44 TWO DIANAS IN ALASKA 



habits of the various animals found there. Thanks 

 to the assistance of a local storekeeper four natives 

 were found who undertook to accompany our expedi- 

 tion at a price which seemed to us somewhat exorbit- 

 ant, namely one and a half dollars pay per diem. 

 Compared with our former experience of the amounts 

 demanded by natives in India and Africa, where a few 

 annas will engage good men, these Alaskan terms 

 seemed excessively high. But we had yet to learn 

 that the Alaskan natives are probably the most inde- 

 pendent and highly paid members of the race of 

 hunters on earth, and this may chiefly be ascribed to 

 the fact of the ease with which they can obtain a 

 living from the unlimited supply of fish, flesh, and 

 fowl that still abounds in the waters and untrodden 

 lands of the Alaskan shores. Moreover, the scarcity 

 of white men along these coasts enables the native to 

 demand, and obtain, extraordinarily high wages if 

 he is inclined to work in such places as the mines, or 

 any of the numerous commercial enterprises which 

 are being rapidly opened up in Alaska. 



The four men who had volunteered to accompany 

 us rejoiced in the names of Ivan, Pete, Steve, and 

 Ned, but their weird-sounding family names were 

 utterly unpronounceable by our foreign tongues, and 

 hence they were always hereafter referred to by their 

 Christian names. As regards their racial type they 

 were half-breeds between Russians and Aleut natives, 

 and spoke Russian and Aleut far better than English, 

 although their conversation and vocabulary com- 

 prised a certain amount of quaint American sayings. 



