CHAPTER XIL 

 INNUIT LIFE AND LAND. 



" Nooshagak ;" Wide Application of an Innuit Name. The Post and River. 

 Countless Pools, Ponds, and Lakes of this District bordering Bristol Bay. 

 The Eskimo Inhabitants of the Coast. The Features and Form of 

 Alaskan Innuits. Light-hearted, Inconstant, and Independent. Their 

 Dress, Manners, and Rude Dwellings. Their Routine of Life. Large and 

 Varied Natural Food-supplies. Indifferent Land Hunters, but Mighty 

 Fishermen. Limited Needs from Traders' Stores. Skilful Carvers in 

 Ivory. Their Town Hall, or "Kashga." They Build and Support no 

 Churches here. Not of a real Religious Cast, as the Aleutians are. The 

 Dogs and Sleds ; Importance of Them here. Great Interest of the Innuit in 

 Savage Ceremonies. The Wild Alaskan Interior. Its Repellent Features 

 alike Avoided by Savage and Civilized Man. The Indescribable Misery 

 of Mosquitoes. The Desolation of Winter in this Region. The Reindeer 

 Slaughter-pen on the Kvichak River. Amazing Improvidence of the 

 Innuit. The Tragic Death of Father Juvenals, on the Banks of the Great 

 Ilyamna Lake, 1796. The Queer Innuits of Togiak. Immense Muskrat 

 Catch. The Togiaks are the Quakers of Alaska. The Kuskok vim Mouth 

 a Vast Salmon-trap. The Ichthyophagi of Alaska. Dense Population. 

 Daily Life of the Fish-eaters. Infernal Mosquitoes of Kuskok vim ; the 

 Worst in Alaska. Kolmakovsky ; its History. 



" NOOSHAGAK " is not a very euphonious name, yet it is employed in 

 Alaska to express the whole of an immense area that backs the 

 borders of Bristol Bay ; but, when strictly applied, it is the desig- 

 nation of a small trading-post at the head of a large, brackish estu- 

 ary of the sea, into which the Nooshagak River pours its heavy 

 flood. A cruise of three hundred and eighty miles to the northeast 

 from Oonalashka in a trim little trading-schooner, which alone can 

 make the landing, takes you to this old and well-known Russian 

 outpost ; but the mariner who pilots that vessel must be well ac- 

 quainted with those perilous shoals and tide-rips of Bristol Bay, or 

 you will never disembark at the foot of that staircase which leads 

 up to the doors of Alexandrovsk. The river here is a broad arm of 

 the sea, full of shifting sand-bars and mud-flats which try the tern- 



