CHAPTER XIV.

MORSE AND MAHLEMOÖT.

The Monotonous Desolation of the Alaskan Arctic Coast.—Dreary

Expanse of Low Moorlands.—Diversified by Saddle-backed Hills of

Gray and Bronze Tints.—The Coal of Cape Beaufort in the Arctic.—A

Narrow Vein.—Pure Carboniferous Formation.—Doubtful if these

Alaskan “Black Diamonds” can be Successfully Used.—Icy Cape, a

Sand- and Gravel-spit.—Remarkable Land-locked Lagoons on the

Beach.—The Arctic Innuits.—Point Barrow, Our Extreme Northern Land,

a Low Gravel-spit.—The Buttercup and the Dandelion Bloom here,

however, as at Home.—Back to Bering Sea.—The Interesting Island

and Natives of St. Lawrence.—The Sea-horse.—Its Uncouth Form and

Clumsy Life.—Its Huge Bulk and Impotency on Land.—Lives entirely

by Clam-digging.—Rank Flavor of its Flesh.—The Walrus is to the

Innuit just as the Cocoa-palm is to the South Sea Islander.—Hunting

the Morse.—The Jagged, Straggling Island of St. Matthew.—The Polar

Bears’ Carnival.—Hundreds of them here.—Their Fear of Man.—“Over

the Hills and Far Away,” whenever Approached.—Completion of the

Alaskan Circuit.

An Innuit village is in plain sight on the low shores of Cape

Kroozenstern, which forms a northern pier-head of Kotzebue Sound,

and its inhabitants greet your vessel as it passes out and up the

coast with the usual dress-parade—climbing upon the summits of

their winter houses, and by running in light-hearted mirth along

the beach. A most dreary expanse of low moorland borders the coast

as the little schooner reviews it, swiftly heeling on her course to

the north. Not until the bluffs of Cape Thompson are in sight does

a noteworthy landmark occur. This is an abrupt headland capped by

carboniferous limestone full of fossils, shells, corals and the like,

which are peculiar to that age. It is also traversed by veins of a

blackish chert varying in thickness from six inches to three feet or

more, causing a decided network tracery to appear very plainly on

its gray-white face. Half-way down from the top, the limestone is

succeeded by blue, black, and gray argillaceous shades, the colors

of which alternate in layers of horizontal strata, six or eight

feet in thickness, nearly down to the base; it is then composed of

black carboniferous shales alone, which abound in organic remains

and are occasionally interstratified by limestone much deflected.

This contortion is so great as to form two regularly banded arches.

Several tiny snow-water cascades tumble down its ravines and boldly

plunge over the bluffs, which are about four hundred feet high in

their greatest elevation.

This chert is that which the Eskimo of the entire Alaskan arctic

region (before the coming of white men) used for tipping their lance-

and arrow-heads when ivory was not employed. They, aided with a

small piece of bone, were able to “flake” it off in slices that were

easily reduced to the desired forms. They still work a little of it

up every year, in a desultory or perfunctory manner, however, more

for amusement than anything else, since they have a profusion of iron

and steel now in their possession. The fashion in which they chip it

gives ample evidence of their full understanding of a flat conchoidal

fracture peculiar to flint, and of which they take advantage.

To the northwest of Cape Thompson the coast runs out abruptly as a

low spit, projected into the Arctic Ocean for a distance of twenty

miles. This is Port Hope. The beach everywhere is principally formed

of dark basaltic gravel. To the north of a considerable stream not

far from this point, and on a low and diluvial shore, is a large

hamlet of Innuits, who have covered the turfy thatches on their

winter houses with heavy blocks of angular clink-stones picked up

from the sea-beach. The whole surface of the interior country here

is raised several hundred feet above tide-level, and is diversified

with saddle-backed hills of gray and bronzed tints, separated by wide

valleys in which a rich green summer verdancy is characteristic. Here

and there conical eminences and perpendicular shelving cliffs arise

from a general evenness of the whole landscape. These cliffs seem to

be composed of limestones, while their acclivities are of slate and

shale.

As we near Cape Lisburne a jutting range of bluffs, stratified in

bands of grayish-brown and black, receive the full wash of the

sea, and are called Cape Dyer; but Cape Lisburne is the striking

landmark, and a most important one for the navigator to recognize.

It is composed of two remarkable promontories: the southwestern one

rises abruptly from the surf, is covered with loose gray stones,

divested of the smallest traces of vegetation. The northeastern

one rises gradually, and, although but thinly clad with verdure,

it forms a pleasing and marked contrast with the gray head of the

other. The first is elevated from the sea in distinct strata, with

a southwestern dip, and consists of layers of impure chert in its

central and most prominent projections, and of a soft, friable slate

and shale in its worn and more retiring sides. The front of the

second is rugged and shelving, with very indistinct bandings; it is

partly covered with tundra vegetable-growths, and with fallen masses

of gray flint. Both points to this double-headed cape of Lisburne are

easily accessible; they are about one thousand feet in height from

the shore of the ocean, and both stretch their ridges away inland far

to the southeast.

The highly elevated country here ceases at once to the northeast of

Cape Lisburne, where the entire coast-line, away on and off to Icy

Cape, and beyond again, forms a deep and extensive bay skirted by a

dark, low beach. A gravel-flat fronts this again, filled with shallow

estuaries and lagoons. The land of the interior rises from that beach

in a series of low, earthy cliffs and in gradual acclivities.

The coal-veins, which Beechey visited in 1826, are about fifty miles

to the eastward of Lisburne, embedded in a ridge some three hundred

feet high where it juts into the ocean. This point is known as

Cape Beaufort. A narrow vein of pure carboniferous coal is exposed

there, about a quarter of a mile from the beach. “It was slaty, but

burned with a bright, clear flame and rapid consumption.” Again, at

a point about midway between Beaufort and Lisburne, directly at the

surf-margin, the officers of the United States Revenue Marine cutter

_Corwin_ mined a few tons of this same coal in 1880-81. But no harbor

for a coaling ship is near by; the steady north and westerly winds of

summer, which blow right on shore almost all of that short time in

which a vessel can navigate the Arctic, make it very doubtful whether

these remote mines of Alaskan “black diamonds” will ever be of real

economic value.

That sand- and shingle-spit ahead of us, which the whalers have named

Icy Cape with perfect fitness, is in itself almost invisible, since

it is a mere continuation of the outer rim to a remarkable lagoon

which borders this coast from Cape Beaufort to Wainright Inlet,

over one hundred miles in length, and varying in width from five to

ten miles, with an average depth of two fathoms. It is spanned by

occasional sand-bars, some of them entirely dry, so that it is not

navigable except for those small boats and oomiaks of the natives,

who haul these craft across as they journey, thus safe and snug,

up and down a desolate coast. This lagoon of the Arctic Ocean has

several openings to the sea itself. Small schooners can run in and

escape from ice-pack “jams,” if they draw less than eight or ten feet

of water. The coast-line of the mainland at Icy Cape is a series

of low mud-cliffs, varying from ten to fifty feet in height above

a shingly beach, which is everywhere composed of fine, minutely

comminuted, pebbly bases of granite, of chert, of sienite, and of

indurated clay, the last being a predominant form.

From this point clear around to the boundary of our Alaskan Arctic

coast at Point Demarcation that country presents the same appearance

which we note here. It is low and slightly rolling, and falls in

small cliffs of mud or sandstone at the sea-shore. During the

midsummer season it wears a hue of gray and brown, with little

patches of bright green where the snow has melted early in sunny,

sheltered spots. The lines of many streams, as they course in

carrying off melting snows, are plainly marked over a dreary tundra

by the dark fringes of dwarfed willows, birches, and alders which

only grow upon their banks.

[Illustration: Innuit Whaling-camp at Icy Cape.]

All along this cheerless northern sea-shore are small and widely

scattered settlements of our Innuits, who burrow in their turfy

underground winter huts, and who tent outside in summer-time upon

these shingly gravels and clink-stones of the Arctic coast. They

then live upon the walrus and kill an occasional calf-whale. For

the better apprehension of these animals they erect lookouts on the

beach by setting up drift-wood scaffolds, and climbing as lookouts

to an elevated platform thus made. In the winter, when the weather

permits, they net a ringed seal (_Phoca fœtida_) under the ice, make

short inland trips, where they camp for weeks at a time in rude

snow-houses, hunting reindeer, which are shy though abundant, and

they trap a few wolves and foxes. Every July and August they expect

the visit of a few whaling-vessels at least, and they are seldom

disappointed, for such craft are compelled by ice-floes to hug this

shore very closely, in order to get as far to the eastward as the

whales are found; sometimes, in spite of all the wariness and skill

of our own hardy whalemen, great floe-booms, of icy make, suddenly

shut down on that land so quickly from the north as to catch and

crush the staunchest ships like egg-shells under foot. Then, indeed,

is the sadness and the distress of the white men sharply contrasted

with that great joy and happy anticipation of an Innuit who feasts

his eyes and gloats in fancy over the abandoned vessels as they lie

riven by ice upon those shallow strands of Icy Cape or Point Barrow.

It is more than sixty years now since Captain Beechey[163] camped

upon and located Point Barrow, our extreme limit of northern landed

possession, and in that time few changes, other than depopulation

of the natives, have taken place on this coast. That same village

of Noowuk, which he graphically described, still stands there on

the tip of a low gravel-spit which extends out from the mainland

twelve miles into the chill flood of an Arctic Ocean. All the land at

its extremity not inundated by the sea in storms is now, as it was

then, occupied by the winter houses of the natives. Blooming here

in the short summer of July, on those desolate moors adjacent to

Point Barrow, is the same dandelion and buttercup which filled the

Englishman then, as it does us now, with thoughts of meadows at home,

and some bright little poppies still nod their yellow heads again

to us, as they did to him, on this low north end of Alaska. A tiny

golden butterfly flits from flower to flower, and as they fade, it,

too, disappears over frost-bitten swales.

Big ice-fields seldom ever fail to threaten the coast here, even

when they relax their grasp in July. In a few short weeks, however,

they return to stay for the rest of the year and best part of the

next. Such brief intervals for navigation in the Arctic Ocean during

every July and August are those which lure whaling-ships, and the

dark lanes of open water in white ice-floes are the last refuge of

many hard-hunted whales, unless they dive, and rise to breathe again

in that conjectured clear yet frigid flood of a polar sea, far away

under the north star.

[Illustration: The Ringed Seal (Phoca fœtida).

