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.