404 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



or more natives from the Yukon delta come over here to fish with 

 the Kuskokvims, making a sum-total of six or seven thousand fish- 

 eaters, who catch, consume, and waste an astonishing quantity of 

 salmon, which would, if properly handled, be sufficient to hand- 

 somely feed the entire number of native inhabitants of Alaska, 

 four times over, every year ! 



Snow lies deeply upon all this region, driven and packed in vast 

 drifts and fields by the wrath of furious wintry gales, and the hunt- 

 ing of land animals is thus made impossible. Then a native of the 

 Kuskokvim Valley turns his attention to trapping white-fish* just 

 as soon as the ice becomes firmly established, usually early in No- 

 vember. The traps are made of willow and alder wicker-work, and 

 nearly all in the same pattern as those employed for salmon, but of 

 somewhat smaller dimensions, so as to be easier to handle, since 

 they are not required to catch the huge "chowichie." Every morn- 

 ing at dawn on the river the men of its many villages can be seen 

 making their way out to these fish-traps, when it is not bitterly 

 inclement, and even then, sometimes. They carry curiously shaped 

 ice-picks, made or fashioned from walrus-teeth or deer-antlers, be- 

 cause every night's freezing covers the trap anew with a solid cap 

 of ice, which must be broken up and removed ere a savage can get 

 at it, haul it out, and empty its "pot." Think of the physical hard- 

 ihood required of a man who goes out from his hut to visit such 

 a trap when the wind, away below zero, is blowing over an icy 

 plain of the broad river at the rate of sixty miles an hour, whirling 

 snowy spiculse, like hot shot, into the faintest exposure which he 

 dares to make of his face or eyes ! He does not often go when a 

 "poorga" prevails in this boisterous manner. Sometimes he feels 

 as though he must, since a storm may have raged in wild, bitter 

 fury for a week without sign of abatement. His children or his 

 wife may be sick and half-starved ; then, only then, does he vent- 

 ure out to dare and endure the greatest hardship of savage life in 

 Alaska. 



It frequently happens after an unusually cold night that a trap, 

 including its contents, is frozen solid. This is another dreaded 

 accident, for it involves great labor, since the trap itself must be 

 picked to pieces and built anew. In spite of all these difficulties, 

 the natives get enough fresh fish during each winter by such method 



