138 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



the quarry of those dusky captors. The traders erect small frame 

 dwellings as stores in the midst of the otter-hunting settlements, 

 places like Oonalashka, Belcovsky, Oonga, and Kadiak villages, 

 which are the chief resorts of population and this trade in Alaska. 

 They own and employ small schooners, between thirty and one 

 hundred tons burthen, in conveying the hunting parties to and 

 from these hamlets above mentioned as they go to and return from 

 the sea-otter hunting-grounds of Saanak and the Chernaboor rocks, 

 where five-sixths of all the sea-otters annually taken in Alaska are 

 secured. Why these animals should evince so much partiality for 

 this region between the Straits of Oonimak and the west end of 

 Kadiak Island is somewhat mysterious, but, nevertheless, it is the 

 great sea-otter hunting-ground of the country. Saanak Island, 

 itself, is small, with a coast-circuit of less than eighteen miles. 

 Spots of sand-beach are found here and there, but the major por- 

 tion of the shore is composed of enormous water-worn boulders, 

 piled up high by the booming surf. The interior is low and roll- 

 ing, with a central ridge rising into three hills, the middle one some 

 eight hundred feet high. There is no timber here, but an abun- 

 dant exhibit of grasses, mosses, and sphagnum, with a score of little 

 fresh-water ponds in which multitudes of ducks and geese are 

 found every spring and fall. The natives do not live upon the 

 island, because the making of fires and scattering of food-refuse, 

 and other numerous objectionable matters connected with their 

 settlement, alarm the otters and drive them off to parts unknown. 

 Thus the island is only camped upon by the hunting-squads, and 

 fires are never made unless the wind is from the southward, since 

 no sea-otters are ever found to the northward of the ground. The 

 sufferings miseries of cold, and even hunger, to which the Aleutes 

 subject themselves here every winter, going for weeks and weeks 

 at a time without fires, even for cooking, with the thermometer 

 below zero in a wild, northerly and westerly gale of wind, is better 

 imagined than portrayed. 



To the southward and westward of Saanak, stretching directly 

 from it out to sea, eight or ten miles, is a succession of small, sub- 

 merged islets, rocky, and bare most of them, at low water, with 

 numerous reefs and stony shoals, beds of kelp, etc. This scant area 

 is the chief resort of the kahlan, together with the Chernaboor 

 Islets, some thirty miles to the eastward, which are identical in 

 character. The otter rarely lands upon the main island, but he 



