USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 13
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The rough, rocky islands of Trinity, which constitute the ex- treme southern limit of the Kadiak influence, are the chosen resort of sea-lions and many of the rare sea-otter. Their capture lures a few hardy natives to live in close juxtaposition to the favored haunts of these much-prized animals, and they have a most extended hunting range, reaching far away down to the westward and south- ward as low as that remarkable barren island of Ookamok, where the celebrated "Botany Bay," of the old Russian régime, was es- tablished. That lonely, isolated, desolate spot was the point where the old-time criminals who were guilty of murder, arson, and other capital offences, were always shipped, and left largely to their own devices for a livelihood. They were literally entombed alive on this islet, where nothing but moss and lichens and scant sphagnum could exist upon the rough, rocky surfaces, where the soil was barely appreciable-elsewhere there was none. But, strange to say, upon this island great numbers of that lively little ground squirrel, Parry's marmot, were found, and still continue to be found, which were characterized then as now by a peculiar bluish ground-tint to their fur. This color is most popular and the one so highly prized in those universal coats or cloaks used by the natives, and called " parkies " by them.
Therefore the convicts were obliged, in order to get food of their liking and many small luxuries, to diligently hunt these little animals, which they did, not only for this reason alone, but in self- defence to kill time as well.
In 1870 the descendants of the original convicts, and survivors of recent transportation by Russian order, learned in some way or other that they might lead a free life; so they then actually removed en masse in two large skin bidarrahs, loaded to the gunwales, and made in safety that long sea-voyage which inter- venes between Ookamok and Kadiak Island. They had about one chance in a hundred of getting over the route alive, for the least of those chronic gales and storms that prevail here would have swept
depth, with a three-and-a-half-inch mesh. The whole native population is also employed in this fishery during the summer.
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them to the bottom of the ocean had it arisen in the time of their passage .*
A great expanse of tide-troubled and wind-tossed water is bound between the northern coast of Kadiak and the volcanic ridges of the mainland opposite. The Straits of Shellikov are fair to see on the chart, but the mariner who has once sailed into them, lured there by the false promise of a sheltered passage, never fails to avoid the track afterward-he gladly makes the open detour of the broad Pacific. That same precipitous mountain range which we have gazed upon as it rose in sullen grandeur from the waters of Cook's Inlet, still fronts us, just as boldly, as it sweeps down the entire three hundred miles of the peninsula, forming the southern coast of that land. The sombre green and blue timber-cloak, so characteristic of its northern range, is here replaced by the russet- grays and brownish-yellows of that sphagnum and moss which now supplant the coniferous forests of Cook's Inlet, giving to the picture a much richer tone. Several of these peaks in this chain of mountains thus extended down the south coast of the peninsula are five and seven thousand feet in altitude, their summits much eroded and broken. They hold in their lofty solitudes a great many little glaciers, that, however, never come down to the sea as they habit- ually do in the Choogatch and Elias Alps. The feet of these pen- insular mountains are washed by the direct roll of the ocean waves, which dash into innumerable fiords and coves, studded with small,
* The true reason for this hegira of the convicts is a most amusing one. It is as follows : Shortly after the transfer, in 1869, General Thomas made an ex- tended inspection of the Alaskan posts on a steamer detailed for that work. He was accompanied by a certain representative of a Protestant Board of Mis- sions. The vessel accidentally ran across Ookamok Island when making her way to the westward from Kadiak and touched there, where, ignorant of the fact that the people were convicts and their descendants, moved by their piti- ful tales of privation, a large amount of ship's stores were landed upon the beach to satisfy the " suffering " natives : they ate, drank, and were merry, and lived sumptuously for several months afterward. But an end to these good things came at last ; the reaction in the settlement was terrible. So, urged by its pangs, the penal colony determined to pack up and move to the nearest point possible, where, when living, they could again meet, and often too, their kind benefactors ! Hence that startling journey to find those generous Ameri- cans. Lately, however, the traders at Kadiak have taken many of these peo- ple back to Ookamok, where they begged to be allowed to go and end their lives. This is the most desolate island, perhaps, in all the range of that vast Aleutian archipelago.
