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of the sea in obtaining other comforts for themselves 
through the profits of their work. 
The size to which fish attain in Alaska appears almost 
incredible. White fish of from thirty-five to forty pounds 
in weight are common in the waters from St. Michael’s 
to Anvik. During the season they are eagerly sought 
for by the natives. Black fish grow very large and are 
wonderfully abundant. Dr. Bean and Mr. Turner 
state that they run for ‘‘many miles along the coast, and 
into the rivers where they are the chief dependence for 
about three thousand inhabitants with their aogs. In’ 
three months sixty-nine tons are taken. The average 
is about 103.5 tonsinaseason.” These as well as Tom 
Cod and Lamprey Eels are frozen in grass bags or 
possibly left upon the ice to be chopped in pieces when 
wanted. Sometimes the mass is sliced and eaten raw, 
and often it is boiled, but in either case the natives 
often have only this form of food, when other food 
supplies are unattainable. By a grateful adaptability 
to circumstances neither men nor dogs seem to desire 
anything better. 
The fishes which I have here mentioned are but a 
few of the most valuable of the many excellent species 
which are plentiful beyond computation. There are 
flounders, greylings, smelts, sticklebacks, eels, sturgeon, 
sculpins, and in fact nearly all kinds of fishes from 
whales to minnows, and all enormously abundant. By 
this we can plainly see the peculiar provision which 
nature has made for both the human and animal 
inhabitants of that strange north country. The people 
are poor in every comfort outside of that to be obtained 
from the creatures of the ocean or its near neighborhood. 
Confined to a country in which land animal food is but 
scarcely distributed, and vegetables, fruit and milk are 
unknown, the human inhabitants have been necessitated 
to subsist upon that which could be found in sufficient 
quantity. Salt being an almost unknown commodity 