[_The common Hair-Seal of the Arctic Ocean._]]

There is nothing more to see, or noteworthy to learn, at or beyond

Point Barrow, even were you to live and drag out a wretched year’s

existence in looking for it, so you gladden the heart of your skipper

and his hardy crew by telling them to shape a course homeward. Back

through the Straits of Bering, wrapped in a chill thick fog, the

little schooner heels, with a singing northwester on her quarter that

holds her canvas just as taut as if made of tough wood. She fairly

scrapes by the Diomedes—the walls of Noornabook loom up high in a

cold, gray fog-light, as though its bold, gray cliffs were right over

her spars—but the crew know at the time that they are more than two

miles away from that surf which noisily thunders on the dark rocks

of these islets. That same chill wind, and gloomy fog-surrounding,

follows them into Bering Sea—not a glimpse of all the land and

mountain, which they so plainly discerned going up, have they caught

going down.

What trifles often determine our success or failure in life! Had it

not been for a sudden sunburst from the gloom of a leaden fog which

shrouded all about it in its misty darkness, and thus lighted up a

lofty russet head of the East Cape of St. Lawrence Island, a little

vessel bearing the author would have been piled up and thrown into

foaming breakers which beat upon a low, rocky reef that reaches out

from its feet. This gleam of light reflected from that headland

warned a startled man on the lookout just in time to have her wheel

put hard up, and thus luff our light trim craft in season to shave

safely by.

St. Lawrence is the largest island in Bering Sea. It is directly

south of Bering Straits, one hundred and eighty miles distant from

the Diomedes; it is eighty to eighty-five miles in length, with an

average width of fifteen or twenty. The sea has built onto it quite

extensively, in very much the same manner as it has filled out and

extended the coast of St. Paul, of the Pribylov group. At Kagallegak,

on the east shore, the island is made up of coarse feldspathic, red

granitic flats and hills, with extensive lagoons and lakelets. The

skeleton of this island seems to have been originally one of low

hills and ranges of granite, with volcanic outbursts everywhere

manifested at their summits, especially on the north shore. Between

them stretch long, low plains, or gently rolling uplands, and

perfectly smooth reaches of sand and gravelly beaches that border the

sea everywhere not so marked by bluffs.

At Kagallegak your eye sweeps over extensive level plains to the

northward, upon which a green-stalked and white-plumed tundra grass

(_Eriophorum_) principally grows everywhere on the wet and boggy

surface, while, on those sand-beach margins, the “wild wheat”

(_Elymus_) springs up most abundantly, short and stunted, however.

These extended low areas of moorland so peculiar to this island are

made up of fine granitic drift and clays, lined at their sea-borders

with a low, broad sand-belt. The hills and hill ranges of St.

Lawrence are rich in color, with dark blue-black patches interspersed

which indicate a location of trap-protrusions. No shrubbery whatever

grows upon these wind-swept tundra and hills save dwarfed and

creeping willows; yet, a series of characteristic rock-lichens color

such bare summits in their bright relief which we have just noted.

The rocks themselves are reddish, coarse-grained, shining granites,

with abundant trap-protrusions, that weather out and fall down upon

the flanks of the peaks and ridges in dusky patches and streaks, so

as to contrast, from a slight distance, very sharply with the main

ground of pinkish rock, which is moss- and lichen-grown, and

colored here and there with areas of that peculiar and characteristic

greenish-russet tinge of sphagnous origin. This dark marking of those

trap-dikes appears like the presence of low-growing shrubbery from

the vessel, as an observer sails by. Snow and ice lie all the year

around in small bodies within the gullies and on the hill-sides.

[Illustration: VILLAGE AND ISLET OF POONOOK

Mahlemoöt Winter Houses on the Poonook Islets, 6 miles East of St.

Lawrence]

The lower plains have a richer, warmer, yellowish-green tone than

that cold tint of the uplands, while the sand of the sea-shore is a

bright light-brown. Small streams flow down from these hills, and

twist and turn sluggishly through the tundra as they lead to lakes

or empty directly into the sea—a few parr, or young salmon, being

the only fish in them that can be found; most of the fresh-water

lakes and lagoons are, however, fairly stocked with familiar-looking

mullets (_Catastomus_), but nothing else.

The entire expanse of these lowlands of St. Lawrence are precisely

like all of those vast reaches of Alaskan tundra—they are great

saturated, earthy sponges, filled and overrunning with water in

midsummer—the chief and happiest vegetation upon them being that same

beautiful tufted or plumed grass which we noticed at Michaelovsky,

since the white and silken tassels of its feathery inflorescence

never fail to charm even tired and travel-worn eyes. This grass, in

conjunction with several rank-growing mosses, the trailing runners

of the crowberry-vines, and little patches of the humble arctic

raspberry (_Rubus chamæmorus_) make up that conventional tundra color

of russet-green (flecked with grayish-blue spots on the slopes of

stern northern exposures) which mark these great marshy tracts of

Alaska, and under which eternal frost is found, even in midsummer,

a foot or two only from their surfaces. Small white shells of a

land-mollusk (_succinea_) are scattered thickly over these moorlands.

On the flats of the east shore of St. Lawrence a great abundance

of drift-wood was piled in much confusion. Here the natives had a

wood-cutting camp, hewing and carving; its chips were scattered all

along the beach-levels for miles. There are places, here, where the

ice in some unusual seasons has carried large logs and pieces of

drift-wood far back, full half a mile from the sea, and a vigorous

growth of tundra vegetation now flourishes in between; and there they

lie to-day deeply embedded in the swale, settling down in decay—that

slow, hungering eremacausis of the Arctic.

The Innuits, living here as they do, some three or four hundred in

number, are great walrus-hunters. They enjoy a location that enables

them to secure these animals at all seasons of a year. In winter

the sea-horse floats on big ice-fields; but during summer-time the

“aibwook” hauls up to sun and rest his heavy body in and on the

inviting peace of those beaches of St. Lawrence. A famous spot for

this landing of the walrus is on the rocky and pebbly shores of

Poonook (three small rocky islets), just five miles east of the

summer tents of Kagallegak. These tiny, detached fragments of St.

Lawrence stand in the full sweep of those air- and water-currents

which keep broad ice-floes in constant motion, and thus bring

walrus-herds into range of Mahlemoöt hunters, who have a winter

village dug deep into sandy flats of “Poonookah.”

Naturally enough we regard the walrus with more than passing

interest, for it plays so large and so vital a part in sustaining the

life of human beings who reside in these arctic and subarctic regions

of Alaska. Perhaps the only place in all this extended area in which

these clumsy brutes are found, where the creature itself can be

closely observed and studied, is that unique islet, six miles east of

St. Paul (Pribylov group) and about four hundred miles south of St.

Lawrence.

[Illustration: The Walrus-hunter.

[_A St. Lawrence Mahlemoöt—in winter parka with the hood removed.

August 16, 1874._]]

Here the morse rests upon some rocky, surf-washed tables

characteristic of this place without being disturbed; hence the

locality afforded me a particularly pleasant and advantageous

opportunity of minutely observing these animals. My observations,

perhaps, would not have passed over a few moments of general notice,

had I found a picture presented by them such as I had drawn in my

mind from previous descriptions; the contrary, however, stamping

itself so suddenly and decidedly upon my eye, set me to work with

pen and brush in noting and portraying such extraordinary brutes, as

they lay grunting and bellowing, unconscious of my presence, and not

ten feet away from the ledge upon which I sat.[164]

Sitting as I did to the leeward of them, with a strong wind blowing

in at the time from seaward, which, ever and anon, fairly covered

many of them with foaming surf-spray, therefore they took no notice

of me during the three or more hours of my study. I was first

astonished at observing the raw, naked appearance of the hide: it was

a skin covered with multitudes of pustular-looking warts and large

boils or pimples, without hair or fur, save scattered and almost

invisible hairs; it was wrinkled in deep, flabby seam-folds, and

marked by dark-red venous lines, which showed out in strong contrast

through the thicker and thinner yellowish-brown cuticle, that in turn

seemed to be scaling off in places as if with leprosy; indeed, a fair

expression of this walrus-hide complexion if I may use the term,

can be understood by the inspection of those human countenances in

the streets and on the highways of our cities which are designated

as the faces of “bloats.” The forms of _Rosmarus_ struck my eye at

first in a most unpleasant manner, and the longer I looked at them

the more heightened was my disgust; for they resembled distorted,

mortified, shapeless masses of flesh; those clusters of big, swollen,

watery pimples, which were of a yellow, parboiled flesh-color,

and principally located over the shoulders and around the necks,

painfully suggested unwholesomeness.

On examining the herd individually, and looking upon perhaps one

hundred and fifty specimens directly beneath and within the sweep of

my observation, I noticed that there were no females among them; they

were all males, and some of the younger ones had considerable hair,

or enough of that close, short, brown coat to give a hirsute tone to

their bodies—hence I believe that it was only the old, wholly matured

males which offered to my eyes such bare and loathsome nakedness.

[Illustration: Section showing Construction of Mahlemoöt Winter

Houses at Poonook.]

I noticed, as they swam around, and before they landed, that they

were clumsy in the water, not being able to swim at all like the

_Phocidæ_ and the _Otariidæ_; yet their progress in the sea was

wonderfully alert when brought into comparison with that terrestrial

action of theirs; the immense bulk and weight of this walrus,

contrasted with the size and strength of its limbs, renders it simply

impotent when hauled out of the water on those low, rocky beaches

or shelves upon which it rests. Like the seals, however, it swims

entirely under water when travelling, but it does not rise, in my

opinion, so frequently to take breath; when it does, it blows or

snorts not unlike a whale. Often have I heard this puffing snort of

those animals (since the date of these observations on Walrus Islet),

when standing on the bluffs near the village of St. Paul and looking

seaward; on one cool, quiet morning in May I followed with my eye and

ear a herd of walrus, tracing its progress some distance off and up

along the east coast of the island by those tiny jets of moisture

or vapor from its confined breath which the animals blew off as they

rose to respire.

[Illustration: =AN OLD WALRUS, OR “MORSE”=

A Life Study, made by the Author, of an aged Male on Walrus Islet.

July 5, 1872]

Mariners, while coasting in the Arctic, have often been put on

timely footing by a walrus fog-horn snorting and blowing as the

ship dangerously sails silently through dense fog toward land or

ice-floes, upon which those animals may be resting; indeed, these

uncouth monitors to this indistinct danger rise and bob under and

around a vessel like so many gnomes or demons of fairy romance, and

sailors may well be pardoned for much of that strange yarning which

they have given to the reading world respecting the sea-horse during

the last three centuries.

When a walrus-herd comes ashore, after short preliminary surveys of

the intended spot of landing, an old veteran usually takes the lead

of a band which is so disposed.

