THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. 121 



Aleutian dialect, using an alphabet prepared for their race by the 

 Greek Catholic missionaries in 1810-25. But, while the large capt- 

 ure of sea-otters and consequent flow of the traders' money and 

 supplies into this settlement brings these people greater wealth than 

 that showered elsewhere, yet the real physical misery of those 

 natives of Belcovsky proves the truth and points the moral of a 

 very old saying which declares that riches alone do not bring con- 

 tentment to the human mind, be it ever so high or ever so low. 



A strong south wind is springing up, and you are told by 

 the skipper that you must get aboard as quickly as possible, for 

 it is sure destruction to his vessel if she lies long at anchor in the 

 offing, since the sunken rocks and open roadstead are dangerous. 

 The little schooner is rapidly put under way, " beating out " in the 

 freshening gale and headed for Oonga, which is the next settlement 

 in importance, about fifty miles east. Sailing-vessels never come 

 into Belcovsky, except those of rival traders, because it is the most 

 risky port that the mariner has to make in all these waters of Alaska. 



Before leaving the sea-otter emporium it is well to call attention 

 to the fact that at a small indentation of this same peninsula, 

 twenty-nine miles to the northward, is a settlement made up en- 

 tirely of the poor relatives of these Belcovsky people, some forty or 

 fifty souls, who, however, take a great pride in their superior health 

 and morality. They have a little chapel, and enjoy much better 

 opportunities for hunting bear and reindeer. These animals, the 

 reindeer leading, always followed by the bears, come down at regu- 

 lar intervals in large herds from a great moorland to the north- 

 east, travelling on a well-beaten "road" or track, which leads clear 

 to the westernmost end of the peninsula, where those bovine road- 

 makers plunge into and cross the narrow Krenitzin Straits to renew 

 their land march and scatter all over the rugged and extended 

 tundra and mountain sides of Oonimak Island. 



With a line of dissipation and general misery which the rich 

 commerce of Belcovsky causes in that settlement, we ought not to 

 fail to include the Protassov or Morserovie village which is located 

 on the far end of the peninsula the extreme west end, where a much 

 smaller community exists, though equally opulent and just as disso- 

 lute. Here is a settlement of nearly a hundred natives, who have 

 an annual average income of about $1,000 to each family. Yet, in 

 spite of this small fortune in such a region, when visited by an 

 agent of the Government in 1880, they shocked him by their aspect 



