cook's inlet and its people. 89 



braids, hanging upon their backs, thickly larded over with grease, 

 and often powdered with feathers and geese-down. 



In the immediate vicinity of the shores of Cook's Inlet the 

 primitive habits of these savages have been ver^' much changed by 

 their dail}' intercourse with the Creoles ; but at the head of the 

 gulf, especially in the Sooshetno and Keknoo valleys, they are still 

 dressed in their deer-skin shirts and trousers, men and women 

 alike. They work those garments with a great variety of beads, 

 porcupine quills stained in bright colors, and grass plaitings. 



These Kenaitze are the only real hunters in all Alaska. They 

 place little or no dependence on fish like the other tribes, unless we 

 excejDt the walrus-eating Eskimo, who hunt, however, in water-craft 

 entirely. And Avere they not natural Nimrods, the abundance of 

 game which abounds in their district would stimulate such ambi- 

 tion alone in itself. The brown bear * of Alaska is found almost 

 everywhere ; but it seems to prefer an open, swampy country to that 

 dense timber most favored by its ursine relative, the black bear. 

 It attains its greatest size, and exhibits the most ferocity, on the 

 Kenai Peninsula. It should be called the grizzly, because it is fre- 

 quently shot here fully as large, if not larger,f than those examjoles 

 recorded in Oregon and California. 



This wide-ranging brute is found away wp beyond the Arctic Cir- 

 cle, though never coming down to the coast of the icy ocean except 

 at Kotzebue Sound. It is a most expert fisherman, and a terror to 

 the reindeer and cariboo of those hyperborean solitudes. It fre- 

 quents, during the salmon season, all the Alaskan rivers and their 

 tributaries which empty into Bering Sea and the North Pacific, as 

 far as the fish can ascend. When the run for the year is over, then 

 the animal retires into the thick recesses of semi-timbered ujDlands 

 and tundra, where berries and small game, deer especially, are 

 most abundant. 



Everywhere throughout this large extent of Alaska the foot-paths, 

 or roads, of that omnipresent ursine traveller arrest your attention. 

 The banks of all streams are lined by the well-trodden trails of 

 these heavy brutes, and offer far better facilities for progress than 

 those afforded by the paths of men. Not only are the swampy 



* Ursus riclmrdsonii. 



f One shot at Kenai Mission in 1880 measured nine feet two inches in 

 length. 