Finally the first one makes a landing, and no sooner gets composed

upon the rocks for sleep than a second one comes along, prodding and

poking with its blunted tusks, demanding room also, thus causing

the first to change its position to another location still farther

off and up from the water, a few feet beyond; then the second is in

turn treated in the same way by a third, and so on until hundreds

will be slowly packed together on the shore as thickly as they can

lie—never far back from the surf, however—pillowing their heads upon

the bodies of one another: and, they do not act at all quarrelsome

toward each other. Occasionally, in their lazy, phlegmatic adjusting

and crowding, the posteriors of some old bull will be lifted up, and

remain elevated in the air, while the passive owner continues to

sleep, with its head, perhaps, beneath the pudgy form of its neighbor.

These pinnipeds are, perhaps, of all animals, the most difficult

subjects that an artist can find to reproduce from life. There are no

angles or elbows to seize hold of. The lines of body and limbs are

all rounded, free and flowing; yet, the very fleshiest examples never

have that bloated, wind-distended look which most of the published

figures give them. One must first become familiarized with the

restless, varying attitudes of these creatures by extended personal

contact and observation ere he can satisfy himself with the result of

his drawings, no matter how expert he may be in rapid and artistic

delineation. Life-studies by artists of the young of the Atlantic

walrus have been made in several instances; but of the mature animal,

until my drawing, there was nothing extant of that character.

As the walrus came ashore they made no use of their tusks in

assistance; but such effort was all done by their fore flippers and

the “boosting” of exceptionally heavy surf which rolled in at wide

intervals, and for which marine assistance the walrus themselves

seemed to patiently wait. When moving on land they do not seem to

have any real power in the hinder limbs. These are usually pulled

and twitched up behind, or feebly flattened out at right angles to

its body. Terrestrial progression is slowly and tediously made by a

dragging succession of short steps forward on the fore-feet; but if

an alarm is given, it is astonishing to note the contrast which they

present in their method of getting back to sea: they fairly roll and

hustle themselves over and into the waves within an exceedingly short

lapse of time.

When sleeping on drifting ice-floes of the Arctic Ocean, or on rocks

at St. Matthew’s or Walrus Island, they resort to a very singular

method of keeping guard, if I may so term it. In this herd of three

or four hundred male walrus that were beneath my vision, though

nearly all were sleeping, yet the movement of one would disturb

the other, which would raise its head in a stupid manner for a few

moments, grunt once or twice, and before lying down to sleep again

it would strike the slumbering form of its nearest companion with

its tusks, causing that animal to rouse up in turn for a few moments

also, grunt, and pass the blow on to the next, lying down in the same

manner. Thus the word was transferred, as it were, constantly and

unceasingly around, always keeping some one or two aroused, which

consequently were more alert than the rest.

On Walrus Island a particularly large individual walrus was selected

and shot, out of a herd of more than two hundred. This was done

at the author’s instance, who made the following memoranda: It

measured twelve feet seven inches from its bluff nostrils to the

tip of its excessively abbreviated tail, which was not more than

two and one-half or three inches long; it had the surprising girth

of fourteen feet. An immense mass of blubber on the shoulders and

around the neck made the head look strangely small in proportion,

and the posteriors decidedly attenuated; indeed, the whole weight of

the animal was bound up in its girth anteriorly. It was a physical

impossibility for me to weigh this brute, and I therefore can do

nothing but make a guess, having this fact to guide me—that the head,

cut directly off at the junction with the spine, or the occipital or

atlas joint, weighed eighty pounds; that the skin, which I carefully

removed with the aid of these natives, with the head, weighed five

hundred and seventy pounds. Deducting the head and excluding the

flippers, I think it is safe to say that the skin itself would not

weigh less than three hundred and fifty pounds, and the animal could

not weigh much less than a ton, from two thousand to two thousand two

hundred pounds.

The head had a decidedly flattened appearance, for the nostrils,

eyes, and ear-spots seem to be placed nearly on top of the cranium.

The nasal apertures are literally so, opening directly over the

muzzle. They are oval, and closed parallel with the longitudinal axis

of the skull, and when dilated are about an inch in their greatest

diameter.

The eyes are small, but prominent; placed nearly on top of the head,

and, protruding from their sockets, they bulge like those of a

lobster. The iris and pupil of this eye is less than one-fourth of

its exposed surface; the sclerotic coat swells out from under the

lids when they are opened, and is of a dirty, mottled coffee-yellow

and brown, with an occasional admixture of white; the iris itself is

light-brown, with dark-brown rays and spots. I noticed that whenever

the animal roused itself, instead of turning its head, it only rolled

its eyes, seldom moving the cranium more than to elevate it. The

eyes seem to move, rotating in every direction when the creature

is startled, giving the face of this monster a very extraordinary

attraction, especially when studied by an artist. The expression is

just indescribable. The range of sight enjoyed by the walrus out of

water, I can testify, is not well developed, for, after throwing

small chips of rock down upon the walruses near me, several of them

not being ten feet distant, and causing them only to stupidly stare

and give vent to low grunts of astonishment, I then rose gently and

silently to my feet, standing boldly up before them; but then, even,

I was not noticed, though their eyes rolled all over from above to

under me. Had I, however, made a little noise, or had I been standing

as far as one thousand yards away from them to the windward, they

would have taken the alarm instantly, and tumbled off into the sea

like so many hustled wool-sacks, for their sense of smell is of the

keen, keenest.

The ears of the walrus, or rather the auricles to the ears, are on

the same lateral line at the top of the head with the nostrils and

eyes, the latter being just midway between. The pavilion, or auricle,

is a mere fleshy wrinkle or fold, not at all raised or developed;

and from what I could see of the _meatus externus_ it was very narrow

and small; still, the natives assured me that the _Otariidæ_ had no

better organs of hearing than _Rosmarus_.

The head of the male walrus, to which I have alluded, and from which

I afterward removed the skin, was eighteen inches long between the

nostrils and the post-occipital region; and, although its enormous

tusks seemed to be firmly planted in their osseous sockets, judge of

my astonishment when one of the younger natives flippantly struck a

tusk with a wooden club quite smartly, and then easily jerked the

tooth forth. I had frequently observed that it was difficult to keep

such teeth from rattling out of their alveoli in any of the best

skulls I had gathered of the fur seals and sea-lions, especially

difficult in the case of the latter.

Its tusks, or canines, are set firmly under the nostril-apertures in

deep, massive, bony pockets, giving that strange, broad, square-cut

front of the muzzle so characteristic of its physiognomy.

The upper lips of this walrus of Bering Sea are exceedingly thick and

gristly, and its bluff, square muzzle is studded, in regular rows and

intervals, with a hundred or so, short, stubby, gray-white bristles,

varying in length from one-half to three inches. There are a few

very short and much softer bristles set, also, on the fairly hidden

chin of its lower jaw, which closes up under a projecting snout

and muzzle, and is nearly concealed by the enormous tushes, when

laterally viewed.

The thickness of the skin of the walrus is a marked and most

anomalous feature. I remember well how surprised I was, when I

followed the incision of a broad-axe used in beheading the specimen

shot for my benefit, to find that the skin over its shoulders and

around the throat and chest was three inches thick—a puffy, spongy

epidermis, outwardly hateful to the sight, and inwardly resting

upon a slightly acrid fat or blubber so peculiar to this animal.

Nowhere was that hide, upon the thinnest point of measurement,

less than half an inch thick. It feeds exclusively upon shell-fish

(_Lamellibranchiata_), or clams principally, and also upon the

bulbous roots and tender stalks of certain marine plants and grasses

which grow in great abundance over the bottoms of broad, shallow

lagoons and bays of the main Alaskan coast. I took from the paunch

of the walrus above mentioned more than a bushel of crushed clams in

their shells, all of which that animal had evidently just swallowed,

for digestion had scarcely commenced. Many of those clams in that

stomach, large as my clinched hands, were not even broken; and it is

in digging this shell-fish food that the services rendered by its

enormous tusks become apparent.[165]

I am not in accord with some singular tales told, on the Atlantic

side, about the uses of these gleaming ivory teeth, so famous and

conspicuous: I believe that the Alaskan walrus employs them solely in

his labor of digging clams and rooting bulbs from those muddy oozes

and sand-bars in the estuary waters peculiar to his geographical

distribution. Certainly, it is difficult for me to reconcile my

idea of such uncouth, timid brutes, as were those spread before me

on Walrus Islet, with any of the strange chapters written as to the

ferocity and devilish courage of a Greenland “morse.” These animals

were exceedingly cowardly, abjectly so. It is with the greatest

difficulty that the natives, when a herd of walruses are surprised,

can get a second shot at them. So far from clustering in attack

around their boats, it is the very reverse, and a hunter’s only

solicitude is which way to travel in order that he may come up with

the fleeing animals as they rise to breathe.

On questioning the natives, as we returned, they told me that the

walrus of Bering Sea was monogamous, and that the difference between

the sexes in size, color, and shape is inconsiderable; or, in other

words, that until the males are old the young males and the females

of all ages are not remarkably distinct, and would not be at all

if it were not for their teeth. They said that the female brings

forth her young, a single calf, in June usually, on the ice-floes

in the Arctic Ocean, above Bering Straits, between Point Barrow and

Cape Seartze Kammin; that this calf resembles the parent in general

proportions and color when it is hardly over six weeks old, but that

the tusks (which give it its most distinguishing expression) are not

visible until the second year of its life; that the walrus mother is

strongly attached to her offspring, and nurses it later through the

season in the sea; that the walrus sleeps profoundly in the water,

floating almost vertically, with barely more than the nostrils above

water, and can be easily approached, if care is taken as to the wind,

so as to spear it or thrust a lance into its bowels; that the bulls

do not fight as savagely as the fur-seal or the sea-lion; that the

blunted tusks of these combatants seldom do more than bruise their

thick hides; that they can remain under water nearly an hour, or

about twice as long as the seals, and that they sink like so many

stones immediately after being shot at sea.

I personally made no experiments touching the peculiarity of sinking

immediately after being shot. Of course, on reflection, it will

appear to any mind that all seals, no matter how fat or how lean,

would sink instantly out of sight, if not killed, at the shock of a

bullet; even if mortally wounded, the great involuntary impulse of

brain and muscle would be to dive and speed away, for all swimming is

submarine when pinnipeds desire to travel.

Touching this mooted question, I had an opportunity when in Port

Townsend, during 1874, to ask a man who had served as a partner in

a fur-sealing schooner off the Straits of Fuca. He told me that

unless a seal was instantly killed by the passage of his rifle-bullet

through its brain, it was never secured, and would sink before they

could reach the bubbling wake of its disappearance. If, however, the

aim of a marksman had been correct, then its body was invariably

taken within five to ten minutes after the rifle discharge. Only one

man does the shooting; the rest of such a crew, ten to twelve white

men and Indians, man canoes and boats which are promptly despatched

from the schooner, after each report, in the direction of a victim.

