IX.] NIKOLSKY. 189 



any one would leave England to cruise in Bering's Sea for amuse- 

 ment. He left the ship with evidently no little distrust as to our 

 designs, but condescended to supply us with two pieces of mforma- 

 tion before his departure : the first, that we had taken up the best 

 anchorage in the bay, and the other, that we were the only British 

 ship that had ever visited the island. For the truth of the latter 

 statement I cannot vouch ; with regard to the former we could 

 only say that we were sorry it was not better. 



The little village, in spite of the utter bareness of its surround- 

 ings, looks neat and not impleasing from a distance, with its care- 

 fully-fenced compounds and red-roofed houses. This unproved 

 appearance — for not long ago the people lived in miserable under- 

 ground yourts like those in use among the Kurile islanders — is due 

 in great measure to the Alaska Commercial Company, who rent the 

 islands from the Eussian Government, and have the sole right of 

 killing the seals. Many turf-built houses still remain, inhabited 

 by the Aleuts employed in the seal-industry, but they are being 

 gradually replaced by the more healthy wooden tenements, all the 

 materials for which, in consequence of the complete treelessness of 

 the island, have to be brought over from Kamschatka. The 

 condition of the islanders has no doubt improved in every way 

 since the Company has been in possession. There is a Paissian 

 church and a good school for the children, and the ills to wdiich 

 Aleut flesh is heir are looked after by a surgeon. With the ex- 

 ception of one or two Eussian officials who check the annual take 

 of skins, administer justice, and lead as meditative an existence as 

 the climate will permit, every soul upon the island is in the service 

 of the Americans. 



The Komandorskis, and, for that matter, other islands ui these 

 out-of-the-way regions to which I shall presently refer, would be 

 valueless without the fur seal; and just as m Kamschatka the salmon 

 and sables are the be-all and end-all of life, so here tliis extra- 

 ordinary animal, whose congener of the Antarctic Ocean is now 

 nearly extinct, supplies either directly or indirectly the means of 



