174 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



give every hunter a pass, or grocer's book, in which he keeps a reg- 

 ular account, charging what he may need, in advance of payment, 

 so enabhng his family to get what it requires during his long ab- 

 sence on the hunting-grounds. In short, that book is a regular 

 letter of credit at the store, and the traders have found it the best 

 way of influencing the natives in their favor, and also of aiding the 

 superior hunters. 



This method of credit has developed, and made manifest the 

 truth of a strong statement in which Veniaminov declared his 

 belief that these j)eople were really honest at heart, totally unlike 

 all other savages in Alaska, or elsewhere on the American continent, 

 for that matter. Many of the hunters, when they are about to de- 

 part for a long four or five months' sea-otter chase, and consequent 

 absence for such length of time from home, go to the trader and 

 tell him to restrict their wives from overdrawing a certain pecuniary 

 limit, which they fix of their own idea as to what they can afford. 

 This action, however, is the purpose of true honesty only, for those 

 same hunters, when they get back, after first religiously settling 

 every indebtedness in full, make at once a heavy draft upon any 

 surplus that they may have, going so far in the line of extravagance 

 and singular improvidence, in some instances, as to purchase, on 

 the spur of the moment, music-boxes worth two hundred dollars 

 each, or whole bolts of silk and costly packages of handkerchiefs, 

 neckties, and white linen, and many other things of a like nature, 

 wholly unwarranted by the means of the hunter, or of any real 

 service to him or his family. 



The church " prazniks," or festivals, are very quiet affairs, but 

 when the Aleut determines to celebrate his birthday or " eman 

 nimik," he goes about it in full resolution to have a stirring and 

 vociferous time. Therefore he brews a potential beer by putting a 

 quantity of sugar, flour, rice, and dried apples (if he can get the 

 latter) into a ten or twenty-gallon barrel, which is filled with water. 

 He sends invitations out to his friends so dated as to bring them to 

 the barrabkie when a right degree of fermentation in the kvass- 

 barrel shall have arrived ; sometimes the odor of that barrel itself is 

 sufficient to gather them in all on time. Some one of the natives 

 who is famous for natural and cultivated skill in playing the accor- 

 dion or concertina, is given the post of honor and the best of the 

 beer ; he or she, as the case may be, soon starts the most hilarious 

 dancing, because Aleutes are exceedingly fond of this amuse- 