How long one of the bodies of these “clean” killed seals would float

he did not know; the practice always was to get it as quickly as

possible, fearing that the bearings of its position, when shot from

a schooner, might be confused or lost. He also affirmed that, in his

opinion, there were not a dozen men on the whole northwest coast who

were good enough with a rifle, and expert at distance calculation,

to shoot fur-seals successfully from the deck of a vessel on the

ocean. The Indians of Cape Flattery do most of their pelagic

fur-sealing by cautiously approaching from the leeward when these

animals are asleep, and then throw line-darts or harpoons into them

before they awaken.

The finest bidarrah skin-boats of transportation that I have seen

in this country were those of the St. Lawrence natives. These were

made out of dressed walrus-hides, shaved and pared down by them to

the requisite thickness, so that when they were sewed with sinews

to the wooden whalebone-lashed frames of such boats they dried into

a pale greenish-white prior to oiling, and were even then almost

translucent, tough and strong.

When I stepped, for the first time, into the baidar of St. Paul

Island, and went ashore, from the _Alexander_, over a heavy sea,

safely to the lower bight of Lukannon Bay, my sensations were of

emphatic distrust; the partially water-softened skin-covering would

puff up between the wooden ribs, and then draw back, as the waves

rose and fell, so much like an unstable support above the cold,

green water below, that I frankly expressed my surprise at such an

outlandish craft. My thoughts quickly turned to a higher appreciation

of those hardy navigators who used these vessels in circumpolar seas

years ago, and of the Russians who, more recently, employed bidarrahs

chiefly to explore Alaskan and Kamchatkan _terræ incognita_. There is

an old poem in Avitus, written by a Roman as early as 445 A.D.; it

describes the ravages of Saxon pirates along the southern coasts of

Britain, who used just such vessels as this bidarrah of St Paul.

“Quin et armoricus piratim Saxona tractus

Spirabat, cui pelle falum fulcare Britannum

Ludus, et assuto glaucum mare findere lembo.”

These boats were probably covered with either horse’s or bulls’

hides. When used in England they were known as _coracles_; in Ireland

they were styled _curachs_. Pliny tells us that Cæsar moved his army

in Britain over lakes and rivers in such boats. Even the Greeks used

them, terming them _karabia_; and the Russian word of _korabl_’,

or “ship,” is derived from it. King Alfred, in 870-872, tells us

that the Finns made sad havoc among many Swedish settlements on the

numerous “meres” (lakes) in the moors of that country, by “carrying

their ships (baidars) overland to the meres whence they make

depredations on the Northmen; their ships are small and very light.”

Until I saw these bidarrahs of the St. Lawrence natives, in 1874,

I was more or less inclined to believe that the tough, thick, and

spongy hide of a walrus would be too refractory in dressing for use

in covering such light frames, especially those of the bidarka;

but the manifest excellence and seaworthiness of those Eskimo

boats satisfied me that I was mistaken. I saw, however, abundant

evidence of a much greater labor required to tan or pare down this

thick cuticle to that thin, dense transparency so marked on their

bidarrahs; for the pelt of a hair-seal, or sea-lion, does not need

any more attention, when applied to this service, than that of simply

unhairing it. This is done by first sweating the “loughtak” in

piles, then rudely, but rapidly, scraping with blunt knives or stone

flensers the hair off in large patches at every stroke; the skin is

then air-dried, being stretched on a stout frame, where, in the lapse

of a few weeks, it becomes as rigid as a board. Whenever wanted for

use thereafter, it is soaked in water until soft or “green” again;

then it is sewed with sinews, while in this fresh condition, tightly

over the slight wooden skeleton of the bidarka or the heavier frame

of a bidarrah. In this manner all boats and lighters at the islands

are covered. Then they are air-dried thoroughly before oiling, which

is done when the skin has become well indurated, so as to bind the

ribs and keel as with an iron plating. The thick, unrefined seal-oil

keeps the water out for twelve to twenty hours, according to the

character of the hides. When, however, the skin-covering begins to

“bag in” between the ribs of its frame, then it is necessary to haul

the bidarrah out and air-dry it again, and then re-oil. If attended

to thoroughly and constantly, those skin-covered boats are the best

species of lighter which can be used in these waters, for they will

stand more thumping and pounding on the rocks and alongside ship than

all wooden, or even corrugated-iron, lighters could endure and remain

seaworthy.

[Illustration: Newack’s Brother, with a Sealskin full of Walrus-oil.

[_Mahlemoöt boy—fourteen or fifteen years of age._]]

The flesh of the walrus is not, to our palate, at all toothsome; it

is positively uninviting. That flavor of the raw, rank mollusca, upon

which it feeds, seems to permeate every fibre of its flesh, making

it very offensive to the civilized palate; but the Eskimo, who do

not have any of our squeamishness, regard it as highly and feed upon

it as steadily, as we do on our own best corn-fed beef. Indeed, the

walrus to an Eskimo answers just as the cocoa-palm does to a South

Sea islander: it feeds him, it clothes him, it heats and illuminates

his “igloo,” and it arms him for the chase, while he builds a summer

shelter and rides upon the sea by virtue of its hide. The morse,

however, is not of much account to the seal-hunters on the Pribylov

Islands. They still find, by stirring up the sand-dunes and digging

about them at Northeast Point, all the ivory that they require for

their domestic use on the islands, nothing else belonging to a walrus

being of the slightest economic value to them. Some authorities

have spoken well of walrus-meat as an article of diet. Either they

had that sauce for it born of inordinate hunger, or else the cooks

deceived them. Starving explorers in the arctic regions could relish

it—_they_ would thankfully and gladly eat anything that was juicy,

and sustained life, with zest and gastronomic fervor. The Eskimo

naturally like it; it is a necessity to their existence, and thus

a relish for it is acquired. I can readily understand, by personal

experience, how a great many, perhaps a majority of our own people,

could speak well, were they north, of seal-meat, of whale “rind,” and

of polar-bear steaks; but I know that a mouthful of fresh or “cured”

walrus-flesh would make their “gorges rise.” The St. Paul natives

refuse to touch it as an article of diet in any shape or manner. I

saw them removing the enormous testicles of an old morse which was

shot, for my purposes, on Walrus Island. They told me they did so in

obedience to the wishes of a widow doctress at the village, Maria

Seedova, who desired a pair for her incantations.

Curiosity, mingled with a desire to really understand, alone tempted

me to taste some walrus-meat which was placed before me at Poonook,

on St. Lawrence Island; and candor compels me to say that it was

worse than the old beaver’s tail which I had been victimized with

in British Columbia, worse than the tough brown-bear steak of

Bristol Bay—in fact, it is the worst of all fresh flesh of which I

know. It had a strong flavor of an indefinite acrid nature, which

turned my palate and my stomach instantaneously and simultaneously,

while the surprised natives stared in bewildered silence at their

astonished and disgusted guest. They, however, greedily put chunks,

two inches square and even larger, of this flesh and blubber into

their mouths as rapidly as the storage room there would permit; and

with what grimy gusto! as the corners of their large lips dripped

with the fatness of their feeding. How little they thought, then,

that in a few short seasons they would die of starvation, sitting

in these same igloos—their caches empty and nothing but endless

fields of barren ice where a life-giving sea should be. The winter

of 1879-80 was one of exceptional rigor in the Arctic, although in

the United States it was unusually mild and open. The ice closed in

solid around St. Lawrence Island—so firm and unshaken by the giant

leverage of wind and tide that all walrus were driven far to the

southward and eastward beyond the reach of those unhappy inhabitants

of that island, who, thus unexpectedly deprived of their mainstay

and support, seemed to have miserably starved to death then, with

an exception of one small village on the north shore: thus, the

residents of Poonook, Poogovellyak, and Kagallegak settlements

perished, to a soul, from hunger; nearly three hundred men, women,

and children. I recall that visit which I made to these alert

Innuits, August, 1874, with sadness, in this unfortunate connection,

because they impressed me with their manifest superiority over the

savages of our northwest coast. They seemed, then, to be living,

during nine months of the year, almost wholly upon the flesh and

oil of the morse. Clean-limbed, bright-eyed, and jovial, they

profoundly impressed me with their happy reliance and subsistence

upon the walrus-herds of Bering Sea. I could not help remarking then,

that these people had never been subjected to the temptations and

subsequent sorrow of putting their trust in princes; hence their

independence and good heart. But now it appears that it will not do

to put your trust in _Rosmarus_ either.

[Illustration: “Newack” and “Oogack.”

[_St. Lawrence Mahlemoöts: pen portraits made at Poogovellyak,

August, 1874._]]

I know that it is said by Parry, by Hall, and lately by others,

that the flesh of the Atlantic walrus is palatable; perhaps the

nature of its food-supply is the cause. We all recognize a wide

difference in pork from hogs fed on corn and those fed on beech-mast

and oak-acorns, and those which have lived upon the offal of the

slaughtering houses, or have gathered the decayed castings of the

sea-shore; the sea-horse of Bering Sea lives upon that which does not

give a pleasant flavor to its flesh.

The range of our Alaskan walrus now appears to be restricted in

the Arctic Ocean to an extreme westward at Cape Chelagskoi, on the

Siberian coast, and an extreme eastward between Point Barrow and

the region of Point Beechey, on the Alaskan shore. It is, however,

substantially confined between Koliutchin Bay, Siberia, and Point

Barrow, Alaska. As far as its distribution in polar waters is

concerned, and how far to the north it travels from these coasts of

two continents, I am unable to present any well-authenticated data

illustrative of the subject; the shores of Wrangel Island were found

in possession of walrus-herds during the season of 1881.

This walrus has, however, a very wide range of distribution in

Alaska, though not near so great as in prehistoric times. They abound

to the eastward and southeastward of St. Paul, over in Bristol Bay,

where great numbers congregate on the sand-bars and flats, now

flooded, now bared by the rising and ebbing of the tide; they are

hunted here to a considerable extent for their ivory. No morse are

found south of the Aleutian Islands; still, not more than forty-five

or fifty years ago, small gatherings of these animals were killed

here and there on some islands between Kadiak and Oonimak Pass; the

greatest aggregate of them, south of Bering Straits, will always be

found in the estuaries of Bristol Bay and on the north side of the

peninsula of Alaska.

