DOWN THE MACKENZIE 



155 



covered with snow. Toward the southeast the bluish white 

 rocks, known as the Diomede Islands, were sharply outlined 

 against the sunlit masses of vapor which concealed the Ameri- 

 can coast from view. 



On leaving the cape our course was shaped for Cape Tchap- 

 lin, or Indian Point, as it is known among the whalers, situated 

 a hundred miles farther down the Asiatic coast. We reached the 

 Point on the morning of the nth, and spent the day anchored 

 off the long low sandspit, upon which the settlement stands, 

 engaged in trading for whalebone and walrus ivory with the 

 natives, who came aboard in such numbers as to fill the cabin 

 and cover the decks. 



Their chief, Gohara, was among their number. He was a dig- 

 nified and intelligent looking man and had little to say, even 

 in trading. He is said to possess a herd of reindeer, whale- 

 boats and trading goods amounting in all — valued at San Fran- 

 cisco prices — to fifty thousand dollars. 



Considerable quantities of alcohol and other liquors have 

 been distributed among these people, though the nefarious traf- 

 fic is now about suppressed. The natives have been " educated " 

 until they are nearly a match for the whisky trader. The chief 

 will no longer buy a demijohn of alcohol without testing it from 

 the bottom. He remembers the time when he drank the first 

 draft from the vessel and became very "molly kelly" — drunk, 

 while his followers quenched their own overpowering thirst with 

 the water on which a pint of alcohol had been carefully poured. 

 Captain Murray told me that he had once purchased two bun- 

 dles of whalebone, of a native of that coast, in which two heavy 

 iron bars were concealed. When the trick was discovered, the 

 thrifty Eskimo laughed and said, "alle same white man!" 



An unusually large and handsome polar bearskin was brought 

 on board which had been dressed in such a manner that it could 

 be mounted. This I succeeded in purchasing for the University. 



We set sail in the evening with a fair wind which carried us 

 across Behring Sea in four days. The Aleutian, or Fox, 

 Islands as they are known to the whalers, were passed on the 

 14th of October. The volcanic peaks on either hand were 

 obscured by snow squalls until we were fairly within the pass 

 of Unimak, when the clouds lifted sufficiently to reveal the 

 sterile and forbidding coasts. 



