

That extreme narrowing of the American shore of Bering Straits: the
Asiatic coast is only thirty-six miles to the Westward from this
Point, which was located and named by Captain Cook, August 7, 1778]

Cape Prince of Wales, which forms the extreme narrowing of Bering
Straits, is a high, rugged promontory, with walls on the south side
that are abrupt precipices of a full thousand feet, while the uplands
rise, culminating in a snowy crown that is twenty-five hundred feet
above the level of the sea. Deep gulches seam these vertical walls,
and are the paths of numerous tiny rivulets that trickle and run in
cascades down from the spongy moorlands above. When, however, you
stand in to the straits, homeward bound from the Arctic Ocean, this
cape on that side presents a wholly different outline. It slopes up
gradually from the beaches, and presents the appearance of a tundra
gently rising to a small ridge-like summit. This lowland on the north
side is projected under the sea for a distance of over eight miles
in a northerly direction, making an exceedingly dangerous shoal, and
justly dreaded by the mariner.

The Siberian side and opposite headland is the bold and lofty East
Cape, and is connected with the mainland by a low neck of rolling
tundra, which is characteristic of Cape Prince of Wales also. Both of
these outposts of two mighty continents present, at a small distance,
the resemblance of islands.

On June 20th, two hundred and thirty-eight years ago (1648), Simeon
Deschnev, a Cossack chief trader, sailed from the mouth of the
Siberian river Kolyma, standing to the eastward, where he intended
to cruise until the country of those Chookchie natives, who had
ivory for trade, should be reached. His party sailed in three small
“kotches,” which were rude wooden shallops, decked over, about
thirty feet long and twelve in beam, drawing but little water.
They pushed on and on in that region to the eastward, from which
direction the nomadic natives of the Kolyma had always returned
laden with walrus-ivory. Fields of ice retarded them; no populous
trading-villages rewarded their scrutiny of the rugged coast as they
advanced. The known waters behind them closed up with floes, so
returning was impossible; while the unknown waters ahead were open
and invited exploration. In this manner, hugging the coast, Deschnev
and his companions sailed through the straits, landing once there in
September. He called it an “isthmus,” and described the appearance of
the Diomede Islands, which he plainly saw from the shore. Although
no mention is made by any one of this party of having seen the
American continent, yet it must have been observed by them, for the
bold headland of Cape Prince of Wales can be easily descried on any
clear day from the Asiatic side. Deschnev’s voyage had been quite
forgotten until Müller, in hunting over old records in 1764, found
the narrative then, and at once published it in the “Morskoi Sbornik.”

A long interregnum elapsed between the hardy voyage of Simeon
Deschnev and the next or second passage of the straits by the keel of
a white man’s vessel. Not until August, 1728, did Bering sail through
here. He went only a short distance above, into the Arctic Ocean,
and returned without giving any sign thereafter of the importance of
the pass or its nature, believing, most likely, that what land he
saw on the eastern side was a mere island and not a great American
continent. But that intrepid navigator, Captain Cook, who comes third
in this early initiation of our race, made no mistake: he fully
realized that the division of two hemispheres was here effected,
and so declared the fact, and then gave to these straits, in a most
chivalric manner, the name of Bering, August, 1778.

[Illustration: The Diomedes.

  “Fairway Rock.”      “Ignalook” (America).      “Noornabook” (Asia).

[_Viewed from the Arctic Ocean; looking S.S.W. 7 m._]]

Midway, stepping-stones as it were, across those straits are the
Diomedes, two barren, rocky islets and a sheer rock. The largest and
the most western is about three miles long and one in width; it is
seven or eight hundred feet in abrupt elevation from the water, and
the line of division between the Siberian possessions and our own
just takes it in. The sister island is somewhat smaller, less than
half as large, but it is as bold and sheer in its rocky elevation,
leaving a channel-width of two miles only in between. The first
is named Ratmanov, or _Noornabook_; the second, Kroozenstern, or
_Ignalook_; while that high isolated hay-cock mass, about seven miles
south of Kroozenstern, is called Fairway Rock. Bering Straits has an
average depth of only twenty-six fathoms, with a hard, regular bottom
of sand, gravel, and silt.

This gateway to the Arctic Ocean is closed by ice-floes usually by
the middle or end of October every year, and opened again in the
following season by May 25th or June 1st, but the ice-fields do not
allow much room for navigation north until the middle or end of June,
sometimes not until the month of July has been well passed.

On that low, northern tundra slope of Cape Prince of Wales is the
largest Innuit village in the Alaskan northland. Four hundred souls
live there in a settlement which they style Kingigahmoot, and they
bear unmistakable evidence of the vicious and degrading influence
which evil whalers and rum-traders have exerted. We are struck by
their saucy flippancy, their restless, meddlesome, and impertinent
bearing. It is because these people have been for a great many years
thoroughly familiarized with and degraded by all the tricks and petty
treacheries of dishonest and disreputable white men. They do not
draw a line in favor of any decency in our race to-day, and hence
their disagreeable manner. Otherwise, beyond shaving the crowns of
their heads, they do not differ from the Innuits whom we have met
heretofore. They are seamen in the full sense of the word—hardy,
reckless navigators who boldly launch themselves into stormy waters
and cross from land to land in tempest and in fogs, depending solely
upon the frail support of their walrus-skin baidars, or oomiaks.
These are very neatly made, however, the covering of seal- and
walrus-hides being stretched and sewed tightly over wooden frames
that are lashed at the joints with sinew and whalebone-thongs. They
hoist a square sail of deer-skins or cotton drilling, and run before
the wind in heavy gales; or they employ paddles and oars, and urge
their craft against head-winds and perverse currents. Their poverty
is the only redemption which they have had from absolute destruction;
for were they possessed of furs that would encourage the regular
visits of traders, they would, with their disposition to debauchery,
have been utterly exterminated long before this time. But they are
poor, very poor, having nothing to tempt the cupidity of white
traders—nothing but small stores of walrus-oil and teeth, and a few
red and white foxes, perhaps. Therefore our people never stop long
near them, just laying the vessel’s sails aback for a few minutes,
or an hour, while the dusky paddling crews of the oomiaks surrounding
the schooner exhibit their slim stocks of oil and ivory.

These northern Innuits are not known anywhere to have a village
located far back from the sea save at three places, where, on the
Selawik, the Killiamoot, and the Kooak Rivers, are settlements of
a few people who are at least fifty and one or two hundred miles
inland; but they are the exceptions only to their rule of living.
Some thirty-five villages of these hyperborean Innuits of Alaska are
scattered along the coast between St. Michael’s and Point Barrow;
they possess an aggregate (estimated) inhabitation of three thousand
men, women, and children. The Diomede and Prince of Wales natives are
the most active middlemen or commission merchants among their people;
they conduct all the trade between the Asiatic Chookchie savages and
the American Innuits, chiefly with those of Kotzebue Sound. Before a
wholesale destruction by our people, in 1849-57, of the whales that
once were so abundant in these waters, the life of those natives was
a comparatively easy struggle for existence, and they were far more
numerous then than they are to-day; but a fleet of four and five
hundred whaling-ships, manned by the hardiest men of all nations,
literally swept that cetacean life from the North Pacific and Bering
Sea, and drove it so far into the Arctic Ocean that its remnant,
which is still there, is practically safe and beyond human reach.

As you leave the Straits of Bering behind, your little vessel cuts
the cold, green waves of the Arctic Ocean rapidly, especially if
under the pressure of a warm southwester which funnels up stiffly
through the pass. You find nothing to catch your eye in all that
long reach from Cape Prince of Wales to the entrance of Kotzebue
Sound, which is an objective point of all the traders who come into
the Arctic. Here is the last safe Alaskan harbor for a sea-going
vessel as we go north. It is a big one; and it is a famous place
for a geologist and Innuits alike. To the latter it is of especial
significance, since the small rivers which empty there mark an
extreme northern limit of salmon-running in America.

The shores which bound this large gulf rise as perpendicular bluffs,
either directly from the water or from a shelving beach. In some
places the land is remarkably low (as it always is when bordering
the coast), and only so much raised above tide-level as to render
the idea probable that it is of an alluvial formation, the result
of accumulated mud and sand, brought down in former times by the
melting and running of large glacial rivers, and then thrown up later
by recent ice-floes of the Arctic Sea. The cliffs are, in part,
abrupt and rocky; others are made up of falling masses of mud, sand,
and ice. The rocky cliffs are dominant on the western and southern
shores, while the diluvial bluffs and flats complete that remaining
east and northeast circuit of the sound. Lowlands border a major
portion of the Bay of Good Hope, and form the land of Cape Espenberg
and contiguous country.

A most striking natural feature of this final rendezvous of the
salmon-loving Innuits is the Peninsula of Choris, which divides the
inner waters of the Bay of Escholtz from those of Good Hope. It is
a narrow, variously indented tongue; its northern end is separated
from the southern, and connected by a slender neck of very low land.
This lower point assumes the shape of a round and somewhat conical
eminence, surmounted by a flat, hut-like peak, the sides of which
rise a few feet perpendicularly above a surrounding surface, as
though raised artificially by masonry. The whole height is about six
hundred feet above sea-level. Both sides of that quaint headland
terminate in rocky cliffs which, toward the west, are one hundred
and fifty or two hundred feet high, stratified, unbroken, and
dipping to the west at an angle of thirty degrees. They are composed
of micaceous slate, with no included minerals. This slate is of a
greenish hue, with a very considerable predominance of mica. In it
are garnets, veins of feldspar enclosing crystals of schorl, and
fissures filled with quartz. At one point, nearly midway between
the southern end of this peninsula and its low neck, is a singular
bed of pure milk-white quartz, that marks its locality from a long
distance by the masses of large white blocks which have fallen down
by natural processes of cleavage and frost-chiselling, and these
remain unaltered in their snowy color in spite of the corroding
action of time and weather. Again, still nearer the neck, a narrow
bed of limestone forms a distinct protrusion above some mica-schist,
about thirty feet in length and five in depth. It reappears in such
strength, however, at the southern end of the peninsula, that it
forms most of the rock exposed, and produces four perpendicular and
contiguous promontories, separated from each other by small, receding
bays, that present curious walls striped a white and blue tint in
beautifully blended stratification, most unique and attractive to the
eye. The upper part of this limestone contains iron pyrites, and has
cavities filled with chlorite. The lower strata are more abundantly
mixed with micaceous schistus, containing compact actynolite, and
flat prisms of a glassy shade of it, crystals of tourmaline, and
those various concretions of iron pyrites. The quartz is, in some
places, colored a real topaz tint. Such, in brief, is a faint
description of those geological attractions which the Arctic rocks of
Kotzebue Sound present to a student.

The country everywhere, that borders the Arctic Ocean and this sound,
is low. The land rises by faint and gradual slopes; it is covered
with clay soils and the characteristic vegetation of a tundra. The
many low, projecting points of Kotzebue Sound are thickly strewn with
large and smaller masses of vesicular and of compact lava, containing
olivine. Some of these blocks extend into the sea; others are
embedded in the sandy soil of the beach; but many are insulated and
awash above the surf. They are honeycombed with empty cavities. The
sands of this Arctic Ocean beach partake of the black and volcanic
nature of those blocks. These large and numerous erratic blocks of
basalt, collected chiefly on such jutting points, must have been
conveyed there by ice-sheets from a very considerable distance, for
no volcanic formation is to be seen in their vicinity.

A suggestive wreck lies half buried in the sand and drift of the
north shore of Choris Peninsula—it is the scant and weathered
remnants of a large whaling-bark, which was run ashore here
and burned. Its own crew did so to prevent its capture by the
_Shenandoah_—that cruiser which, during our civil war, swooped
down upon our Asio-Alaskan whaling-fleet, as a fish-hawk drops
upon a flock of startled gulls. Again, on the south side of Good
Hope Bay, in this same remarkable sound of Kotzebue, is a bluff of
solid blue clay, from the face of which the frost-king annually
strikes large masses. The weathered débris of these fallen sections
reveal many fine specimens of well-preserved remains of huge
pachyderms—mammoths—and their finding has given a fit name of
“Elephant Point” to the place.

Across that peninsula, which Choris Point and its comical little
tender of Chamisso Islet project from, lies the long and narrow
estuary of Hotham Inlet, where all Innuits, from Icy Cape to the
far north and Bering Straits in the south, annually repair for
salmon-fishing in August. Into the mouths of a half-dozen small
streams which empty there, and that large one, of Kooak River, the
humpbacked salmon runs, for a brief period, in great numbers: then
the harvest of the Eskimo is at hand. Nowhere else above this point
can a salmon ever be taken, and as it is the last chance of these
natives, they improve it. Flocks of fat ducks and geese hover over
and rest upon the smooth, shallow waters of this inlet, alternately
feeding there and then alighting upon the tundra where crowberries
and insects abound. Our whalers have taught these Innuits how to
make and use gill-nets, with which they now catch their fish almost
exclusively; and not unwisely have those natives made the change, for
they have not got any slender willow brush and alder-saplings which
their brethren use so effectually in making rude traps on the Yukon,
Kuskokvim, and Nooshagak Rivers. They also stretch these gill-nets
over certain narrow places, from shore to shore, of lagoons and
lakes, where flocks of water-fowl are wont to fly (in early morning
and late in the evening), and succeed in capturing a great many
luckless birds by this simple method.


