MOUNT ST. ELI AS AND PEINCE WILLIAM SOUND. 187 



the delta of this curious river. Two more nights 

 were spent in camp in different picturesque coves, 

 where we found abundance of salmon, a description of 

 which fish as seen in Alaska must be reserved for 

 Nuchuk, which we reached on the fifth day. 



Nuchuk, or Port Etches, is a solitary and remote 

 trading post of the Alaska Commercial Company, 

 situated in a noble bay on Hinchinbrook Island, in 

 Prince William Sound, whither the Indians resort 

 from the surrounding districts in order to dispose of 

 their furs to the white agent. A schooner, bringing 

 the winter supplies, was due, and might have arrived 

 any day ; but we had a weary wait of no less than 

 eight weeks before she appeared. This interval I spent 

 in short expeditions of different kinds, not venturing 

 to absent myself for more than a day or two at a time. 

 The trader, who had been selected for the post by the 

 Alaska Commercial Company, was a Yankee skipper, 

 apparently of middle age, an autocrat, whose word 

 was law amongst the little community, which con- 

 sisted of half-civilised Chugamutes, some of them 

 half Eussian in blood. All were professed Christians, 

 and close by the trader's house stood a very diminu- 

 tive wooden church, built after the Kussian style, to 

 which they regularly contributed and in which they 

 regularly assembled for worship, which was conducted 

 with much superstitious genuflection. The trader 

 himself never entered the building. The priest was a 

 little Alaskan Eussian, called Mcolai, half Indian in 

 appearance. He cooked the trader's meals and kept 



