BERING STRAIT
Native stories of the distant continent—The Russians in
Kamchatka—Bering's expedition—The difficulties of his task—Builds
a vessel and reaches Kamchatka—Builds another vessel and discovers
the strait named after him by Captain Cook—His second
expedition—Spangberg's voyage to Japan—Bering reaches the American
coast—His shipwreck and death—The influence of the sea-otter and
the fur-seal on geographical discovery—The Arctic voyage of
Captain Cook—Clerke's voyage—Beechey's voyage—Point Barrow reached
by the barge of the _Blossom_—Kellett's voyage in the
_Herald_—Boat expedition to Hudson Bay—Kellett reaches 72°
51´—Landing on Herald Island—Kellett sights Wrangell Island—Berry
in the _Rodgers_ explores Wrangell Island—He reaches 73°
44´—Frederick Whymper and W. H. Dall ascend the Yukon.
Rumours of land over against the far corner of Siberia had reached the
Russians for years, and many were the legends of those who had seen
these lands from the cliffs, or had been on the ice to look at them more
closely, or had gone away to them and never come back. There was, for
instance, the old legend of Kraechoj, who believed he had found safe
shelter at Irkaipii from the Chukche vengeance, but the Chukche made his
way into the stronghold and killed Kraechoj's son, whereupon Kraechoj
escaped by letting himself down with thongs to the boat and fled to the
land whose mountains can be seen in clear sunshine from Cape Yakan; and
there he was among his people who had left Asia before him.
And among the official documents was the statement made by the Chukches
when they went to Anadyrskoi Ostrog to acknowledge the dominion of the
Russians, that "The Noss is full of rocky mountains, and the low grounds
consist of land covered with turf. Opposite to it lies an island, within
sight of it, of no great extent, and void of wood. It is inhabited by
people who have the same aspect as the Chukche, but are quite a
different nation, and speak their own language, though they are not
numerous. It is half a day's voyage with boats from the Noss to the
island. There are no sables on the island, and no other animals but
foxes, wolves, and reindeer. Beyond the island is a large continent that
can be scarcely discerned from it, and that only on clear days; in calm
weather one may row over the sea from the island to the continent, which
is inhabited by a people who in every particular resemble the Chukches.
There are large forests of fir, pine, larch, and cedar trees; great
rivers flow through the country and fall into the sea. The inhabitants
have dwellings and fortified places of abode environed with ramparts of
earth; they live upon wild reindeer and fish; their clothes are made of
sable, fox, and reindeer skins, for sables and foxes are there in great
abundance. The number of men in that country may be twice or three times
as many as that of the Chukches who are often at war with them." That
there was land in sight somewhere seemed clear, but the reports differed
in placing it all the way round from the north to the east. Many were
the vain attempts to reach it from the northward-flowing rivers, and it
was left to be found from the Pacific side.
[Illustration: BERING STRAIT]
When Atlassof, in 1697, took the first steps in the conquest of
Kamchatka the Russians were already known to the inhabitants. Long
before him Fedotof and a few comrades had made their way into the
country and intermarried with native women. They had been held in great
honour and almost deified as being evidently of a superior race. For
some time it was supposed that no human hand could hurt them, but this
belief was rudely shattered when two of the demigods quarrelled and
fought, and one wounding the other, the blood flowed. That flow of blood
was fatal, for the natives, judging that they were but ordinary flesh,
took an early opportunity of wiping them out, the name of their leader
being still traceable in that of the Fedotcha River on the banks of
which they had lived.
The Kamchadales had other tales to tell of visitors from the east and
south, and Atlassof himself discovered on the River Itcha a Japanese who
had been wrecked on the coast two years before, from whom he learnt of
islands innumerable. But there were no ships on the Pacific coast of
Siberia, and nothing in the way of discovery could be done until 1714,
when there arrived at Ochotsk a detachment of sailors and shipwrights
despatched thither overland. According to one of the sailors, Henry
Bush, a Dutchman, the carpenters built a good durable vessel some fifty
feet long which was ready for sea in 1716 when the first voyage was
undertaken. The coast of Kamchatka was made near the River Itcha, and
sailing south they reached the Kompakova, where they wintered and found
the whale that had in its body the harpoon of European workmanship
marked with Roman letters, mentioned by Scoresby. Bush returned to
Ochotsk in July, to be sent in the following year to discover the
Shantar Islands, and next year, 1718, the Kuriles; thus venturing into
the Pacific beyond Cape Lopatka.