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rocky islets and reefs awash. A beautiful geological demonstration of the effect which surf-beating waves of the ocean have made upon these mountains ages ago, is shown by the plainly evident lines traced on their flanks fully one thousand feet above the present level of the tide ; and again, another terrace is sculptured in par- allel relief just above it, some five hundred feet higher-a silent, but conclusive showing of the truth that the entire Aleutian chain has been lifted out, at two successive periods, and up from the sea.
This range of the peninsula is in itself quite peculiar from the others which we have hitherto noticed thus far. It differs from their physiognomy in one respect-the mountains and ridges them- selves are interrupted in one continuity down the line of their extension by abrupt depressions. These passes, as they appear to be, are not so in fact, but are either low or elevated marshy plains, which extend clear across the peninsula ; they create an impression in the mind of the observer that at a not very remote period, geo- logically speaking, the peaks of this peninsula range were then islands, and the marshy portages, now elevated, were the bottoms of the straits then between them. The natives are continually going to and fro between the waters of Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean over these areas of swampy level, engaged in hunt- ing reindeer, bear, or in friendly intercourse with the settlements. The most signal mountain groups on the peninsula are those of Morshovie, of Belcovsky, and the Pavlosk volcanic cluster-all joined by low, wet isthmian swales. The Shoomagin volcano of Venia- minov is also a noteworthy peak. The peninsula is almost bisected between Moller and Zakharov Bays, where the natives cross from water to water in a half-day's portage, and again at Pavlov Harbor. All these isolated or nearly detached mountain sections have a striking resemblance in every respect to the first large island, Oonimak, that is separated from the mainland by the narrow and unnavigable Krenitzin Straits.
The Bering Sea coast line of the great Alaskan Peninsula pre- sents a most radical contrast to that of the Pacific-the unbroken, rocky abruptness and roughness there is here suddenly transformed right at the very turn in the Straits of Krenitzin, to low, sandy reaches and slightly elevated moorland tundra, which cover a wide interval between the mountains and the waters of Bristol Bay and Bering Sea. The huge masses of lava, of breccia and conglomer- ate tufa, that everywhere rear their black-ebony shoulders above
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the Pacific surf, disappear entirely and suddenly here. At Oogash- ik, where we find a small settlement of Aleutes from Oonalashka, hunting walrus and sea-lions, reindeer and bears, the first rocks of granite and quartz-porphyries appear, every evidence of that character to the westward being purely and essentially igneous.
Belcovsky is the metropolis of the Alaskan Peninsula. It is the chief settlement of the sea-otter hunters, and the seat of the great- est rivalry and traffic in that fur-trade, based wholly upon the costly skins of the " bobear," # and which constitutes the only traffic worthy of mention in which the inhabitants of the entire Aleutian and Kadiak districts can engage. Here we observe from our an-
HEsion
The Walrus-hunting Village of Oogashik.
chorage a little town perched upon the summit of a bluff and clinging to the flanks of a precipitous mountain that looms up be- hind it, usually so wreathed in fog that its summit is seldom seen. Some two hundred and sixty or seventy Aleutian sea-otter hunters and their families are living here in an oddly contrasted hamlet of frame houses and earthen barraboras ; the freshly painted red roof and yellow walls of a large, new church, in the tower of which a pleasing chime of bells (but rudely struck, however), arrests the ear and the eye as the most attractive single object within the lim- its of the place.t The rival traders have run up their flags very
* Literally " beaver." The Russians always called this animal the " sea- beaver," but shortened from " morskie-bobear " to the simple name.
+ This church was finished in 1882-begun in 1880, it cost $7,000, every cent being freely contributed by the natives.
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smartly on the poles that are erected before their doors as we swing to anchor in the offing, and a great bustle is evident among the inhabitants when our boat pulls away for the landing, which is a sheltered surf-eddy right under the blackest and most forbidding of bluffs. Two rival trading-firms have each erected a landing warehouse for the reception of their stores upon the rocky beach where we step ashore. The ascent to the village above is steep, but over a sloping slide of mossy earth and rocks. A clear, brawl- ing brook runs down through the town, and we cross it by a lit- tle foot-bridge on our way. We observe cord-wood piled upon the beach, which the traders have brought from Kadiak, and several heaps of coal that had been brought up as ballast from Vancouver's Island. This fuel is regularly sold to the natives here, who have none, unless it be a stray stick of drift-wood or the "chicksa " * vines, which the women gather on the hill-sides.