I have been frequently questioned whether, in my opinion, more than a

short space of time would elapse ere the walrus was exterminated, or

not, since our whalers had begun to hunt them in Bering Sea and the

Arctic Ocean. To this I frankly make answer that I do not know enough

of the subject to give a correct judgment. The walrus spend most

of their time in waters that are within reach of these skilful and

hardy navigators; and if they (the walrus) are of sufficient value

to a whaler, he can and undoubtedly will make a business of killing

them, and work the same sad result that he has brought about with the

mighty schools of cetacea which once whistled and bared their backs,

throughout the now deserted waters of Bering Sea, in perfect peace

and seclusion prior to 1842. The returns of the old Russian America

Company show that an annual average of ten thousand walrus have

been slain by the Eskimo since 1799 to 1867. There are a great many

left yet; but, unless the oil of _Rosmarus_ becomes very precious

commercially, I think the shoal waters of Bristol Bay and Kuskokvim

mouth, together with the eccentric tides thereof, will preserve the

species indefinitely. Forty years ago, when the North Pacific was a

rendezvous of the greatest whaling-fleet that ever floated, those

vessels could not, nor can they now, approach nearer than sixty or

even eighty miles of many muddy shoals, sands, and bars upon which

the walrus rest in Bristol Bay, scattered in herds of a dozen or

so to bodies of thousands, living in lethargic peace and almost

unmolested, except in several small districts which are carefully

hunted over by the natives of Oogashik for oil and ivory. I have been

credibly informed that they also breed in Bristol Bay, and along its

coast as far north as Cape Avinova, during seasons of exceptional

rigor in the Arctic.

[Illustration: The Death-stroke.

[_Mahlemoöts Morse-hunting in the summer._]]

The Innuits of St. Lawrence, and all of their race living above them,

hunt the walrus without any excitement other than that of securing

such quarry. They never speak of real danger. When they do not shoot

them as these beasts drift in sleepy herds on ice-floes, then they

surprise them on the beaches or reefs and destroy a herd by spearing

and lancing. When harpooned or speared, a head of the weapon is so

made as to detach itself from its shank, and by thus sticking in the

carcass a line of walrus-hide is made fast to the plethoric body of

_Rosmarus_. When this brute has expended its surplus vitality by

towing the natives a few miles in a mad, frenzied burst of swimming,

their bidarrah is quietly drawn up to its puffing form close enough

to permit of a _coup_ by an ivory-headed lance; it is then towed to

a beach at high water. When the ebb is well out, the huge carcass

is skinned by its dusky butchers, who out it up into large square

chunks of flesh and blubber, which are deposited in queer little

“Dutch-oven” caches of each family that are made especially for its

reception.

Dressing walrus-hides is the only serious hard labor which the

Alaskan Innuit subjects himself to. He cannot lay it entirely upon

the women, as the Sioux do when they spread buffalo bodies all

over the plains. It is too much for female strength alone, and so

the men bear a hand right lustily in this business. It takes from

four to six stout natives, when a green walrus-hide is removed, to

carry it to a sweating-hole, where it is speedily unhaired. Then,

stretched alternately upon air-frames and pinned over the earth, it

is gradually scraped down to a requisite thinness for use in covering

the bidarrah skeletons, etc.

There are probably six or seven thousand human beings in Alaska who

live largely by virtue of the existence of _Rosmarus_, and every

year, when the season opens, they gather together by settlements,

as they are contiguous, and discuss the walrus chances for a coming

year as earnestly and as wisely as our farmers who confer over their

prospects for corn and potatoes. But an Eskimo hunter is a sadly

improvident mortal, though he is not wasteful of morse life, while we

are provident, and yet wasteful of our resources.

If the North Pole is ever reached by our people, they will do so only

when they can eat walrus-meat and get plenty of it—at least that is

my belief—and, knowing now what the diet is, I think the journey to

that hyperborean _ultima_ is a long one, though there is plenty of

meat and many men who want to try it.

[Illustration: PINNACLE ISLET

An Active Volcanic Nodule near St. Matthew’s Island: (bearing W. N.

W. 2m.)]

Unless we spend a winter in the Arctic Ocean above Bering Straits we

will not be able to see a polar bear; but there is one place, and

one place only, in Alaska where in midsummer we can land, and there

behold on its swelling, green, and flowery uplands hundreds of these

huge ursine brutes. That place is the island of St. Matthew, and it

is right in our path as we leave St. Lawrence and head for Oonimak

Pass and home.

[Illustration: Mahlemoöts Landing a Walrus.

[_An Innuit “double purchase.” St. Lawrence Island._]]

St. Matthew Island is an odd, jagged, straggling reach of bluffs and

headlands, connected by bars and lowland spits. The former, seen at a

little distance out at sea, resemble half a dozen distinct islands.

The extreme length is twenty-two miles, and it is exceedingly narrow

in proportion. Hall Island is a small one that lies west from it,

separated from it by a strait (Sarichev) less than three miles

in width, while the only other outlying land is a sharp, jagged

pinnacle-rock, rearing itself over a thousand feet abruptly from the

sea, standing five miles south of Sugar-loaf Cone on the main island.

From a cleft and blackened fissure, near the summit of this serrated

pinnacle-rock, volcanic fire and puffs of black smoke have been

recorded as issuing when first discovered, and they have issued ever

since.

Our first landing, early in the morning of August 5th, was at the

spot under Cub Hill, near Cape Upright, the easternmost point of

the island. The air came out from the northwest cold and chilly, and

snow and ice were on the hill-sides and in the gullies. The sloping

sides and summits of these hills were of a grayish, russet tinge,

with deep-green swale flats running down into the lowlands, which are

there more intensely green and warmer in tone. A pebble-bar formed

by the sea between Cape Upright and Waterfall Head is covered with a

deep stratum of glacial drift, carried down from the flanks of Polar

and Cub Hills, and extending over two miles of this water-front to

the westward, where it is met by a similar washing from that quarter.

Back, and in the centre of this neck, are several small lakes and

lagoons without fish; but emptying into them are a number of clear,

lively brooks, in which were salmon-parr of fine quality. The little

lakes undoubtedly receive them; hence they were land-locked salmon.

A luxuriant growth of thick moss and grass, interspersed, existed

almost everywhere on the lowest ground; and occasionally strange

dome-like piles of peat were lifted four or five feet above marshy

swales, and appeared so remarkably like abandoned barraboras that we

repeatedly turned from our course to satisfy ourselves personally to

the contrary.

As these lowlands ascend to the tops of higher hills, all vegetation

changes rapidly to a simple coat of cryptogamic gray and light

russet, with a slippery slide for the foot wherever a steep flight or

climbing was made. Water oozes and trickles everywhere under foot,

since an exhalation of frost is in progress all the time. Sometimes

these swales rise and cross hill-summits to the valleys again without

any interruption in their wet, swampy character. The action of ice

in rounding down and grinding hills, chipping bluffs, and chiselling

everywhere, carrying the soil and _débris_ into depressions and

valleys, is most beautifully exhibited on St. Matthew. The hills

at the foot of Sugar-loaf Cone are bare and literally polished by

ice-sheets and slides of melting snow. Rocks and soil from these

summits and slopes are carried down and “dumped,” as it were, in

numberless little heaps beneath, so that the foot of every hill and

out on the plain around strongly put us in mind of those refuse-piles

which are dropped over the commons or dumping-grounds of a city.

Nowhere can the work of ice be seen to finer advantage than here,

aided and abetted, as it undoubtedly is, by the power of wind,

especially with regard to that chiselling action of frost on the

faces of ringing metallic porphyry cliffs.

The flora here is as extensive as on the Seal Islands, two hundred

miles to the southward; but the species of _gramma_ are not near so

varied. Indeed, there is very little grass around about. Wherever

there is soil it seems to be converted by the abundant moisture into

a swale or swamp, over which we travelled as on a quaking water-bed;

but on the rounded hilltops and ridge-summits wind-driven and

frost-splintered shingle makes good walking. Both of these climatic

agencies evidently have a permanent iron grip on this island.

The west end of St. Matthew differs materially from the east. A

fantastic weathering of the rocks at Cathedral Point, Hall Island,

will strike the eye of a most casual observer as his ship enters the

straits going south. This eastern wall of that point looms up from

the water like a row of immense cedar-tree trunks. The scaling off

of basaltic porphyry and a growth of yellowish-green and red mossy

lichens made the effect most real, while a vast bank of fog lying

just overhead seemed to shut out from our vision the foliage and

branches that should be above. This north cape of Hall Island changes

when approached, with every mile’s distance, to a new and altogether

different profile.

Our visit at the west end of the island of St. Matthew was,

geologically speaking, the most interesting experience I have ever

had in Alaska. A geologist who may desire to study the greatest

variety of igneous forms _in situ_, within a short and easy radius,

can do no better than make his survey here. These rocks are not only

varied by mineral colors, together with a fantastic arrangement of

basalt and porphyry, but are rich and elegant in their tinting by the

profuse growth of lichens—brown, yellow, green, and bronze.

An old Russian record prepared us, in landing, to find bears here,

but it did not cause us to be equal to the sight we saw, for we met

bears—yea, hundreds of them. I was going to say that I saw bears

here as I had seen seals to the south, but that, of course, will not

do, unless as a mere figure of speech. During the nine days that

we were busy in surveying this island, we never were one moment,

while on land, out of sight of a bear or bears; their white forms

in the distance always answered to our search, though they ran from

our immediate presence with a wild celerity, travelling in a swift,

shambling gallop, or trotting off like elephants. Whether due to the

fact that they were gorged with food, or that the warmer weather of

summer subdued their temper, we never could coax one of these animals

to show fight. Its first impulse and its last one, while within our

influence, was flight—males, females, and cubs—all, when surprised by

us, rushing with one accord right, left, and in every direction, over

the hills and far away.

After shooting half a dozen, we destroyed no more, for we speedily

found that we had made their acquaintance at the height of their

shedding-season, and their snowy and highly prized winter-dress was a

very different article from the dingy, saffron-colored, grayish fur

that was flying like downy feathers in the wind, when ever rubbed

or pulled by our hands. They never growled, or uttered any sound

whatever, even when shot or wounded.

Here, on the highest points, where no moss ever grows, and nothing

but a fine porphyritic shingle slides and rattles beneath our tread,

are bear-roads leading from nest to nest, or stony lairs, which they

have scooped out of frost-splintered _débris_ on the hill-sides,

and where old she-bears undoubtedly bring forth their young: but it

was not plain, because we saw them only sleeping, at this season of

the year, on the lower ground; they seemed to delight in stretching

themselves upon, and rolling over, the rankest vegetation.

They sleep soundly, but fitfully, rolling their heavy arms and

legs about as they doze. For naps they seem to prefer little

grassy depressions on the sunny hill-sides and along the numerous

water-courses, and their paths were broad and well beaten all over

the island. We could not have observed less than two hundred and

fifty or three hundred of these animals while we were there; at one

landing on Hall Island there were sixteen in full sight at one sweep

of our eyes, scampering up and off from the approach of the ship’s

boat.

Provided with more walrus-meat than he knows what to do with, the

polar bear, in my opinion, has never cared much for the Seal Islands;

the natives have seen them, however, on St. Paul, and its old men

have their bear stories, which they tell to a rising generation.

