120 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



smartly on the poles that are erected before their doors as we swing 

 to anchor in the offing, and a great bustle is evident among the 

 inhabitants when our boat pulls away for the landing, which is a 

 sheltered surf-eddy right under the blackest and most forbidding 

 of bluffs. Two rival trading-firms have each erected a landing 

 warehouse for the reception of their stores upon the rocky beach 

 where we step ashore. The ascent to the village above is steep, 

 but over a sloping slide of mossy earth and rocks. A clear, brawl- 

 ing brook runs down through the town, and we cross it by a lit- 

 tle foot-bridge on our way. We observe cord- wood piled upon the 

 beach, which the traders have brought from Kadiak, and several 

 heaps of coal that had been brought up as ballast from Vancouver's 

 Island. This fuel is regularly sold to the natives here, who have 

 none, unless it be a stray stick of drift-wood or the "chicksa " * 

 vines, which the women gather on the hill-sides. 



Sea-otter hunting is the sole industry and topic of conversation, 

 for within a radius of fifty miles from the site of Belcovsky fully 

 one-half of the entire Alaskan catch of these valuable peltries is se- 

 cured. Were they not hopelessly improvident, shiftless and extrava- 

 gant, they would be a really wealthy community ; but the notoriety 

 of the debauches here has become a by- word and a reproach over 

 the whole region between Cook's Inlet and Attoo. Every dollar of 

 their surplus earnings is squandered in orgies, stimulated by the 

 vile " quass " or beer which they make. They dress, however, in 

 suits of every-day clothing, such as we wear ourselves, when loung- 

 ing about the village, and their women wear cloth garments and 

 hats cut after a fashion not very remote in San Francisco. 



The neatness of the villages which we have just visited at Kadiak 

 and Cook's Inlet has no counterpart in Belcovsky, where, in spite of 

 its much greater trade and wealth, the filth and neglect everywhere 

 manifested among the barraboras and their interiors, are in harsh 

 and disagreeable contrast, while the taciturn, swelled heads of the 

 inmates speak volumes for the strength of that carousal during the 

 night prior to your arrival. A small frame house is pointed out 

 as the school, where it seems that those natives actually sustain a 

 teacher and send a large percentage of their children. It declares 

 that these people are not vicious at heart, though they cannot re- 

 sist intemperance. They read and write, however, principally in the 



* Trailing tendrils of the Empetrum nigrum. 



