INNUIT LIFE AND LAND. 



409 



at an end in it. As the years roll by, these trunks gradually bleach 

 out to almost a grayish white, the charred, blackened bark is all 

 weathered off, and gradually such trees fall, as they decay at the 

 stump, in every conceivable direction upon the ground, across one 

 another, like so many jack-straws, making a perfectly impassable 

 barricade to human travel without tediovis labor. A brisk growth 

 of small i^oplars, birch, and willow springs up in place of the orig- 

 inal spruce forest, but none of these trees and shrubs ever grow to 

 any great size. At rare intervals a young evergreen is seen to rise 

 in sharp relief, towering over all deciduous shrubbery, and in the 

 lapse of long years it will succeed in sujiplanting every growing 

 thing around with its own kind again. 



" Brule " Desolation ; Alaskan Interior. 

 [A view on the Stickeen Divide : beat's, in search o/larvce, rippimj open decayed logs.'] 



The traders at Kolmakovsky make up their furs into snug bales 

 and descend the river in wooden and skin boats, every June, to a 

 point below, about one hundred and fifty miles, where they meet 

 their respective schooners, or go still lower to an anchorage of 

 larger vessels, and renew their annual supplies. These river-ljoats 

 are then poled and rope-walked up the river back to the post. The 

 principal trade here is beaver, red foxes, mink, marten, land-otter, 

 and brown and black bears. 



The traders say it is exceedingly seldom that a white man 

 ever comes in contact with the natives of the Lower Kuskokvim, 

 and that there is nothing to call them there ; also, that the labors 

 of the Russian missionaries of the Yukon never extended to this re- 

 gion, though their registers and reports show qiiite a number of 

 Christians on the Kuskokvim River. The only trace of Christian- 

 ity among this tribe, outside of the immediate vicinity of a trad- 



