THE GREAT ALEUTIAN CHAIN. 173 



At the time of their first discovery, they were living as savages 

 in every sense of the word, bold and hardy, throughout the Aleu- 

 tian chain, but now they respond, on these islands, to all outward 

 signs of Christianity, as sincerely as our own church-going people. 

 The question as to the derivation of those natives is still a mooted 

 one among ethnologists, for in all points of personal bearing, intel- 

 ligence, character, as well as physical structure, they seem to form 

 a perfect link of gradation between the Japanese and Eskimo, not- 

 withstanding their traditions and their language are entirely distinct 

 and peculiar to themselves ; not one word or numeral of their 

 nomenclature resembles the dialect of either. They claim, how- 

 ever, to have come first to the Aleutian Islands from a " big land 

 in the westward," and that when they came there first they found 

 the land uninhabited, and that they did not meet with any people, 

 until their ancestors had pushed on to the eastward as far as the 

 peninsula and Kadiak. Confirmatory of this legend, or rather 

 highly suggestive of it, is the fact that repeated instances have 

 occurred within our day where Japanese junks have been, in the 

 stress of hurricanes and typhoons, dismantled, and have drifted 

 clear over and on to the reefs and coasts of the Aleutian Islands. 

 Only a short time ago, in the summer of 1871, such a craft was so 

 stranded, helpless and at the mercy of the sea, upon the rocky 

 coast of Adak Island, in this chain ; the few surviving sailors, 

 Japanese, five in number, were rescued by a party of Aleutian sea- 

 otter hunters, who took care of them until the vessel of a trader 

 earned them back, by way of Oonalashka, to San Francisco, and 

 thence they returned to their native land. 



A number of the males in every Aleutian village will be found 

 who can read and write with the Russian alphabet. This education 

 they get in the line of church exercises, inasmuch as they are all 

 conducted in the Russian language, though the responses for the 

 congregation usually are made by Aleutian accents. An Aleut 

 grammar and phonetic alphabet, adapted to the expression of the 

 Russian language, is used in all of these hamlets. It was prepared 

 by that remarkable man, Veniaminov, in 1831 : a large number of 

 the books were printed, and they have been in use ever since. The 

 young men and boys are taught as they grow up, by the church 

 deacon usually, to read, first in the Aleut dialect, then in the Rus- 

 sian. The traders take advantage of this understanding among 

 these people, and facilitate their bartering very materially. They 



