IXXUIT LIFE AND LAND. 403 



daily change in a level of the water prevails, is most repellant and 

 discouraging. 



From the high-tide bank-rims of the Kuskokvim, as we go up, 

 across to the hills and to their rear in the east, extends a dreary 

 expanse of swale and watered moors forty to sixty miles in width, 

 flat and low as the surface of the sea itself. At high tide it appears 

 to be nearly all submerged. It shimmers then like an inland ocean 

 studded with myriads of small mossy islets. Again, when the tide 

 in turn runs out, great far-expanded flats of mud and ooze supplant 

 the waters everywhere, giving in this abrupt manner a striking 

 shift of scenic effect. The eastern river bank is a queer, natural 

 dike, formed by a rank and vigorous growth of coarse sedges, bul- 

 rushes, and little sapling fringes of alders, willows, with birch and 

 poplars interspersed. Upon this natural dike these native villages 

 range in close continuity, each occupying all the dry land in its own 

 immediate limits, and occupying it so thoroughly that a traveller 

 cannot, without great difficulty, find bare land enough outside of 

 their sites upon which to pitch his tent. Mud, mud everywhere 

 a whitish-clay silt, through which, at low tide, it is almost a phys- 

 ical impossibility to walk from a stranded bidarka up to the vil- 

 lages. Indeed, if you are unfortunate enough to reach a settlement 

 here when coming down or going up the river as the tide is out, 

 you are a wise man if you simply fold your arms, sit quietly in your 

 cramped position until the rising, roaring flood returns and carries 

 you forward and over to your destination. 



On the Lower Kuskokvim the river width of itself is so great 

 that the people living on its eastern banks never can see an oppo- 

 site shore to the westward, for it is even more submerged there and 

 swampy, if anything, than where they reside ; hence we find them 

 located here on the east bank, to a practical exclusion of all settle- 

 ment over on those occidental swales and bogs. The current of 

 this singular stream flows quite rapidly. It discharges a great 

 volume of water, which is colored a peculiar whitish tone by the 

 contribution of a roiled tributary that heads in the Nooshagak 

 divide. At its source and down to this muddy junction it is clear. 

 It is a rapid stream in the narrows, and dull and sluggish in flow 

 through wide openings. 



The density of aboriginal population so remarkably manifested 

 as we observe it on the Lower Kuskokvim does not, however, give 

 all the testimony, inasmuch as during every summer two thousand 



