THE GREAT ISLAND OF KAUIAK. Ill 



shelter, to protect or to ward oft" in the slightest manner this 

 trouble, until the very moment of supreme dissolution calls in a 

 shaman and the sorrowing relatives. 



After lung diseases, the next destroying factor of greatest power 

 is embodied in the virulence of scrofulous afiections, which take 

 the form of malignant ulcers that eat into the vitals and slough 

 away the walls of the large arteries. This most loathsome blood- 

 poisoning renders a fcAV settlements entirely leprous, especially so 

 to our startled eyes when we visit them. And in this regard it 

 is liard to find a village in the whole Alaskan boundary where at 

 least one or more of the families therein has not got upon some one 

 of its members the singularly prominent sciirs that attest this dis- 

 ease. Often a comely young girl or man will, in turning suddenly, 

 reveal under the jaws or on the neck and throat, a disgusting, 

 livid eruption which a scrofulous ancestry has cursed the youth 

 with. Since most of this complaint is on the surface, as it were, 

 we naturally would look for some care on the part of the afflicted 

 native, even if for no other end than self-contentment and the ready 

 alleviation of this cutaneous misery ; but we will look in vain, the 

 patient never gives it. On the contrary, it is utterly neglected, and 

 by reason of the filthy habit of these j^eople, it is immensely aggra- 

 vated and made infinitely more violent. Li regard to consumption 

 this apathy on the part of the victim is not, in contrast, so very 

 remarkable, since it is more concealed and not near so disagreeable 

 both to the native and his associates. 



Though consumption and scrofula are the two great indigenous 

 sources of disease and death among the natives, yet there is still a 

 list — quite a long one — of other ills, such as paralysis, inflamma- 

 tory rheumatism and peritonitis, fits, and an abrupt ending of life 

 in the middle-aged, called most graphically " general debility." As 

 might be inferred from the method and exigencies of aboriginal 

 life in Alaska, these natives do not survive to any great age ; rarely, 

 indeed, will an authenticated case of the full limit of sixty years 

 be recoi'ded or observed — an overwhelming majority of them are 

 old at thirty-five and forty. When a man or a woman in a set- 

 tlement rounds the fiftieth year of his or her life, a noted example of 

 the tribe is afforded ; but should this age be attained, and the man 

 then be free from rheumatic troubles or the death-grasp of scrofu- 

 lous or pulmonic disease, he is sure to be afflicted with injui'ed and 

 defective vision, if not totally blind ; the glint of snow and the in- 