FOOTNOTES:

[157] The first white man to enter the Yukon and behold its immense
volume was Glazoonov, a Russian post-trader of the old Company, who,
with a small band of promishlyniks, managed to overcome the hostility
of the natives sufficiently to get up as far as the present site of
Nulato. This was in 1833. Lieutenant Zagoskin, of the Russian Navy,
made a thorough engineering examination of the river up as far as
the “Ramparts,” between the years 1842-45, inclusive, locating its
positions and courses by astronomical and magnetic observations.
After him, named in regular order of their priority in visiting the
river, came the following Americans, the first in 1865, the last
in 1885:—Kennicott, Pease, Adams, Ketchum, Dall, Whymper, Mercier,
Raymond, Hill and Shaw (two miners, from its very source), Nelson,
Petroff, then Schwatka and Everett (also from its source). All of
these men have given to the world more or less elaborate accounts
of the Yukon through the medium of published works, letters, and
lectures. The literature on the single subject of the Kvichpak is
decidedly voluminous.

[158] François Mercier, according to whom “Ingaleek” signifies
“incomprehensible.”

[159] Lieutenant H. T. Allen, Engineer Corps, United States Army.

[160] An average temperature prevails in this region for the year as
follows:

  January,    -.5°
  February,   -.6°
  March,      9.5°
  April,     22.1°
  May,       32.8°
  June,      45.2°
  July,      53.1°
  August,    52.1°
  September, 43.3°
  October,   28.0°
  November,  18.3°
  December,   8.9°

[161] December 5, 1842. The refreshing honesty and frankness of this
explorer’s thorough work on the Yukon and Kuskokvim deserve to be
better known.

[162] It is the same reply that is honestly given to any query made
as to the reason of almost every one of these Innuit mummeries. Too
many attempts have been made to attach serious meaning to such idle
ceremonies.




CHAPTER XIV.

MORSE AND MAHLEMOÖT.

  The Monotonous Desolation of the Alaskan Arctic Coast.—Dreary
  Expanse of Low Moorlands.—Diversified by Saddle-backed Hills of
  Gray and Bronze Tints.—The Coal of Cape Beaufort in the Arctic.—A
  Narrow Vein.—Pure Carboniferous Formation.—Doubtful if these
  Alaskan “Black Diamonds” can be Successfully Used.—Icy Cape, a
  Sand- and Gravel-spit.—Remarkable Land-locked Lagoons on the
  Beach.—The Arctic Innuits.—Point Barrow, Our Extreme Northern Land,
  a Low Gravel-spit.—The Buttercup and the Dandelion Bloom here,
  however, as at Home.—Back to Bering Sea.—The Interesting Island
  and Natives of St. Lawrence.—The Sea-horse.—Its Uncouth Form and
  Clumsy Life.—Its Huge Bulk and Impotency on Land.—Lives entirely
  by Clam-digging.—Rank Flavor of its Flesh.—The Walrus is to the
  Innuit just as the Cocoa-palm is to the South Sea Islander.—Hunting
  the Morse.—The Jagged, Straggling Island of St. Matthew.—The Polar
  Bears’ Carnival.—Hundreds of them here.—Their Fear of Man.—“Over
  the Hills and Far Away,” whenever Approached.—Completion of the
  Alaskan Circuit.


An Innuit village is in plain sight on the low shores of Cape
Kroozenstern, which forms a northern pier-head of Kotzebue Sound,
and its inhabitants greet your vessel as it passes out and up the
coast with the usual dress-parade—climbing upon the summits of
their winter houses, and by running in light-hearted mirth along
the beach. A most dreary expanse of low moorland borders the coast
as the little schooner reviews it, swiftly heeling on her course to
the north. Not until the bluffs of Cape Thompson are in sight does
a noteworthy landmark occur. This is an abrupt headland capped by
carboniferous limestone full of fossils, shells, corals and the like,
which are peculiar to that age. It is also traversed by veins of a
blackish chert varying in thickness from six inches to three feet or
more, causing a decided network tracery to appear very plainly on
its gray-white face. Half-way down from the top, the limestone is
succeeded by blue, black, and gray argillaceous shades, the colors
of which alternate in layers of horizontal strata, six or eight
feet in thickness, nearly down to the base; it is then composed of
black carboniferous shales alone, which abound in organic remains
and are occasionally interstratified by limestone much deflected.
This contortion is so great as to form two regularly banded arches.
Several tiny snow-water cascades tumble down its ravines and boldly
plunge over the bluffs, which are about four hundred feet high in
their greatest elevation.

This chert is that which the Eskimo of the entire Alaskan arctic
region (before the coming of white men) used for tipping their lance-
and arrow-heads when ivory was not employed. They, aided with a
small piece of bone, were able to “flake” it off in slices that were
easily reduced to the desired forms. They still work a little of it
up every year, in a desultory or perfunctory manner, however, more
for amusement than anything else, since they have a profusion of iron
and steel now in their possession. The fashion in which they chip it
gives ample evidence of their full understanding of a flat conchoidal
fracture peculiar to flint, and of which they take advantage.

To the northwest of Cape Thompson the coast runs out abruptly as a
low spit, projected into the Arctic Ocean for a distance of twenty
miles. This is Port Hope. The beach everywhere is principally formed
of dark basaltic gravel. To the north of a considerable stream not
far from this point, and on a low and diluvial shore, is a large
hamlet of Innuits, who have covered the turfy thatches on their
winter houses with heavy blocks of angular clink-stones picked up
from the sea-beach. The whole surface of the interior country here
is raised several hundred feet above tide-level, and is diversified
with saddle-backed hills of gray and bronzed tints, separated by wide
valleys in which a rich green summer verdancy is characteristic. Here
and there conical eminences and perpendicular shelving cliffs arise
from a general evenness of the whole landscape. These cliffs seem to
be composed of limestones, while their acclivities are of slate and
shale.

As we near Cape Lisburne a jutting range of bluffs, stratified in
bands of grayish-brown and black, receive the full wash of the
sea, and are called Cape Dyer; but Cape Lisburne is the striking
landmark, and a most important one for the navigator to recognize.
It is composed of two remarkable promontories: the southwestern one
rises abruptly from the surf, is covered with loose gray stones,
divested of the smallest traces of vegetation. The northeastern
one rises gradually, and, although but thinly clad with verdure,
it forms a pleasing and marked contrast with the gray head of the
other. The first is elevated from the sea in distinct strata, with
a southwestern dip, and consists of layers of impure chert in its
central and most prominent projections, and of a soft, friable slate
and shale in its worn and more retiring sides. The front of the
second is rugged and shelving, with very indistinct bandings; it is
partly covered with tundra vegetable-growths, and with fallen masses
of gray flint. Both points to this double-headed cape of Lisburne are
easily accessible; they are about one thousand feet in height from
the shore of the ocean, and both stretch their ridges away inland far
to the southeast.

The highly elevated country here ceases at once to the northeast of
Cape Lisburne, where the entire coast-line, away on and off to Icy
Cape, and beyond again, forms a deep and extensive bay skirted by a
dark, low beach. A gravel-flat fronts this again, filled with shallow
estuaries and lagoons. The land of the interior rises from that beach
in a series of low, earthy cliffs and in gradual acclivities.

The coal-veins, which Beechey visited in 1826, are about fifty miles
to the eastward of Lisburne, embedded in a ridge some three hundred
feet high where it juts into the ocean. This point is known as
Cape Beaufort. A narrow vein of pure carboniferous coal is exposed
there, about a quarter of a mile from the beach. “It was slaty, but
burned with a bright, clear flame and rapid consumption.” Again, at
a point about midway between Beaufort and Lisburne, directly at the
surf-margin, the officers of the United States Revenue Marine cutter
_Corwin_ mined a few tons of this same coal in 1880-81. But no harbor
for a coaling ship is near by; the steady north and westerly winds of
summer, which blow right on shore almost all of that short time in
which a vessel can navigate the Arctic, make it very doubtful whether
these remote mines of Alaskan “black diamonds” will ever be of real
economic value.

That sand- and shingle-spit ahead of us, which the whalers have named
Icy Cape with perfect fitness, is in itself almost invisible, since
it is a mere continuation of the outer rim to a remarkable lagoon
which borders this coast from Cape Beaufort to Wainright Inlet,
over one hundred miles in length, and varying in width from five to
ten miles, with an average depth of two fathoms. It is spanned by
occasional sand-bars, some of them entirely dry, so that it is not
navigable except for those small boats and oomiaks of the natives,
who haul these craft across as they journey, thus safe and snug,
up and down a desolate coast. This lagoon of the Arctic Ocean has
several openings to the sea itself. Small schooners can run in and
escape from ice-pack “jams,” if they draw less than eight or ten feet
of water. The coast-line of the mainland at Icy Cape is a series
of low mud-cliffs, varying from ten to fifty feet in height above
a shingly beach, which is everywhere composed of fine, minutely
comminuted, pebbly bases of granite, of chert, of sienite, and of
indurated clay, the last being a predominant form.

From this point clear around to the boundary of our Alaskan Arctic
coast at Point Demarcation that country presents the same appearance
which we note here. It is low and slightly rolling, and falls in
small cliffs of mud or sandstone at the sea-shore. During the
midsummer season it wears a hue of gray and brown, with little
patches of bright green where the snow has melted early in sunny,
sheltered spots. The lines of many streams, as they course in
carrying off melting snows, are plainly marked over a dreary tundra
by the dark fringes of dwarfed willows, birches, and alders which
only grow upon their banks.

[Illustration: Innuit Whaling-camp at Icy Cape.]

All along this cheerless northern sea-shore are small and widely
scattered settlements of our Innuits, who burrow in their turfy
underground winter huts, and who tent outside in summer-time upon
these shingly gravels and clink-stones of the Arctic coast. They
then live upon the walrus and kill an occasional calf-whale. For
the better apprehension of these animals they erect lookouts on the
beach by setting up drift-wood scaffolds, and climbing as lookouts
to an elevated platform thus made. In the winter, when the weather
permits, they net a ringed seal (_Phoca fœtida_) under the ice, make
short inland trips, where they camp for weeks at a time in rude
snow-houses, hunting reindeer, which are shy though abundant, and
they trap a few wolves and foxes. Every July and August they expect
the visit of a few whaling-vessels at least, and they are seldom
disappointed, for such craft are compelled by ice-floes to hug this
shore very closely, in order to get as far to the eastward as the
whales are found; sometimes, in spite of all the wariness and skill
of our own hardy whalemen, great floe-booms, of icy make, suddenly
shut down on that land so quickly from the north as to catch and
crush the staunchest ships like egg-shells under foot. Then, indeed,
is the sadness and the distress of the white men sharply contrasted
with that great joy and happy anticipation of an Innuit who feasts
his eyes and gloats in fancy over the abandoned vessels as they lie
riven by ice upon those shallow strands of Icy Cape or Point Barrow.

It is more than sixty years now since Captain Beechey[163] camped
upon and located Point Barrow, our extreme limit of northern landed
possession, and in that time few changes, other than depopulation
of the natives, have taken place on this coast. That same village
of Noowuk, which he graphically described, still stands there on
the tip of a low gravel-spit which extends out from the mainland
twelve miles into the chill flood of an Arctic Ocean. All the land at
its extremity not inundated by the sea in storms is now, as it was
then, occupied by the winter houses of the natives. Blooming here
in the short summer of July, on those desolate moors adjacent to
Point Barrow, is the same dandelion and buttercup which filled the
Englishman then, as it does us now, with thoughts of meadows at home,
and some bright little poppies still nod their yellow heads again
to us, as they did to him, on this low north end of Alaska. A tiny
golden butterfly flits from flower to flower, and as they fade, it,
too, disappears over frost-bitten swales.

Big ice-fields seldom ever fail to threaten the coast here, even
when they relax their grasp in July. In a few short weeks, however,
they return to stay for the rest of the year and best part of the
next. Such brief intervals for navigation in the Arctic Ocean during
every July and August are those which lure whaling-ships, and the
dark lanes of open water in white ice-floes are the last refuge of
many hard-hunted whales, unless they dive, and rise to breathe again
in that conjectured clear yet frigid flood of a polar sea, far away
under the north star.

[Illustration: The Ringed Seal (Phoca fœtida).

