MOUNT ST. ELIAS AND PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND. 183 



and preferred trusting to the shaman, died, and were 

 subsequently cremated. Our position would have 

 been exceedingly critical, and the Indians might 

 have exacted a bloody retribution from us, had they 

 not been aware that the dreaded gun-boat would 

 shortly return. 



We frequently visited the sick, and the medicine- 

 man's mode of procedure was so peculiar that it de- 

 serves a word of description. In the centre of a large 

 Indian hut, by a fire, lay one of the sick, a man, on 

 his back. His naked stomach was being rubbed by 

 women with their saliva. Around were grouped in a 

 wide circle some Indians making a monotonous noise 

 with tom-toms. By the side of the sick man crouched 

 the shaman in a state of nudity, excepting for a dis- 

 coloured loin-cloth, and shining with perspiration and 

 grease. An assistant was engaged in blowing over 

 him a cloud of young eagles' down, which naturally 

 adhered to his skin, covered as it was with fat. The 

 effect produced by this process was very remarkable. 

 He kept shouting and swaying his body in time with 

 the tom-toms, occasionally placing some charm upon 

 the patient in the shape of a rattle or a figure of a 

 man, rudely carved, and having upon its chest an 

 enormous frog with a tongue protruding from its jaws, 

 and inserted into the mouth of its victim. 



Soon afterwards I set sail for Kaiak in the 

 small schooner, manned and owned by two Swedes. 

 The others returned safely, if uneventfully, in the 

 Pinta, which came for them in due time. My own 



