270 TWO DIANAS IN ALASKA 



versation together, on pain of instant death, and that 

 the sentence should be carried out effectively the boy 

 and girl were imprisoned in baraboras built at some 

 distance from each other. Love laughs at locksmiths, 

 and perhaps Alaskan locks are easier picked than 

 most. The youth escaped, and straight as an arrow 

 from a bow sped to the prison-house where lived his 

 father's daughter. Even as they met they were 

 caught, and so read their death warrant in the fierce, 

 stern eyes of the offended chieftain. 



From the top of a great cliff, down the face of a 

 precipice, the lovers were hurled to the sea below, 

 striking the cruel rocks ere the bodies fell into the 

 water. The spray shot up incarnadined, then still- 

 ness. Next morning, round and round the scene of 

 the death agony, in ever-widening circles, swam two 

 strange creatures, otter-like, but more beautiful and 

 wonderful than the otter of the rivers. The Aleuts, 

 wise and learned in all animals of their sea and land, 

 had never before known anything like these agile 

 swimmers, who remained in the vicinity for some 

 hours, and then headed to sea to return no more. 



The spirits of the lovers had not died, so said Aleut 

 superstition. They lived on in a new form of life, 

 lonely creatures of the deep, and from these two sea- 

 otters sprang the race of the most scarce, much hunted, 

 exquisite animal of the Northern Seas. 



Many more strange, weird tales come to my mind, 

 but it is so hard to make them readable. Told in the 

 heart of the mysterious and wonderful solitudes the 

 barbaric plainspokenness of each legend is, by the 



