THE GKEAT ISLAND OF KADIAK. 



119 



the Pacific surf, disappear entirely and suddenly here. At Oogash- 

 ik, where we find a small settlement of Aleutes from Oonalashka, 

 hunting walrus and sea-lions, reindeer and bears, the first rocks 

 of granite and quartz-porphyries apj)ear, every evidence of that 

 character to the westward being pui-ely and essentially igneous. 



Belcovsky is the metropolis of the Alaskan Peninsula. It is the 

 chief settlement of the sea-otter hunters, and the seat of the great- 

 est rivalry and traflSc in that fur-trade, based wholly upon the costly 

 skins of the " bobear," * and which constitutes the only traflSc 

 worthy of mention in which the inhabitants of the entire Aleutian 

 and Kadiak districts can engage. Here we observe from our au- 



The Walrus-hunting Village of Oogashik. 



chorage a little town perched upon the summit of a bluff and 

 clinging to the flanks of a precipitous mountain that looms up be- 

 hind it, usually so wreathed in fog that its summit is seldom seen. 

 Some two hundred and sixty or seventy Aleutian sea-otter hunters 

 and their families are living here in an oddly contrasted hamlet 

 of frame houses and earthen barraboras ; the freshly painted red 

 roof and yellow walls of a large, new church, in the tower of which 

 a pleasing chime of bells (but rudely struck, however), arrests the 

 ear and the eye as the most attractive single object within the lim- 

 its of the place. f The rival traders have run up their flags very 



* Literally "beaver." The Russians always called this animal the "sea- 

 beaver," but shortened from " morskie-bobear '' to the simple name. 



f This church was finished in 1883— begun in 1880, it cost $7,000, every 

 cent being freely contributed by the natives. 



