Authorities differ as to the proper boundaries of Bristol Bay, but it
may be said to be the vast indentation of Behring Sea lying east of a
line drawn from Unimak Island to the mouth of the Kuskokwim River; or,
possibly, from Scotch Cap to Cape Newenham would be better. The
commercial salmon fisheries of this district are on the Ugashik, Egegak,
Naknek, Kvichak, Nushagak, and Wood rivers and the sea-waters leading to
them.
Nushagak Bay is about fifteen miles long and ten wide. It is exceedingly
shallow, and is obstructed by sand-bars and shoals. The
Redoubt-Alexandra was established at the mouth of the river in 1834 by
Kolmakoff.
The rivers are all large and, with one exception,--Wood River,--drain
the western slope of the Aleutian Chain which, beginning on the western
shore of Cook Inlet, extends down the Aliaska Peninsula, crowning it
with fire and snow.
There are several breaks in the range which afford easy portages from
Bristol Bay to the North Pacific. The rivers flowing into Bristol Bay
have lake sources and have been remarkably rich spawning-streams for
salmon.
The present chain of islands known as the Aleutians is supposed to have
once belonged to the peninsula and to have been separated by volcanic
disturbances which are so common in the region.
[Illustration: Copyright by F. H. Nowell, Seattle
FOUR BEAUTIES OF CAPE PRINCE OF WALES WITH SLED REINDEER OF THE AMERICAN
MISSIONARY HERD]
The interior of the Bristol Bay country has not been explored. It is
sparsely populated by Innuit, or Eskimo, who live in primitive fashion
in small settlements,--usually on high bluffs near a river. They make a
poor living by hunting and fishing. Their food is largely salmon, fresh
and dried; game, seal, and walrus are delicacies. The "higher" the food
the greater delicacy is it considered. Decayed salmon-heads and the
decaying carcass of a whale that has been cast upon the beach, by their
own abominable odors summon the natives for miles to a feast. Their food
is all cooked with rancid oil.
Their dwellings are more primitive than those of the island natives, for
they have clung to the barabaras and other ancient structures that were
in use among the Aleutians when the Russians first discovered them. Near
these dwellings are the drying-frames--so familiar along the Yukon--from
which hang thousands of red-fleshed salmon drying in the sun. Little
houses are erected on rude pole scaffoldings, high out of the reach of
dogs, for the storing of this fish when it has become "ukala" and for
other provisions. These are everywhere known as "caches."
The Innuit's summer home is very different from his winter home. It is
erected above ground, of small pole frames, roofed with skins and open
in front--somewhat like an Indian tepee. There is no opening in the
roof, all cooking being done in the open air in summer.
These natives were once thrifty hunters and trappers of wild animals,
from the reindeer down to the beaver and marten, but the cannery life
has so debauched them that they have no strength left for this energetic
work.
Formerly every Innuit settlement contained a "kashga," or town hall,
which was built after the fashion of all winter houses, only larger.
There the men gathered to talk and manage the affairs of their small
world. It was a kind of "corner grocery" or "back-room" of a village
drug store. The men usually slept there, and in the mornings their
wives arose, cooked their breakfast, and carried it to them in the
kashga, turning their backs while their husbands ate--it being
considered exceedingly bad form for a woman to look at a man when he is
eating in public, although they think nothing of bathing together. The
habits of the people are nauseatingly filthy, and the interiors of their
dwellings must be seen to be appreciated.
Near the canneries the natives obtain work during the summer, but soon
squander their wages in debauches and are left, when winter arrives, in
a starving condition.
The season is very short in Bristol Bay, but the "run" of salmon is
enormous. When this district is operating thirteen canneries, it packs
each day two hundred and fifty thousand fish. In Nushagak Bay the fish
frequently run so heavily that they catch in the propellers of launches
and stop the engines.
Bristol Bay has always been a dangerous locality to navigate. It is only
by the greatest vigilance and the most careful use of the lead, upon
approaching the shore, that disaster can be averted.
Nearly all the canneries in this region are operated by the Alaska
Packers Association, which also operates the greater number of canneries
in Alaska.
In 1907 the value of food fishes taken from Alaskan waters was nearly
ten millions of dollars; in the forty years since the purchase of that
country, one hundred millions, although up to 1885 the pack was
insignificant. At the present time it exceeds by more than half a
million cases the entire pack of British Columbia, Puget Sound, Columbia
River, and the Oregon and Washington coasts.
In 1907 forty-four canneries packed salmon in Alaska, and those on
Bristol Bay were of the most importance.
The Nushagak River rivals the Karluk as a salmon stream, but not in
picturesque beauty. The Nushagak and Wood rivers were both closed
during the past season by order of the President, to protect the salmon
industry of the future.
Cod is abundant in Behring Sea, Bristol Bay, and south of the Aleutian,
Shumagin, and Kadiak islands, covering an area of thirty thousand miles.
Halibut is plentiful in all the waters of southeastern Alaska. This
stupid-looking fish is wiser than it appears, and declines to swim into
the parlor of a net. It is still caught by hook and line, is packed in
ice, and sent, by regular steamer, to Seattle--whence it goes in
refrigerator cars to the markets of the east.
Herring, black cod, candle-fish, smelt, tom-cod, whitefish, black bass,
flounders, clams, crabs, mussels, shrimp, and five species of
trout--steelhead, Dolly Varden, cutthroat, rainbow, and lake--are all
found in abundance in Alaska.
