400 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



devise. It is an exceedingly fascinating spot, and language is utter* 

 ly inadequate to portray its vistas, which alternate from absolute 

 grandeur to that of quiet loveliness, as you sail around its pebbly 

 shores and yellow sands. 



The immediate banks of the Nakneek Biver, through which 

 Lake Walker empties its surplus water into Bristol Bay, are low and 

 flat, and covered with a luxuriant growth of bushes, grasses, and 

 amphibious plants, semi-tropical in their verdant vigor of life. 

 The timber on hill-slopes that rise from the plain is principally 

 clumps of birch and poplar, quickly passing to solid masses of 

 spruce as a higher ascent is made to the rolling uplands and 

 mountain sides. An old, deserted settlement ruins of Paugwik, 

 marked by the decayed outlines of its cemetery, still is visible at 

 the debouchure of the Nakneek. With a strange disrespect for the 

 departed, those natives who live at an adjoining village come over 

 here to excavate salmon-holes in that ancient graveyard, wherein they 

 place their fish-heads, so that a process of moist rotting shall take 

 place prior to eating them ! The Innuits of Kenigayat have no fear 

 of the " witching hour of night " in this burial site of their ancestors. 



The seal and walrus hunters of the Nooshagak district are those 

 hardy Innuits who live at Kulluk and Ooallikh Bays, in plain sight 

 of these walrus islets and shoals which we were taking notice of a 

 short time ago. The large mahklok and a smaller, but quaintly 

 marked "saddle-backed" seal are taken by these people in large 

 numbers every year. The oil is their great stock-in-trade, for those 

 fur-bearing animals that belong to the land here are away below par 

 when brought to a trader. The coast between their villages and 

 the mouth of the Togiak Biver is one of a most remarkable series 

 of bluffy headlands, seven of them, being all of sandstone which 

 has weathered into queer, fantastic pinnacles and towers, and is 

 washed at the sea-level into hundreds of huge caverns wherein the 

 surf beats with a noise like the distant roar of artillery. Scream- 

 ing flocks of water-fowl are breeding on their mural faces, and 

 troops of foxes lurk in the interstices, and roam incessantly for eggs 

 and unwary birds. 



The Togiak Biver never was ascended by a white man until the 

 summer of 1880.* It is a very remarkable region with respect to 



* Visited then by Ivan Petroff , who made an extended trip for the United 

 States Census. 



