HBDLirKA] WBITEE»S IMP OX YUKON 121 



August 2l , -23. During the night have left Port Clarence and 

 endeavored once more to reach Wales and the Diomedes, to be again 

 turned away l>y fog and rough weather. The captain doubts if 

 there will be any more decent " spells." The season for this stormy 

 sea is too far advanced. Unable to land anywhere. 



The day is followed by another horrid night, again off the St. 

 Lawrence Island. Boat tossing and heaving and rolling, waves 

 reaching and even splashing over the level of the high upper deck 

 in the back, everything tied up and cleared or fastened, a danger 

 in making even a few steps of being thrown against something, or 

 on the deck of being thrown overboard, and everything constantly 

 cracking, creaking, with every few minutes an impact big thudlike 

 or a splash of a wave, the floor heaving and twisting; and thus from 

 before evening until morning. Then a trace easier, but the whole 

 day gloomy and rough and the night again more unsettled. To-day 

 better, wind which began east then turned northwest, then almost 

 north, now stopped, but a heavy swell is running, heaving us nearly 

 as much as yesterday. We have gone very slowly. 



Have arrived off Savonga. The sky is now clear and there is 

 not much wind, but the swell is and keeps on such that, not- 

 withstanding the repeated calls of our siren, the Eskimo whom we 

 see above the beach near their boats, do not dare to launch these 

 and come, nor does the captain care to risk one of our own launches, 

 though we need fresh reindeer meat and all would like once more 

 to meet the nice lot of natives of this village. After a prolonged 

 wait and as conditions show no improvement, nothing remains but 

 to leave the island. 



Our next stop, if the weather permits, is to be at Nunivak Island. 

 This is a large island off the Alaskan coast, well below the present 

 delta of the Yukon and some distance above Kuskokwim Bay. The 

 island is one of the least explored, and the people living upon it 

 one of the least known. It is only during the last few years that 

 a trading and a reindeer post has been established on this island, 

 and only the second year that there is a teacher. What little is 

 known of the natives, a branch of the Eskimo, shows that they have 

 many different habits from those farther north, in clothing, decora- 

 tion, etc. They make rather good black pottery, and from this 

 island come the most elaborate carvings in ivory, reminding strongly 

 of small totem poles. A photograph of a group of these people, 

 seen at the Lomen Studio at Nome, showed remarkably broad and 

 short faces, unlike the Eskimo of the north. All of which made me 

 very anxious to visit the island. 



To be brief such a visit, though promised to me by the captain, 

 could not be realized. The waters about the island are so im- 



88253°— 30 9 