[_The common Hair-Seal of the Arctic Ocean._]]

There is nothing more to see, or noteworthy to learn, at or beyond
Point Barrow, even were you to live and drag out a wretched year’s
existence in looking for it, so you gladden the heart of your skipper
and his hardy crew by telling them to shape a course homeward. Back
through the Straits of Bering, wrapped in a chill thick fog, the
little schooner heels, with a singing northwester on her quarter that
holds her canvas just as taut as if made of tough wood. She fairly
scrapes by the Diomedes—the walls of Noornabook loom up high in a
cold, gray fog-light, as though its bold, gray cliffs were right over
her spars—but the crew know at the time that they are more than two
miles away from that surf which noisily thunders on the dark rocks
of these islets. That same chill wind, and gloomy fog-surrounding,
follows them into Bering Sea—not a glimpse of all the land and
mountain, which they so plainly discerned going up, have they caught
going down.

What trifles often determine our success or failure in life! Had it
not been for a sudden sunburst from the gloom of a leaden fog which
shrouded all about it in its misty darkness, and thus lighted up a
lofty russet head of the East Cape of St. Lawrence Island, a little
vessel bearing the author would have been piled up and thrown into
foaming breakers which beat upon a low, rocky reef that reaches out
from its feet. This gleam of light reflected from that headland
warned a startled man on the lookout just in time to have her wheel
put hard up, and thus luff our light trim craft in season to shave
safely by.

St. Lawrence is the largest island in Bering Sea. It is directly
south of Bering Straits, one hundred and eighty miles distant from
the Diomedes; it is eighty to eighty-five miles in length, with an
average width of fifteen or twenty. The sea has built onto it quite
extensively, in very much the same manner as it has filled out and
extended the coast of St. Paul, of the Pribylov group. At Kagallegak,
on the east shore, the island is made up of coarse feldspathic, red
granitic flats and hills, with extensive lagoons and lakelets. The
skeleton of this island seems to have been originally one of low
hills and ranges of granite, with volcanic outbursts everywhere
manifested at their summits, especially on the north shore. Between
them stretch long, low plains, or gently rolling uplands, and
perfectly smooth reaches of sand and gravelly beaches that border the
sea everywhere not so marked by bluffs.

At Kagallegak your eye sweeps over extensive level plains to the
northward, upon which a green-stalked and white-plumed tundra grass
(_Eriophorum_) principally grows everywhere on the wet and boggy
surface, while, on those sand-beach margins, the “wild wheat”
(_Elymus_) springs up most abundantly, short and stunted, however.
These extended low areas of moorland so peculiar to this island are
made up of fine granitic drift and clays, lined at their sea-borders
with a low, broad sand-belt. The hills and hill ranges of St.
Lawrence are rich in color, with dark blue-black patches interspersed
which indicate a location of trap-protrusions. No shrubbery whatever
grows upon these wind-swept tundra and hills save dwarfed and
creeping willows; yet, a series of characteristic rock-lichens color
such bare summits in their bright relief which we have just noted.
The rocks themselves are reddish, coarse-grained, shining granites,
with abundant trap-protrusions, that weather out and fall down upon
the flanks of the peaks and ridges in dusky patches and streaks, so
as to contrast, from a slight distance, very sharply with the main
ground of pinkish rock, which is moss- and lichen-grown, and
colored here and there with areas of that peculiar and characteristic
greenish-russet tinge of sphagnous origin. This dark marking of those
trap-dikes appears like the presence of low-growing shrubbery from
the vessel, as an observer sails by. Snow and ice lie all the year
around in small bodies within the gullies and on the hill-sides.

[Illustration: VILLAGE AND ISLET OF POONOOK

Mahlemoöt Winter Houses on the Poonook Islets, 6 miles East of St.
Lawrence]

The lower plains have a richer, warmer, yellowish-green tone than
that cold tint of the uplands, while the sand of the sea-shore is a
bright light-brown. Small streams flow down from these hills, and
twist and turn sluggishly through the tundra as they lead to lakes
or empty directly into the sea—a few parr, or young salmon, being
the only fish in them that can be found; most of the fresh-water
lakes and lagoons are, however, fairly stocked with familiar-looking
mullets (_Catastomus_), but nothing else.

The entire expanse of these lowlands of St. Lawrence are precisely
like all of those vast reaches of Alaskan tundra—they are great
saturated, earthy sponges, filled and overrunning with water in
midsummer—the chief and happiest vegetation upon them being that same
beautiful tufted or plumed grass which we noticed at Michaelovsky,
since the white and silken tassels of its feathery inflorescence
never fail to charm even tired and travel-worn eyes. This grass, in
conjunction with several rank-growing mosses, the trailing runners
of the crowberry-vines, and little patches of the humble arctic
raspberry (_Rubus chamæmorus_) make up that conventional tundra color
of russet-green (flecked with grayish-blue spots on the slopes of
stern northern exposures) which mark these great marshy tracts of
Alaska, and under which eternal frost is found, even in midsummer,
a foot or two only from their surfaces. Small white shells of a
land-mollusk (_succinea_) are scattered thickly over these moorlands.

On the flats of the east shore of St. Lawrence a great abundance
of drift-wood was piled in much confusion. Here the natives had a
wood-cutting camp, hewing and carving; its chips were scattered all
along the beach-levels for miles. There are places, here, where the
ice in some unusual seasons has carried large logs and pieces of
drift-wood far back, full half a mile from the sea, and a vigorous
growth of tundra vegetation now flourishes in between; and there they
lie to-day deeply embedded in the swale, settling down in decay—that
slow, hungering eremacausis of the Arctic.

The Innuits, living here as they do, some three or four hundred in
number, are great walrus-hunters. They enjoy a location that enables
them to secure these animals at all seasons of a year. In winter
the sea-horse floats on big ice-fields; but during summer-time the
“aibwook” hauls up to sun and rest his heavy body in and on the
inviting peace of those beaches of St. Lawrence. A famous spot for
this landing of the walrus is on the rocky and pebbly shores of
Poonook (three small rocky islets), just five miles east of the
summer tents of Kagallegak. These tiny, detached fragments of St.
Lawrence stand in the full sweep of those air- and water-currents
which keep broad ice-floes in constant motion, and thus bring
walrus-herds into range of Mahlemoöt hunters, who have a winter
village dug deep into sandy flats of “Poonookah.”

Naturally enough we regard the walrus with more than passing
interest, for it plays so large and so vital a part in sustaining the
life of human beings who reside in these arctic and subarctic regions
of Alaska. Perhaps the only place in all this extended area in which
these clumsy brutes are found, where the creature itself can be
closely observed and studied, is that unique islet, six miles east of
St. Paul (Pribylov group) and about four hundred miles south of St.
Lawrence.

[Illustration: The Walrus-hunter.

[_A St. Lawrence Mahlemoöt—in winter parka with the hood removed.
August 16, 1874._]]

Here the morse rests upon some rocky, surf-washed tables
characteristic of this place without being disturbed; hence the
locality afforded me a particularly pleasant and advantageous
opportunity of minutely observing these animals. My observations,
perhaps, would not have passed over a few moments of general notice,
had I found a picture presented by them such as I had drawn in my
mind from previous descriptions; the contrary, however, stamping
itself so suddenly and decidedly upon my eye, set me to work with
pen and brush in noting and portraying such extraordinary brutes, as
they lay grunting and bellowing, unconscious of my presence, and not
ten feet away from the ledge upon which I sat.[164]

Sitting as I did to the leeward of them, with a strong wind blowing
in at the time from seaward, which, ever and anon, fairly covered
many of them with foaming surf-spray, therefore they took no notice
of me during the three or more hours of my study. I was first
astonished at observing the raw, naked appearance of the hide: it was
a skin covered with multitudes of pustular-looking warts and large
boils or pimples, without hair or fur, save scattered and almost
invisible hairs; it was wrinkled in deep, flabby seam-folds, and
marked by dark-red venous lines, which showed out in strong contrast
through the thicker and thinner yellowish-brown cuticle, that in turn
seemed to be scaling off in places as if with leprosy; indeed, a fair
expression of this walrus-hide complexion if I may use the term,
can be understood by the inspection of those human countenances in
the streets and on the highways of our cities which are designated
as the faces of “bloats.” The forms of _Rosmarus_ struck my eye at
first in a most unpleasant manner, and the longer I looked at them
the more heightened was my disgust; for they resembled distorted,
mortified, shapeless masses of flesh; those clusters of big, swollen,
watery pimples, which were of a yellow, parboiled flesh-color,
and principally located over the shoulders and around the necks,
painfully suggested unwholesomeness.

On examining the herd individually, and looking upon perhaps one
hundred and fifty specimens directly beneath and within the sweep of
my observation, I noticed that there were no females among them; they
were all males, and some of the younger ones had considerable hair,
or enough of that close, short, brown coat to give a hirsute tone to
their bodies—hence I believe that it was only the old, wholly matured
males which offered to my eyes such bare and loathsome nakedness.

[Illustration: Section showing Construction of Mahlemoöt Winter
Houses at Poonook.]

I noticed, as they swam around, and before they landed, that they
were clumsy in the water, not being able to swim at all like the
_Phocidæ_ and the _Otariidæ_; yet their progress in the sea was
wonderfully alert when brought into comparison with that terrestrial
action of theirs; the immense bulk and weight of this walrus,
contrasted with the size and strength of its limbs, renders it simply
impotent when hauled out of the water on those low, rocky beaches
or shelves upon which it rests. Like the seals, however, it swims
entirely under water when travelling, but it does not rise, in my
opinion, so frequently to take breath; when it does, it blows or
snorts not unlike a whale. Often have I heard this puffing snort of
those animals (since the date of these observations on Walrus Islet),
when standing on the bluffs near the village of St. Paul and looking
seaward; on one cool, quiet morning in May I followed with my eye and
ear a herd of walrus, tracing its progress some distance off and up
along the east coast of the island by those tiny jets of moisture
or vapor from its confined breath which the animals blew off as they
rose to respire.

[Illustration: =AN OLD WALRUS, OR “MORSE”=

A Life Study, made by the Author, of an aged Male on Walrus Islet.
July 5, 1872]

Mariners, while coasting in the Arctic, have often been put on
timely footing by a walrus fog-horn snorting and blowing as the
ship dangerously sails silently through dense fog toward land or
ice-floes, upon which those animals may be resting; indeed, these
uncouth monitors to this indistinct danger rise and bob under and
around a vessel like so many gnomes or demons of fairy romance, and
sailors may well be pardoned for much of that strange yarning which
they have given to the reading world respecting the sea-horse during
the last three centuries.

When a walrus-herd comes ashore, after short preliminary surveys of
the intended spot of landing, an old veteran usually takes the lead
of a band which is so disposed.

Finally the first one makes a landing, and no sooner gets composed
upon the rocks for sleep than a second one comes along, prodding and
poking with its blunted tusks, demanding room also, thus causing
the first to change its position to another location still farther
off and up from the water, a few feet beyond; then the second is in
turn treated in the same way by a third, and so on until hundreds
will be slowly packed together on the shore as thickly as they can
lie—never far back from the surf, however—pillowing their heads upon
the bodies of one another: and, they do not act at all quarrelsome
toward each other. Occasionally, in their lazy, phlegmatic adjusting
and crowding, the posteriors of some old bull will be lifted up, and
remain elevated in the air, while the passive owner continues to
sleep, with its head, perhaps, beneath the pudgy form of its neighbor.

These pinnipeds are, perhaps, of all animals, the most difficult
subjects that an artist can find to reproduce from life. There are no
angles or elbows to seize hold of. The lines of body and limbs are
all rounded, free and flowing; yet, the very fleshiest examples never
have that bloated, wind-distended look which most of the published
figures give them. One must first become familiarized with the
restless, varying attitudes of these creatures by extended personal
contact and observation ere he can satisfy himself with the result of
his drawings, no matter how expert he may be in rapid and artistic
delineation. Life-studies by artists of the young of the Atlantic
walrus have been made in several instances; but of the mature animal,
until my drawing, there was nothing extant of that character.

As the walrus came ashore they made no use of their tusks in
assistance; but such effort was all done by their fore flippers and
the “boosting” of exceptionally heavy surf which rolled in at wide
intervals, and for which marine assistance the walrus themselves
seemed to patiently wait. When moving on land they do not seem to
have any real power in the hinder limbs. These are usually pulled
and twitched up behind, or feebly flattened out at right angles to
its body. Terrestrial progression is slowly and tediously made by a
dragging succession of short steps forward on the fore-feet; but if
an alarm is given, it is astonishing to note the contrast which they
present in their method of getting back to sea: they fairly roll and
hustle themselves over and into the waves within an exceedingly short
lapse of time.

