124 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



happy under the conditions of climate which prevail. But they 

 argue that where they themselves cannot peacefully exist the year 

 round, it would be idle to suppose that a civilized settlement could 

 be well established. We will find, however, quite a number of 

 genial, sociable fellows, men of our race, who are well educated, 

 and who have had excellent opportunities, and who to-day are 

 roaming here, there, and everywhere in Alaska, hunting, fishing, 

 and trading, or prospecting. They appear to be entirely happy, 

 not a bit cynical, and never express the slightest desire to return 

 with us to the world which they have left behind them voluntarily. 

 Alaska to them is a perfect Mecca of peace, and they have no de- 

 sire to see it changed. They unite usually in saying that their 

 wants are few, easily supplied, and they scarcely remember what 

 care was it does not trouble them now. 



The cod-fishermen do not make their working headquarters in 

 this village, but across, over the bay on Popov Islet, at a spot which 

 is called Pirate Cove. They are not annoyed by idle villagers there, 

 and are also somewhat nearer to the fishing-resorts which are just 

 outside. They are most likely not far from that spot where Bering 

 landed, August 30, 1741, to bury one of his seamen named Shoom- 

 agin, and to refill his water-casks. The exact locality, or even the 

 precise islet of the many that form this Shoomagin group, on 

 which the then sick and sadly demoralized explorer and his crew 

 interred the remains of their dead comrade, will never be satisfac- 

 torily established ; the cross of wood set up was immediately 

 pulled down, after his departure, by the natives, who were then 

 decidedly hostile, and who eyed him and his vessel with unaffected 

 dislike and apprehension.* When the St. Peter, six days later, 

 hauled off from those islands and turned her prow for Kamchatka, 

 perhaps that gloomy, timid Dane commanding her may have had 

 an astral premonition of the wreck of this vessel, which soon fol- 

 lowed and his own death too, in a self-made sand grave beneath 

 the black shadows of the bluffs at "Kommandor" this may have 

 caused him to earn that reproach which has been so lavishly laid 

 upon his conduct of a most remarkable and disastrous voyage. 



The Shoomagins are all bold and bluffy, with high uplands and 



* From the record made in the ship's log it would seem most likely that 

 he landed on either Popov Island, or else Nogai ; the description will fit either 

 locality. 