Sea-otter hunting is the sole industry and topic of conversation, for within a radius of fifty miles from the site of Belcovsky fully one-half of the entire Alaskan catch of these valuable peltries is se- cured. Were they not hopelessly improvident, shiftless and extrava- gant, they would be a really wealthy community ; but the notoriety of the debauches here has become a by-word and a reproach over the whole region between Cook's Inlet and Attoo. Every dollar of their surplus earnings is squandered in orgies, stimulated by the vile " quass " or beer which they make. They dress, however, in suits of every-day clothing, such as we wear ourselves, when loung- ing about the village, and their women wear cloth garments and liats cut after a fashion not very remote in San Francisco.
The neatness of the villages which we have just visited at Kadiak and Cook's Inlet has no counterpart in Belcovsky, where, in spite of its much greater trade and wealth, the filth and neglect everywhere manifested among the barraboras and their interiors, are in harsh and disagreeable contrast, while the taciturn, swelled heads of the inmates speak volumes for the strength of that carousal during the night prior to your arrival. A small frame house is pointed out as the school, where it seems that those natives actually sustain a teacher and send a large percentage of their children. It declares that these people are not vicious at heart, though they cannot re- sist intemperance. They read and write, however, principally in the
* Trailing tendrils of the Empetrum nigrum.
Village of Aleutian Sea-otter Hunters, on the South Shore of the Alaskan Peninsula. Viewed from the Schooner's Anchorage
BELCOVSKY
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Aleutian dialect, using an alphabet prepared for their race by the Greek Catholic missionaries in 1810-25. But, while the large capt- ure of sea-otters and consequent flow of the traders' money and supplies into this settlement brings these people greater wealth than that showered elsewhere, yet the real physical misery of those natives of Belcovsky proves the truth and points the moral of a very old saying which declares that riches alone do not bring con- tentment to the human mind, be it ever so high or ever so low.
A strong south wind is springing up, and you are told by the skipper that you must get aboard as quickly as possible, for it is sure destruction to his vessel if she lies long at anchor in the offing, since the sunken rocks and open roadstead are dangerous. The little schooner is rapidly put under way, "beating out " in the freshening gale and headed for Oonga, which is the next settlement in importance, about fifty miles east. Sailing-vessels never come into Belcovsky, except those of rival traders, because it is the most risky port that the mariner has to make in all these waters of Alaska.
Before leaving the sea-otter emporium it is well to call attention to the fact that at a small indentation of this same peninsula, twenty-nine miles to the northward, is a settlement made up en- tirely of the poor relatives of these Belcovsky people, some forty or fifty souls, who, however, take a great pride in their superior health and morality. They have a little chapel, and enjoy much better opportunities for hunting bear and reindeer. These animals, the reindeer leading, always followed by the bears, come down at regu- lar intervals in large herds from a great moorland to the north- east, travelling on a well-beaten "road " or track, which leads clear to the westernmost end of the peninsula, where those bovine road- makers plunge into and cross the narrow Krenitzin Straits to renew their land march and scatter all over the rugged and extended tundra and mountain sides of Oonimak Island.
With a line of dissipation and general misery which the rich commerce of Belcovsky causes in that settlement, we ought not to fail to include the Protassov or Morserovie village which is located on the far end of the peninsula-the extreme west end, where a much smaller community exists, though equally opulent and just as disso- lute. Here is a settlement of nearly a hundred natives, who have an annual average income of about $1,000 to each family. Yet, in spite of this small fortune in such a region, when visited by an agent of the Government in 1880, they shocked him by their aspect
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of abject physical misery and that excessive debauchery which had stamped them more wretchedly than it had even their cousins of Belcovsky. These people, in addition to their fine natural advan- tages of position for hunting sea-otters, enjoy a location in close juxtaposition to walrus-banks and sea-lion spits and islands else- where on the Bering shore, where they find these pinnipeds in great numbers at certain seasons of the year. The fleslı, skins, blubber, and sinews are both articles of essential use and of luxury to them. Also, the same reindeer and brown-bear road, which we have just noticed, passes close by the village, so that those desiderata of food- supply and trade are very accessible.
