582 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



Captain Billings wrote of them, "If perfect symmetry, smoothness, and 

 proportion constitute beauty, they are beautiful beyond anything that 

 I ever beheld." 



At Kadiak in 1784 the Russian Gregory Shelikoff formed a settle- 

 ment and commenced the subjugation of the people. The first school 

 in Alaska was organized at this place, and here the first church building 

 was erected. For a long time it was the Russian capital of Alaska. 

 Kadiak is the headquarters of the Alaska Commercial Company for the 

 district comprising Cook's Inlet and Prince William Sound, and furs to 

 the value of $300,000 are shipped yearly. Here the Bureau of Educa- 

 tion has an excellent public school, Mr. C. C. Solter teacher. I attended 

 sessions of the school, and have no hesitation in saying that the children 

 are just as far advanced as children of the same age in any village 

 school in the country. I had a satisfactory interview with the members 

 of the local school committee, who here, as elsewhere in the Territory, 

 aid the Bureau of Education with suggestions, and several improve- 

 ments to the school property were authorized. The priest of the Russo- 

 Greek Church, under whose spiritual care are most of the children, was 

 present. 



Near Kadiak Island is Wood Island. Here the Baptist Woman's 

 Home Mission Society has begun a noble work for the rescuing of the 

 waifs and destitute children of that region by maintaining a home. 

 The condition of some of the poorer native children was thus described 

 by Mr. W. E. Roscoe, in charge of the home, formerly teacher at 

 Kadiak : 



In every settlement tlirongh this part of tlie country may be found poor, defense- 

 less children clothed only in rags, with no one to provide suitable food or clothing, 

 and living entirely upon such charity as may be found among a heathen people. 

 There are many destitute children, made so by the drunkenness and the vagabond 

 character of their parents. In the Aleut settlement of Afognak, the natives have 

 sold the bedding from their huts to obtain tlie vile stuff. The winter is upon them, 

 and until recently they have been so demoralized with liquor that they had not laid 

 in the usual winter's supply of dried tish — their main subsistence. Now, the future 

 of this race is that they will perish from off the face of the globe unless they are 

 Christianized, and that soon. It is a fact that the children do not generally show 

 this terrible craving for strong drink. The pupils of my school are ashamed of their 

 parents' drinking. It is only right and just that our Government take orphan chil- 

 dren and inebriates' children and put them in a good industrial school under religious 

 teachers, who, in addition to moral and intellectual training, will teach them the 

 cultivation of the soil, the rearing of cattle, sheep, hogs, and poultry, the elements 

 of some of the mechanical arts, and the girls the arts of sewing and of cooking. 



In the hospital on Wood Island were seven men who had been saved 

 from the wreck of the schooner White, which Avas driven ashore at the 

 south end of Kadiak Island in a severe storm on April 13. Eleven of 

 the crew had perished in the icy waters and several of the survivors 

 had been so terribly frostbitten that they would be maimed for life. 



Kadiak Island is separated from the mainland by the wide Shelikoff 

 Strait. According to the native legend this was once a narrow chan- 



