INTRODUCTION OF DOMESTIC REINDEER INTO ALASKA. 29 



niatioii that careful, conscientious training had wrought in the children 

 was marvelous. While waiting to join the United States revenue-cut- 

 ter Bear in its arctic cruise I became intimately acquainted with the 

 work being done in the home under the supervision of Mr. and Mrs. 

 Tuck, and I have no hesitation in saying that a neater, more intelligent, 

 well-behaved set of children it would be hard to find anywhere in the 

 country. In the schoolroom, which I visited repeatedly, I found that 

 good progress had been made in the acquisition of the English language. 

 Those children wlio had been in the home for three years or more not 

 only read, wrote, and spoke, but also seemed to do their thinking in 

 English. From its commencement in 1889 until the past summer the 

 home has been maintained in a small one and one-half story rented 

 cottage. During the summer a commodious boarding house was erected. 

 The Aleutian Islaiuls are so remote, so little is generally known of 

 them, to the visitor they have such an air of priunval solitude that one 

 finds it difficult to realize that they have been the theater of stirring 

 events and have a history extending back one hundred and fifty years. 

 No notice of this region would be complete without at least a glance at 

 this history. I (^uote the following resume from Dr. Sheldon Jackson's 

 report for 1890: 



The discovery of these islands by P^uropeaus is due to the uiibouuded ambition of 

 Peter the Great, jf Russia, who, having founded a Russian Em[)ire in Europe and 

 Asia, would also found one in America. The western coast of America had been 

 explored as far as Cape Mendocino, California, but from California north it was 

 avast, unknown region — "Aie great northern mystery, with its Anian sti'ait and 

 silver mountains aud divers other fabulous tales.'' To solve these mysteries, to deter- 

 mine whether Asia had laud communication with America, to learn what lands and 

 people were beyond his possessions on the eastern coast of Siberia, Peter the Great, 

 in 1724, ordered two expeditions of exploration and placed theui both under the com- 

 mand of Vitus Bering, a Dane in the Russian service. The expedition set out over- 

 laud through Siberia on January 28, 1725, under Lieutenant Chirikoft". Three days 

 later the Emperor died, but the expeditions were energetically pushed by his widow 

 and daughter. The first expedition, from 1725 to 1730, explored Bering Strait, and 

 settled tlie question of separation between Asia and America. 



The second expedition was fitted out by the Empress Catherine, and consisted of 

 two vessels, the St. Paul, commanded by Bering himself, and the St. Peter, in charge 

 of Alexei Ilich Chii'ikoff, second iu conmiand. The expedition was accompanied by 

 several scientists and sailed from Avatcha Buy, Kamtschatka, on June 4, 1741. This 

 ill-fated expedition discovered the mainland of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. 

 But the remnant that brought back the news of the discovery of northwestern 

 America also brought with them the beautiful furs of the sea otter, and wide-awake 

 merchants were not slow to see their opportunity. As the adventurous hunt for 

 the little sable had led the hardy Cossack and extended Russian dominion from the 

 Ural Mountains across Asia to Kamtschatka and Bering Sea, so now the hunt for the 

 sea otter was to extend Russian settlement 2,000 miles along the coast of America. 

 A few months after the return of Bering's expedition in the spring of 1743, Emilian 

 Bassof formed a partnership with a wealthy Moscow merchant, built a small vessel 

 named the KapHou, and commenced the fur trade of the newly discovered islands. 

 On his second trip iu 1745 he collected 1,600 sea otters, 2,000 fur seals, and 2,000 blue 

 Arctic foxes. This was the commencement on the part of the merchants of Siberia of 

 a mad race after the furs of Alaska — a race so mad that they could not wait the 



