86 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



build a comfortable dwelling, furnish agricultural tools, seeds, cat- 

 tle and fowls, and supply the pensioner receiving all this with pro- 

 visions enough to support him and his wife for one j^ear. These 

 "old colonial citizens" (as they were called), ihus established, were 

 then exempted from all taxation, military duty, or molestation 

 whatsoever, and a list of their names was annually f orwaixled in the 

 reports of the company. The children of those settlers were at lib- 

 erty to enter or not, as they pleased, the service of the company at 

 stated salaries. The company, furthermore, was commanded to pur- 

 chase all the surplus produce of these pensioners, furs, and dried 

 fish, etc. This oi'der of the Crown, thus fixing the status of those 

 old servants, also included the half-breeds who were equally infirm 

 by reason of such service. Such whites, or Russians, were officially 

 designated "colonial citizens," the half-breeds wei'e styled " colonial 

 settlers." 



The descendants of these pensioned servants of the Russian 

 Company are the men and women you observe to-day in those little 

 hamlets scattered along the east coast of Cook's Inlet, or the Kenai 

 Peninsula. They are bright, clean, and, though very, very poor, 

 still appear wholly independent. They are engaged in small trad- 

 ing with the Kenaitze savages and in their limited agricultural 

 efforts, whereby they have potatoes, turnips, and other hardy vege- 

 tables. The cattle, of which they have a few in each settlement, 

 are of the small, shaggy Siberian breed, not much larger than 

 Shetland ponies, and capable of living in the rigors of a winter 

 which would destroy or permanently injure our breeds of neat cat- 

 tle. These people make butter by laboriously shaking the milk in 

 bottles. 



They are obliged to shelter their cattle during winters from 

 the driving fury of heavy snow-storms, and Avhen the herd ranges 

 in the grass-season, the boys and old men always have to guard it 

 from the deadly attention of the big brown bears which infest the 

 entire region. They have a regular " round-up " in each hamlet 

 every night. 



Everywhere on the west coast of Cook's Inlet the mountains rise 

 steeply and rugged from the sea, a wild and uninviting contrast 

 with the park-like terraces of the Kenai coast just opposite. Here 

 are the same lofty ridges and smoking peaks which startled and 

 oppressed the brave heart of Captain Cook, as they muttered and 

 trembled in volcanic throes when he sailed by. The two cones 