The last of these expeditions was due to the direct order of Peter the
Great, who, knowing nothing of Deschnef, and finding the sea open to the
north, resolved on a voyage in that direction, his holograph
instructions to Admiral Apraxin being: "One or two boats with decks to
be built at Kamchatka, or at any other convenient place, with which
inquiry should be made relative to the northerly coasts, to see whether
they are not contiguous with America, since their termination is not yet
known." Peter died, and the Empress Catherine, carrying out these
instructions in their fullest meaning, began her reign with an order for
the expedition.
Veit Bering, Dane by birth and sailor by trade, had voyaged to the
Indies, east and west, and, like many other men of enterprise, had
entered the Russian service at Peter's invitation. He had served with
distinction in the Cronstadt fleet in the war against the Swedes, and,
being in good repute for his knowledge of ships and their handling, was
appointed to the command of the most remarkable Arctic enterprise on
record. Just as Nicholas ruled a line and ordered a railway to be built
there, so did Catherine in the same imperial way order an exploring
expedition, and it was done. But it meant building the ship from the
trees of the forest on the coast of the Pacific and carrying the
materials and stores—everything but the timber—right across the Russian
empire in the days when for thousands of miles there were not even
roads.
[Illustration: THE FACE OF THE FUR SEAL]
Bering's lieutenants were Martin Spangberg and Alexei Tschirikof. With
them and the rest of the expedition he left St. Petersburg on the 5th of
February, 1725. During that year they got as far as the Ilim, where they
wintered. In the spring of 1726 they sailed down the Lena to Yakutsk,
where they parted company for a time owing to the difficulties of the
route to Ochotsk, the way not being passable in summer with wagons, or
in winter with sledges, on account of the marshes and rocky ground. So
Spangberg set out, working along the rivers Aldan, Maia, and Judoma,
with part of the provisions and heavy naval stores, while Bering
followed overland through uninhabited country with more stores on
horses, and Tschirikof remained to collect still more and follow in the
track of his commander.
Bering reached Ochotsk first. Spangberg was frozen up in the Judoma, and
thence he walked to Ochotsk with the most necessary materials; but he
suffered so much from hunger on the way that he had to support life by
eating leather bags, straps, and shoes, and did not reach Bering till
the 1st of January, 1727, nearly two years after leaving St. Petersburg.
In the beginning of February he returned to the Judoma and brought away
about half of his lading, the other half being left for a third journey,
which he made from and to Ochotsk on horses. Meanwhile Tschirikof was
toiling along from Yakutsk, and did not arrive to complete the party
until the 30th of July.
On arrival Bering had to build a vessel to take his most necessary naval
stores and his shipbuilders across the sea of Ochotsk to Bolscheretzkoi,
which, in her, he reached on the 2nd of September. From here he followed
the shipwrights, who went on ahead to fell the trees, taking with them
the provisions and stores, over the backbone of the isthmus and down the
Kamchatka River to the mouth, a distance of some two hundred miles, the
journey being very slow on account of the travelling being by
dog-sledge. In short, it was not until the 4th of April, 1728, that is,
more than three years after leaving St. Petersburg, that it was possible
to put on the stocks the vessel in which the voyage to the north was to
be made. But she took only three months to build, being launched on the
10th of July, when she was named the _Gabriel_.
Laden with stores for forty men during a year's voyage, she put to sea
ten days afterwards, Bering keeping close to the coast so that he could
map it as he went. On the 10th of August he was off the island of St.
Lawrence, which he so named, as it was the day of that saint. In a day
or two he had passed the East Cape without seeing the American coast,
and had entered the Arctic Circle. And on the 15th he was well through
the strait, out in the Arctic Ocean, in 67° 18´ off Serdze Kamen, a
promontory behind which the coast trended to the west, as the Chukches
had told him it did; and he assumed, and rightly so, though he had not
gone far enough to prove it, that there was no land connection between
Asia and America. Whereupon, as he had in his opinion accomplished his
mission, seeing no need for wintering in those parts, he put the
_Gabriel_ about and was back in the Kamchatka River on the 20th of
September, after a voyage of seven weeks in a vessel that took three
months to build on a spot that took over three years to reach—the plan
of campaign being much the same as that in which a mountain stronghold
is advanced on across a desert, besieged for a few days, and captured by
assault.
[Illustration: THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS]
After wintering, Bering went off next year on a voyage due east in
search of reported land, but, after some hundred and thirty miles out,
he was blown back, and, rounding the south end of Kamchatka, put in at
the River Bolschaia; thence he crossed to Ochotsk, whence he started for
St. Petersburg, where he arrived after an absence of five years.
