IX BACK TO THE KENAI PENINSULA 173 



bandaged up. On returning to cook our supper that evening 

 Glyn and I found the invaHds and two other men making 

 themselves thoroughly at home in our cabin. The two 

 patients were calmly sitting on our beds, and probably filling 

 the room with microbes of the mumps, whilst the other two 

 were peaceably cooking themselves a meal of the best 

 luxuries they could find in the house. I was charmed with 

 their free-and-easy manners, and so was Glyn, who had never 

 previously had mumps, and daily expected them for some 

 time after. I endeavoured to reason with them in a suave 

 manner, which ended in my almost kicking the lot out of the 

 house. This meant a further delay to collect more natives, 

 and it was another five days before we finally started up the 

 river. 



During our stay at Kussiloff we inspected all the wonder- 

 ful machinery and appliances for canning the salmon. The 

 cannery had stopped work a few days before, but all hands 

 were busy packing the tins in cases, and loading them on 

 steam-tugs, where they were conveyed across the inlet to 

 the big sailing vessel which was to carry the whole lot of men 

 and cases back to San Francisco. There were countless 

 thousands of gulls flying round the cannery and river-mouth, 

 feeding on the offal and remains of salmon thrown out from 

 the cannery and carried backwards and forwards by the rise 

 and fall of the tide. The noise made by these gulls screaming 

 by day and night was tremendous, and although we shot 

 a number of them and added the skins to our collection, no 

 amount of shooting seemed to have the effect of quieting or 

 keeping them away. There were a fair number of mallards 

 on the marshes near the river, and we braved the mosquitoes 

 which swarmed there, in order to add some of these ex- 

 cellent fat birds to our daily diet of silver salmon, which 



