THE ALASKAN FISHING-GEOUNDS. • 109 



drive tbem into shoal water, where they are easily dispatched with flint spears. According to 

 their tradition, to kill the helitga with any other weapon would entail endless misfortune upon 

 the guilty party .^ We might suppose that the belvga spear would be held in high esteem by the 

 Innuit, but, on the contrary, it is freely bartered for a trifle of tobacco or a few percussion- caps. 



In this portion of Alaska the capture of hair-seals is one of the most important native 

 occupations. The seal is patiently watched for until it appears at its breathing-hole, when it is 

 shot with a rifle. A very ingenious decoy used by these natives is a short piece of wood on which 

 are fastened seal-claws, which are intended to make a scratching sound like that of the seal. 

 Captain Hooper thus describes the movements of the seal hunter : 



" The hunter approaches cautiously, by crawling over the ice, his body nearly prostrate, 

 raised slightly on one elbow. He has a piece of bear-skin, about two feet long and a foot wide, 

 which he attaches to his leg on the side upon which he rests ; this enables him to slide more 

 easily over the ice. The elbow rests upon a ring of grass." 



As already mentioned, seal oil is carried in seal-skin pouches or bags, and the natives 

 sometimes partly fill the bag with water and partly with oil when making preparations for 

 trading. 



The gill-nets used by the Arctic Alaskan natives for the capture of seal did not come under 

 my observation, but those used in Plover Bay, which are similar to the Alaskan, are made of 

 strong seal-skin line. They are about thirty to forty feet long "and six deep ; the bottom is 

 furnished with stone sinkers at short intervals, and the top has a series of floats made of stuffed 

 seal flippers ; they are set off from the beach and sunk to the bottom, standing up for the seal to 

 run into as they swim along shore in search of food. Seal-skin lines are attached to the net and 

 held by heavy stones on the beach ; with these the net is hauled in when a seal has been secured. 

 A small stone placed on the slack of some of the hauling lines and readily displaced by the 

 struggle of a captive shows when to take up the net. Captain Hooper says the Alaskan gill-net 

 is set from the shore by means of a pole sixty to eighty feet long, made by joining a number of 

 short poles together ; with this the net is pushed out to its desired position and then the pole is 

 withdrawn. The seal-skin lines are cut from a skin by passing round and round continuously. 

 The line is then stretched between whalebone posts or large rocks, and the whole net after it is 

 finished is folded into a narrow, long bundle, and carefully stretched between similar supports. 



A glance at the map will show this region to be supplied with a few rivers, the Selawik and 

 Finland being the largest. Selawik Eiver communicates, through a lake of the same name, with 

 Hotham Inlet, near the mouth of which the Finland empties also. Buckland Eiver, a small but 

 important salmon stream, flows into Eschscholtz Bay. These streams are well supplied with 

 salmon and whiteflsh. Petroff says that " the streams or small rivers which empty into Kotzebue 

 Sound mark the extreme northern limit of the run of salmon in America,'"' but in this he was, 

 perhaps, misled by Seemann. We took the young of the red-spotted trout at Cape Lisburne in 

 the summer of 1880, and at least one species of Oncorhynchus is known from as far north as 

 Colville Eiver. 



The species of fish observed by us in the possession of natives in Kotzebue Sound were fresh 

 flat-fish {Pleuronectes glacialis) and smelt {Osmerus dentex) and a species of dried salmon. Dried 

 smelt were obtained also. Most of the species recorded from the region were taken in our seine. 



While in Eschscholtz Bay, natives from Cape Espenberg were there for the purpose of fishing 

 and trading. They were well supplied with small objects made of walrus ivory, and many of 



^HooPEK: Op. cit., p. 59. 



^Preliminary Eeport on Census of Alaska, 1881, p. 59. 