Near by the village, less than half a mile, as if planned espe- cially by a merciful providence, there are a number of hot sulphur- springs which would afford the diseased and sickly natives infinite relief, if they could only be induced to make the necessary exertion to go to them and bathe therein. Yet this officer of the Govern- ment declares that not one of them could be induced by him to try the efficacy of the healing waters-" It was too far to walk !"
When our little vessel comes to anchor in Delarov Harbor, Oonga Island, of the Shoomagin group, we see a flag flying from the summit of a grassy knoll which caps an irregular but bluffy headland. The village lies directly over, and under the shelter of that ridge, and it opens quickly on our view as we pull around the point and land with our dingy in a deeply indented cove upon a smooth sand and pebbly beach. The town is just above, in its full extent, but it is a thickly clustered mass of fourteen frame houses, twenty or twenty-one bar- rabkies, and the ever-present church. It does not make near as much of a spread as does Belcovsky, although it is quite as large. This is the chief codfishing rendezvous for the white fishermen who annually come up to the Shoomagin banks from San Francisco in six or seven small schooners. The location and surroundings of the little hamlet are exceedingly picturesque, but, unfortunately, though in a somewhat less disagreeable extent, the people here are also given over to those Belcovsky orgies, inasmuch as they, too, are great and successful otter-hunters, and have an income of over six hundred dollars for each family, which wealth seems to demoralize far more than it comforts their existence.
The strong southerly and southeast winds that prevail here during the summer season are the most severe, and, strange to say, they are the ones which are the coldest and the chilliest-a
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THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK.
north wind is always warmer! These south winds bring to Oon- ga its foggiest weather, its heaviest rains, and raise such a ground swell in the village harbor that the craft therein are often compelled to go to sea for safety, and it always drives the fishermen from the banks outside. Those cod-banks are best, off the southerly range of the islands, and hence, when a southeaster blows, the schooners are on a most dangerous lee-shore. They seldom ever take the risks of riding out such a gale. Old skippers who have fished for forty years on the Grand Banks and "Georges," for the Gloucester and Boston markets, declare that the fury of the sea and wind is greater off the Shoomagins in a southeaster than anything of the kind experienced on the Atlantic. These wild gales become stronger, loaded with sleet and snow, as winter approaches, so that by the middle or end of November, until next April, all sailing- craft are practically driven from the fishing grounds.
The same method of catching cod is employed here as practised by our Gloucester men, in only one respect, however : the long, buoyed lines are not set out and regularly under-run, but instead, small boats and dories, with two men in each, are put off from the schooners, and fish with hand-lines, using what is known as "11- inch " and "12-inch " hooks. Halibut, and "squid," or cuttle-fish, make the best bait. A good, smart man, if he is fortunate, will haul up four hundred codfish in a day's steady labor, but this is an ex- traordinary streak of luck. An average of three hundred every fair day is one that gives the highest satisfaction. These fish are taken on board of the schooner, salted, and not touched again until the cargo is broken for re-drying and curing at several points chosen for that purpose in California. At first our people were disposed to hire the natives up here to do this hand-line fishing, and they did so ; but a patient trial has demonstrated the fact that it pays to employ our own men instead, even at greatly advanced wages. The Aleutes are docile, and do exceedingly well in spurts, but they do not like to work in steady, well-sustained periods of any great length at a time.
