154 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



this place sj)end the greater part of their time, however, far away 

 from home on tlie sea-otter grouuds of Saanak, being carried, Hke 

 their brethren of Akoon and Avatanak, to and from that spot by 

 a trader's vessel. 



Closely joined to them is the village of Akoon, in which fifty-five 

 or sixty of their countrymen live on the northwest shore, who hunt 

 and deport themselves as do those of Akootan. The Akoonites, 

 however, enjoy the satisfaction of being nearer than their neighbors 

 to that small, rugged islet of Oogamak, which stands in the path, 

 as it were, of the great Pass of Oonimak ; here on the low rocks a 

 comparatively large number of sea-lions repair, and the little hair- 

 seal also. For some reason or other, more of these last-named 

 seals are found here than elsewhere in the entire large extent of this 

 gigantic island chain. Akoon used to boast of many mighty whalers 

 among its prehistoric population of five or six hundred natives, 

 who, in fading away, have left the ruins only of eight settlements 

 to attest their previous jDroud existence. 



"While we have noticed the poverty of the Akootans, yet, as we 

 contemplate the wretched little village on Avatanak, close by and 

 facing the straits, we must call this the most abject human settle- 

 ment, perhaps, that we shall or can find throughout the archipelago 

 — only nineteen souls living here in the most abandoned squalor and 

 apathy, principally upon the sea-castings of the beach and mussels. 

 Yet this island in olden days was the happy home for a busy little 

 fishing community which then had three settlements on the banks 

 of a beautiful stream that empties its clear waters into the sea on 

 its north side. The most revolting chajiter in all the long story of 

 Russian outrage and oppression of Aleutian natives is devoted to 

 a recital of the savage brutality of Solovaiyah and Notoorbin, who 

 lived here during the winter of 1763. 



Steam-vessels usually make the jagged headlands and peaks of 

 Tigalda Island as their first land-fall en route from San Francisco to 

 Oonalashka and Bering Sea. They then shape their course into 

 Akootan Straits very easily and safely. The currents and winds, 

 which always cause a variation of the shij)'s course, never carry the 

 vessel much to the right of Tigalda, or to the left of Avatanak, so 

 that an experienced Alaskan mai'iner has but little difficulty — even 

 though dense fog prevails, which only gives him fitful gleams of 

 the rude landscape — in recognizing some one of the characteristic 

 peaks or bluffs of these Krenitziu islands ; then, with a known 



