Publishers' Preface 



From the small size of this volume, one would 

 hardly realize, perhaps, what an immense amount 

 of labor and patient research its writing must neces- 

 sarily represent. The author, who was first sent to 

 northwestern Alaska in the summer of 1890, and 

 who, by the bye, has, with the exception of two 

 vacations of a year each, been constantly at his post 

 in that bleak country ever since, found himself one 

 day landed, with his possessions, upon the inhospi- 

 table sea-beach of the Point Hope peninsula, where 

 for weeks he was compelled to shelter himself from 

 wind and rain, as best he could, in an improvised 

 tent made of barrels and boxes with canvas thrown 

 over them. Finally, the carpenters of some of the 

 whaling ships were got together and a house, which 

 had been framed in distant San Francisco, was put 

 up for him, a few hundred yards from the water's 

 edge. 



A mile or so away lay a large native village, the 

 inhabitants of which naturally regarded him as a 

 great curiosity. But he found himself quite unable 

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