COOK'S INLET AND ITS PEOPLE. 91 



hot springs and solfataras, will always be a rendezvous for game, 

 especially bears, which seem to fully understand that in staying 

 there they will never be disturbed. But the Kenaitze are ardent 

 hunters, nevertheless, and spend most of their time and energy in 

 the chase of land animals making long journeys into the interior, 

 and gloomy recesses of mountainous canons and defiles, to follow 

 and find the fur-bearing quarry peculiar to their country. 



They have regular tracks of main travel, where, like stage sta- 

 tions on our frontier post-roads, at intervals they have erected 

 shelter-huts, in which they often live with their families for months 

 of the year at a time ; they make birch-bark canoes for their river 

 and lake transit, but in navigating Cook's Inlet, they buy skin 

 bidarkas of the Kadiak model and use them altogether. They are 

 fairly independent of salt water, and seldom pass many hours upon 

 it, except in travelling and trading one with another, and the 

 Creoles ; they are, however, very expert at fresh-water fishing 

 through holes in the ice for trout in the thousand and one lakes, 

 large and small, which are so common in their country.* 



As these natives live in their permanent settlements, we find 

 them distinguished by a peculiar architecture. Their houses are 

 fashioned out of logs, and set above ground resting upon its sur- 

 face ; the logs are hollowed out on one side so as to fit one upon 

 the other in true spoon-fashion, and make a really air and water- 

 tight wall ; an enclosure of these walls will hardly ever be larger 

 than 20 feet square, and most of them never go over 12 or 15 feet ; 

 they have regularly laid cross-rafters, with a low, or half-pitch, over 

 which spruce-bark shells are so spread as to shed rain and drifting 

 snow ; these shingle slabs are kept in place by a number of heavy 

 poles, lashed transversely across ; a fireplace is always in the cen- 

 tre with a very small smoke-hole opened in the roof just above it ; 



* The greatest number of different mammals found wild in any one region 

 of Alaska is to be recorded here : bears, brown and black ; deer, reindeer 

 and the woodland cariboo ; big-horn mountain sheep, a long-haired variety. 

 These animals are all shot. The trapped varieties are: beaver, land-otter, por- 

 cupines, whistling marmot or woodchuck, large gray wolves, lynx, wolverine, 

 marten, mink, ermine, weasels, and muskrats. Wild-fowl : grouse both 

 white and ruffled, geese, ducks, sandhill cranes, and the great northern 

 swan. Berries : whortleberries, salmonberries, gooseberries, and cranberries ; 

 all gathered in season and mixed with the everlasting rancid oil used by every 

 native in every section of Alaska. 



