76 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



into the ocean. How the winds do blow here ! How the trader 

 dreads to tarry " off and on " this coast ! 



There are a few lonely places in this world, and the wastes of the 

 great Alaskan interior are the loneliest of them all. Those of Sibe- 

 ria are traversed occasionally by wandering bands, but those of 

 Alaska, never. The severe exigencies of climate there are such as 

 to substantially eliminate savage life, and to rear an impregnable 

 barrier to that of civilization. 



When Alaska was first transferred, an estimate of many thou- 

 sands of Indians inhabiting its vast interior was gravely made and 

 as gravely accepted by us ; but a thorough investigation made by 

 our traders and officers of our Government during the last fifteen 

 years has exposed that error. Hundreds only live where thousands 

 were declared to exist. The Indians who live on the banks of the 

 Copper River are, perhaps, the most poverty-stricken of all their 

 kind in Alaska. Their shiftless spruce-bark rancheries and rude be- 

 longings are certainly the most primitive of their race, and render 

 that weird Russian legend of the massacre of Seribniekov in 1848, 

 which declared them so numerous and savage, absolutely grotesque. 

 They are perfectly safe as they live in their wild habitat. The cu- 

 pidity of savage or civilized man never has and never will molest 

 them. But if half is true as to what they relate of huge glaciers 

 which empty into their river, then those that have been described 

 in Cross Sound have formidable rivals, which may yet prove to be 

 superiors, perhaps, although it seems incredible. 



The Suchnito or Copper River has long been a bugbear, for the 

 Russians* years ago have returned from several unsuccessful at- 



* When the surveying parties of the War Department were ascending Cop- 

 per River last summer, certain Indians, who had been instrumental in slaying 

 the Russian party of Seribniekov in 1848, were very much alarmed. They 

 were sure that the fates had come for them at last. One of these natives, an 

 aged man, now wholly blind, was reported as saying that he was ready to die, 

 and knew what the white men wanted. This old fellow, Lieutenant Allen 

 says, was one of the finest-looking savages that he ever saw. The face of the 

 blind man was one of remarkable character a large, massive head, high 

 aquiline nose, with a full, thin-lipped mouth and broad forehead. He was 

 totally blind and his hair white as snow. 



The Russian party were sleeping in their sledges, which they compelled 

 the natives to draw while ascending the river. At a preconcerted signal the 

 unwilling Indians turned and brained their taskmasters with hatchets. These 

 natives had welcomed the Russians ; but when they were made to perform 



