THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. 107 



thrown with spades, picks, and hoes up as small ridges or tumuli, 

 into the surface of which the seed is planted. A few of those 

 shaggy little bulls and cows, which we have noticed before at Wood 

 Island and Kadiak, are also roaming about, and a great many 

 domestic fowls, such as chickens and ducks, are raised by the 

 women and children, who take the poultry into the attics or lofts 

 above their living rooms during the inclemencies of winter. 



The desire of the Russians to have beef, milk, and butter, led to 

 a very general importation of Siberian cattle from Petropaulovsk so 

 that every post in Alaska, at one time, had at least a pair of these 

 useful animals to start with. The greatest care was given to them 

 at first, everywhere ; they were especially fostered at Sitka, where 

 the demand for their flesh and milk was most urgent, but at Kadiak 

 and the Kenai mission on Cook's Inlet, the only partial success in 

 causing an increase to the stock was achieved. Impressed with an 

 idea that certain sections of the Kadiak region would serve admira- 

 bly for sheep-husbandry, a San Francisco merchant-firm shipped a 

 flock of rams and ewes one hundred and fifty of them sheep of 

 the hardiest breed, to Kolma, a spot not far from St. Paul's Harbor, 

 Kadiak. They were in charge of a trained Scotch shepherd ; but 

 while the flock did remarkably well in the summer, yet most of 

 them perished during the following winter, not from exposure nor 

 want of food, but the long-continued and frequent intervals when 

 the sheep are obliged to be shut up tightly from the fury of wintry 

 gales laden with sleet and rain and snow, causes their wool to 

 "sweat" and fall from the skin in large patches, producing an 

 emaciation and debility which the animal seldom fully recovers 

 from. Also, the general dampness everywhere under foot during the 

 summer season in many good grazing sections of Alaska, is such 

 as to cause an abnormal increase of the hoofs, so that the horny toes 

 turn and grow upward, destroying the peace and comfort of a 

 sheep and literally confine its movements and destroy its thrifty 

 life.* 



These cereals never ripen, but are cut green, and fed as fodder. Corn is a 

 total failure everywhere, even as fodder. No cereals have been ripened in 

 Alaska ; the attempt, however, has been made a thousand times. 



* The first cattle brought into Alaska were taken to Kadiak in 1795, and 

 from this central station the stock was distributed so that by 1833 it had 

 increased to a herd of over two hundred and twenty. At the present writing 

 it is very doubtful whether there are sixty head in the whole region. Every 



