164 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



the head, and almost always pierced for brass or silver rings. The 

 complexion is a light yellowish-brown ; in youth it is often fair, 

 almost white, with a faint blush in the cheeks ; in middle age and 

 to senility the skin always becomes very strongly wrinkled and 

 seamed, with a leathery harshness. They all have full even sets of 

 teeth, but never take the least care of them whatever. They have 

 small, well-shaped hands and feet, but the finger-nails are exceed- 

 ingly thin and brittle, bitten off, and never trimmed neatly. They 

 walk in a clumsy, shambling manner, with none of that lithe, 

 springy stepping so characteristic of the Rocky Mountain Indians. 

 When we meet them as we saunter through the settlement, men, 

 women, and children alike drop their eyes to the ground, and jjass 

 by in stujDid humility, or indifference, as the case may be. 



As we see these people at Oonalashka, so they are seen in every 

 respect elsewhere, as they exist between Attoo and Bristol Bay and 

 the Shoomagin Islands. They spend most of their time, men and 

 women, in their skin-canoes, hunting the sea-lion and sea-otter — in 

 codfishing and travelling to and from their favorite salmon-runs 

 and berrying-grounds. Therefore, they have not enabled a sym- 

 metrical figure to develop — their legs are always sprung at the 

 knees, some badly bowed, and all are unsteady in walking. While 

 there is nothing about the countenances of the women or girls 

 which will warrant the term of handsome, yet they are not so ugly 

 as the squaws of the Sitkan archij^elago. Many of them have very 

 kindly expressions, and a gleam of true womanly instinct far above 

 their surroundings. 



No people are more amiable or docile than are these natives of 

 the Aleutian Islands to-day. They are quiet and respectful in their 

 intercourse with the traders, and are all duly baptized members of 

 the Greek Catholic Church. A chapel is never absent from their 

 villages. They hunt sea-otters and trap foxes for their means of 

 trading for those simple luxuries and necessaries of their life which 

 they cannot find in their own country. There are no other fur- 

 bearing animals here, and no other industries whatever in which 

 they can engage. 



As they live here to-day, they are married and sustain ver}' faith- 

 fully the relation of husband and wife. Each family, as a rule, has 

 its own hut or barrabora. They have long, long ago ceased to dress 

 in skins ; but they still retain and wear the primitive water-proof 

 coat or " kamlayka " and boots or tarbosars, which are made from 



