NATURAL HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY OF NORTHERN ALASKA. 



THE KOWAK RIVER REGION. 



It is a good Arctic day's journey in a steam-launch up Hotham Inlet to the Kowak mouth, 

 for there is scarcely more than an hour's darkness at the beginning of July, and as the waves 

 run pretty high wlien the wind IjIows. the heavily loaded launch hugs the windward shore for 

 safety Plenty of water birds are met with along here. Surf ducks, loons, white-fronted and 

 white-cheeked geese keep swimming out of the way of the boaty. and a few Truiyc£ run along 

 shore or keep just ahead by short flights. 



This west shore consists of narrow beach, behind which rises an irregular line of low 

 bluffs that shut off the view of the treeless tundra peninsula separating the inlet from Kotze- 

 bue Sound. An occasional ravens croak calls attention to his black form perched upon a bank, 

 and the osprey or some other hawk frequently announces its presence by some falconine call 

 as it passes. The bushes clinging to the bluffs harbor a few white-crown and savanna spar- 

 rows, and some ptarmigan, in mottled summer plumage, may be flushed from among the 

 whortleljerry bushes ( Vaccimuni) growing amid the sphagnum of the tundra. A few mice 

 (Arvicola) are found in the drier situations. 



In the delta of the river a stray kingfisher or an anxious goose, hurrying her brood of half- 

 grown young under the overhanging willow verdure of the banks for concealment, are about 

 the only signs of life, for the channels are narrow and the view is shut off completely. Polar 

 hares are met with along here. Farther up the scattered spruces (Abies) come in sight to vary 

 the monotony, or a wiclening out of "the river's wooded reaches" affords a glimpse of some 

 distant rocky-topped elevation which, by reason of the meanderings of the stream through 

 the lowlands, shows alternately to poi't and starboard. 



Above the many-channeled delta the Kowak assumes a different character. High Ijanks 

 of old ice and clay appear, bearing a thin coat of surface soil, which supports the stunted 

 Arctic growth of white spruce. The banks, undermined by the melting of their ancient icy 

 substratum, often slide in massive sections into the river, carrying a wide margin of forest 

 with them. In many places navigation is impeded by earth-anchored spruce snags. Some- 

 times cavernous holes are excavated as the gritty ice disappears, and the overarching mass of 

 earth hangs ready to fall when a few more hours exposure to the incessant Arctic sunshine 

 shall have set it free. These banks are too icy to be tunneled by kingfishers or bank swal- 

 lows, consequently such birds are scarce along the lower river. 



There are many extensive sand-bars in the Kowak above the delta, where cranes, a few gulls 

 and terns, and some least sandpipers and semi-palmated plovers congregate to feed and sun them- 

 selves. Bears and the smaller fur-bearing animals leave many tracks here, and on the sand- 

 bars further up we saw reindeer tracks. An occasional spi-uce along shore is topped with the 

 bulky nest of the fish-hawk. 



Although spruce forest exists to a greater or less extent in all parts of the Kowak River 

 region, there is no regularity about its distribution: a hundred miles or more above salt water, 

 where the river runs near the hills, the forest is quite heavy, but where the course is through 

 level country the river is bordered by mossy tundra plains, usually treeless. 



Excellent whortleberries grow in all parts of the country, and are eaten greedily by wild 

 geese and cranes as well as all the smaller birds. I suspected the robins and varied thrushes 

 of eating the currants which grew plentifully in all thickets near the river. Flowers of beau- 



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