When sleeping on drifting ice-floes of the Arctic Ocean, or on rocks
at St. Matthew’s or Walrus Island, they resort to a very singular
method of keeping guard, if I may so term it. In this herd of three
or four hundred male walrus that were beneath my vision, though
nearly all were sleeping, yet the movement of one would disturb
the other, which would raise its head in a stupid manner for a few
moments, grunt once or twice, and before lying down to sleep again
it would strike the slumbering form of its nearest companion with
its tusks, causing that animal to rouse up in turn for a few moments
also, grunt, and pass the blow on to the next, lying down in the same
manner. Thus the word was transferred, as it were, constantly and
unceasingly around, always keeping some one or two aroused, which
consequently were more alert than the rest.

On Walrus Island a particularly large individual walrus was selected
and shot, out of a herd of more than two hundred. This was done
at the author’s instance, who made the following memoranda: It
measured twelve feet seven inches from its bluff nostrils to the
tip of its excessively abbreviated tail, which was not more than
two and one-half or three inches long; it had the surprising girth
of fourteen feet. An immense mass of blubber on the shoulders and
around the neck made the head look strangely small in proportion,
and the posteriors decidedly attenuated; indeed, the whole weight of
the animal was bound up in its girth anteriorly. It was a physical
impossibility for me to weigh this brute, and I therefore can do
nothing but make a guess, having this fact to guide me—that the head,
cut directly off at the junction with the spine, or the occipital or
atlas joint, weighed eighty pounds; that the skin, which I carefully
removed with the aid of these natives, with the head, weighed five
hundred and seventy pounds. Deducting the head and excluding the
flippers, I think it is safe to say that the skin itself would not
weigh less than three hundred and fifty pounds, and the animal could
not weigh much less than a ton, from two thousand to two thousand two
hundred pounds.

The head had a decidedly flattened appearance, for the nostrils,
eyes, and ear-spots seem to be placed nearly on top of the cranium.
The nasal apertures are literally so, opening directly over the
muzzle. They are oval, and closed parallel with the longitudinal axis
of the skull, and when dilated are about an inch in their greatest
diameter.

The eyes are small, but prominent; placed nearly on top of the head,
and, protruding from their sockets, they bulge like those of a
lobster. The iris and pupil of this eye is less than one-fourth of
its exposed surface; the sclerotic coat swells out from under the
lids when they are opened, and is of a dirty, mottled coffee-yellow
and brown, with an occasional admixture of white; the iris itself is
light-brown, with dark-brown rays and spots. I noticed that whenever
the animal roused itself, instead of turning its head, it only rolled
its eyes, seldom moving the cranium more than to elevate it. The
eyes seem to move, rotating in every direction when the creature
is startled, giving the face of this monster a very extraordinary
attraction, especially when studied by an artist. The expression is
just indescribable. The range of sight enjoyed by the walrus out of
water, I can testify, is not well developed, for, after throwing
small chips of rock down upon the walruses near me, several of them
not being ten feet distant, and causing them only to stupidly stare
and give vent to low grunts of astonishment, I then rose gently and
silently to my feet, standing boldly up before them; but then, even,
I was not noticed, though their eyes rolled all over from above to
under me. Had I, however, made a little noise, or had I been standing
as far as one thousand yards away from them to the windward, they
would have taken the alarm instantly, and tumbled off into the sea
like so many hustled wool-sacks, for their sense of smell is of the
keen, keenest.

The ears of the walrus, or rather the auricles to the ears, are on
the same lateral line at the top of the head with the nostrils and
eyes, the latter being just midway between. The pavilion, or auricle,
is a mere fleshy wrinkle or fold, not at all raised or developed;
and from what I could see of the _meatus externus_ it was very narrow
and small; still, the natives assured me that the _Otariidæ_ had no
better organs of hearing than _Rosmarus_.

The head of the male walrus, to which I have alluded, and from which
I afterward removed the skin, was eighteen inches long between the
nostrils and the post-occipital region; and, although its enormous
tusks seemed to be firmly planted in their osseous sockets, judge of
my astonishment when one of the younger natives flippantly struck a
tusk with a wooden club quite smartly, and then easily jerked the
tooth forth. I had frequently observed that it was difficult to keep
such teeth from rattling out of their alveoli in any of the best
skulls I had gathered of the fur seals and sea-lions, especially
difficult in the case of the latter.

Its tusks, or canines, are set firmly under the nostril-apertures in
deep, massive, bony pockets, giving that strange, broad, square-cut
front of the muzzle so characteristic of its physiognomy.

The upper lips of this walrus of Bering Sea are exceedingly thick and
gristly, and its bluff, square muzzle is studded, in regular rows and
intervals, with a hundred or so, short, stubby, gray-white bristles,
varying in length from one-half to three inches. There are a few
very short and much softer bristles set, also, on the fairly hidden
chin of its lower jaw, which closes up under a projecting snout
and muzzle, and is nearly concealed by the enormous tushes, when
laterally viewed.

The thickness of the skin of the walrus is a marked and most
anomalous feature. I remember well how surprised I was, when I
followed the incision of a broad-axe used in beheading the specimen
shot for my benefit, to find that the skin over its shoulders and
around the throat and chest was three inches thick—a puffy, spongy
epidermis, outwardly hateful to the sight, and inwardly resting
upon a slightly acrid fat or blubber so peculiar to this animal.
Nowhere was that hide, upon the thinnest point of measurement,
less than half an inch thick. It feeds exclusively upon shell-fish
(_Lamellibranchiata_), or clams principally, and also upon the
bulbous roots and tender stalks of certain marine plants and grasses
which grow in great abundance over the bottoms of broad, shallow
lagoons and bays of the main Alaskan coast. I took from the paunch
of the walrus above mentioned more than a bushel of crushed clams in
their shells, all of which that animal had evidently just swallowed,
for digestion had scarcely commenced. Many of those clams in that
stomach, large as my clinched hands, were not even broken; and it is
in digging this shell-fish food that the services rendered by its
enormous tusks become apparent.[165]

I am not in accord with some singular tales told, on the Atlantic
side, about the uses of these gleaming ivory teeth, so famous and
conspicuous: I believe that the Alaskan walrus employs them solely in
his labor of digging clams and rooting bulbs from those muddy oozes
and sand-bars in the estuary waters peculiar to his geographical
distribution. Certainly, it is difficult for me to reconcile my
idea of such uncouth, timid brutes, as were those spread before me
on Walrus Islet, with any of the strange chapters written as to the
ferocity and devilish courage of a Greenland “morse.” These animals
were exceedingly cowardly, abjectly so. It is with the greatest
difficulty that the natives, when a herd of walruses are surprised,
can get a second shot at them. So far from clustering in attack
around their boats, it is the very reverse, and a hunter’s only
solicitude is which way to travel in order that he may come up with
the fleeing animals as they rise to breathe.

On questioning the natives, as we returned, they told me that the
walrus of Bering Sea was monogamous, and that the difference between
the sexes in size, color, and shape is inconsiderable; or, in other
words, that until the males are old the young males and the females
of all ages are not remarkably distinct, and would not be at all
if it were not for their teeth. They said that the female brings
forth her young, a single calf, in June usually, on the ice-floes
in the Arctic Ocean, above Bering Straits, between Point Barrow and
Cape Seartze Kammin; that this calf resembles the parent in general
proportions and color when it is hardly over six weeks old, but that
the tusks (which give it its most distinguishing expression) are not
visible until the second year of its life; that the walrus mother is
strongly attached to her offspring, and nurses it later through the
season in the sea; that the walrus sleeps profoundly in the water,
floating almost vertically, with barely more than the nostrils above
water, and can be easily approached, if care is taken as to the wind,
so as to spear it or thrust a lance into its bowels; that the bulls
do not fight as savagely as the fur-seal or the sea-lion; that the
blunted tusks of these combatants seldom do more than bruise their
thick hides; that they can remain under water nearly an hour, or
about twice as long as the seals, and that they sink like so many
stones immediately after being shot at sea.

I personally made no experiments touching the peculiarity of sinking
immediately after being shot. Of course, on reflection, it will
appear to any mind that all seals, no matter how fat or how lean,
would sink instantly out of sight, if not killed, at the shock of a
bullet; even if mortally wounded, the great involuntary impulse of
brain and muscle would be to dive and speed away, for all swimming is
submarine when pinnipeds desire to travel.

Touching this mooted question, I had an opportunity when in Port
Townsend, during 1874, to ask a man who had served as a partner in
a fur-sealing schooner off the Straits of Fuca. He told me that
unless a seal was instantly killed by the passage of his rifle-bullet
through its brain, it was never secured, and would sink before they
could reach the bubbling wake of its disappearance. If, however, the
aim of a marksman had been correct, then its body was invariably
taken within five to ten minutes after the rifle discharge. Only one
man does the shooting; the rest of such a crew, ten to twelve white
men and Indians, man canoes and boats which are promptly despatched
from the schooner, after each report, in the direction of a victim.
How long one of the bodies of these “clean” killed seals would float
he did not know; the practice always was to get it as quickly as
possible, fearing that the bearings of its position, when shot from
a schooner, might be confused or lost. He also affirmed that, in his
opinion, there were not a dozen men on the whole northwest coast who
were good enough with a rifle, and expert at distance calculation,
to shoot fur-seals successfully from the deck of a vessel on the
ocean. The Indians of Cape Flattery do most of their pelagic
fur-sealing by cautiously approaching from the leeward when these
animals are asleep, and then throw line-darts or harpoons into them
before they awaken.

The finest bidarrah skin-boats of transportation that I have seen
in this country were those of the St. Lawrence natives. These were
made out of dressed walrus-hides, shaved and pared down by them to
the requisite thickness, so that when they were sewed with sinews
to the wooden whalebone-lashed frames of such boats they dried into
a pale greenish-white prior to oiling, and were even then almost
translucent, tough and strong.

When I stepped, for the first time, into the baidar of St. Paul
Island, and went ashore, from the _Alexander_, over a heavy sea,
safely to the lower bight of Lukannon Bay, my sensations were of
emphatic distrust; the partially water-softened skin-covering would
puff up between the wooden ribs, and then draw back, as the waves
rose and fell, so much like an unstable support above the cold,
green water below, that I frankly expressed my surprise at such an
outlandish craft. My thoughts quickly turned to a higher appreciation
of those hardy navigators who used these vessels in circumpolar seas
years ago, and of the Russians who, more recently, employed bidarrahs
chiefly to explore Alaskan and Kamchatkan _terræ incognita_. There is
an old poem in Avitus, written by a Roman as early as 445 A.D.; it
describes the ravages of Saxon pirates along the southern coasts of
Britain, who used just such vessels as this bidarrah of St Paul.

    “Quin et armoricus piratim Saxona tractus
    Spirabat, cui pelle falum fulcare Britannum
    Ludus, et assuto glaucum mare findere lembo.”

These boats were probably covered with either horse’s or bulls’
hides. When used in England they were known as _coracles_; in Ireland
they were styled _curachs_. Pliny tells us that Cæsar moved his army
in Britain over lakes and rivers in such boats. Even the Greeks used
them, terming them _karabia_; and the Russian word of _korabl_’,
or “ship,” is derived from it. King Alfred, in 870-872, tells us
that the Finns made sad havoc among many Swedish settlements on the
numerous “meres” (lakes) in the moors of that country, by “carrying
their ships (baidars) overland to the meres whence they make
depredations on the Northmen; their ships are small and very light.”

Until I saw these bidarrahs of the St. Lawrence natives, in 1874,
I was more or less inclined to believe that the tough, thick, and
spongy hide of a walrus would be too refractory in dressing for use
in covering such light frames, especially those of the bidarka;
but the manifest excellence and seaworthiness of those Eskimo
boats satisfied me that I was mistaken. I saw, however, abundant
evidence of a much greater labor required to tan or pare down this
thick cuticle to that thin, dense transparency so marked on their
bidarrahs; for the pelt of a hair-seal, or sea-lion, does not need
any more attention, when applied to this service, than that of simply
unhairing it. This is done by first sweating the “loughtak” in
piles, then rudely, but rapidly, scraping with blunt knives or stone
flensers the hair off in large patches at every stroke; the skin is
then air-dried, being stretched on a stout frame, where, in the lapse
of a few weeks, it becomes as rigid as a board. Whenever wanted for
use thereafter, it is soaked in water until soft or “green” again;
then it is sewed with sinews, while in this fresh condition, tightly
over the slight wooden skeleton of the bidarka or the heavier frame
of a bidarrah. In this manner all boats and lighters at the islands
are covered. Then they are air-dried thoroughly before oiling, which
is done when the skin has become well indurated, so as to bind the
ribs and keel as with an iron plating. The thick, unrefined seal-oil
keeps the water out for twelve to twenty hours, according to the
character of the hides. When, however, the skin-covering begins to
“bag in” between the ribs of its frame, then it is necessary to haul
the bidarrah out and air-dry it again, and then re-oil. If attended
to thoroughly and constantly, those skin-covered boats are the best
species of lighter which can be used in these waters, for they will
stand more thumping and pounding on the rocks and alongside ship than
all wooden, or even corrugated-iron, lighters could endure and remain
seaworthy.