Cook, entering Bristol Bay in 1778, named it for the Earl of Bristol,
with difficulty avoiding its shoals. He saw the shoaled entrance to a
river which he called Bristol River, but which must have been the
Nushagak. He saw many salmon leaping, and found them in the maws of cod.
The following day, seeing a high promontory, he sent Lieutenant
Williamson ashore. Possession of the country in his Majesty's name was
taken, and a bottle was left containing the names of Cook's ships and
the date of discovery. To the promontory was given the name which it
retains of Cape Newenham.
Proceeding up the coast Cook met natives who were of a friendly
disposition, but who seemed unfamiliar with the sight of white men and
vessels; they were dressed somewhat like Aleutians, wearing, also, skin
hoods and wooden bonnets.
The ships were caught in the shoals of Kuskokwim Bay, but Cook does not
appear to have discovered this great river, which is the second in size
of Alaskan rivers and whose length is nine hundred miles. In the bay the
tides have a fifty-foot rise and fall, entering in a tremendous bore.
This vicinity formerly furnished exceedingly fine black bear skins.
Cook's surgeon died of consumption and was buried on an island which was
named Anderson, in his memory. Upon an island about four leagues in
circuit a rude sledge was found, and the name of Sledge Island was
bestowed upon it. He entered Norton Sound, but only "suspected" the
existence of a mighty river, completely missing the Yukon.
He named the extreme western point of North America, which plunges out
into Behring Sea, almost meeting the East Cape of Siberia, Cape Prince
of Wales. In the centre of the strait are the two Diomede Islands,
between which the boundary line runs, one belonging to Russia, the other
to the United States.
Cook sailed up into the Frozen Ocean and named Icy Cape, narrowly
missing disaster in the ice pack. There he saw many herds of sea-horses,
or walrus, lying upon the ice in companies numbering many hundreds. They
huddled over one another like swine, roaring and braying; so that in the
night or in a fog they gave warning of the nearness of ice. Some members
of the herd kept watch; they aroused those nearest to them and warned
them of the approach of enemies. Those, in turn, warned others, and so
the word was passed along in a kind of ripple until the entire herd was
awake. When fired upon, they tumbled one over another into the sea, in
the utmost confusion. The female defends her young to the very last, and
at the sacrifice of her own life, if necessary, fighting ferociously.
The walrus does not in the least resemble a horse, and it is difficult
to understand whence the name arose. It is somewhat like a seal, only
much larger. Those found by Cook in the Arctic were from nine to twelve
feet in length and weighed about a thousand pounds. Their tusks have
always been valuable, and have greatly increased in value of recent
years, as the walrus diminish in number.
Cook named Cape Denbigh and Cape Darby on either side of Norton Bay; and
Besborough Island south of Cape Denbigh.
Going ashore, he encountered a family of natives which he and Captain
King describe in such wise that no one, having read the description, can
ever enter Norton Sound without recalling it. The family consisted of a
man, his wife, and a child; and a fourth person who bore the human
shape, and that was all, for he was the most horribly, the most
pitiably, deformed cripple ever seen, heard of, or imagined. The husband
was blind; and all were extremely unpleasant in appearance. The
underlips were bored.
These natives would have evidently sold their souls for iron. For four
knives made out of old iron hoop, they traded four hundred pounds of
fish--and Cook must have lost his conscience overboard with his anchor
in Kuskokwim Bay. He recovered the anchor!
He gave the girl-child a few beads, "whereupon the mother burst into
tears, then the father, then the cripple, and, at last, the girl
herself."
Many different passages, or sentences, have been called "the most
pathetic ever written"; but, myself, I confess that I have never been so
powerfully or so lastingly moved by any sentence as I was when I first
read that one of Cook's. Almost equalling it, however, in pathos is the
simple account of Captain King's of his meeting with the same family. He
was on shore with a party obtaining wood when these people approached in
a canoe. He beckoned to them to land, and the husband and wife came
ashore. He gave the woman a knife, saying that he would give her a
larger one for some fish. She made signs for him to follow them.
"I had proceeded with them about a mile, when the man, in crossing a
stony beach, fell down and cut his foot very much. This made me stop,
upon which the woman pointed to the man's eyes, which, I observed, were
covered with a thick, white film. He afterward kept close to his wife,
who apprised him of the obstacles in his way. The woman had a little
child on her back, covered with a hood, and which I took for a bundle
until I heard it cry. At about two miles distant we came upon their open
skin-boat, which was turned on its side, the convex part toward the
wind, and served for their house. I was now made to perform a singular
operation upon the man's eyes. First, I was directed to hold my breath;
afterward, to breathe on the diseased eyes; and next, to spit on them.
The woman then took both my hands and, pressing them to his stomach,
held them there while she related some calamitous history of her family,
pointing sometimes to her husband, sometimes to a frightful cripple
belonging to the family, and sometimes to her child."
Berries, birch, willow, alders, broom, and spruce were found. Beer was
brewed of the spruce.
Cook now sailed past that divinely beautiful shore upon which St.
Michael's is situated, and named Stuart Island and Cape Stephens, but
did not hear the Yukon calling him. He did find shoal water, very much
discolored and muddy, and "inferred that a considerable river runs into
the sea." If he had only guessed _how_ considerable! Passing south, he
named Clerk's, Gore's, and Pinnacle Islands, and returned to Unalaska.