210 HUNTING IN THE ARCTIC 



trace the route that they were traveling. We could see 

 some of the bed of King County Creek, clearly make out 

 the channel of the Funny River, which ran almost parallel 

 to the Killey and some miles south of it, and beyond this 

 could see the edge of a higher table land separating the 

 Funny River basin from the drainage sj^stem of Lake 

 Tustumena, which the local inhabitants called Kusiloff 

 Lake. 



As we stepped upon the dike, shivering with the cold, 

 trying to beat our numbed fingers and toes mto sensibility, 

 we were in position to look over almost the whole of the 

 small territory thickly populated by the great moose. 

 For these noble creatures had, in recent years, been 

 crowded into a definite region. At times they migrated 

 to one side or another, but generally they were now 

 hemmed in the country lying between Skilak and Tus- 

 tumena Lakes, between the Kenai Mountains and the 

 low western coastal plain. North of Skilak Lake speci- 

 mens were often obtained, but the general opinion was 

 that such had migrated from the main territory. 



Driven out of the southwestern end of the Peninsula 

 by hunters issuing from Homer and Seldovia to supply 

 the canneries there; forced to retreat from Kenai and 

 Hope on the west and north, the moose had withdrawn 

 near to the mountains, and we sometimes found them 

 among the foothills at elevations exceeding three thousand 

 feet, in isolated instances. Most of the animals we came 

 upon, however, were ranging at one thousand to two 

 thousand feet above the sea level. Many hundreds were 

 killed yearly by the Indians, the guides and the profes- 

 sional meat hunters, and the continual persecution had 

 herded the remainder together into a comparatively 

 small piece of country; possibly only 1,500 square miles 