Catherine was dead and another empress reigned in her stead, who was
pleased and satisfied if no one else was, and the 21st of February,
1733, saw him starting again in the same laborious fashion to arrange
other voyages as part of a great scheme for the exploration of Northern
and North-eastern Asia. Some of these expeditions on the north coast
have already been mentioned; Bering's particular task was to send
Spangberg in search of Japan, while he and Tschirikof, in separate
ships, went eastward to America. More stores and provisions went
overland across Siberia than before; Spangberg got again frozen up on
the Judoma and had to continue on foot to Ochotsk, where he found plenty
of food owing to Bering having sent on ahead, in case of any such
trouble, a hundred horses, each of them laden with meal. In June, 1738,
Spangberg, in two newly-built vessels and the _Gabriel_, was off to
Japan, to reach the Kuriles and return to winter in Kamchatka; but next
year he arrived there all well and found to his astonishment that the
Japanese knew as much about maps as he did. He was still more astonished
on his return to be told by those high in office at St. Petersburg that
he could not possibly have been there as they had not got it on their
maps where he said it was, and, consequently, he was to go where he had
been as soon as he could to make sure. He started on this voyage of
verification, but circumstances were against him and he did not reach
there; and his Japanese trip remained discredited until the Russian
geographers knew better. His voyage thither had, however, used such a
stock of provisions that it was two years before the deficiency could be
made up, and it was actually the 4th of September, 1740, seven and a
half years after leaving St. Petersburg, when Bering, in the
specially-built _St. Peter_, and Tschirikof, in her sister the _St.
Paul_, got off outward bound to America.
In about three weeks they were at Awatcha Bay on the east of Kamchatka,
anchored in the fine harbour named Petropaulovsk after the two ships,
and here they had to stay for the winter, so that they did not leave
Russian territory until the 4th of the following June. A few days out
the ships were separated in a fog and storm, and the _St. Paul_ reached
the American coast first, at Kruzof Island on the western shore of Sitka
Sound. The _St. Peter_ three days afterwards, on the 18th of July,
drifted to the coast more to the northward, at Cape St. Elias near the
mighty mountain of that name. In this neighbourhood amid much fog Bering
stayed six weeks until he was blown out to sea, when, his men beginning
to die from scurvy, he resolved to return to Kamchatka. It was a voyage
of misfortune in a continual downfall, the men in want, misery, and
sickness, continuously at work in the cold and wet, becoming fewer and
fewer, so that there were not enough to work the ship properly. It ended
on one of the Commander Islands by the vessel being lifted by the sea
clear over a reef into calm water. Bering died—the island is named after
him—and the survivors of the crew, building a boat from the materials of
the _St. Peter_, arrived at Petropaulovsk on the 27th of August,
bringing with them a quantity of sea-otter skins, which did more for
discovery in those seas than any imperial expedition.
[Illustration: DRIVING THE FUR SEAL]
As the sable had brought about the conquest of Siberia, so did the
sea-otter lead to the seizure of the islands of the Bering Sea and the
coasts of Alaska. Three years after the return of the survivors of the
_St. Peter_, Nevodtsikof wintered on one of the Aleutian Islands, and in
a few years the fur-hunters were at their exterminating work over the
whole chain. In time the fur-seal attracted as much attention, and, with
Pribylov's discovery, in 1786, of its rookeries on the islands named
after him, the trade became of such increasing importance as to endanger
in our time the peace of the world. Every one has heard of the wonderful
haunts and habits of that strange eared seal which seems to have come
from the south through the tropics to breed in the coldest limit of its
range, now almost entirely on the Pribylovs and the Commanders; how it
is pursued in skin boats and every sort of craft, and scared in long
lines to slaughter by clapping of boards and bones and waving of flags
and opening and shutting of gingham umbrellas, until it promises to
become as extinct as Steller's sea-cow or as rare as the sea-otter.
Following Bering on the way to the north came Captain James Cook, in
H.M.S. _Resolution_, who gave Bering's name to the strait. Cook sighted
Mount St. Elias in May, 1778, and, cruising slowly along the coast with
many discoveries and much accurate surveying, was off, and named, Cape
Prince of Wales, the western extremity of America, on the 9th of August.
