INNUIT LIFE AND LAND. 405 



to eke out their scanty stpre of dried salmon and save themselves 

 from starvation. On the lower river course, within the influence 

 of that tremendous tidal action which has been described, a solid 

 covering of ice never envelops the surface of the Kuskokvim. Here 

 the natives hunt seals, the mahklok, and also the white whale or 

 beluga, which furnishes them a full supply of oil * and blubber. A 

 school of belugas puff and snort, like a fleet of tug-boats, as they 

 push between and under tide-broken masses of ice in hot pursuit 

 of fish that abound all over the broad estuary. 



There is one particularly distressing and hideous feature that 

 belongs to this entire area of the Alaskan coast tundra and marshy 

 moors of the interior and its forests, its river-margins, and, in fact, 

 to every place except those spots where the wind blows hard. It is 

 the curse of mosquitoes the incessant stinging of swarms of these 

 blood-thirsty insects, which come out from their watery pupae by 

 May 1st (with the earliest growing of spring vegetation), and remain 

 in perfect clouds until withered and destroyed by severe frosts in 

 September and October. The Indians themselves do not dare to 

 go into the woods at Kolmakovsky during the summer, and the very 

 dogs themselves frequently die from effects of mere mosquito-biting 

 about their eyes and paws only, for that thick woolly hair of these 

 canines effectually shields all other portions of their bodies. Close- 

 haired beasts, like cattle or horses, would perish here in a single 

 fortnight at the longest, if not protected by man. 



Universal agreement in Alaska credits the Kuskokvim mosquito 



* The oil obtained from the beluga and the large seal (mahklok) is a very 

 important article of trade between the lowland people and those of the moun- 

 tains, the latter depending upon it entirely for lighting their semi-subterra- 

 nean dwellings during the winter, and to supplement their scanty stores of 

 food. It is manufactured by a very simple process. Huge drift-logs are fash- 

 ioned into troughs much in the same manner as the Thlinket tribes make 

 their wooden canoes. Into these troughs filled with water the blubber is 

 thrown in lumps of from two to five pounds in weight. Then a large number 

 of smooth cobble-stones are thrown into a fire until they are thoroughly heated, 

 when they are picked up with sticks fashioned for the purpose and deposited 

 in the water, which boils up at once. After a few minutes these stones must 

 be removed and replaced by fresh ones, this laborious process being continued 

 until all oil has been boiled out of the blubber and floats on the surface, 

 when it is removed with flat pieces of bone or roughly fashioned ladles, and 

 decanted into bladders or whole seal-skins, then cached on pole-frames until 

 sold or used by the makers. 



