LONELY NORTHERN WASTES. 417 



icy sea ; but it is stunted and scant in its hyperborean distribution 

 thereon. 



It is not necessary to enter into a description of the appearance 

 and disposition of these Yukon Indians who live on this great river 

 above Anvik, since they resemble those savages which we are so 

 familiar with in the British American interior, Oregon, and Dakota. 



The Russians, in regarding them, at once took notice of their 

 marked difference from the more stolid Inuuits, so that they were 

 styled, jocularly, by Slavonian jiioneers, "Frenchmen of the North," 

 and "Gens de Butte." The Inuuits called them "Ingaleeks," and 

 that is their general designation on the river to-day. They differ 

 from our Plain Indians in this respect only : they are all dog- 

 drivers. Tliey rely upon the river and its tributaries largely for 

 food, using birch-bark canoes — no skin-boats whatever. Thej have 

 an overflowing abundance of natural food-sujDply of flesh, and fowl 

 also, and when they suffer, as they often do, from starvation, it is 

 due entirely to their own startling improvidence during seasons of 

 plenty, which occur every year. A decided infusion of Innuit blood 

 will be observed in the faces of the Indians who live at Anvik, and 

 some distance up the river from that point of landed demarcation 

 between Innuit and Ingaleek. In olden times the latter were wont 

 to raid upon the settlements of the former, and carried oft' Innuit 

 women into captivity whenever they could do so, treating the Es- 

 kimo just as the Romans raped the Sabines. 



An Innuit is not thrifty at all, but when brought into compari- 

 son with the Indian he is a bright and shining light in this re- 

 spect. Among the Ingaleeks of the Yukon a spring famine regularly 

 prevails every year during the months of April and May, or until 

 the ice breaks up and the salmon run. One would naturally think 

 that the bitter memories of gnawing hunger endured for weeks be- 

 fore an arrival of abundant food, would stimulate that savage to 

 glad exertion when it did arrive so as to lay by of such abundance 

 enough to insure him and his family against recurring starvation 

 next year. Strange to say, it does not. The fish come ; the fam- 

 ished natives gorge themselves, and thus engorged, loaf and idle 

 that time away which should be employed in drying and preserving 

 at least sufficient to keep them in stock when the fish have left the 

 stream. Often we will actually see them lazily going to their 

 slender store which they have newly prepared, and eat thereof, 

 while salmon are still running in the river at their feet ! Such im- 

 27 



