LONELY NORTHERN WASTES. 427 



Long experience at plunging through surf with their handsomely 

 made kayaks, and returning to land on these perilous shores of King's 

 Island, has made the Ookivok people the boldest and the best water- 

 men in the north. Their little skin canoes are of the finest con- 

 struction, and their surplus time is largely passed in carving walrus- 

 ivory into all fashions of rude design for barter in the summer, 

 when the ice shall disappear and the sails of whaling-ships and fur- 

 trading schooners challenge their attention in the offing. 



What a winter these people must witness ! What a succession 

 of furious storms and snow-laden gales! When their summer 

 comes it brings but little sunlight to their rocky retreat; for, 

 standing, as it does, in the full sweep of that warmer flood which 

 flows up from the Japanese coast into the Arctic, cold, chilly fogs 

 and obstinate clouds envelope them most of the time. But sympa- 

 thy is utterly wasted ; were they to be transported to California, 

 and surrounded with all the needs of a creature existence, they 

 would soon entreat, beg, implore us to return them to the inhospit- 

 able rock from which they were taken. The whalers have, at vari- 

 ous intervals during the last twenty years, carried Innuits down to 

 spend the winter with them at the Sandwich Islands, under an 

 idea that these people would be delighted with the soft, warm cli- 

 mate there, and such fruits and flowers, and be grateful for the trip. 

 But in no instance did an individual of this hyperborean race fail 

 to sigh for his home in Bering Sea, or the Arctic Ocean, soon after 

 landing at Hawaii. Those Innuits who were without kith or kin 

 became just as homesick and forlorn as any natives did who had 

 relatives behind awaiting their return. 



A few hours' sailing, with a free wind, to the north from King's 

 Island, brings you into full view of a bold headland at the en- 

 trance to Port Clarence. Cape York is a noted landmark in this 

 well-travelled highway to the Arctic Ocean well travelled by the 

 whaling fleets of the whole world until recently ; now, an elimina- 

 tion of cetacean life from these waters has caused their substantial 

 abandonment by those vessels, and no others come, save a tradin^- 

 schooner ever and anon at wide intervals. A roomy harbor, shel- 

 tered from the south by a long pier of alluvium, is Port Clarence. 

 Leading beyond it is an immense inner basin, walled in all about 

 by steep slate precipices : this is Grantley Harbor. High hopes and 

 great expectations were centred here in 1865-66, by the location of 

 that short cable-end which, under-running Bering Straits, was to 