The last “medvait” killed on St. Paul Island was shot at Bogaslov

in 1848; none have ever come down since, and very few were there

before, but those few evidently originated at and made St. Matthew

Island their point of departure. Hence I desire to notice this

hitherto unexplored spot, standing, as it does, two hundred miles to

the northward of St. Paul, and which, until Lieutenant Maynard and

myself, in 1874, surveyed and walked over its entire coast-line,

had not been trodden by white men, or by natives, since that dismal

record made by a party of five Russians and seven Aleutes who passed

the winter of 1810-11 on it, and who were so stricken down with

scurvy as to cause the death of all the Russians save one, while the

rest barely recovered and left early the following year. We found the

ruins of those huts which had been occupied by this unfortunate and

discomfited party of fur-hunters; they were landed there to secure

polar bears in the depth of winter, when such shaggy coats should be

the finest.

As we complete our review of St. Matthew and its ursine occupation,

the circuit of Alaska has been made—its impression we have recorded,

and the path from here home again is a bee-line to the Golden Gate

over

“Nothing, nothing but the sea—

Vast in its immensity?”

FOOTNOTES:

[163] Captain F. W. Beechey H. M. S. _Blossom_, voyage 1825-28,

inclusive. The seasons of 1826 and 1827 were passed in these waters.

Murdoch, who passed the winters of 1881-83, inclusive, here, has

given an interesting _résumé_ of the natural history, etc., of the

spot. Beechey’s account of the people and country are confirmed by

him.

[164] These favored basaltic tables are also commented upon in

similar connection by an old writer in 1775, Shuldham, who calls

them “echouries;” he is describing the Atlantic walrus as it appears

at the Magdalen Islands: “The echouries are formed principally

by nature, being a gradual slope of soft rock, with which the

Magdalen Islands abound, about eighty to one hundred yards wide at

the water-side, and spreading so as to contain, near the summit, a

very considerable number.” The tables at Walrus Island and those at

Southwest Point are very much less in area than those described by

Shuldham, and are a small series of low, saw-tooth jetties of the

harder basalt, washed in relief, from a tufa matrix; there is no room

to the landward of them for many walruses to lie upon. The _Odobœnus_

does not like to haul up on loose or shingly shores, because it

has the greatest difficulty in getting a solid hold for its fore

flippers with which to pry up and move ahead its huge, clumsy body.

When it hauls on a sand-beach, it never attempts to crawl out to the

dry region back of the surf, but lies just awash, at high water. In

this fashion they used to rest all along the sand-reaches of St.

Paul prior to the Russian advent in 1786-87; and when Shuldham was

inditing his letters on the habits of _Rosmarus_, _Odobœnus_ was then

lying out in full force and great physical peace on the Pribylov

Islands.

[165] It is, and always will be, a source of sincere regret to me

and my friends that I did not bodily preserve this huge paunch and

its contents. It would have filled a half-barrel very snugly, and

then its mass of freshly swallowed clams (_Mya truncata_), filmy

streaks of macerated kelp, and fragments of crustaceans, could have

been carefully examined during a week of leisure at the Smithsonian

Institution. It was, however, ripped open so quickly by one of the

Aleutes, who kicked the contents out, that I hardly knew what had

been done ere the strong-smelling subject was directly under my nose.

The natives then were anxious that I should hurry through with my

sketches, measurements, etc., so that they might the sooner push off

their egg-laden bidarrah and cross back to the main island before

the fogs would settle over our homeward track, or the rapidly rising

wind shift to the northward and imperil our passage. Weighty reasons

these, which so fully impressed me, that this unique stomach of a

_carnivora_ was overlooked and left behind; hence, with the exception

of curiously turning over the clams (especially those uncrushed

specimens), which formed the great bulk of its contents, I have no

memoranda or even distinct recollection of the other materials that

were incorporated.

INDEX.

A

Adahk, island of, 183

Aggatoo, island of, 179

Agricultural features in Sitkan region, 18, 22, 24, 25, 35

in Kadiak region, 103, 106, 107

in Cook’s Inlet region, 83, 84, 85, 86

in Aleutian region, 184, 185

in Seal Islands, 204

in Yukon Valley and the North, 421, 443

Agents of the United States Government, 251, 252

Akootan, island of, 151, 153

volcano of, 153

Akoon, island of, 150, 154

wolves on, 156

Alaska, its area and population, 13, 14

its discovery, 1, 2, 3, 5

its purchase by United States Government, 11, 12

Alaska Commercial Company, its history, 224, 245, 247, 248, 249

Albinos and monstrosities, few among fur-seals, 306

Alexander Archipelago, its land and scenery, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19,

26, 271

its earliest white occupation, 28, 29, 30

all visitors necessarily go there, 14, 15

Alexandrovsk, established by Kolmakov (1834), 375, 376

Aleutes, traits, characteristics of, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168,

169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174

Algæ, or sea-weeds, those of Sitkan waters, 20

those of Aleutian waters, 182

those of Pribylov waters, 214, 215

American traders, business relations of Baranov with, 28

business methods in Sitkan region, 36, 37, 38, 39

business methods in Aleutian region, 129, 191

business methods in Yukon and Kuskokvim regions, 384, 414, 418, 424

business methods in Arctic Ocean, 425

Amchitka, island of, 181, 184

Amlia, island of, 182

Animals, fur-bearing and food, in the Sitkan region, 55, 61, 62

in the Cook’s Inlet region, 91

in the Aleutian region, 151, 156, 163, 178

in the Nooshagak region, 381, 382, 399

in the Kuskokvim region, 381, 382, 399

in the Yukon and Arctic region, 418, 425, 426, 440

Area and extent of Alaska, 13, 14

Arrie egg-shells, their toughness, 222

Atkha, island and natives of, 144, 180, 181, 182, 183

Attitudes and land postures of fur-seals, 280

Attoo, extreme western land of North American continent, 143, 179, 180

Auroral and nephelogical phenomena, 158, 198, 420

Autocratic powers of the old Russian American Company, 9

Avatanak, island of, 154

B

Bachelor, or “holluschiokie” fur-seals, 294, 295, 296, 297

Baird, Professor S. F., 190

Banks, codfishing, 122, 123, 124

Baranov, Alexander, character of, 6, 28

Barrabkie, a, how it is made, 135, 166, 167

Basking sharks and killer-whales, 325, 327

Bath, Innuit, vile methods, 387

Barrow, Point, 440

Battles of the fur-seals, 265, 266

Bays indenting coast of Kadiak, 115, 116

of Oonalashka, 159

Bear “Roads,” 89

Beaver Bay, Oonalashka Island, 176

Bering’s expedition of Alaskan discovery, 1, 2, 3

the discovery of Alaska, 2, 3

the ill-fated homeward voyage, 3, 4, 124

the shipwreck and escape of survivors, 4, 191

Bering Straits, 428, 429, 430, 431, 441

Belcovsky, village of, 119, 120

Bidarrah, use of, how it is made, 346, 347, 453, 454

Bidarka, use of, how it is made, 133

Birth of fur-seals, 282

Bishop Innocent Veniaminov, his labors, 309

Blubber of fur-seal, sea-lion, mahklok, and beluga, 292, 345, 405

Bogaslov Islet, volcanic eruption of, recently, 186, 167

Borka, village of, 176, 177

Bristol Bay, 118, 398

Breeding grounds, number of fur-seals on, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314,

315, 316, 317, 319, 320, 321

of sea-lions, 187, 310, 354, 356, 357, 358, 361

of hair-seals, 256

of sea-otters, 132

of water-fowl, 210, 211

Burials and funerals of the Sitkans or Thlinkets, 50

of the Innuits or Eskimo, 389, 410

of the Aleutes, 178

Burnt or Brulé districts, 408, 409

C

Camps, Innuit summer, 381, 426

Kenaitze hunting, 91

Canoes, Sitkan, 62, 63

Ingaleek, 417

Carousals, Aleutian beer orgies, 137, 174, 175

Carving bone and ivory, skill of Innuits, 384

wood, skill of Haidahs, 49

Cape Prince of Wales, 428, 429, 431

Capture of sea-otters, 128, 191, 133

of sea-lions, 364, 365

Carcasses of slaughtered fur-seals, 350, 351, 352, 353

Cassiar Gold-diggings, 17, 18, 25

Cattle in Alaska, 86, 106, 107, 178, 184

Cereals, total failure in Alaska, 107

Chernaboor islets, 138, 141

Christianity among the Aleutes and Kadiakers, 115, 116, 171, 172,

241, 246

among the Innuits, 410

among the Thlinkets, 40, 41, 42

Church, Greek, 40, 41, 120, 121, 137, 164, 174, 178, 241, 388

Clans, the several Sitkan tribes, 43

Climate of the Sitkan region, 24

of the Mount St. Elias region, 72, 77

of the Cook’s Inlet region, 93

of the Kadiak region (see Cook’s Inlet)

of the Aleutian Islands, 158, 185

of the Pribylov Islands, 194, 195, 196, 197

of the Nooshagak region, 382, 404

of the Kuskokvim region, 382, 404, 407

of Michaelovsky and the Yukon, 421, 422, 424

of Arctic coast of Alaska, 427

Coal in Cook’s Inlet, 125

in the Arctic, 125, 438

in Shoomagin Group, 125

in Sitkan region, 70, 71

Coins, Russian names and values of, 8

Codfish, industry of, at Oonga, 122, 123, 124

Companies, rival trading, 191

Consumption, chief cause of death-rate among natives, 110

Cook’s Inlet, characteristics of, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87

country north of, 87

Copper River, its character, 76, 77

Cossacks, Russian and Siberian, 128, 159

Courage of fur-seals, 279

Creoles, what they are, 108

Crillon, Mount, 72

Cruelties inflicted by Russian traders upon natives, 6, 128, 147, 159

Curing and dressing fur-seal skins, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349

D

Dangers of Alaskan coast navigation, 76, 83, 117, 123, 218, 219, 374,

375, 395, 440, 442

to which young fur-seals are exposed, 283, 329, 330

Death, natural, of fur-seals, 307

Decay of the Russian American Company after Baranov’s removal, 11

Deer, Sitkan, 55, 62

Rein, 121, 122, 397, 418

Definition of technical terms on Seal Islands, 320, 321

Delta of the Copper River, 75, 77

of the Yukon River, 414, 415

Deschnev, Simeon, his remarkable voyage (1648), 429

Diet of natives of the Sitkan region, 58

of the Cook’s Inlet region, 95

of the Kadiak region, 136, 137

of the Aleutian region, 168

of the Seal Islands, 241, 242, 243

of the Innuits, 382, 383, 454, 455, 456

Diomedes, islands of, Bering Straits, 430, 431, 432, 441

Diseases, natives most afflicted with, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 238

