112 OUR AKCTIC PROVINCE. 



tensely smoky interiors of every style of native dwelling so affect 

 the eyes of these people that those organs of sight, in the middle- 

 aged, are seldom without signs of decay — showing some one of the 

 various stages of granular ophthalmia, as a rule. 



Snow-blindness can be remedied and its pain abated by the use 

 of peculiar goggles, which the savages know well how to make and 

 use, but the greater evil of smoke-poison to the optic nerve is not 

 obviated at all by any action on their part, though it would be easy 

 so to do. They actually seem determined to live on so as to live as 

 wretchedly in the future as they have in the past. 



Another singular characteristic of these Alaskan savages is the 

 fact that none of the many tribes have any medicine whatever ; nor 

 have they any knowledge, so far as we can find out, of any medici- 

 nal herb or mineral, and this again is the most extraordinary item 

 of it all. Every less or great indisposition is treated by a uni- 

 versal resort to the sweat-bath ; this is the sole specific, and this 

 is the only relief, except when the shaman is called in to worry 

 the last hours of the unhappy patient to death, or, perhaps, in rare 

 cases, to prolong his wretched existence for a longer period, by 

 stimulating an undue or extra nervous tension, which then causes, 

 at times, the usually languid and resigned sufferer to rally, as it 

 were, before the flame flickers out. Truly these people are predes- 

 tinarians ; they are wonderful in their patience when suffering long 

 and acutely, as they lie stretched out or squatted in their gloomy, 

 noisome hovels. 



All the traders, and every vessel that sails in Alaskan waters, 

 have medicine-chests, and to their credit be it said that, as far as 

 they can, they do everything in their power to aid the natives when 

 sick ; but the aborigines have not the right idea of taking physic, 

 since they appreciate nothing but forcible treatment — large doses of 

 something that acts immediately, or nothing at all. For instance, if 

 the trader gives an Indian a dose of Epsom-salts, the amount given 

 must be at least four or five times as mvxch as w^ould do for himself, 

 or there will be no effect on the patient whatever. Consequently, 

 the simplest remedies known are the only ones which the white 

 man dare give to these people, and they have, as a matter of 

 course, very little power to relieve them. During the last six or 

 seven years a violent form of typhoid-pneumonia has been w^asting 

 whole settlements on the Kadiak and Aleutian coasts ; the Creoles 

 and the natives alike yield at once to the disease, making scarcely 



