INNUIT LIFE AND LAND. 407 



replaced by this pleasing change, which we have just mentioned, a 

 short distance below Kolmakovsky. 



Back of that post, and clearly defined against the horizon, are 

 the snowy-capped summits of those mountains that form a Noosha- 

 gak divide. One of them rises in an oval-pointed crest to a very 

 considerable elevation * above all the rest, and is the landmark of 

 every traveller who comes over the Yukon divide to Kolmakov. 

 The river here, as it brawls swiftly in its course, is about seven 

 hundred feet in width, with bends above and below where it ex- 

 pands to fully twice that distance. 



While the Kuskokvim is the only considerable rival of the Yukon 

 in this whole Alaskan country, yet when seriously contrasted with 

 the great Kvichpak f itself, then the Kuskokvim bears about the 

 same resemblance to it that the Ohio River does to the Mississippi. 



Kolmakovsky marks the limit of inland migration allotted to 

 the Innuit race on its banks, who are not permitted by those Tinneh 

 tribes of the interior to advance farther up the river. It is also 

 removed from that disagreeable influence of Bering Sea, where the 

 prevalence of rain and of furious protracted gales of wind make life 

 a burden to a white man on the Lower Kuskokvim. Its environ- 

 ing forests break the force of these storms, and there is also less 

 fog, so that the sun usually shines out clear and hot, especially in 

 July and August. 



In the winter season, when frost has locked up miry swales and 

 swamps, and snow lies in deep, limitless drifts, a white hunter at 

 Kolmakov can join the Kuskokvamoots in trailing and shooting 

 giant moose which come down from the mountains of the Noosh- 

 agak divide. This animal is quickly apprehended by the native 

 dogs, so that whenever winter weather will permit, a native Innuit 

 spends most of his time, not employed by ice-fishing on the Kus- 

 kokvim, in this sport. 



The fur-trade at Kolmakovsky is quite active, but it is almost ex- 

 clusively transacted with a few Indians up the river, and not with 

 the numerous Innuits below. The latter are, commercially speak- 

 ing, very poor, having not much of anything but little stores of 



* Mount Tamahloopat : two thousand eight hundred feet. 



f The Russians and natives always called the Yukon River by this name. 

 Our change was first made by those Hudson Bay traders who came over to it 

 from the Mackenzie, and was subsequently universally adopted- 