Were it not for the intense physical discomfort of the rapidly recurring fog, sleet, and rain-laden gales, Oonga would undoubt- edly be a site well chosen for a neat New England fishing village. Many of those white men now employed up there in the cod-fishery declare that they would bring their wives and children into the country, to permanently settle, if they thought that they could be
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happy under the conditions of climate which prevail. But they argue that where they themselves cannot peacefully exist the year round, it would be idle to suppose that a civilized settlement could be well established. We will find, however, quite a number of genial, sociable fellows, men of our race, who are well educated, and who have had excellent opportunities, and who to-day are roaming here, there, and everywhere in Alaska, hunting, fishing, and trading, or prospecting. They appear to be entirely happy, not a bit cynical, and never express the slightest desire to return with us to the world which they have left behind them voluntarily. Alaska to them is a perfect Mecca of peace, and they have no de- sire to see it changed. They unite usually in saying that their wants are few, easily supplied, and they scarcely remember what care was-it does not trouble them now.
The cod-fishermen do not make their working headquarters in this village, but across, over the bay on Popov Islet, at a spot which is called Pirate Cove. They are not annoyed by idle villagers there, and are also somewhat nearer to the fishing-resorts which are just outside. They are most likely not far from that spot where Bering landed, August 30, 1741, to bury one of his seamen named Shoom- agin, and to refill his water-casks. The exact locality, or even the precise islet of the many that form this Shoomagin group, on which the then sick and sadly demoralized explorer and his crew interred the remains of their dead comrade, will never be satisfac- torily established ; the cross of wood set up was immediately pulled down, after his departure, by the natives, who were then decidedly hostile, and who eyed him and his vessel with unaffected dislike and apprehension .* When the St. Peter, six days later, hauled off from those islands and turned her prow for Kamchatka, perhaps that gloomy, timid Dane commanding her may have had an astral premonition of the wreck of this vessel, which soon fol- lowed-and his own death too, in a self-made sand grave beneath the black shadows of the bluffs at "Kommandor "-this may have caused him to earn that reproach which has been so lavishly laid upon his conduct of a most remarkable and disastrous voyage.
The Shoomagins are all bold and bluffy, with high uplands and
* From the record made in the ship's log it would seem most likely that he landed on either Popov Island, or else Nogai ; the description will fit either locality.
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lofty ridges ; on Oonga the most elevated summits are to be seen. Bare of timber, but covered with sphagnum and mosses and clumps of dwarfed crab-apples and willows, they stand as rock- ribbed break-waters against the full sweep of the mighty uninter- rupted roll of a vast ocean. The surf that dashes foaming and booming upon their firm foundations is of unrivalled force, and fear-inspiring.
Oonga Island has also been the base of a very extended and thorough attempt to develop a large vein of coal which is found cropping out on the face of a bluff in a small inlet of its north shore. The oldest coal-mine in the region of Alaska is located in Cook's Inlet near its mouth, at a spot still indicated on maps as Coal Harbor. Here the Russians, eager to be able to obtain fuel for the use of their steam-vessels, began, in 1852, a most active and systematic series of mining operations ; they brought machinery and ran it by steam-power ; experienced German miners were engaged to superintend and direct a large force of Muscovitic laborers sent up from Sitka. In 1857 the work had been so ener- getically pushed that shafts had been sunk, and a drift run into the vein for a distance of one thousand seven hundred feet ; during this period, and three following years, two thousand seven hundred tons of coal were mined, the value of which was forty-six thou- sand rubles, but the result was a net loss. The thickness of the vein was found to vary from nine to twelve feet, and its extent was practically unlimited. But the Russians found out then, as our people at Oonga did afterward, that this Alaskan lignite was utterly unfit for use in the furnaces of the steamers-that it was so highly charged with sulphur as to burn like a flash and eat out, fuse and warp the grate-bars-even melting down the smoke- stacks! Steam-vessels now bring their own coal with them from San Francisco, Puget Sound or Nanaimo, or have it sent up from there by sailing-tenders to depots previously designated .*
As we leave the sheltering bluffs of Oonga, our course seems to
* Captain F. W. Beechey in his voyage of the Blossom, 1825-27, discov- ered and located at Cape Beaufort, in the Arctic Ocean and on the Alaskan coast, a vein of coal; this has been subsequently revisited and mined to a small extent by the officers of the Revenue marine cutters of our Government, who pronounce it very satisfactory for steaming purposes. Its situation, how- ever, is so remote that it has no economic significance, and no harbor is there for a vessel of any kind.
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