36 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



hoiiso. Hence men, women, and c.liiUlrcn are engaged in the work, each family trying 

 to bring in as many skins as ])()ssible. This system has been found necessary there, 

 as the i)opulati()n would have been entirely inadequate to handle the catch if the 

 Jeering Island scheme had been adopted, it has resulted in overworking the Copper 

 Islanders, exi)ecially the females; but 1 am not certain that their more cheerful and 

 inde[)eiulently open character, as (contrasted with the more sulky and indifl'erent aspect 

 of tlie Bering Island natives, is not due to the competition, on one hand, and the para- 

 lyzing connnunism on the other. 



The religion of the natives is, of course, the orthodox Russian Greek-Catholic 

 faith. They have built a fine and expensive clinrch on each island. They also sni)port 

 a priest on each island,and on Bering Island an assistant priest or ''diakon." The moral 

 l)laue of the church — its methods, men, and ineinbers — is similar to that of the same 

 institution in Alaska. 



Schools are provided for both islands and housed in roomy and welllighted build- 

 ings, very creditable in every respect. The children are provided witii all the modern 

 imi)rovements in school furniture, as well as a])paratus for object lessons, maps, and 

 colored charts of animals and ])lants decorating the walls, on which, over the teaxclier's 

 rostrum, also hang the portraits of the tsar and the tsarina. Whether the knowledge 

 received by the boys and girls is up to the flue ajjparatus, I am not able to say. Any- 

 way, the boys used to write a good hand, at least when the late Mr. Volokitin taught 

 them. I also saw the apparatus of a modern school gymnasium, but as it was outside 

 the schoolhouse and being i)ainted dead-black, I surmise that the authorities had come 

 to the conclusion that it was carrying coal to Newcastle to give the outdoor children 

 of Aleut extraction the additional physical exercise of indoor gymnastics. 



A doctor, appointed and paid by the Government, is now stationed on Bering 

 Island, with a good drug store on each island. He has for an assistant a "feltcher" or 

 barber, a native boy who has undergone a training at Vladivostok. The midwife, sent 

 out from St. Petersburg by the authorities there, must also be regarded as the doctor's 

 assistant. 



A— BERING ISLAND. 

 GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 



Bering Island, the northwestern island of the Commander group, is situated 

 between (approximately) 55° 22' and S-to 42' north latitude and 10.5'^ 40' and IfiOo 41' 

 east longitude (pi. 4). Its greatest length from northwest to southeast is a little less 

 than 50 miles, the average width being about 10 miles. 



Two outlying islets, both not fiir from the northwestern extremity, ju'operly 

 belong here — Toporlcof Inland, a flat-topped, low island, about 2 miles west of the 

 main village, and Ari Kamen, on older charts usually called Sivutchi Kamen, a 

 higher basaltic rock, with a two-peaked top, 4i miles farther west. 



Tlie southern two-thirds of Bering Island are exceedingly mountainous, with 

 peaks rising to about 2,200 feet. Tlie maximum elevation is nearer the western side 

 than the eastern, and the rise from the sea consequently more abrupt along the 

 former coast, the mountains sloping more gently toward the east. The valleys, as a 

 rule, are shorter, narrower, and V-shaped on the west side, longer and more open oti 

 the other. The passes are usually high, 000 to 1,000 feet, bnt at one place, viz, 

 between (JhidUorfilunja on the west coast and Polavino on the east, the two valleys 



I 