[Illustration: Newack’s Brother, with a Sealskin full of Walrus-oil.

[_Mahlemoöt boy—fourteen or fifteen years of age._]]

The flesh of the walrus is not, to our palate, at all toothsome; it
is positively uninviting. That flavor of the raw, rank mollusca, upon
which it feeds, seems to permeate every fibre of its flesh, making
it very offensive to the civilized palate; but the Eskimo, who do
not have any of our squeamishness, regard it as highly and feed upon
it as steadily, as we do on our own best corn-fed beef. Indeed, the
walrus to an Eskimo answers just as the cocoa-palm does to a South
Sea islander: it feeds him, it clothes him, it heats and illuminates
his “igloo,” and it arms him for the chase, while he builds a summer
shelter and rides upon the sea by virtue of its hide. The morse,
however, is not of much account to the seal-hunters on the Pribylov
Islands. They still find, by stirring up the sand-dunes and digging
about them at Northeast Point, all the ivory that they require for
their domestic use on the islands, nothing else belonging to a walrus
being of the slightest economic value to them. Some authorities
have spoken well of walrus-meat as an article of diet. Either they
had that sauce for it born of inordinate hunger, or else the cooks
deceived them. Starving explorers in the arctic regions could relish
it—_they_ would thankfully and gladly eat anything that was juicy,
and sustained life, with zest and gastronomic fervor. The Eskimo
naturally like it; it is a necessity to their existence, and thus
a relish for it is acquired. I can readily understand, by personal
experience, how a great many, perhaps a majority of our own people,
could speak well, were they north, of seal-meat, of whale “rind,” and
of polar-bear steaks; but I know that a mouthful of fresh or “cured”
walrus-flesh would make their “gorges rise.” The St. Paul natives
refuse to touch it as an article of diet in any shape or manner. I
saw them removing the enormous testicles of an old morse which was
shot, for my purposes, on Walrus Island. They told me they did so in
obedience to the wishes of a widow doctress at the village, Maria
Seedova, who desired a pair for her incantations.

Curiosity, mingled with a desire to really understand, alone tempted
me to taste some walrus-meat which was placed before me at Poonook,
on St. Lawrence Island; and candor compels me to say that it was
worse than the old beaver’s tail which I had been victimized with
in British Columbia, worse than the tough brown-bear steak of
Bristol Bay—in fact, it is the worst of all fresh flesh of which I
know. It had a strong flavor of an indefinite acrid nature, which
turned my palate and my stomach instantaneously and simultaneously,
while the surprised natives stared in bewildered silence at their
astonished and disgusted guest. They, however, greedily put chunks,
two inches square and even larger, of this flesh and blubber into
their mouths as rapidly as the storage room there would permit; and
with what grimy gusto! as the corners of their large lips dripped
with the fatness of their feeding. How little they thought, then,
that in a few short seasons they would die of starvation, sitting
in these same igloos—their caches empty and nothing but endless
fields of barren ice where a life-giving sea should be. The winter
of 1879-80 was one of exceptional rigor in the Arctic, although in
the United States it was unusually mild and open. The ice closed in
solid around St. Lawrence Island—so firm and unshaken by the giant
leverage of wind and tide that all walrus were driven far to the
southward and eastward beyond the reach of those unhappy inhabitants
of that island, who, thus unexpectedly deprived of their mainstay
and support, seemed to have miserably starved to death then, with
an exception of one small village on the north shore: thus, the
residents of Poonook, Poogovellyak, and Kagallegak settlements
perished, to a soul, from hunger; nearly three hundred men, women,
and children. I recall that visit which I made to these alert
Innuits, August, 1874, with sadness, in this unfortunate connection,
because they impressed me with their manifest superiority over the
savages of our northwest coast. They seemed, then, to be living,
during nine months of the year, almost wholly upon the flesh and
oil of the morse. Clean-limbed, bright-eyed, and jovial, they
profoundly impressed me with their happy reliance and subsistence
upon the walrus-herds of Bering Sea. I could not help remarking then,
that these people had never been subjected to the temptations and
subsequent sorrow of putting their trust in princes; hence their
independence and good heart. But now it appears that it will not do
to put your trust in _Rosmarus_ either.

[Illustration: “Newack” and “Oogack.”

[_St. Lawrence Mahlemoöts: pen portraits made at Poogovellyak,
August, 1874._]]

I know that it is said by Parry, by Hall, and lately by others,
that the flesh of the Atlantic walrus is palatable; perhaps the
nature of its food-supply is the cause. We all recognize a wide
difference in pork from hogs fed on corn and those fed on beech-mast
and oak-acorns, and those which have lived upon the offal of the
slaughtering houses, or have gathered the decayed castings of the
sea-shore; the sea-horse of Bering Sea lives upon that which does not
give a pleasant flavor to its flesh.

The range of our Alaskan walrus now appears to be restricted in
the Arctic Ocean to an extreme westward at Cape Chelagskoi, on the
Siberian coast, and an extreme eastward between Point Barrow and
the region of Point Beechey, on the Alaskan shore. It is, however,
substantially confined between Koliutchin Bay, Siberia, and Point
Barrow, Alaska. As far as its distribution in polar waters is
concerned, and how far to the north it travels from these coasts of
two continents, I am unable to present any well-authenticated data
illustrative of the subject; the shores of Wrangel Island were found
in possession of walrus-herds during the season of 1881.

This walrus has, however, a very wide range of distribution in
Alaska, though not near so great as in prehistoric times. They abound
to the eastward and southeastward of St. Paul, over in Bristol Bay,
where great numbers congregate on the sand-bars and flats, now
flooded, now bared by the rising and ebbing of the tide; they are
hunted here to a considerable extent for their ivory. No morse are
found south of the Aleutian Islands; still, not more than forty-five
or fifty years ago, small gatherings of these animals were killed
here and there on some islands between Kadiak and Oonimak Pass; the
greatest aggregate of them, south of Bering Straits, will always be
found in the estuaries of Bristol Bay and on the north side of the
peninsula of Alaska.

I have been frequently questioned whether, in my opinion, more than a
short space of time would elapse ere the walrus was exterminated, or
not, since our whalers had begun to hunt them in Bering Sea and the
Arctic Ocean. To this I frankly make answer that I do not know enough
of the subject to give a correct judgment. The walrus spend most
of their time in waters that are within reach of these skilful and
hardy navigators; and if they (the walrus) are of sufficient value
to a whaler, he can and undoubtedly will make a business of killing
them, and work the same sad result that he has brought about with the
mighty schools of cetacea which once whistled and bared their backs,
throughout the now deserted waters of Bering Sea, in perfect peace
and seclusion prior to 1842. The returns of the old Russian America
Company show that an annual average of ten thousand walrus have
been slain by the Eskimo since 1799 to 1867. There are a great many
left yet; but, unless the oil of _Rosmarus_ becomes very precious
commercially, I think the shoal waters of Bristol Bay and Kuskokvim
mouth, together with the eccentric tides thereof, will preserve the
species indefinitely. Forty years ago, when the North Pacific was a
rendezvous of the greatest whaling-fleet that ever floated, those
vessels could not, nor can they now, approach nearer than sixty or
even eighty miles of many muddy shoals, sands, and bars upon which
the walrus rest in Bristol Bay, scattered in herds of a dozen or
so to bodies of thousands, living in lethargic peace and almost
unmolested, except in several small districts which are carefully
hunted over by the natives of Oogashik for oil and ivory. I have been
credibly informed that they also breed in Bristol Bay, and along its
coast as far north as Cape Avinova, during seasons of exceptional
rigor in the Arctic.

[Illustration: The Death-stroke.

[_Mahlemoöts Morse-hunting in the summer._]]

The Innuits of St. Lawrence, and all of their race living above them,
hunt the walrus without any excitement other than that of securing
such quarry. They never speak of real danger. When they do not shoot
them as these beasts drift in sleepy herds on ice-floes, then they
surprise them on the beaches or reefs and destroy a herd by spearing
and lancing. When harpooned or speared, a head of the weapon is so
made as to detach itself from its shank, and by thus sticking in the
carcass a line of walrus-hide is made fast to the plethoric body of
_Rosmarus_. When this brute has expended its surplus vitality by
towing the natives a few miles in a mad, frenzied burst of swimming,
their bidarrah is quietly drawn up to its puffing form close enough
to permit of a _coup_ by an ivory-headed lance; it is then towed to
a beach at high water. When the ebb is well out, the huge carcass
is skinned by its dusky butchers, who out it up into large square
chunks of flesh and blubber, which are deposited in queer little
“Dutch-oven” caches of each family that are made especially for its
reception.

Dressing walrus-hides is the only serious hard labor which the
Alaskan Innuit subjects himself to. He cannot lay it entirely upon
the women, as the Sioux do when they spread buffalo bodies all
over the plains. It is too much for female strength alone, and so
the men bear a hand right lustily in this business. It takes from
four to six stout natives, when a green walrus-hide is removed, to
carry it to a sweating-hole, where it is speedily unhaired. Then,
stretched alternately upon air-frames and pinned over the earth, it
is gradually scraped down to a requisite thinness for use in covering
the bidarrah skeletons, etc.

There are probably six or seven thousand human beings in Alaska who
live largely by virtue of the existence of _Rosmarus_, and every
year, when the season opens, they gather together by settlements,
as they are contiguous, and discuss the walrus chances for a coming
year as earnestly and as wisely as our farmers who confer over their
prospects for corn and potatoes. But an Eskimo hunter is a sadly
improvident mortal, though he is not wasteful of morse life, while we
are provident, and yet wasteful of our resources.

If the North Pole is ever reached by our people, they will do so only
when they can eat walrus-meat and get plenty of it—at least that is
my belief—and, knowing now what the diet is, I think the journey to
that hyperborean _ultima_ is a long one, though there is plenty of
meat and many men who want to try it.

[Illustration: PINNACLE ISLET

An Active Volcanic Nodule near St. Matthew’s Island: (bearing W. N.
W. 2m.)]

Unless we spend a winter in the Arctic Ocean above Bering Straits we
will not be able to see a polar bear; but there is one place, and
one place only, in Alaska where in midsummer we can land, and there
behold on its swelling, green, and flowery uplands hundreds of these
huge ursine brutes. That place is the island of St. Matthew, and it
is right in our path as we leave St. Lawrence and head for Oonimak
Pass and home.

[Illustration: Mahlemoöts Landing a Walrus.

[_An Innuit “double purchase.” St. Lawrence Island._]]

St. Matthew Island is an odd, jagged, straggling reach of bluffs and
headlands, connected by bars and lowland spits. The former, seen at a
little distance out at sea, resemble half a dozen distinct islands.
The extreme length is twenty-two miles, and it is exceedingly narrow
in proportion. Hall Island is a small one that lies west from it,
separated from it by a strait (Sarichev) less than three miles
in width, while the only other outlying land is a sharp, jagged
pinnacle-rock, rearing itself over a thousand feet abruptly from the
sea, standing five miles south of Sugar-loaf Cone on the main island.
From a cleft and blackened fissure, near the summit of this serrated
pinnacle-rock, volcanic fire and puffs of black smoke have been
recorded as issuing when first discovered, and they have issued ever
since.

Our first landing, early in the morning of August 5th, was at the
spot under Cub Hill, near Cape Upright, the easternmost point of
the island. The air came out from the northwest cold and chilly, and
snow and ice were on the hill-sides and in the gullies. The sloping
sides and summits of these hills were of a grayish, russet tinge,
with deep-green swale flats running down into the lowlands, which are
there more intensely green and warmer in tone. A pebble-bar formed
by the sea between Cape Upright and Waterfall Head is covered with a
deep stratum of glacial drift, carried down from the flanks of Polar
and Cub Hills, and extending over two miles of this water-front to
the westward, where it is met by a similar washing from that quarter.
Back, and in the centre of this neck, are several small lakes and
lagoons without fish; but emptying into them are a number of clear,
lively brooks, in which were salmon-parr of fine quality. The little
lakes undoubtedly receive them; hence they were land-locked salmon.
A luxuriant growth of thick moss and grass, interspersed, existed
almost everywhere on the lowest ground; and occasionally strange
dome-like piles of peat were lifted four or five feet above marshy
swales, and appeared so remarkably like abandoned barraboras that we
repeatedly turned from our course to satisfy ourselves personally to
the contrary.

