426 



OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



cessantly beneath them, and secured to the perpendicular cliffs by 

 lashings and guys of walrus-thongs. The wooden poles thus fast- 

 ened to the rocks are covered with walrus-hides. On these unique 

 brackets those hardy Innuits spend the warmer weather. Their 

 winter residences are mere holes excavated in the interstices and 

 fissures of the same bluff to which their flimsy summer dwell- 

 ings are attached, the entrances to most of them being directly un- 

 der the frail jalatforms upon which these Mahlemout families are 

 perched with all of their rude household belongings. The naked- 

 ness of the island is so great as to forbid life to even a spear of 

 grass or moss — nothing but close, leatheiy lichens, that grow so 

 tightly to its weathered rocks that they appear to be part and par- 



cel of the splintered basaltic cubes or olivine bluffs themselves. A 

 more uninviting spot for human habitation could not be found in 

 all the savage solitudes of the north. But the Innuit is here, not 

 for the pleasure of location ; he is here for that command which 

 this station gives him over all walrus-herds floating up and down 

 on the ice-floes of Bering Sea at the sport of varying moods of wind 

 and current. 



From the rugged crests of King's Island the natives can appre- 

 hend drifting sea-horses as thej' sleep heavily on broad ice-cakes, 

 and make ample preparation for their capture. The violence of the 

 wind is so great that the small, flat summit of this islet cannot be 

 utilized as a place of residence — the winds that howl over and 

 around its rock-strewn head would hurl the Innuits, bag and bag- 

 gage, into those angry waves which thunder incessantly below. 