Docility of fur-seals when driven, and being killed, 335

Dogs, Eskimo, 388

Sitkan, 61

none on the Aleutian Chain, 158

Dressing fur-seal skins, 348, 349

Driving fur-seals, 333, 334, 336

sea-lions, 366, 367, 368

Dwellings of the Aleutes, 133, 166, 167

of the Innuits, 378, 379, 380, 381, 426

of the Cook’s Inlet Kenaitze, 91, 92, 93

of the Sitkans or Thlinkets, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 60, 64

of the Seal Islanders, 232, 233

of the white fur-traders, 36, 175

E

Earthquakes, 146, 147, 148, 161, 186, 189

Eggs, water-fowl, gastronomic value of, 211

Epidemic among seals, 324

Employés, superannuated “old colonial settlers,” 85, 86

Eskimo of Alaska (see Innuits)

Experiments with fur-seals, 263, 264

Extermination of fur-seals, 231, 307, 308, 309, 324

of sea-otters, 129

of walrus, 458, 459

Extent and area of Alaska, 13, 14

Eyes of fur-seals, beauty of, 291

of fur-seals, lurid lights in, 341

of sea-lion, ferocity of, 355

of walrus, grotesqueness of, 449

F

Fairweather, Mount, 71, 72

Familiar flowering plants on the Seal Islands, 200, 201, 202, 203

on the Arctic coast of Alaska, 440

Fasting, long-protracted, of male fur-seals, 272, 273

Festivals, native Innuit, 390, 391, 392, 393, 423

First school in Alaska, 102

First mission in Alaska, 102

Fishing industries of the Sitkans, 59

of the Aleutes, 168

of the Shoomagin Islands, 122, 123, 124

of the Kuskokvim and Yukon, 404

of the Arctic, 434, 435

of Americans at Cook’s Inlet, 93

of Americans at Kadiak Island, 115, 116

Flowers, wild, great abundance of, 177, 420

Forest trees of Alaska, 21, 22, 79, 85, 103, 104, 105, 157, 408, 409,

416, 424

Forests of Alaska, 21, 71, 408, 409

Foxes, blue (_Vulpes lagopus_), 180, 205, 206

red, 180, 206

Four Peaks, or “Cheetiery Sopochnie,” 186

Fruits indigenous to Sitkan district, 22, 23

indigenous to Aleutian district, 168

indigenous to Kuskokvim district, 411

indigenous to Seal Islands, 201

Fur-seal, arrival of at breeding grounds, 292, 293-297

boldness of, 129, 331

description of adult male, 258, 259, 260, 261

description of adult female, 273, 274, 275, 276

description of “pups,” 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289

odor and noise of, 265, 270, 281

erroneous ideas of its skin, 347, 348

effect of warm weather on, 306

first arrival at the islands, 262

food of, 328, 329

healthiness of, 324

high order of instinct of, 258, 301

numbers of, 310-313, 324, 326

increase or diminution or, 317, 318, 328, 333

in the waters around the islands, 286, 299, 300, 302, 331, 361

manner of killing and skinning, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342

manner of salting, dressing, and shipping skins of, 345-349

meat of, 344

method of land travel, 260

natural enemies of, 325, 327, 330

noise on the breeding rookeries, 270, 271

movements on land and in water, 286, 289, 298, 362

pelagic range of, in search of food, 329, 330

“podding” of its “pups,” 289

polygamous and angry males, 275, 276, 277, 278

position and selection of hauling-grounds, 295, 296

power of land locomotion, 267

pre-emption of rookeries, 265, 276

prostration of, by heat or driving, 271, 272

range of vision of, 291

relative growth and weight of, 304, 305

sanguinary combats of, 265, 266

shedding of hair and fur, 285, 290, 302, 303

sleep of, 280, 281

sleep on land of, 280, 281

skill in selecting rookeries, 277

strength and courage of the male, 265, 267

tabulated result of surveys, 312

vitality of, 283, 323

voice of, 268, 269, 270

G

Games, festivals, etc., of the Aleutes, 239, 240, 241

of the Innuits, 393, 423

of the Thlinkets or Sitkans, 65

Glaciers of the Aleutian Islands, 183

of Cook’s Inlet, 84

of Prince William Sound, 78

of the Sitkan Archipelago and Cross Sound, 19, 20

of Mount St. Elias region, 75

of Copper River region, 76

easy approach to Grand, Icy Bay, 19, 20

Gold-bearing quartz, Sitkan Archipelago, 69, 70

Cook’s Inlet, 96, 97

Golovin Bay, Norton’s Sound, mines in, 424

Goreloi, island of, 183, 184

Government, civil laws, etc., for Alaska, 42

Greek Church, in Alaska, 40, 41, 120, 121, 137, 164, 174, 178, 388

Guano, accumulation prevented, 221

H

Haidah Indians, best savages of the Sitkan region, 44

house, or “rancherie,” 46, 47, 48, 49, 51

Hair-seal, description of, 255, 256, 257, 332

picture of _Phoca-fœtida_, 441

picture of _E. barbatus_, 383

Halibut, Sitkan natives fishing for, 55, 63

Aleutes fishing for, 212, 213

Hauling grounds, selection of, by fur-seals, 294, 295, 296

Hogs, 108, 208

Hot springs, near Sitka, 68

Peninsula and Aleutian Islands, 122, 183, 184

Homeward voyage and shipwreck of Bering, 3, 4

Human protection of fur-seals, 373

Hunting sea-otter, 127, 128, 129, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139,

140, 141, 142, 143, 144

Hutchinson, H.M., his labors, 247, 248

I

Ice Company, San Francisco, 105

Icy Bay, grand glacier in, 19, 20

Ilyamna, volcano of, 87

lake, 396

Implements, agricultural, manufacture of, at Sitka, 33

Indians of the Sitkan region, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 51, 52, 53, 54,

59, 60, 64, 65

Ingaleek, or Interior Indians of Alaska, 408, 417, 418

Innuits, or Eskimo, characteristics of, 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381,

382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 392, 393, 394,

411, 426, 431, 432, 437, 456, 457, 458

Intoxication among Alaskan natives, 66, 137, 174, 175, 235

J

Japanese and Aleutian facial resemblance, 163

Jumping out of water by fur-seals, 300, 301

Juneau, gold mining at, 69

Juvenal, tragic death of Father, 396, 397

K

Kadiak, the island of, 98, 99, 103

sheep raising, 107

old colonial citizens of, 104

sea-otter hunting by natives of, 116

old ship-building industry, 105, 106

Ice Company of San Francisco, 105

timber line drawn upon, 103

wars of early Russian traders, 102, 103

visit, and establishment of Shellikov, 99, 100, 101, 102

Kanaga, island of, 181, 183

Kaniags, natives of Kadiak, 109, 110

Kamlayka, the water-proof, 371

Kashga, the Innuit, 385, 386, 387

Kenai Peninsula, 84, 85, 86

Kenaitze Indians, habits and appearance of, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93

queer architecture of, 92

Killer whales, their ferocity, 325, 327, 330

Killing grounds, Seal Islands, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341

Killing sea-lions, method of natives, 368, 369

Kings Island, or Ookivok, 425, 426

Kotzebue Sound, characteristics of, 432, 433, 434

Kolmakovsky, trading-post of, 406

Krenitzin Group of Islands, 148

Kuskokvim region, characteristics of, 402, 403, 404, 405

density of population of, 403, 404

commercial poverty of it, 407, 408

prevalence of mosquitoes in it, 405, 406

L

Land and scenery of the Sitkan region, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 26, 27

of the Mount St. Elias region, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75

of the Cook’s Inlet, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86

of the Kadiak district, 98, 99, 100, 103, 104, 105, 106, 117

of the Aleutian district, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156,

157, 162, 163

of the Pribylov Islands, 215, 226, 227

of the Nooshagak region, 374, 375, 376, 395

of the Kuskokvim region, 395, 403, 404, 405, 406, 407

of the Yukon region, 395

of the Bering Sea Islands, 425, 426, 427, 430, 442, 443, 461, 462

of the Alaskan Arctic region, 424, 425, 434, 436, 437, 438, 439,

440

Law, natural, obeyed among the fur-seals, 310

protecting the seal islands, 250

Lead, ore of, miner’s prospecting for, 424

Lease of the Seal Islands, 250

M

Mackerel, Atkhan, or “yellow-fish,” 181, 182

Mahklok, big hair-seal (_Erignathus_), 382, 383

Makooshin, volcano of, 160, 161

Mammoth and mastodon, fossil remains of, 424, 434

Massacre of Baranov’s Sitkan garrison (1801), 28

of Drooshinnin’s party, 159

of Seribniekov’s party, 76

by Glottov, of Oonalaskhan natives, 160

by Glottov, of Four Mountain natives, 186

Measles and typhoid-pneumonia in, 64, 112, 113

Medicines and pathology of Alaskan savages, 112

Michaelovsky, trading-post of, 413, 419

Mirage, the Arctic, 421

Missionaries, Russian, labors of, 99, 106, 121, 388

Moose, hunting of, 407

Morgan, Captain E., labors of, 247, 248

Morserovia, village of, 121

Morse (see Walrus)

Mosses, Alaskan, 22, 38, 149, 155, 163, 200, 318, 398, 403, 420,

442, 462

Mosquitoes, curse of Alaska, 405, 406

none on Seal Islands, 204

Mummies, Aleutian, 186

Mushrooms, on the Seal Island, 203, 204

Musk-ox not found in Alaska, 418

Mutilation of female fur-seals, 276

N

Nephelogical and auroral phenomena, 158, 198, 420

Niebaum, Captain G., labors of, 247

Nikolsky, village of, 184

Nooshagak region and village of, 374, 375, 376, 398

Nomenclature of fur-seal rookeries, 320

Norton Sound, 424

O

Occupation of Alaska by Americans (1867), 12

of Alaska by Russians (1745-63), 128

of the Seal Islands by Russians (1786), 192, 193

of the Seal Islands by Americans (1868), 247, 248

Odor from the killing grounds, 350, 351

from the fur-seal blubber, 292, 372

Oil, fur-seal and sea-lion, 372

oolachan grease, 57

herring, 57

beluga and mahklok, 405

coal, use of by Aleutes, 167

“Old colonial settlers,” 85, 86

Ommaney, Cape, 27

Oomnak, island of, 184, 185

Oonalashka, village and island of, 139, 156, 157, 158

Oonimak, island of, 145, 146, 147

Oonga, village and fisheries, 122, 123, 124

Ookamok, island and penal settlement on, 116, 117

Ookivok, island and village of, 425, 426

Oogashik, village of, 119

Oonalga, island of, 155

Oogalgan, island of, 155

Oogamok, island of, 148

Otter Island, or “Bobrovia,” 219

Otter, sea, hunting, 120, 179

a description of it, 130, 131, 132

P

Parka, the Innuit garment, 377, 378, 410, 411

Pelagic fur sealing, 452, 453

Peninsula of Alaska, 82, 117, 118

Penal settlement, R. A. Co. on Ookamok, 116, 117

Pneumonia, typhoid, scourge of, recently, 112, 113

Pogromnia Sopka, volcano of, 146

Polar bears, on the Seal Islands, 194, 464

on St. Matthew’s Island, 463, 464

Poonook, islets and village of, 444

Population of Alaska, 13, 14

Poultry kept in Alaska, 107, 185

Port Clarence, description of, 427, 428

Potatoes, how cultivated, and where, 60, 61, 106, 421

Powers and privileges of old Russian Company, 9, 10, 11

Pribylov, Gerassim, the discoverer of the Seal Islands, 191, 192, 323

Pribylov Islands, agriculture on, 204

algæ of the, 214, 215

animals and birds, 208, 209, 210, 211, 213, 214, 223, 224

churches and schools, 241, 246

climate and winds, 194, 195, 196, 197

colonization, 193, 230, 231

creature-comforts of natives now, 232, 233

description of natives of, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239

