96 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



1,000,000 pounds of fresh salmon ; this, figured down, sliows that 

 a single Indian uses, during the winter solstice — five months — the 

 enormous amount of 1,430 pounds of this rich-meated article of 

 diet, or about ten pounds every day, in addition to the bear-meat, 

 deer, and sheep-meat, seal and beluga oil, berries and roots which 

 he is constantly consuming, at the same time, in the greatest free- 

 dom, and which are always in abundant supply. The full thought 

 of my presentation will be better understood when it is remembered 

 that a pound of fresh salmon has more nourishing and sustaining 

 quality than the same amount dried. The salt-dried codfish with 

 which we are so familiar is very different in its texture, and weighs 

 many times more than it would if it were cured by the air and 

 smoke-exposure to which the natives of Alaska are driven in pre- 

 serving their fish. 



An exceedingly happy illustration of the singular force of habit 

 which the salmon have in returning every recurring season to 

 the exact localities of their birth was afforded near the Creole settle- 

 ment of Neelshik on the Kenai Inlet coast. A small stream runs 

 down to the gulf from the mountains and moors of the interior. 

 Its mouth had been closed by a barrier of surf-raised sand and 

 gravel during storms in the winter of 1879-80, and through which the 

 sluggish stream filtered in its course without overflowing. When the 

 salmon, which had descended the year previously from the upper 

 waters of the stream in the course of their reproductive circuit, 

 again returned to renew such labors in the following season, this 

 unexpected wall barred their ingress. They did not turn away, but 

 actually leaped out uj^o^ tliis sandy spit, and many of them suc- 

 ceeded, by spasmodic springs and wriggling, while on the dry gravel, 

 in getting across and into the river- water beyond ! the Creoles, in 

 the meantime, having nothing to do except to walk down from 

 their houses and gather up the self-stranded salmon as they fancied 

 their size and condition. Inasmuch as these " old colonial settlers " 

 are very pious, as well as very indolent, they were profuse in giving 

 thanks to their patron saints for this unexpected bounty. 



The color of gold evei'ywhere found by washing the sands of 

 Cook's Inlet on the Kenai shore early aroused the cupidit}' of the 

 Russians. They made systematic examinations here under the lead 

 of experienced men, between 1848 and 1855, and the Russian Ameri- 

 can Company spent a great deal of money in the same time by sus- 

 taining a large force of forty miners, directed by Lieutenant Doro- 



