48 j;XI'Kl)LTl()N TO POINT BARKOW, ALASKA. 



used n kilikiui< .' made from the catkins HIM! bark of the arctic willow, which they now use to 

 adulterate their tobacco. They all seem to have a natural appetite for this weed in any form. 

 The men would often beg the privilege of cleaning the deposit from the stein and bowls of our 

 pipes, which they ate with gnat relish, and, strange to say, without being nauseated in tho 

 slightest. 



T'.iat these people have not yet made the transition from the -stone to the iron age is shown 

 by the large number of stone and bone implements still in use among them at the present time. 

 M my of the old conservative men still cling to the habits of their fathers, and believe that stone 

 arrow and lance heads possess virtues that makes them superior to those made of iron. They 

 etill teach the young men the art of chipping flint, and over their work tell them of the happy 

 days before the white men came to drive away the whales and walrus, and when food was always 

 plenty. An old man, when asked what he would do without the things the white men brought 

 them, answered it would be very hard, and tlven to show us what he could do he showed a pair of 

 boots he had on, and told us with great pride how, when his boots gave out while, hunting, he 

 killed a deer, made a needle from a piece of his bone, thread from the sinew, and made himself a 

 new pair of boots from the skin, and asked, Could a white man do that? In the spring of is,s:;, 

 when they came to prepare their boats for whaling, they decided after many grave debates that 

 the bad luck of the previous year was owing entirely to their having equipped their beats M ith 

 white man's gear, of which they had abundance, obtained from wrecked whalers; so it, was decided 

 that they would go back to the implements of their fathers, and the old ivory and stone harpoon 

 and lance heads were brought forth and repaired, and that they took one whale was attributed 

 entirely to this change; the fact that tho whale was killed by a shot from a bomb gun we loaned 

 them to the contrary notwithstanding. 



From the head of Kotzebue to the mouth of the Mackenzie there i- .ml any timber of 



any si/e indigenous to that region, and the Colville, Ik-plk-pun, and Meade Iliver bri- Q no 



drift of any size, only the arctic willow. The drift east up by the sea - ace, 



birch, and poplar; it often comes ashore with the bark and r< ; rn. 



That this drift comes principally from the Mackenzie is shown by the fact that it is found in g 

 abundance to the eastward of Point Barrow, while to the west of it not so abundant. We o 

 sionally saw large trunks of trees, from two to three feet in d : tripped of roots ;, hes, 



generally of cottonwood'which seemed to have been a very long time at .sea. Y\"hat little drift wo 

 saw coming from the, westward was always old. 



The streams that have their source in Meade liiver Mountains bring drift larger than 



the arctic willow, and we saw no drift along the arctic shore that resembled that from the Yukon, 

 found along the shore of Norton Hound. The natives in the vicinity of Point Barro "iys 



on the lookout for pieces of drift wood, and every piece that can be utilized in building hut or boat 

 is at once marked and placed above high water. At leisure they work them dov.n to tl;- 

 quired, stick them up so as to show above the snow in winter, when they are hauled to the iglu 

 and placed on the cache. It is often a work of from three to five years to accumulate enough timber 

 to construct a boat or iglu. Every cache shows a store of neatly dressid sticks, that are highly 

 prized, and that, have a commercial value. 



In the small inlets along the coast drift wood was found from ten to lifteen feet above the high- 

 water mark' of the sea, and at first we were led to believe that such drift represented an unusually 

 high tide, but we subsequently learned that it was caused by the, heavy ice pack, which, in the 

 winter, is foived in on the laud by the violent gales, and makes a dam across the entrance' to the 

 inlets. The water from the melting snows in the spring fill up the inlets and finds no outlet until 

 it overflows this barrier, when, running down rapidly, it leaves the drift high -vol. 



These openings, seen in tin' early summer, have often been mistaken B -; tits of rivers by 



people passing on ships. It is \er.v doubtful if this vast, stretch of country contains anything that 

 will ever render it, of an.\ < ..i value to il:e world. But on our vi .:ili we were 



struck with the fertile, appearaneeof the Aleutian Islands where we halted fora few days to repair 

 our vessel. On the island we visited, though late in September, we found a luxuriant growth of 

 grass still untouched by frost. All the islands we saw were high and rolling, intersected by beau- 