As these lowlands ascend to the tops of higher hills, all vegetation
changes rapidly to a simple coat of cryptogamic gray and light
russet, with a slippery slide for the foot wherever a steep flight or
climbing was made. Water oozes and trickles everywhere under foot,
since an exhalation of frost is in progress all the time. Sometimes
these swales rise and cross hill-summits to the valleys again without
any interruption in their wet, swampy character. The action of ice
in rounding down and grinding hills, chipping bluffs, and chiselling
everywhere, carrying the soil and _débris_ into depressions and
valleys, is most beautifully exhibited on St. Matthew. The hills
at the foot of Sugar-loaf Cone are bare and literally polished by
ice-sheets and slides of melting snow. Rocks and soil from these
summits and slopes are carried down and “dumped,” as it were, in
numberless little heaps beneath, so that the foot of every hill and
out on the plain around strongly put us in mind of those refuse-piles
which are dropped over the commons or dumping-grounds of a city.
Nowhere can the work of ice be seen to finer advantage than here,
aided and abetted, as it undoubtedly is, by the power of wind,
especially with regard to that chiselling action of frost on the
faces of ringing metallic porphyry cliffs.

The flora here is as extensive as on the Seal Islands, two hundred
miles to the southward; but the species of _gramma_ are not near so
varied. Indeed, there is very little grass around about. Wherever
there is soil it seems to be converted by the abundant moisture into
a swale or swamp, over which we travelled as on a quaking water-bed;
but on the rounded hilltops and ridge-summits wind-driven and
frost-splintered shingle makes good walking. Both of these climatic
agencies evidently have a permanent iron grip on this island.

The west end of St. Matthew differs materially from the east. A
fantastic weathering of the rocks at Cathedral Point, Hall Island,
will strike the eye of a most casual observer as his ship enters the
straits going south. This eastern wall of that point looms up from
the water like a row of immense cedar-tree trunks. The scaling off
of basaltic porphyry and a growth of yellowish-green and red mossy
lichens made the effect most real, while a vast bank of fog lying
just overhead seemed to shut out from our vision the foliage and
branches that should be above. This north cape of Hall Island changes
when approached, with every mile’s distance, to a new and altogether
different profile.

Our visit at the west end of the island of St. Matthew was,
geologically speaking, the most interesting experience I have ever
had in Alaska. A geologist who may desire to study the greatest
variety of igneous forms _in situ_, within a short and easy radius,
can do no better than make his survey here. These rocks are not only
varied by mineral colors, together with a fantastic arrangement of
basalt and porphyry, but are rich and elegant in their tinting by the
profuse growth of lichens—brown, yellow, green, and bronze.

An old Russian record prepared us, in landing, to find bears here,
but it did not cause us to be equal to the sight we saw, for we met
bears—yea, hundreds of them. I was going to say that I saw bears
here as I had seen seals to the south, but that, of course, will not
do, unless as a mere figure of speech. During the nine days that
we were busy in surveying this island, we never were one moment,
while on land, out of sight of a bear or bears; their white forms
in the distance always answered to our search, though they ran from
our immediate presence with a wild celerity, travelling in a swift,
shambling gallop, or trotting off like elephants. Whether due to the
fact that they were gorged with food, or that the warmer weather of
summer subdued their temper, we never could coax one of these animals
to show fight. Its first impulse and its last one, while within our
influence, was flight—males, females, and cubs—all, when surprised by
us, rushing with one accord right, left, and in every direction, over
the hills and far away.

After shooting half a dozen, we destroyed no more, for we speedily
found that we had made their acquaintance at the height of their
shedding-season, and their snowy and highly prized winter-dress was a
very different article from the dingy, saffron-colored, grayish fur
that was flying like downy feathers in the wind, when ever rubbed
or pulled by our hands. They never growled, or uttered any sound
whatever, even when shot or wounded.

Here, on the highest points, where no moss ever grows, and nothing
but a fine porphyritic shingle slides and rattles beneath our tread,
are bear-roads leading from nest to nest, or stony lairs, which they
have scooped out of frost-splintered _débris_ on the hill-sides,
and where old she-bears undoubtedly bring forth their young: but it
was not plain, because we saw them only sleeping, at this season of
the year, on the lower ground; they seemed to delight in stretching
themselves upon, and rolling over, the rankest vegetation.

They sleep soundly, but fitfully, rolling their heavy arms and
legs about as they doze. For naps they seem to prefer little
grassy depressions on the sunny hill-sides and along the numerous
water-courses, and their paths were broad and well beaten all over
the island. We could not have observed less than two hundred and
fifty or three hundred of these animals while we were there; at one
landing on Hall Island there were sixteen in full sight at one sweep
of our eyes, scampering up and off from the approach of the ship’s
boat.

Provided with more walrus-meat than he knows what to do with, the
polar bear, in my opinion, has never cared much for the Seal Islands;
the natives have seen them, however, on St. Paul, and its old men
have their bear stories, which they tell to a rising generation.
The last “medvait” killed on St. Paul Island was shot at Bogaslov
in 1848; none have ever come down since, and very few were there
before, but those few evidently originated at and made St. Matthew
Island their point of departure. Hence I desire to notice this
hitherto unexplored spot, standing, as it does, two hundred miles to
the northward of St. Paul, and which, until Lieutenant Maynard and
myself, in 1874, surveyed and walked over its entire coast-line,
had not been trodden by white men, or by natives, since that dismal
record made by a party of five Russians and seven Aleutes who passed
the winter of 1810-11 on it, and who were so stricken down with
scurvy as to cause the death of all the Russians save one, while the
rest barely recovered and left early the following year. We found the
ruins of those huts which had been occupied by this unfortunate and
discomfited party of fur-hunters; they were landed there to secure
polar bears in the depth of winter, when such shaggy coats should be
the finest.

As we complete our review of St. Matthew and its ursine occupation,
the circuit of Alaska has been made—its impression we have recorded,
and the path from here home again is a bee-line to the Golden Gate
over

    “Nothing, nothing but the sea—
    Vast in its immensity?”


FOOTNOTES:

[163] Captain F. W. Beechey H. M. S. _Blossom_, voyage 1825-28,
inclusive. The seasons of 1826 and 1827 were passed in these waters.
Murdoch, who passed the winters of 1881-83, inclusive, here, has
given an interesting _résumé_ of the natural history, etc., of the
spot. Beechey’s account of the people and country are confirmed by
him.

[164] These favored basaltic tables are also commented upon in
similar connection by an old writer in 1775, Shuldham, who calls
them “echouries;” he is describing the Atlantic walrus as it appears
at the Magdalen Islands: “The echouries are formed principally
by nature, being a gradual slope of soft rock, with which the
Magdalen Islands abound, about eighty to one hundred yards wide at
the water-side, and spreading so as to contain, near the summit, a
very considerable number.” The tables at Walrus Island and those at
Southwest Point are very much less in area than those described by
Shuldham, and are a small series of low, saw-tooth jetties of the
harder basalt, washed in relief, from a tufa matrix; there is no room
to the landward of them for many walruses to lie upon. The _Odobœnus_
does not like to haul up on loose or shingly shores, because it
has the greatest difficulty in getting a solid hold for its fore
flippers with which to pry up and move ahead its huge, clumsy body.
When it hauls on a sand-beach, it never attempts to crawl out to the
dry region back of the surf, but lies just awash, at high water. In
this fashion they used to rest all along the sand-reaches of St.
Paul prior to the Russian advent in 1786-87; and when Shuldham was
inditing his letters on the habits of _Rosmarus_, _Odobœnus_ was then
lying out in full force and great physical peace on the Pribylov
Islands.

[165] It is, and always will be, a source of sincere regret to me
and my friends that I did not bodily preserve this huge paunch and
its contents. It would have filled a half-barrel very snugly, and
then its mass of freshly swallowed clams (_Mya truncata_), filmy
streaks of macerated kelp, and fragments of crustaceans, could have
been carefully examined during a week of leisure at the Smithsonian
Institution. It was, however, ripped open so quickly by one of the
Aleutes, who kicked the contents out, that I hardly knew what had
been done ere the strong-smelling subject was directly under my nose.
The natives then were anxious that I should hurry through with my
sketches, measurements, etc., so that they might the sooner push off
their egg-laden bidarrah and cross back to the main island before
the fogs would settle over our homeward track, or the rapidly rising
wind shift to the northward and imperil our passage. Weighty reasons
these, which so fully impressed me, that this unique stomach of a
_carnivora_ was overlooked and left behind; hence, with the exception
of curiously turning over the clams (especially those uncrushed
specimens), which formed the great bulk of its contents, I have no
memoranda or even distinct recollection of the other materials that
were incorporated.




INDEX.


  A

  Adahk, island of, 183

  Aggatoo, island of, 179

  Agricultural features in Sitkan region, 18, 22, 24, 25, 35
    in Kadiak region, 103, 106, 107
    in Cook’s Inlet region, 83, 84, 85, 86
    in Aleutian region, 184, 185
    in Seal Islands, 204
    in Yukon Valley and the North, 421, 443

  Agents of the United States Government, 251, 252

  Akootan, island of, 151, 153
    volcano of, 153

  Akoon, island of, 150, 154
    wolves on, 156

  Alaska, its area and population, 13, 14
    its discovery, 1, 2, 3, 5
    its purchase by United States Government, 11, 12

  Alaska Commercial Company, its history, 224, 245, 247, 248, 249

  Albinos and monstrosities, few among fur-seals, 306

  Alexander Archipelago, its land and scenery, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19,
        26, 271
    its earliest white occupation, 28, 29, 30
    all visitors necessarily go there, 14, 15

  Alexandrovsk, established by Kolmakov (1834), 375, 376

  Aleutes, traits, characteristics of, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168,
        169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174

  Algæ, or sea-weeds, those of Sitkan waters, 20
    those of Aleutian waters, 182
    those of Pribylov waters, 214, 215

  American traders, business relations of Baranov with, 28
    business methods in Sitkan region, 36, 37, 38, 39
    business methods in Aleutian region, 129, 191
    business methods in Yukon and Kuskokvim regions, 384, 414, 418, 424
    business methods in Arctic Ocean, 425

  Amchitka, island of, 181, 184

  Amlia, island of, 182

  Animals, fur-bearing and food, in the Sitkan region, 55, 61, 62
    in the Cook’s Inlet region, 91
    in the Aleutian region, 151, 156, 163, 178
    in the Nooshagak region, 381, 382, 399
    in the Kuskokvim region, 381, 382, 399
    in the Yukon and Arctic region, 418, 425, 426, 440

  Area and extent of Alaska, 13, 14

  Arrie egg-shells, their toughness, 222

  Atkha, island and natives of, 144, 180, 181, 182, 183

  Attitudes and land postures of fur-seals, 280

  Attoo, extreme western land of North American continent, 143, 179, 180

  Auroral and nephelogical phenomena, 158, 198, 420

  Autocratic powers of the old Russian American Company, 9

  Avatanak, island of, 154


  B

  Bachelor, or “holluschiokie” fur-seals, 294, 295, 296, 297

  Baird, Professor S. F., 190

  Banks, codfishing, 122, 123, 124

  Baranov, Alexander, character of, 6, 28

  Barrabkie, a, how it is made, 135, 166, 167

  Basking sharks and killer-whales, 325, 327

  Bath, Innuit, vile methods, 387

  Barrow, Point, 440

  Battles of the fur-seals, 265, 266

  Bays indenting coast of Kadiak, 115, 116
    of Oonalashka, 159

  Bear “Roads,” 89

  Beaver Bay, Oonalashka Island, 176

  Bering’s expedition of Alaskan discovery, 1, 2, 3
    the discovery of Alaska, 2, 3
    the ill-fated homeward voyage, 3, 4, 124
    the shipwreck and escape of survivors, 4, 191

  Bering Straits, 428, 429, 430, 431, 441

  Belcovsky, village of, 119, 120

  Bidarrah, use of, how it is made, 346, 347, 453, 454

  Bidarka, use of, how it is made, 133

  Birth of fur-seals, 282

  Bishop Innocent Veniaminov, his labors, 309

  Blubber of fur-seal, sea-lion, mahklok, and beluga, 292, 345, 405

  Bogaslov Islet, volcanic eruption of, recently, 186, 167

  Borka, village of, 176, 177

  Bristol Bay, 118, 398

  Breeding grounds, number of fur-seals on, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314,
        315, 316, 317, 319, 320, 321
    of sea-lions, 187, 310, 354, 356, 357, 358, 361
    of hair-seals, 256
    of sea-otters, 132
    of water-fowl, 210, 211

  Burials and funerals of the Sitkans or Thlinkets, 50
   of the Innuits or Eskimo, 389, 410
   of the Aleutes, 178

