LONELY NORTHERN WASTES. 435 



backed salmon runs, for a brief period, in great numbers : then the 

 harvest of the Eskimo is at hand. Nowhere else above this point 

 can a salmon ever be taken, and as it is the last chance of these 

 natives, they improve it. Flocks of fat ducks and geese hover over 

 and rest upon the smooth, shallow waters of this inlet, alternately 

 feeding there and then alighting upon the tundra where crow- 

 berries and insects abound. Our whalers have taught these Innuits 

 how to make and use gill-nets, with which they now catch their fish 

 almost exclusively ; and not unwisely have those natives made the 

 change, for they have not got any slender willow brush and alder- 

 saplings which their brethren use so effectually in making rude 

 traps on the Yukon, Kuskokvim, and Nooshagak Rivers. They also 

 stretch these gill-nets over certain narrow places, from shore to 

 shore, of lagoons and lakes, where flocks of water-fowl are wont to 

 fly (in early morning and late in the evening), and succeed in capt- 

 uring a great many luckless birds by this simple method. 



