180 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



in the archipelago, being dressed largely in tanned seal and bird- 

 skins, of the fashion made and worn by their forefathers who wel- 

 comed Novodiskov long, long ago. 



The necessity of doing something in order to gain from the 

 trader a few of the simplest articles, such as the natural resources 

 of Attoo utterly failed to supply, has driven the natives to the care 

 and conservation of blue foxes, which they introduced here many 

 years past, and of which they secure, in traps, two or three hun- 

 dred every season. The common red fox * of the whole Aleutian 

 chain became extinct here in prior time ; so, taking advantage of 

 this fact, those blue foxes, so abundant and so valuable on the Seal 

 Islands, were imported, and have ranged without deterioration, 

 since ice-floes never bridge the straits that isolate this island from 

 the nearest adjacent land, and upon which the common breed might 

 cross over to ruin the quality of the fur of that transported Vulpes 

 lagopus. They have also domesticated the wild goose, and rear flocks 

 of them around their barraboras, being the only people in Alaska 

 who have ever done so. 



It hardly seems credible, at first thought, but the village of 

 Attoo makes San Francisco practically the half-way town as we go 

 from Calais, Me., to it, our westernmost settlement! It is really 

 but slightly short of being just midway, since Attoo stands almost 

 three thousand miles west of the Golden Gate, f A strict geo- 

 graphical centre of the American Union is that point at sea forty 

 miles off the Columbia River mouth, on the coast of Oregon. 



The nearest neighbors of the Attoo villagers are not of their 

 own kith and kin they are the Atkhan and Kamchadale Creoles 

 and natives of the Russian Seal Islands, some two hundred miles 



* The only fur-bearing animal found in every section of Alaska is the red 

 fox ( Vulpes fulvus). From Point Barrow to the southern boundary, and from 

 the British line to the Island of Attoo, this brute is omnipresent. It varies 

 greatly in size and quality of fur, from the handsome specimens of Nooshagak 

 down to the diminutive yellow-tinged creatures that ramble furtively over the 

 Aleutian Islands. 



f "The distance in statute miles between San Francisco and a point due 

 south of Attoo, measured on the parallel of San Francisco, is 2,943.1 miles. 

 The distance east from Attoo of a point due north of San Francisco, measured 

 on the parallel of Attoo, is 2,214.5 miles. The amount of westing made in 

 sailing from San Francisco to Attoo, on a great circle, is very nearly 2,582.5 

 miles." (Henry Gannett, Geographer U. S. Geological Survey: letter to 

 author. ) 