  Burnt or Brulé districts, 408, 409


  C

  Camps, Innuit summer, 381, 426
    Kenaitze hunting, 91

  Canoes, Sitkan, 62, 63
    Ingaleek, 417

  Carousals, Aleutian beer orgies, 137, 174, 175

  Carving bone and ivory, skill of Innuits, 384
    wood, skill of Haidahs, 49

  Cape Prince of Wales, 428, 429, 431

  Capture of sea-otters, 128, 191, 133
    of sea-lions, 364, 365

  Carcasses of slaughtered fur-seals, 350, 351, 352, 353

  Cassiar Gold-diggings, 17, 18, 25

  Cattle in Alaska, 86, 106, 107, 178, 184

  Cereals, total failure in Alaska, 107

  Chernaboor islets, 138, 141

  Christianity among the Aleutes and Kadiakers, 115, 116, 171, 172,
        241, 246
    among the Innuits, 410
    among the Thlinkets, 40, 41, 42

  Church, Greek, 40, 41, 120, 121, 137, 164, 174, 178, 241, 388

  Clans, the several Sitkan tribes, 43

  Climate of the Sitkan region, 24
    of the Mount St. Elias region, 72, 77
    of the Cook’s Inlet region, 93
    of the Kadiak region (see Cook’s Inlet)
    of the Aleutian Islands, 158, 185
    of the Pribylov Islands, 194, 195, 196, 197
    of the Nooshagak region, 382, 404
    of the Kuskokvim region, 382, 404, 407
    of Michaelovsky and the Yukon, 421, 422, 424
    of Arctic coast of Alaska, 427

  Coal in Cook’s Inlet, 125
    in the Arctic, 125, 438
    in Shoomagin Group, 125
    in Sitkan region, 70, 71

  Coins, Russian names and values of, 8

  Codfish, industry of, at Oonga, 122, 123, 124

  Companies, rival trading, 191

  Consumption, chief cause of death-rate among natives, 110

  Cook’s Inlet, characteristics of, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87
    country north of, 87

  Copper River, its character, 76, 77

  Cossacks, Russian and Siberian, 128, 159

  Courage of fur-seals, 279

  Creoles, what they are, 108

  Crillon, Mount, 72

  Cruelties inflicted by Russian traders upon natives, 6, 128, 147, 159

  Curing and dressing fur-seal skins, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349


  D

  Dangers of Alaskan coast navigation, 76, 83, 117, 123, 218, 219, 374,
        375, 395, 440, 442
    to which young fur-seals are exposed, 283, 329, 330

  Death, natural, of fur-seals, 307

  Decay of the Russian American Company after Baranov’s removal, 11

  Deer, Sitkan, 55, 62
    Rein, 121, 122, 397, 418

  Definition of technical terms on Seal Islands, 320, 321

  Delta of the Copper River, 75, 77
    of the Yukon River, 414, 415

  Deschnev, Simeon, his remarkable voyage (1648), 429

  Diet of natives of the Sitkan region, 58
    of the Cook’s Inlet region, 95
    of the Kadiak region, 136, 137
    of the Aleutian region, 168
    of the Seal Islands, 241, 242, 243
    of the Innuits, 382, 383, 454, 455, 456

  Diomedes, islands of, Bering Straits, 430, 431, 432, 441

  Diseases, natives most afflicted with, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 238

  Docility of fur-seals when driven, and being killed, 335

  Dogs, Eskimo, 388
    Sitkan, 61
    none on the Aleutian Chain, 158

  Dressing fur-seal skins, 348, 349

  Driving fur-seals, 333, 334, 336
    sea-lions, 366, 367, 368

  Dwellings of the Aleutes, 133, 166, 167
    of the Innuits, 378, 379, 380, 381, 426
    of the Cook’s Inlet Kenaitze, 91, 92, 93
    of the Sitkans or Thlinkets, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 60, 64
    of the Seal Islanders, 232, 233
    of the white fur-traders, 36, 175


  E

  Earthquakes, 146, 147, 148, 161, 186, 189

  Eggs, water-fowl, gastronomic value of, 211

  Epidemic among seals, 324

  Employés, superannuated “old colonial settlers,” 85, 86

  Eskimo of Alaska (see Innuits)

  Experiments with fur-seals, 263, 264

  Extermination of fur-seals, 231, 307, 308, 309, 324
    of sea-otters, 129
    of walrus, 458, 459

  Extent and area of Alaska, 13, 14

  Eyes of fur-seals, beauty of, 291
    of fur-seals, lurid lights in, 341
    of sea-lion, ferocity of, 355
    of walrus, grotesqueness of, 449


  F

  Fairweather, Mount, 71, 72

  Familiar flowering plants on the Seal Islands, 200, 201, 202, 203
    on the Arctic coast of Alaska, 440

  Fasting, long-protracted, of male fur-seals, 272, 273

  Festivals, native Innuit, 390, 391, 392, 393, 423

  First school in Alaska, 102

  First mission in Alaska, 102

  Fishing industries of the Sitkans, 59
    of the Aleutes, 168
    of the Shoomagin Islands, 122, 123, 124
    of the Kuskokvim and Yukon, 404
    of the Arctic, 434, 435
    of Americans at Cook’s Inlet, 93
    of Americans at Kadiak Island, 115, 116

  Flowers, wild, great abundance of, 177, 420

  Forest trees of Alaska, 21, 22, 79, 85, 103, 104, 105, 157, 408, 409,
        416, 424

  Forests of Alaska, 21, 71, 408, 409

  Foxes, blue (_Vulpes lagopus_), 180, 205, 206
    red, 180, 206

  Four Peaks, or “Cheetiery Sopochnie,” 186

  Fruits indigenous to Sitkan district, 22, 23
    indigenous to Aleutian district, 168
    indigenous to Kuskokvim district, 411
    indigenous to Seal Islands, 201

  Fur-seal, arrival of at breeding grounds, 292, 293-297
    boldness of, 129, 331
    description of adult male, 258, 259, 260, 261
    description of adult female, 273, 274, 275, 276
    description of “pups,” 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289
    odor and noise of, 265, 270, 281
    erroneous ideas of its skin, 347, 348
    effect of warm weather on, 306
    first arrival at the islands, 262
    food of, 328, 329
    healthiness of, 324
    high order of instinct of, 258, 301
    numbers of, 310-313, 324, 326
    increase or diminution or, 317, 318, 328, 333
    in the waters around the islands, 286, 299, 300, 302, 331, 361
    manner of killing and skinning, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342
    manner of salting, dressing, and shipping skins of, 345-349
    meat of, 344
    method of land travel, 260
    natural enemies of, 325, 327, 330
    noise on the breeding rookeries, 270, 271
    movements on land and in water, 286, 289, 298, 362
    pelagic range of, in search of food, 329, 330
    “podding” of its “pups,” 289
    polygamous and angry males, 275, 276, 277, 278
    position and selection of hauling-grounds, 295, 296
    power of land locomotion, 267
    pre-emption of rookeries, 265, 276
    prostration of, by heat or driving, 271, 272
    range of vision of, 291
    relative growth and weight of, 304, 305
    sanguinary combats of, 265, 266
    shedding of hair and fur, 285, 290, 302, 303
    sleep of, 280, 281
    sleep on land of, 280, 281
    skill in selecting rookeries, 277
    strength and courage of the male, 265, 267
    tabulated result of surveys, 312
    vitality of, 283, 323
    voice of, 268, 269, 270


  G

  Games, festivals, etc., of the Aleutes, 239, 240, 241
    of the Innuits, 393, 423
    of the Thlinkets or Sitkans, 65

  Glaciers of the Aleutian Islands, 183
    of Cook’s Inlet, 84
    of Prince William Sound, 78
    of the Sitkan Archipelago and Cross Sound, 19, 20
    of Mount St. Elias region, 75
    of Copper River region, 76
    easy approach to Grand, Icy Bay, 19, 20

  Gold-bearing quartz, Sitkan Archipelago, 69, 70
    Cook’s Inlet, 96, 97

  Golovin Bay, Norton’s Sound, mines in, 424

  Goreloi, island of, 183, 184

  Government, civil laws, etc., for Alaska, 42

  Greek Church, in Alaska, 40, 41, 120, 121, 137, 164, 174, 178, 388

  Guano, accumulation prevented, 221


  H

  Haidah Indians, best savages of the Sitkan region, 44
    house, or “rancherie,” 46, 47, 48, 49, 51

  Hair-seal, description of, 255, 256, 257, 332
    picture of _Phoca-fœtida_, 441
    picture of _E. barbatus_, 383

  Halibut, Sitkan natives fishing for, 55, 63
    Aleutes fishing for, 212, 213

  Hauling grounds, selection of, by fur-seals, 294, 295, 296

  Hogs, 108, 208

  Hot springs, near Sitka, 68
    Peninsula and Aleutian Islands, 122, 183, 184

  Homeward voyage and shipwreck of Bering, 3, 4

  Human protection of fur-seals, 373

  Hunting sea-otter, 127, 128, 129, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139,
        140, 141, 142, 143, 144

  Hutchinson, H.M., his labors, 247, 248


  I

  Ice Company, San Francisco, 105

  Icy Bay, grand glacier in, 19, 20

  Ilyamna, volcano of, 87
    lake, 396

  Implements, agricultural, manufacture of, at Sitka, 33

  Indians of the Sitkan region, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 51, 52, 53, 54,
        59, 60, 64, 65

  Ingaleek, or Interior Indians of Alaska, 408, 417, 418

  Innuits, or Eskimo, characteristics of, 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381,
        382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 392, 393, 394,
        411, 426, 431, 432, 437, 456, 457, 458

  Intoxication among Alaskan natives, 66, 137, 174, 175, 235


  J

  Japanese and Aleutian facial resemblance, 163

  Jumping out of water by fur-seals, 300, 301

  Juneau, gold mining at, 69

  Juvenal, tragic death of Father, 396, 397


  K

  Kadiak, the island of, 98, 99, 103
    sheep raising, 107
    old colonial citizens of, 104
    sea-otter hunting by natives of, 116
    old ship-building industry, 105, 106
    Ice Company of San Francisco, 105
    timber line drawn upon, 103
    wars of early Russian traders, 102, 103
    visit, and establishment of Shellikov, 99, 100, 101, 102

  Kanaga, island of, 181, 183

  Kaniags, natives of Kadiak, 109, 110

  Kamlayka, the water-proof, 371

  Kashga, the Innuit, 385, 386, 387

  Kenai Peninsula, 84, 85, 86

  Kenaitze Indians, habits and appearance of, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93
    queer architecture of, 92

  Killer whales, their ferocity, 325, 327, 330

  Killing grounds, Seal Islands, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341

  Killing sea-lions, method of natives, 368, 369

  Kings Island, or Ookivok, 425, 426

  Kotzebue Sound, characteristics of, 432, 433, 434

  Kolmakovsky, trading-post of, 406

  Krenitzin Group of Islands, 148

  Kuskokvim region, characteristics of, 402, 403, 404, 405
    density of population of, 403, 404
    commercial poverty of it, 407, 408
    prevalence of mosquitoes in it, 405, 406


  L

  Land and scenery of the Sitkan region, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 26, 27
    of the Mount St. Elias region, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75
    of the Cook’s Inlet, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86
    of the Kadiak district, 98, 99, 100, 103, 104, 105, 106, 117
    of the Aleutian district, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156,
        157, 162, 163
    of the Pribylov Islands, 215, 226, 227
    of the Nooshagak region, 374, 375, 376, 395
    of the Kuskokvim region, 395, 403, 404, 405, 406, 407
    of the Yukon region, 395
    of the Bering Sea Islands, 425, 426, 427, 430, 442, 443, 461, 462
    of the Alaskan Arctic region, 424, 425, 434, 436, 437, 438, 439,
        440

  Law, natural, obeyed among the fur-seals, 310
    protecting the seal islands, 250

  Lead, ore of, miner’s prospecting for, 424

  Lease of the Seal Islands, 250


  M

  Mackerel, Atkhan, or “yellow-fish,” 181, 182

  Mahklok, big hair-seal (_Erignathus_), 382, 383

  Makooshin, volcano of, 160, 161

  Mammoth and mastodon, fossil remains of, 424, 434

  Massacre of Baranov’s Sitkan garrison (1801), 28
    of Drooshinnin’s party, 159
    of Seribniekov’s party, 76
    by Glottov, of Oonalaskhan natives, 160
    by Glottov, of Four Mountain natives, 186

  Measles and typhoid-pneumonia in, 64, 112, 113

  Medicines and pathology of Alaskan savages, 112

  Michaelovsky, trading-post of, 413, 419

  Mirage, the Arctic, 421

  Missionaries, Russian, labors of, 99, 106, 121, 388

  Moose, hunting of, 407

  Morgan, Captain E., labors of, 247, 248

  Morserovia, village of, 121

  Morse (see Walrus)

  Mosses, Alaskan, 22, 38, 149, 155, 163, 200, 318, 398, 403, 420,
        442, 462