He then crossed the strait and plied back until on the 18th he sighted
and named Icy Cape in 70° 29´. Close to the edge of the ice, which was
as compact as a wall, and seemed to be ten or twelve feet high at the
least, he sought persistently for a passage through, but none was to be
found; and after reaching 70° 6´ in 196° 42´ (163° 18´ W.) on the 19th,
he turned westward to the Asiatic coast, along which he went until he
sighted and named Cape North, as already stated. Then, blocked by ice,
east, north, and west, he returned, passing Cape Serdze Kamen (Bering's
farthest) and naming East Cape, confirming Bering's observation that it
was the most easterly point of Asia.
On Cook's death at Hawaii Captain Charles Clerke, of the accompanying
vessel H.M.S. _Discovery_, took command of the expedition and carried
out Cook's intention of making another effort during the following year.
The ice conditions were, however, worse. The two ships found the ice
block further south, and as impenetrable as before, and Clerke's highest
was 70° 33´ on the American side, on the 19th of July. As it was Cook's
last voyage, so it was Clerke's. He was in a bad way with consumption,
and continued his work in the north, though, under the special
circumstances and being in command, he could at any time have given up
the obviously hopeless attempt and left for a more genial climate, in
which he would at least have had a chance of longer life; but, remaining
at his duty, he died at sea on the 22nd of August, and was buried at
Petropaulovsk.
[Illustration: FUR SEALS AT SEA]
Captain Beechey, in H.M.S. _Blossom_, passed through the strait in 1826
when sent north from the Pacific with a view of meeting with his old
commander, Franklin, then on his second land journey. Beechey took the
ship to Icy Cape, whence on the 17th of August he despatched the barge
under the master, Thomas Elson, to survey the coast to the
north-eastward as far as he could go in three weeks, there and back.
Elson reached his farthest on the 25th at a spit of land jutting out
several miles from the more regular coast-line, the width of the neck
not exceeding a mile and a half, broadest at its extremity, with several
frozen lakes on it, and a village, whose natives proved so troublesome
that it was thought unsafe to land. This was Point Barrow, in 71° 23´
31˝, longitude 156° 21´ 30˝, the northernmost land on the western half
of the American continent. To the eastward curved a wide bay—named Elson
Bay by Beechey—the shore-line of which joined on to the ice pack that
encircled the horizon. Here he was within a hundred and sixty miles of
where Franklin had turned back a week before. Though Beechey did not
meet Franklin he did most useful work in these parts, for by him the
whole coast was surveyed between Point Barrow and Point Rodney, to the
south of Prince of Wales Cape.
Franklin was also the cause of the appearance of the next British
expedition in the strait. This was in 1848, Captain Henry Kellett, in
H.M.S. _Herald_, with Commander Thomas Moore in H.M.S. _Plover_, forming
the western detachment of the first series of search expeditions. There
were three detachments, one to follow the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ from the
eastward, another under John Richardson to descend the Mackenzie and
search the northern coast, the other coming in from the west to meet the
ships should they have made the passage. On this duty the _Herald_ and
_Plover_ were hereabouts for three seasons, the _Plover_ wintering, the
_Herald_ going south when the navigation closed.
In October, 1826, Beechey had buried a barrel of flour for Franklin on
the sandy point of Chamisso Island, ample directions for finding it
being cut and painted on the rock, and to call the attention of the
party to the spot the name of the _Blossom_ was painted on the cliffs of
Puffin Island. When the _Herald_ was at Chamisso Island in 1849 Captain
Kellett searched for this flour and found it. A considerable space was
cleared round the cask, its chimes were freed, and, only adhering to the
sand by the two lower bilge staves, it required the united strength of
two boats' crews, with a parbuckle and a large spar as a lever, to free
it altogether. The sand was frozen so hard that it emitted sparks with
every blow of the pickaxe. The cask itself was perfectly sound and the
hoops good, and out of the 336 lb. of flour which it contained, 175 lb.
were as sweet and well tasted as any he had with him; so good indeed was
it that Captain Kellett gave a dinner party, at which all the pies and
puddings were made of this flour.
[Illustration:
THE PARKA OF THE ALASKAN INNUITS
(THE SHORTER COAT IS THAT WORN BY THE MEN)
]
After the dinner party, on the 18th of July, the two vessels started for
the north, being joined as soon as they stood from the anchorage by
Robert Shedden in his yacht the _Nancy Dawson_, who at his own
initiative had come up from Hong Kong to join in the search. From
Wainwright Inlet Kellett sent off the boats under Lieutenant Pullen, two
of which made the journey along the northern coast and up the Mackenzie,
their crews thence making their way home eastwards to York Factory.
