ALASKA. 35 



sho will return, no satisfactory conjecture can be made ; she 

 may be absent but a few days, and the absence may be protracted 

 a mouth. If the natives were to seize a trader's schooner a 

 hundred, or even fifty, miles away from Sitka, and were the col- 

 lector to get instant word of it, weeks might elapse before the 

 sailing-cutter could get upon the ground of the outrage, and 

 would even then be utterly unable to follow the outlaws. 

 There is no trading done at Sitka ; the eight or ten thousand 

 Indians between Gross Sound and Fort Simpson trade entirely 

 in the inshore passages and channels with all sorts of men and 

 craft ; what is going on no one knows, and, as matters now 

 stand, the collector and his deputies are certainly not to blame 

 if they never know. 



As matters now stand, the town-site of Sitka is the only place 

 in the Territory where the merest shadovv of ability exists on 

 the part of the Government to sustain law and order, protect 

 propertj', &c. The troops there stationed are utterly helpless to 

 do anything outside of their station, and what is more, the Indi- 

 ans know it and laugh at them when they are reproached and 

 warned for misdemeanors. The collector of customs has a suil- 

 ing-cutter, which is of no earthly use, for she cannot be used 

 in the intricate inside passages, where the principal body of 

 natives live, and can at the best make a wide, shy visit to Ko- 

 diak or Ounalashka, or some such outside sea port, and then 

 is at the mercy of the most fickle and uncertain weather for 

 sailing, so that no calculation can be made upon her going or 

 coming. 



Thp natives of the Territory have been living since the trans- 

 fer under no effectual government restraint — a sudden and per- 

 nicious change from the strict Russian regime ; for now every- 

 where in the Aleutian Islands and at Kodiak the natives are 

 in the habit of drinking " quass," or home-brewed beer, to such 

 an extent that it bids fair to ruin them unless checked. The 

 leaders in drunken orgies are getting perfectly reckless, for they 

 have noted the fact that during the past five years there has 

 been no punishment or notice taken by proper authority of 

 crime, including theft, wife-beating, and murder ; that there is 

 no such thing as the shadow, even, of suspicion or power on the 

 part of the Government, of which they have only heard and 

 know nothing. 



That these people have not behaved worse during the last 

 two or three years in their present life of unchecked license is 



