176 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



of good music is keen : many of the women can easily pick up 

 strains from our own operas, and repeat them con-ectly after listen- 

 ing a short while to the trader or his wife play and sing. They 

 are most pleased with sad, wailing tunes, such as "Lorena," the 

 " Old Cabin Home," and the like. 



Thus we note those salient characteristics of Aleutians, who 

 are the most interesting and praiseworthy inhabitants of Alaska. 

 There are not a great many of them, however, when contrasted 

 numerically with the Indians and the Eskimo of this region ; but 

 they come closer, far nearer to us in good fellowship and human 

 sympathy. We turn, therefore, from them again to resume our 

 contemplation of the country in which they live. The sun is burn- 

 ing through a gray-blue bank of sea-swept fog, ever and anon 

 shining dowai brilliantly upon the beautiful, vividly green moun- 

 tains, and glancing from the clear waters of Oonalashka's harbor. 

 It tempts us to walk, to stroll, when the trader tells us that we can 

 easily cross over to Beaver Bay, where Captain Cook anchored and 

 refitted in 1778. So we go, and a patient, good-humored native 

 trots ahead to keep us on the road and bring us back safely, lest 

 the fog descend and shut all in darkness which is now so light and 

 bright. A narrow foot-trail that is deeply worn by the pigeon-toed 

 Aleutes into moss and sphagnum, or fairly choked by rank- 

 growing grasses and annuals in low warm spots, winds around and 

 over the divide between Oonalashka village and Borka. As we reach 

 the rippling, rocky strand of Beaver Bay, a cascade arrests our at- 

 tention on account of its exceeding beauty. Tumbling down from 

 the brow of a lofty bluff of brown and reddish rocks, a rivulet falls 

 in a line of snowy spray, which reflects prismatic colors from the 

 rocks and sunlight as it drops into the cold embrace of the sea. 

 While we, resting on the grassy margin of the beach, enjoy this 

 charming picture, our native turns his face to the ba}-, and he 

 j)oints out to us the pebbly shore where Captain Cook " hove 

 down " his vessel, more than a century ago, and then scraped those 

 barnacles and sea- weed growths from that ship's bottom. Here the 

 English discoverer first came in contact with the natives of Oona- 

 lashka, and there are people over on Spirkin or "Borka " Island, 

 just across the bay from us, who will recite the legend of this early 

 visit of that Englishman with great earnestness, circumspec- 

 tion, and detail, so faithfully has the story been transmitted from 

 father to son. Their own name of Samah^aanooda was chan";ed 



