406 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



as being me worst. They do not app9ar elsewhere in the same 

 number or ferocity, but they are quite unendurable at the best 

 and most-favored stations. Breeding here, as they do, in these 

 vast extents of tundra sloughs and woodland swamps, they are able 

 to rally around and embarrass an explorer beyond all reasonable 

 description. Language is simply inadequate to portray that misery 

 and annoyance which the Alaskan mosquito-swarms inflict upon 

 us in the summer, whenever we venture out from the shelter of 

 trading-posts, where mosquito-bars envelop our couches and cross 

 the doors and windows to our living-room. Naturally, it will be 

 asked, What do the natives do ? They, too, are annoyed and suffer ; 

 but it must be remembered that their bodies are daily anointed with 

 rancid oil, and certain ammoniacal vapors constantly arise from their 

 garments which even the mosquito, venomous and cruel as it is, 

 can scarcely withstand the repellant power of. When the natives 

 travel in this season, they gladly avail themselves, however, of any 

 small piece of mosquito-netting that they can secure, no matter how 

 small. Usually they have to wrap cloths and skins about their 

 heads, and they always wear mittens in midsummer. The traveller 

 who exposes his bare face at this time of the year on the Kuskokvim 

 tundra or woodlands will speedily lose his natural appearance ; his 

 eyelids swell up and close ; his neck expands in fiery pimples, so 

 that no collar that he ever wore before can now be fastened around 

 it, while his hands simply become as two carbuncled balls. Bear 

 and deer are driven into the water by these mosquitoes. They are 

 a scourge and the greatest curse of Alaska. 



Two hundred miles up from the Kuskokvim mouth is a focal 

 centre of the trade in this district. It is Kolmakovsky, established 

 by the Russians in 1839. It consists of seven large, roughly built 

 frame dwellings and log warehouses, and a chapel, which stand on 

 a flat, timbered mesa well above the river, on its right or southern 

 shore. Here the current of the stream has narrowed, and flows 

 between high banks over a gravelly bed. These terraces, which 

 rise from the water, are flat-topped, and covered with a tall growth 

 of spruce. Mossy tundras and grassy meadows roll in between ^ 

 forest patches. The timber is much larger here than it is a^jr- 

 where else in the great Alaskan interior, and that scenery along 

 this river is far wilder and more agreeable than any which is so 

 monotonous and characteristic of the Upper Yukon. The deso- 

 late flatness and muddy wastes of the Lower Kuskokvim are now 



