THE SALMON AND TROUT OF ALASKA. 19 



preserve order among the incongruous collections of 

 Whites, Creoles, and Indians of which the inhabitants 

 of that forsaken country was composed. 



My command was moored in Sitka Harbor, but dur- 

 ing the two summers and autumns of my sojourn, my 

 duties called upon me to make frequent trips of from 

 ten to two hundred miles, to various portions of the 

 Territory. 



These trips were made in small steamers which I 

 hired, steam launches and boats of the ship, and In- 

 dian canoes, and in them I explored many of the straits 

 and sounds which separate the islands of the Alexander 

 Archipelago. 



Naturally fond of fishing and gunning, my Orvis 

 rods, with full assortment of flies, all gear necessary 

 for salt-water fishing, and my rifle and shot-gun, were 

 my inseparable companions ; and aftei days spent in 

 explorations, sometimes of bays and sounds never before 

 entered by white men, and in one case of a large bay 

 forty miles deep by fifteen broad, existing where the 

 latest charts showed solid land only, my evenings were 

 spent poring over works on natural history, icthyology, 

 and ornithology, and jotting down in my note-book 

 descriptions of my finds. Such jolly times ! One day 

 a mineral lode, another great flocks of ptarmigan, an- 

 other a bear, a mountain sheep, or some new fish — gave 

 me something to dream of. 



The Alexander Archipelago, of which Baranoff, 

 Kruzoff, and Tchitagoff Islands are the principal, is 