  Mosquitoes, curse of Alaska, 405, 406
    none on Seal Islands, 204

  Mummies, Aleutian, 186

  Mushrooms, on the Seal Island, 203, 204

  Musk-ox not found in Alaska, 418

  Mutilation of female fur-seals, 276


  N

  Nephelogical and auroral phenomena, 158, 198, 420

  Niebaum, Captain G., labors of, 247

  Nikolsky, village of, 184

  Nooshagak region and village of, 374, 375, 376, 398

  Nomenclature of fur-seal rookeries, 320

  Norton Sound, 424


  O

  Occupation of Alaska by Americans (1867), 12
    of Alaska by Russians (1745-63), 128
    of the Seal Islands by Russians (1786), 192, 193
    of the Seal Islands by Americans (1868), 247, 248

  Odor from the killing grounds, 350, 351
    from the fur-seal blubber, 292, 372

  Oil, fur-seal and sea-lion, 372
    oolachan grease, 57
    herring, 57
    beluga and mahklok, 405
    coal, use of by Aleutes, 167

  “Old colonial settlers,” 85, 86

  Ommaney, Cape, 27

  Oomnak, island of, 184, 185

  Oonalashka, village and island of, 139, 156, 157, 158

  Oonimak, island of, 145, 146, 147

  Oonga, village and fisheries, 122, 123, 124

  Ookamok, island and penal settlement on, 116, 117

  Ookivok, island and village of, 425, 426

  Oogashik, village of, 119

  Oonalga, island of, 155

  Oogalgan, island of, 155

  Oogamok, island of, 148

  Otter Island, or “Bobrovia,” 219

  Otter, sea, hunting, 120, 179
    a description of it, 130, 131, 132


  P

  Parka, the Innuit garment, 377, 378, 410, 411

  Pelagic fur sealing, 452, 453

  Peninsula of Alaska, 82, 117, 118

  Penal settlement, R. A. Co. on Ookamok, 116, 117

  Pneumonia, typhoid, scourge of, recently, 112, 113

  Pogromnia Sopka, volcano of, 146

  Polar bears, on the Seal Islands, 194, 464
    on St. Matthew’s Island, 463, 464

  Poonook, islets and village of, 444

  Population of Alaska, 13, 14

  Poultry kept in Alaska, 107, 185

  Port Clarence, description of, 427, 428

  Potatoes, how cultivated, and where, 60, 61, 106, 421

  Powers and privileges of old Russian Company, 9, 10, 11

  Pribylov, Gerassim, the discoverer of the Seal Islands, 191, 192, 323

  Pribylov Islands, agriculture on, 204
    algæ of the, 214, 215
    animals and birds, 208, 209, 210, 211, 213, 214, 223, 224
    churches and schools, 241, 246
    climate and winds, 194, 195, 196, 197
    colonization, 193, 230, 231
    creature-comforts of natives now, 232, 233
    description of natives of, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239
    dimensions and contour of, 215, 226, 227
    disappearance of seals and birds in winter, 305, 306, 327
    discussion of seal life, 255, 258, 292, 293, 294
    eligibility of, 229, 230
    flowering plants, etc., of, 200, 201, 202, 203
    fogs and mists of, 194, 195, 306
    gastronomic value of water-fowl eggs, 211
    general business methods of sealing, 234, 237, 245, 246, 252
    geographical position of, 194
    geological structure of, 199, 215, 216, 217, 224, 225, 227, 228
    grand total of fur-seals on, 312
    isolation of rookeries on, 191, 193, 194
    insects of, 204
    lack of harbors in the, 217, 218
    land animals of the, 205, 206, 207
    peculiar advantages of, to fur-seals, 194, 195, 230

  Pribylov Islands, peculiar cats on the, 207
    polar bears on the, 194, 464
    poultry kept on the, 208
    remarks on walrus of the, 255, 332
    Russian slaughter on, 316
    scarcity of fish around the, 212
    status of early colonists, 231, 232
    sheep, on the rookeries, 270
    stock-raising on the, 207, 208
    vast numbers of water-fowl on the, 220, 221, 222
    Veniaminov’s account of the, 194, 200
    vigilance of the natives, 253
    weight, growth, etc., of fur-seals on the 278, 279, 304, 305

  Prince Frederick Sound, its awful scenic grandeur, 23

  Prince William Sound, its gloomy scenic character, 78

  Prince of Wales Island, 15, 99

  Prostration of natives in sunshine, 197
    of fur-seals, when driven, 336

  Protection of fur-seals, 326, 327, 332, 373

  Pups, fur-seal, description of, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287
    learning to swim, 287, 288, 289


  Q

  Quartz mines near Sitka, 69, 70
    on Douglas Island, 70


  R

  Reindeer, 121, 122, 397, 418
    marked difference from that of Siberia, 397, 398

  Rocks of St. Matthew’s Island, beauty of, 463

  Rookeries, Pribylov Islands, 292, 293, 294, 310, 311, 312

  Resurrection Bay, first Alaskan shipyard there, 79

  Russian-American Company, its history, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 103

  Russian coins, their names and value, 8
    exploration and traders, bad record of, 4, 5, 6
    rival companies (1745-1786), 191
    seal islands, Bering and Copper, 327, 373
    Governors living at Sitka, 34

  Russians, as they lived at Sitka, 32, 33


  S

  Saanak, great sea-otter camp of, 138, 141, 142

  Saint Elias, Mount, 73
    George Village, Pribylov Group, 352
    Lawrence Island, Bering Sea, 442, 443
    Matthew’s Island, Bering Sea, 461, 462, 463
    Michaels, post of, 413, 419

  Saint Nicholas, redoubt, Kenai, 84
    Paul Village, Pribylov Group, 352

  Salmon in the Sitkan region, 56
    in Cook’s Inlet, Sitkan region, 87, 94, 95, 96
    in the Kadiak district, 115, 116
    in the Aleutian district, 168, 185
    in the Nooshagak district, 398, 399, 400
    in the Kuskokvim district, 404
    in the Yukon district, 417, 418
    in the Alaskan Arctic, 434, 435

  Salt House, work in, at Saint Paul, 345, 346

  Semeisopochnoi, islands of, 181

  Schools, 120, 173

  Scrofula, virulence of, among Alaskan natives, 111

  Sea-cow, _Rhytina stelleri_, 4

  Seal (see Fur-seal, Hair-seal)

  Seal Islands (see Pribylov Islands)

  Seal and walrus hunting, Innuit, 400, 426, 440, 441, 460, 461

  Sea-otter, a description of it, 130, 131, 132
    early Russian hunt for, 128, 191
    native hunters of, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 179, 181

  Sea-lions, arrival at breeding grounds, 357
    _Eumetopias stelleri_, adult males, 354, 355, 356, 357
    _Eumetopias stelleri_, adult females, 357
    description of a fight between rivals, 355, 356
    general uses of, to natives, 363, 369
    natives driving the, 364, 365, 366, 367
    manner of capture of, 364, 365
    manner of penning or coralling, 365
    manner of killing them on St. Paul, 368, 369
    meat, good quality of, 372
    sites of their abandoned rookeries, 321, 322
    St. George, the last resort for, 362, 363
    shedding hair, 360
    shyness and relative cowardice, 332, 356

  Shamans, their services, 50, 112

  Sheep, trial, and failure to raise in Alaska, 107

  Shellikov, Grigoria, his labors, 99, 100, 101, 102

  Shipbuilding in Alaska, 79, 80, 105, 106

  Shipyard at Sitka, 32

  Shishaldin, beautiful volcano of, 146

  Shoomagin Islands, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126

  Siberian coast, Bering Straits’ shore, 429

  Sitka, its history, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32
    as it is to-day, 33, 34, 35

  Small-pox, epidemic of, 64, 113, 421

  Soil and climate, not favorable to agriculture (see Agriculture)

  Special Agents of the Treasury Department, 251, 252

  Sports and pastimes of the natives, 65, 175
    of the young fur-seals, 298, 299, 300

  Steamers, trading, on the Yukon, 414

  Steller, George W., his labors, 189

  Stench arising from fur-seal carcasses, 350, 351
    from decaying salmon and its roe, 57, 399

  Superstitions of the natives, 80, 81, 90

  Surveys of the fur-seal breeding grounds, 310, 311, 312

  Swans, capture of, 399

  Swimming feats of fur-seals, 300, 301, 302


  T

  Tanaga, island of, 181, 183

  Telegraph, Collins Overland, 427, 428

  Thlinkets, or Sitkan Archipelago Indians, 43, 44, 45, 52, 53, 54,
        59, 60

  Tidal phenomena of Cook’s Inlet, 83, 87
    of Bristol Bay, 374, 375
    of Kuskokvim River, 400
    uncertainties in Bering Sea, 197, 198

  Tigalda, island of, 154, 155

  Timber of Alexander Archipelago, 21, 22, 71
    of Mount St. Elias region, 72, 77
    of Cook’s Inlet region, 85
    of Kadiak District region, 103, 104, 105
    of Aleutian District region, 157
    of Alaskan Interior region, 395, 408, 409, 416
    of Alaskan Arctic region, 425, 439, 443

  Tinneh, or Ingaleeks of Alaska, 408

  Timidity and shyness of pinnipeds at sea, 331

  Togiaks, Quaker-like Innuits, 401, 402

  Treasury Department, its control of Seal Islands, 250, 251, 252

  Totem and totemic posts, 49

  Transfer of Alaska, cause why so done, 11, 12

  Traffic by traders in the Sitkan region, 36, 37, 38, 39
    in the Kadiak region, 119, 120, 129
    in the Aleutian region, 129, 191
    in the Yukon, Nooshagak, and Kuskokvim region, 384, 414, 418
    in the Bering Sea and the Arctic, 425

  Treadwell Gold-mining Stamp Mill, 69, 71

  Tusks of the Walrus, 450, 451


  U

  Ugiak, Eskimo sea-god, 393, 423

  Uses of sea-lion skins in making boats, 370, 371
    of walrus-skins in making boats, 454
    of walrus-teeth, 404


  V

  Veniaminov, the distinguished Russian priest, 37, 309

  Volcanic region of Cook’s Inlet, 87
    region of Oonimak, 146, 147, 148
    region of Atkha, 183
    region of Oomnak, 161

  Volcanic elevation of Bogaslov Islet recently, 186, 187

  Voyage of Captain Cook (1778), 83, 176, 430
    of Veit Bering (1741), 1, 2, 3, 4, 73, 74
    of Tscherikov (1741), 1, 73, 74
    of Shellikov (1782-84), 99, 100, 102
    of Simeon Deschnev (1648), 429


  W

  Walker, Lake, 399, 400

  Walrus, a description of, 444, 445, 446, 447, 449
    in Bristol Bay, 399
    alarm when approached in boats, 332
    in Arctic, 425, 444

  Walrus Islet, a description of, 220, 444, 445
    visit to, gathering eggs, 210, 220, 221, 222, 223

  Walrus and seal-hunting and hunters, 400, 426, 440, 441, 460, 461

  Wars of the Thlinkets, 44
    of the Innuits, 417
    of the Russian traders, 6, 29, 30, 101

  Water-craft of the Sitkans, 62, 63
    of the Aleutes, 33
    of the Ingaleeks, 417
    of the Innuits, 411, 427, 453, 454

  Weaving, grass baskets, hats, etc., by Aleutians, 181
    grass and bark, by Sitkans, 52

  Whaling, Aleutian, 151, 152, 153
    Americans, 71, 72, 440, 441
    Innuit, 439

  Wolves, none on the Aleutian Chain now, 156

  Wrangel, Mount, the highest North American peak, 77
    town of, 17, 18, 25


  Y

  Yukon, the river, its characteristics, 413, 413, 414, 415, 416, 419
    contiguous country to, 415, 416
    its people, 417, 418, 419


  Z

  Zagoskin, Lieutenant, his labors (1841-1845), 422

  Zarenbo, island of, 27
    Lieutenant, 25

  _Zalophus_ and _Eumetopias_, differences between, 362


[Illustration: MAP OF ALASKA AND ADJOINING REGIONS. 1886.]




  Transcriber’s Notes

  pg 94 footnote Changed: Oncorynchus chouicha
                      to: Oncorhynchus chouicha

  pg 127 Removed extra word “the” from:  possession of the the
        sea-otter’s coat

  pg 217 Changed: came to these islands Novastoshna
              to: came to these islands Novastoshnah

  pg 219 Changed: six miles south of St. Panl
              to: six miles south of St. Paul

  pg 229 Changed: Pribylov Islands where any palæntological
              to: Pribylov Islands where any palæontological

  pg 248 Changed: though they have station sscattered
              to: though they have stations scattered

  pg 284 Changed: and bathing quite frequnetly
              to: and bathing quite frequently

  pg 313 Changed: margins of that immmense
              to: margins of that immense

  pg 328 Changed: as they passsed into
              to: as they passed into

  pg 343 Changed: this blubber thins out very preceptibly
              to: this blubber thins out very perceptibly

  pg 351 Changed: stench within is deordorized
              to: stench within is deodorized