When Kellett was about to commence his observations at the inlet he drew
a semicircle on the sand from water's edge to water's edge, and placed
the boats' noses between its points. The natives seemed to understand
the meaning of this line. Not one of them attempted to overstep it, and
they squatted down and remained perfectly quiet and silent. When a
stranger arrived they shouted to him, and he no sooner comprehended the
directions than he crept rather than walked to the boundary, and
squatted among the rest. Afterwards they danced and sang and played
football with the seamen—who stood no chance with them at that game—and
when they had gone off, after all this good behaviour, it was discovered
that they had been picking the pockets of some of the party, one losing
a handkerchief, another a glove, and Commander Moore a box of percussion
caps.
The boat party had a similar experience, without the pocket-picking.
Reaching Point Barrow they landed to make observations and look about
for traces of the visit of the _Blossom's_ boat, which they did not
find. Their interpreter did not understand the tribe, and recourse was
had to the universal language of signs. "We made a rude model of a
vessel," says Lieutenant Hooper, "and performed sundry antics to signify
what we were in search of, but could elicit no information, and so set
to work at obtaining observations. We concluded that these people must
have been entirely misunderstood. Far from evidencing any disposition to
assail or molest us, they were most docile and well-behaved, agreeably
disappointing us in their conduct. When we arrived on the hillock, all,
big and little, sat down around us, and I amused myself by filling their
pipes, becoming a great favourite immediately in consequence. They had
among them a great many knives, which we feared would influence the
magnet. Mr. Pullen therefore kindly drew off the crowd to a distance,
distributing among them tobacco, beads, snuff, etc., and much to their
credit be it said, there was neither confusion nor contention, each
taking his allotted portion, and seeming delighted with his good
fortune. They took care not to come near the instruments, finding that
we did not like their approach; one or two indeed came towards us, but
retired instantly when laughingly motioned back, and this should be
considered as a display of great forbearance, inasmuch as their
curiosity must have been highly excited. When the observations were
concluded they were allowed to inspect the objects of their wonder; then
fast and thickly to utterance flew their expressions of astonishment at
the—to them—novel and splendid instruments. The trough of quicksilver,
liquid and restless, especially attracted them, pleasure and wonder were
evident at the simple view, but when one or two had permission to take
some from the dish, and found it ever elude the grasp, their
astonishment knew no bounds."
[Illustration: THE FROZEN YUKON]
From Wainwright Inlet, which is between Icy Cape and Point Barrow, the
_Herald_ sailed along the pack to the westward, reaching her highest
north, 72° 51´, in 163° 48´, and, on the 17th of August, Kellett landed
on and named Herald Island in 71° 17´ 45˝, a mass of granite towering
nine hundred feet above the sea, under five miles long and three broad,
inhabited mainly by black and white divers and yielding the collector
only four flowering plants. Further to the west he sighted Wrangell
Island, sailed past and named by the American whaling captain, Thomas
Long, in August, 1867.
In 1881 Wrangell Island was thoroughly explored by another search
expedition, that of Captain Berry in the American ship _Rodgers_, who
was in these parts looking out for traces of the _Jeannette_. He found
it to be, not a continent as some had supposed, but an island forty
miles broad and sixty-six miles long, about thirty miles from Herald
Island and eighty from the Siberian coast; and on it, as on all these
Siberian islands and the coast of Alaska, remains of the mammoth were
found. Examining the ice to the northward, he reached 73° 44´ in 171°
30´, being fifty-three miles further north than Kellett and twenty-four
miles further than Collinson in 1850. Returning from the north to winter
quarters he achieved another Arctic record in his ship being destroyed
by fire in St. Lawrence Bay on the Asiatic side of Bering Strait.
Opposite this, on the American side, from Cape York downwards the land
trends away to the south-east to Norton Sound, in which are the mouths
of the Yukon, one of the mightiest rivers of the world, its volume being
as great as, or according to some writers greater than, the Mississippi.
In a course of two thousand miles it runs northwards to the Arctic
Circle at the now abandoned trading post of Fort Yukon, where its waters
are reinforced by its tributary, the Rat or Porcupine, coming in from
the north-east, and given their seaward direction to the south-west. Up
this vast waterway in 1866 went Frederick Whymper and William H. Dall.
