Part 52 (1/2)

The rivers are all large and, with one exception,--Wood River,--drain the western slope of the Aleutian Chain which, beginning on the western sh.o.r.e of Cook Inlet, extends down the Aliaska Peninsula, crowning it with fire and snow.

There are several breaks in the range which afford easy portages from Bristol Bay to the North Pacific. The rivers flowing into Bristol Bay have lake sources and have been remarkably rich sp.a.w.ning-streams for salmon.

The present chain of islands known as the Aleutians is supposed to have once belonged to the peninsula and to have been separated by volcanic disturbances which are so common in the region.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by F. H. Nowell, Seattle

FOUR BEAUTIES OF CAPE PRINCE OF WALES WITH SLED REINDEER OF THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY HERD]

The interior of the Bristol Bay country has not been explored. It is spa.r.s.ely populated by Innuit, or Eskimo, who live in primitive fas.h.i.+on in small settlements,--usually on high bluffs near a river. They make a poor living by hunting and fis.h.i.+ng. Their food is largely salmon, fresh and dried; game, seal, and walrus are delicacies. The ”higher” the food the greater delicacy is it considered. Decayed salmon-heads and the decaying carca.s.s of a whale that has been cast upon the beach, by their own abominable odors summon the natives for miles to a feast. Their food is all cooked with rancid oil.

Their dwellings are more primitive than those of the island natives, for they have clung to the barabaras and other ancient structures that were in use among the Aleutians when the Russians first discovered them. Near these dwellings are the drying-frames--so familiar along the Yukon--from which hang thousands of red-fleshed salmon drying in the sun. Little houses are erected on rude pole scaffoldings, high out of the reach of dogs, for the storing of this fish when it has become ”ukala” and for other provisions. These are everywhere known as ”caches.”

The Innuit's summer home is very different from his winter home. It is erected above ground, of small pole frames, roofed with skins and open in front--somewhat like an Indian tepee. There is no opening in the roof, all cooking being done in the open air in summer.

These natives were once thrifty hunters and trappers of wild animals, from the reindeer down to the beaver and marten, but the cannery life has so debauched them that they have no strength left for this energetic work.

Formerly every Innuit settlement contained a ”kashga,” or town hall, which was built after the fas.h.i.+on of all winter houses, only larger.

There the men gathered to talk and manage the affairs of their small world. It was a kind of ”corner grocery” or ”back-room” of a village drug store. The men usually slept there, and in the mornings their wives arose, cooked their breakfast, and carried it to them in the kashga, turning their backs while their husbands ate--it being considered exceedingly bad form for a woman to look at a man when he is eating in public, although they think nothing of bathing together. The habits of the people are nauseatingly filthy, and the interiors of their dwellings must be seen to be appreciated.

Near the canneries the natives obtain work during the summer, but soon squander their wages in debauches and are left, when winter arrives, in a starving condition.

The season is very short in Bristol Bay, but the ”run” of salmon is enormous. When this district is operating thirteen canneries, it packs each day two hundred and fifty thousand fish. In Nus.h.a.gak Bay the fish frequently run so heavily that they catch in the propellers of launches and stop the engines.

Bristol Bay has always been a dangerous locality to navigate. It is only by the greatest vigilance and the most careful use of the lead, upon approaching the sh.o.r.e, that disaster can be averted.

Nearly all the canneries in this region are operated by the Alaska Packers a.s.sociation, which also operates the greater number of canneries in Alaska.

In 1907 the value of food fishes taken from Alaskan waters was nearly ten millions of dollars; in the forty years since the purchase of that country, one hundred millions, although up to 1885 the pack was insignificant. At the present time it exceeds by more than half a million cases the entire pack of British Columbia, Puget Sound, Columbia River, and the Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton coasts.

In 1907 forty-four canneries packed salmon in Alaska, and those on Bristol Bay were of the most importance.

The Nus.h.a.gak River rivals the Karluk as a salmon stream, but not in picturesque beauty. The Nus.h.a.gak and Wood rivers were both closed during the past season by order of the President, to protect the salmon industry of the future.

Cod is abundant in Behring Sea, Bristol Bay, and south of the Aleutian, Shumagin, and Kadiak islands, covering an area of thirty thousand miles.

Halibut is plentiful in all the waters of southeastern Alaska. This stupid-looking fish is wiser than it appears, and declines to swim into the parlor of a net. It is still caught by hook and line, is packed in ice, and sent, by regular steamer, to Seattle--whence it goes in refrigerator cars to the markets of the east.

Herring, black cod, candle-fish, smelt, tom-cod, whitefish, black ba.s.s, flounders, clams, crabs, mussels, shrimp, and five species of trout--steelhead, Dolly Varden, cutthroat, rainbow, and lake--are all found in abundance in Alaska.

Cook, entering Bristol Bay in 1778, named it for the Earl of Bristol, with difficulty avoiding its shoals. He saw the shoaled entrance to a river which he called Bristol River, but which must have been the Nus.h.a.gak. He saw many salmon leaping, and found them in the maws of cod.

The following day, seeing a high promontory, he sent Lieutenant Williamson ash.o.r.e. Possession of the country in his Majesty's name was taken, and a bottle was left containing the names of Cook's s.h.i.+ps and the date of discovery. To the promontory was given the name which it retains of Cape Newenham.

Proceeding up the coast Cook met natives who were of a friendly disposition, but who seemed unfamiliar with the sight of white men and vessels; they were dressed somewhat like Aleutians, wearing, also, skin hoods and wooden bonnets.

The s.h.i.+ps were caught in the shoals of Kuskokwim Bay, but Cook does not appear to have discovered this great river, which is the second in size of Alaskan rivers and whose length is nine hundred miles. In the bay the tides have a fifty-foot rise and fall, entering in a tremendous bore.

This vicinity formerly furnished exceedingly fine black bear skins.