TWO DIANAS IN ALASKA 61 



The management of native guides and hunters in 

 Alaska is quite different from anything one is used to 

 in Africa. The numbers are so many less, wages 

 being so high, and what one loses in quantity is not 

 gained in quality either. The all-round capability 

 of the average African head-man is non-existent in 

 any follower one may acquire in Alaska. To hand 

 over the whole domestic mechanism of camp affairs 

 to an Alaskan servant would just mean utter chaos. 

 They have not attained the smallest notion of the 

 duties of a head-man. They can guide, know the 

 whereabouts of game, and some of them are excellent 

 still-hunters though none of them, in my opinion, 

 come up to the black shikari and all of them are 

 splendid at carrying terrific loads. I am hard to 

 please now, as regards hunters, and am for ever 

 trying to find in each new man I go out with some 

 of the attributes my old Somali shikari possessed. 

 And it is absurd, since I shall never look upon his 

 like again. 



All of the Alaskan tribes, Aleut, Innuit, and rag- 

 tag-and-bobtail of indiscriminate race mixings, can 

 remember happenings of a week back, and not a 

 day beyond. 



The ordinary humdrum man of all work round 

 camp asks a dollar and a half a day, but the real 

 finished article, especially if he is a white, or half- 

 breed, demands his five, and can get it too. The 

 mines claim so much labour, and raise the scale of 

 wages. 



Steve, our first hand first by right of the amount 