Beginning with a sledge journey of a hundred and seventy miles from
Unalachleet, they struck the Yukon on the 10th of November, gliding down
a high steep bank on to it. Hardly a patch of clear ice was to be seen,
the snow covering the whole extent. Accumulations of hummocks had in
many places been forced on the surface before the river had become
thoroughly frozen, and the water was still open, running swiftly in a
few isolated streaks. From bank to bank was not less than a mile, the
stream flowing among several islands. As they sledged up the river the
dreary expanse of snow made them almost forget they were on a sheet of
ice; and, as it winds considerably, their course was often from bank to
bank to cut off corners and bends. Many cliffs abutted on the stream,
and islands of sombre green forest studded it in all directions.
[Illustration: ASCENDING THE YUKON]
On the 15th they reached Nulato, six hundred miles from the mouth, where
they spent the winter. Here they found a curious method of fishing
practised all through the season. Early in the winter large piles or
stakes had been driven down into the bed of the river, and to these were
affixed wickerwork traps like eel-pots on a large scale, oblong holes
being kept open over them by frequently breaking the ice. This was cold
work, for the temperature ran low. "In November and December," says
Whymper, "I succeeded in making sketches of the fort and neighbourhood
when the temperature was as low as thirty degrees below zero. It was
done, it need not be said, with difficulty, and often by instalments.
Between every five strokes of the pencil, I ran about to exercise myself
or went into our quarters for warmth. The use of water-colours was of
course impracticable—except when I could keep a pot of warm water on a
small fire by my side—a thing done by me on two or three occasions, when
engaged at a distance from the post. Even inside the house the spaces
near the windows, as well as the floor, were often below freezing point.
Once, forgetful of the fact, I mixed some colours up with water that had
just stood near the oven, and wetting a small brush commenced to apply
it to my drawing block. Before it reached the paper it was covered with
a skin of ice, and simply scratched the surface, and I had to give up
for the time being."
On the 12th of May the Nulato River broke up and ran out on the top of
the Yukon ice for more than a mile upstream; and in a few days the ice
of the main river was coming down in a steady flow at a rate of five or
six knots, surging into mountains as it met with obstacles, and grinding
and crashing and carrying all before it, whole trees and banks being
swept away on its victorious march, the water rising fourteen feet above
the winter level. On the 26th Whymper and Dall started with two Indians
and a steersman in a skin canoe, the river still full of ice, and
navigation difficult. They had proceeded but a short distance when they
came to bends, round which logs and ice were sweeping at a great rate,
so that it was necessary for a man to stand in the bows of the canoe,
with a pole shod at one end with iron, to push away the masses of ice
and tangle of driftwood. They could often feel the ice and logs rolling
and scraping under the canoe; and it was not the thickness of a plank
between them and destruction, but that of a piece of sealskin a tenth of
an inch thick.
On the 7th of June they were two hundred and forty miles above Nulato,
at the junction of the Tanana, the furthest point reached by the
Russians, and soon were in a part abounding with moose owing to their
seeking refuge in the stream from the millions of mosquitoes. Here the
Indian hunters were busy, not wasting powder and shot, but manœuvring
round the swimming deer in their birch-bark canoes until they tired the
victim out; and then stealthily approaching, securing it with a stab
from their knives.
After twenty-six laborious days against the stream they reached Fort
Yukon, the then furthest outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company, six
hundred miles from Nulato, and, of course, managed and victualled from
the east. Here the amount of peltry was astonishing, the fur-room of the
fort containing thousands of marten skins, hanging from the beams, and
huge piles of common furs lying around, together with a considerable
number of foxes, black and silver-grey, and many skins of the wolverine,
thought so much more of by the Indians than by any one else that they
are used as a medium of exchange. All these furs were brought in from
the surrounding districts, far and near, and traded for goods, as widely
distributed, among the native tribes whose representatives gathered at
the fort in such a miscellaneous crowd that perhaps half a dozen
dialects were heard in a morning.
[Illustration: MOOSE-HUNTING ON THE YUKON]
In the crowd the busiest and most prominent were the primitive Tananas,
gay with feathers and painted faces, looking like survivals among the
local Kutchins and the Kutchins of the upper river, the Birch River men,
and the Rat River men by whom the skins were brought from the natives of
the northern coast, as were the messages from the Franklin search
parties. Indians were all of these, distinguishable by their wearing the
hyaqua or tooth-shell (_Dentalium entalis_) through the septum of the
nose, while the Mahlemut wears a bone on each side of the mouth, a
practice common with all the Innuit, or Eskimo tribes, from the Alaska
Peninsula to Point Barrow, unless some other form of labret happens to
be the local fashion.