46 ALASKA. 



expended in bnildings and upon the people, who will go with 

 wonderful promptness and unanimity wherever they can make 

 the most in trade and are best treated, for they are keen and 

 shrewd. 



I now pass to the consideration of the several trading- dis- 

 tricts, and the character and quality of the furs obtained from 

 them resjiectively. 



THE YUKON DISTRICT. 



KoTZEBUE Sound : 



The trade at this place with the natives is principally by 

 whaling- vessels, which are supplied with liquors; they tit out 

 and clear from the Sandwich Islands for the arctic, and take 

 advantage of the impunity with which they can visit this port 

 and profit by this illicit occupation ; for the natives here, as 

 everywhere else, are passionately fond of liquor, and a large 

 proportion of the best furs from the Lower Yukon, the region 

 south of Saint ]\Jichael's, is picked out by Indian traders and car- 

 ried to this place, where they can be exchanged for whisky. 

 The trade, however, that belongs to the sound itself is not ex- 

 tensive ; only a small number of Eskimo live here, in scattered 

 settlements along the coast, at the mouths of debouching creeks, 

 &c. The catch of fur-bearing animals is not large; the people 

 themselves live more by trading than by hunting, i. e., trading 

 between the people living far to the southward and eastward 

 on the one hand, and the whalers and others, making prolits as 

 middlemen. 



Norton's Sound : 



A. few Eskimo traders live here ; the catch and yield of fur- 

 bearing animals unimportant. These people assist the Kotzebue 

 traders in getting their furs carried up and over to that place, 

 and many of them go over to Port Clarence with an assortment 

 of furs, beaver principally, where they meet the ])eople from 

 the Asiatic side, who cross Bering's Straits in the winter on the 

 ice by way of the Diomede Islands, with dog-sleds, loaded with 

 tame reindeer-skins'^ tanned, which are in great demand by the 

 natives of this district for manufacture into cloaks, coats, par- 

 Mes, &c., while the Asiatics are equally desirous of getting any 

 and all kinds of fur, such as mink, marten, land-otter, beaver, 

 «S:c., but desire beaver especially. 