dimensions and contour of, 215, 226, 227

disappearance of seals and birds in winter, 305, 306, 327

discussion of seal life, 255, 258, 292, 293, 294

eligibility of, 229, 230

flowering plants, etc., of, 200, 201, 202, 203

fogs and mists of, 194, 195, 306

gastronomic value of water-fowl eggs, 211

general business methods of sealing, 234, 237, 245, 246, 252

geographical position of, 194

geological structure of, 199, 215, 216, 217, 224, 225, 227, 228

grand total of fur-seals on, 312

isolation of rookeries on, 191, 193, 194

insects of, 204

lack of harbors in the, 217, 218

land animals of the, 205, 206, 207

peculiar advantages of, to fur-seals, 194, 195, 230

Pribylov Islands, peculiar cats on the, 207

polar bears on the, 194, 464

poultry kept on the, 208

remarks on walrus of the, 255, 332

Russian slaughter on, 316

scarcity of fish around the, 212

status of early colonists, 231, 232

sheep, on the rookeries, 270

stock-raising on the, 207, 208

vast numbers of water-fowl on the, 220, 221, 222

Veniaminov’s account of the, 194, 200

vigilance of the natives, 253

weight, growth, etc., of fur-seals on the 278, 279, 304, 305

Prince Frederick Sound, its awful scenic grandeur, 23

Prince William Sound, its gloomy scenic character, 78

Prince of Wales Island, 15, 99

Prostration of natives in sunshine, 197

of fur-seals, when driven, 336

Protection of fur-seals, 326, 327, 332, 373

Pups, fur-seal, description of, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287

learning to swim, 287, 288, 289

Q

Quartz mines near Sitka, 69, 70

on Douglas Island, 70

R

Reindeer, 121, 122, 397, 418

marked difference from that of Siberia, 397, 398

Rocks of St. Matthew’s Island, beauty of, 463

Rookeries, Pribylov Islands, 292, 293, 294, 310, 311, 312

Resurrection Bay, first Alaskan shipyard there, 79

Russian-American Company, its history, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 103

Russian coins, their names and value, 8

exploration and traders, bad record of, 4, 5, 6

rival companies (1745-1786), 191

seal islands, Bering and Copper, 327, 373

Governors living at Sitka, 34

Russians, as they lived at Sitka, 32, 33

S

Saanak, great sea-otter camp of, 138, 141, 142

Saint Elias, Mount, 73

George Village, Pribylov Group, 352

Lawrence Island, Bering Sea, 442, 443

Matthew’s Island, Bering Sea, 461, 462, 463

Michaels, post of, 413, 419

Saint Nicholas, redoubt, Kenai, 84

Paul Village, Pribylov Group, 352

Salmon in the Sitkan region, 56

in Cook’s Inlet, Sitkan region, 87, 94, 95, 96

in the Kadiak district, 115, 116

in the Aleutian district, 168, 185

in the Nooshagak district, 398, 399, 400

in the Kuskokvim district, 404

in the Yukon district, 417, 418

in the Alaskan Arctic, 434, 435

Salt House, work in, at Saint Paul, 345, 346

Semeisopochnoi, islands of, 181

Schools, 120, 173

Scrofula, virulence of, among Alaskan natives, 111

Sea-cow, _Rhytina stelleri_, 4

Seal (see Fur-seal, Hair-seal)

Seal Islands (see Pribylov Islands)

Seal and walrus hunting, Innuit, 400, 426, 440, 441, 460, 461

Sea-otter, a description of it, 130, 131, 132

early Russian hunt for, 128, 191

native hunters of, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 179, 181

Sea-lions, arrival at breeding grounds, 357

_Eumetopias stelleri_, adult males, 354, 355, 356, 357

_Eumetopias stelleri_, adult females, 357

description of a fight between rivals, 355, 356

general uses of, to natives, 363, 369

natives driving the, 364, 365, 366, 367

manner of capture of, 364, 365

manner of penning or coralling, 365

manner of killing them on St. Paul, 368, 369

meat, good quality of, 372

sites of their abandoned rookeries, 321, 322

St. George, the last resort for, 362, 363

shedding hair, 360

shyness and relative cowardice, 332, 356

Shamans, their services, 50, 112

Sheep, trial, and failure to raise in Alaska, 107

Shellikov, Grigoria, his labors, 99, 100, 101, 102

Shipbuilding in Alaska, 79, 80, 105, 106

Shipyard at Sitka, 32

Shishaldin, beautiful volcano of, 146

Shoomagin Islands, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126

Siberian coast, Bering Straits’ shore, 429

Sitka, its history, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32

as it is to-day, 33, 34, 35

Small-pox, epidemic of, 64, 113, 421

Soil and climate, not favorable to agriculture (see Agriculture)

Special Agents of the Treasury Department, 251, 252

Sports and pastimes of the natives, 65, 175

of the young fur-seals, 298, 299, 300

Steamers, trading, on the Yukon, 414

Steller, George W., his labors, 189

Stench arising from fur-seal carcasses, 350, 351

from decaying salmon and its roe, 57, 399

Superstitions of the natives, 80, 81, 90

Surveys of the fur-seal breeding grounds, 310, 311, 312

Swans, capture of, 399

Swimming feats of fur-seals, 300, 301, 302

T

Tanaga, island of, 181, 183

Telegraph, Collins Overland, 427, 428

Thlinkets, or Sitkan Archipelago Indians, 43, 44, 45, 52, 53, 54,

59, 60

Tidal phenomena of Cook’s Inlet, 83, 87

of Bristol Bay, 374, 375

of Kuskokvim River, 400

uncertainties in Bering Sea, 197, 198

Tigalda, island of, 154, 155

Timber of Alexander Archipelago, 21, 22, 71

of Mount St. Elias region, 72, 77

of Cook’s Inlet region, 85

of Kadiak District region, 103, 104, 105

of Aleutian District region, 157

of Alaskan Interior region, 395, 408, 409, 416

of Alaskan Arctic region, 425, 439, 443

Tinneh, or Ingaleeks of Alaska, 408

Timidity and shyness of pinnipeds at sea, 331

Togiaks, Quaker-like Innuits, 401, 402

Treasury Department, its control of Seal Islands, 250, 251, 252

Totem and totemic posts, 49

Transfer of Alaska, cause why so done, 11, 12

Traffic by traders in the Sitkan region, 36, 37, 38, 39

in the Kadiak region, 119, 120, 129

in the Aleutian region, 129, 191

in the Yukon, Nooshagak, and Kuskokvim region, 384, 414, 418

in the Bering Sea and the Arctic, 425

Treadwell Gold-mining Stamp Mill, 69, 71

Tusks of the Walrus, 450, 451

U

Ugiak, Eskimo sea-god, 393, 423

Uses of sea-lion skins in making boats, 370, 371

of walrus-skins in making boats, 454

of walrus-teeth, 404

V

Veniaminov, the distinguished Russian priest, 37, 309

Volcanic region of Cook’s Inlet, 87

region of Oonimak, 146, 147, 148

region of Atkha, 183

region of Oomnak, 161

Volcanic elevation of Bogaslov Islet recently, 186, 187

Voyage of Captain Cook (1778), 83, 176, 430

of Veit Bering (1741), 1, 2, 3, 4, 73, 74

of Tscherikov (1741), 1, 73, 74

of Shellikov (1782-84), 99, 100, 102

of Simeon Deschnev (1648), 429

W

Walker, Lake, 399, 400

Walrus, a description of, 444, 445, 446, 447, 449

in Bristol Bay, 399

alarm when approached in boats, 332

in Arctic, 425, 444

Walrus Islet, a description of, 220, 444, 445

visit to, gathering eggs, 210, 220, 221, 222, 223

Walrus and seal-hunting and hunters, 400, 426, 440, 441, 460, 461

Wars of the Thlinkets, 44

of the Innuits, 417

of the Russian traders, 6, 29, 30, 101

Water-craft of the Sitkans, 62, 63

of the Aleutes, 33

of the Ingaleeks, 417

of the Innuits, 411, 427, 453, 454

Weaving, grass baskets, hats, etc., by Aleutians, 181

grass and bark, by Sitkans, 52

Whaling, Aleutian, 151, 152, 153

Americans, 71, 72, 440, 441

Innuit, 439

Wolves, none on the Aleutian Chain now, 156

Wrangel, Mount, the highest North American peak, 77

town of, 17, 18, 25

Y

Yukon, the river, its characteristics, 413, 413, 414, 415, 416, 419

contiguous country to, 415, 416

its people, 417, 418, 419

Z

Zagoskin, Lieutenant, his labors (1841-1845), 422

Zarenbo, island of, 27

Lieutenant, 25

_Zalophus_ and _Eumetopias_, differences between, 362

[Illustration: MAP OF ALASKA AND ADJOINING REGIONS. 1886.]

Transcriber’s Notes

pg 94 footnote Changed: Oncorynchus chouicha

to: Oncorhynchus chouicha

pg 127 Removed extra word “the” from: possession of the the

sea-otter’s coat

pg 217 Changed: came to these islands Novastoshna

to: came to these islands Novastoshnah

pg 219 Changed: six miles south of St. Panl

to: six miles south of St. Paul

pg 229 Changed: Pribylov Islands where any palæntological

to: Pribylov Islands where any palæontological

pg 248 Changed: though they have station sscattered

to: though they have stations scattered

pg 284 Changed: and bathing quite frequnetly

to: and bathing quite frequently

pg 313 Changed: margins of that immmense

to: margins of that immense

pg 328 Changed: as they passsed into

to: as they passed into

pg 343 Changed: this blubber thins out very preceptibly

to: this blubber thins out very perceptibly

pg 351 Changed: stench within is deordorized

to: stench within is deodorized