178 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



We pause in that little cemetery, just outside of the village of 

 Illoolook. It is on a small knoll, under higher hills that rear 

 themselves over it. Its disorder and neglect is a fair reminder of 

 what we see in most of our own rural graveyards. The practice of 

 all these natives is to inter by digging a shallow grave. The body 

 is prepared in its best clothes, and cotiined in a plain wooden box. 

 A small mound and a larger or smaller wooden Greek cross is the 

 only monument. Tiny oil-portraits of their patron saints, painted 

 on tin or sheet-iron, especially made for these purposes, and fur- 

 nished by the Church, are tacked to the crosses, with now and then 

 a rude Russian inscription carved or painted thereon in addition. 

 During certain periods of the summer, when the weather is pleas- 

 ant, little squads of relatives will come out here from the village 

 and pass a whole day in tea-drinking and renovating the crosses, 

 sitting on the mounds as they chat, work, and boil their samovar. 

 The Illoolook church-bells ring — they arouse us to resume the walk 

 thus interrupted in this small city of Aleutian dead. As we enter 

 the town, we see the occupants of turfy barraboras and frame 

 cottages hastening from every quarter and trooping to the door 

 of a yellow-walled and red-roofed house of worship. Perched 

 on that three-barred cross which crowns the cupola of this chapel 

 are half a dozen big black ravens, all croaking most lugubriously, 

 as the clanging chimes jDeal out below them. That is their favorite 

 roosting-place. The natives take no notice of those ill-omened birds, 

 which as feathered scavengers, hop around the barraboras in perfect 

 security, since no one ever disturbs them, unless it be some grace- 

 less trader who is anxious to test the killing power of a new shot- 

 gun. They breed in high chinks of the bluffs, and find abundant 

 food cast upon the beaches by the sea. A few domestic fowls, some 

 with broods of newly-hatched chicks, are running about or scratch- 

 ing aroimd the place. The priest's shaggy little bull and cow 

 stand in front of a small stable or "scoatnik," lazily chewing their 

 cud. There is no other live-stock in the hamlet, except a few dogs 

 and cats; not a great many of the latter, however. 



West of this Island of Oonalashka is a nan-ow-lined stretch of 

 more than eight hundred miles of rapidly-succeeding islets and 

 islands, until the extreme limit of the Alaskan border is reached at 

 Attoo. In all this dreary wilderness of land and water only three 

 small human settlements are to be found to-day, with a population 

 of less than five hundred natives and six or seven white men. 



