ALASKA. 99 



past twenty-five or tliirty years they have all come into the 

 general ownership and occupation of a hut to a family. 



Thelvussian Fur Company, controlling the islands, maintained 

 on Saint Paul and Saint George a store and an agent, the 

 people supporting a priest and building a church upon each 

 island, and living in this manner very dirty, poor, and miser- 

 able, they were brought into contact with the Americans at 

 the time of the transfer of the Territory. 



The people are now supplied without charge with a physi- 

 cian and medical stores on each island, and also a school ; but 

 the school is not well attended except by the very young chil- 

 dren, principally the little girls, although every winter fifteen 

 or twenty of the boys and young men are taught the Russian 

 alphabet and church-service by three or four of the elder per- 

 sons. The non-attendance at school is not to be ascribed merely 

 to indisposition on the part of the children and parents to at- 

 tend the English schools established by the Alaska Commercial 

 Company on both islands. The view expressed to the writer b^- 

 one of the oldest and most intelligent of the people may be 

 explanatory of their feeling and consequent action. 



"I do not," said old Philip Yollkov, " have any objection to 

 the attendance of my children, nor have my neighbors to that 

 of theirs, on your (English) school; but if our boys and young 

 men neglect their Russian lessons, who is going to take our 

 places when we die, in our church, at our christenings, and at 

 our burials?'" To any one familiar with the teachings of the 

 Greek Catholic faith the objection of Vollkov is well taken ; 

 but it is to be hoped that in the course of time, however, the 

 Russian church-service may be conducted in English, for until 

 then no satisfactory work can be done by an English school- 

 teacher among them in the w'ay of education. 



Up to the time of the transfer of the islands to the Alaska 

 Commercial Company the inhabitants all lived in huts or sod- 

 walled and dirt-roofed houses or barrabkies, partly under- 

 ground. jMost of these huts Mere, and are, damp, dark, and 

 exceedingly filthy. Under the Russian regime the people gen- 

 erally here had some excuse for such squalor ; but as the case 

 now stands it is due to the improvidence or shiftlessnessof the 

 natives themselves if they are living in this unclean condition 

 and wear an appearance of discomfort. The use of seal-fat for 

 fuel causes the deposit upon everything within doors of a thick 

 coating of greasy, black soot, strongly impregnated with a rank, 



