"Travels in Alaska 



fringe of bushes along the shore and hanging over the 

 brows of the cliffs, the white mountains above, the 

 shining water beneath, the changing sky over all, 

 form pictures of divine beauty in which no healthy 

 eye may ever grow weary. 



Toward evening at the head of a picturesque bay 

 we came to a village belonging to the Taku tribe. We 

 found it silent and deserted. Not a single shaman or 

 policeman had been left to keep it. These people are 

 so happily rich as to have but little of a perishable 

 kind to keep, nothing worth fretting about. They 

 were away catching salmon, our Indians said. All the 

 Indian villages hereabout are thus abandoned at 

 regular periods every year, just as a tent is left for a 

 day, while they repair to fishing, berrying, and hunt- 

 ing stations, occupying each in succession for a week 

 or two at a time, coming and going from the main, 

 substantially built villages. Then, after their sum- 

 mer's work is done, the winter supply of salmon dried 

 and packed, fish-oil and seal-oil stored in boxes, 

 berries and spruce bark pressed into cakes, their 

 trading-trips completed, and the year's stock of 

 quarrels with the neighboring tribe patched up in 

 some way, they devote themselves to feasting, danc- 

 ing, and hootchenoo drinking. The Takus, once a 

 powerful and warlike tribe, were at this time, like 

 most of the neighboring tribes, whiskied nearly out 

 of existence. They had a larger village on the Taku 

 River, but, according to the census taken that year 

 by the missionaries, they numbered only 269 in 

 all, — 109 men, 79 women, and 81 children, figures 



[ 238 ] 



