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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



but have to be burned in a stove, which 

 we found later to be the most important 

 item in our camp outfit. As we got 

 farther west the scenery grew more and 

 more splendid, but the weather became 

 steadily worse, wind and snow or sleet 

 becoming the rule. Our most interesting 

 point of call beyond Kodiak was Chig- 

 nik, where there is one of the largest sal- 

 mon canneries in that region, and where 

 the rocks and snow mountains are par- 

 ticularly fine. 



On April 27 we landed at Portage Bay 

 in a blinding blizzard, and settled our- 

 selves in the shack. We had already de- 

 cided that, even if we could get them, the 

 horses could not pack over the divide 

 through the six or eight feet of snow, 

 so we were rather at our wit's end to 

 know how to get our outfit across. 

 When the weather moderated, Cross and 

 Alfred left us and started to find the 

 Coal Camp, where they arrived after 

 covering a very bad 16 miles. 



By good luck they found at the camp a 

 white man named Johnson with a team 

 of four "outside dogs" (so called in con- 

 trast to the native dog, and which were 

 in this case part setter and part "just 

 dog," and made excellent pullers), so 

 as soon as Cross, who had gone wholly 

 snow-blind after the trip over the divide, 

 was able to see well enough to take care 

 of himself, Alfred and Johnson left him 

 and came back to us with the dog-team. 

 We were thus able to get our outfit, in- 

 cluding a 15-foot cedar canoe, to the Coal 

 Camp after three or four days of good 

 hard work. 



Before leaving the United States we 

 had bought of the principal owners of 

 the Herendeen Bay Coal Company the 

 rights to a salmon boat, salvaged the pre- 

 vious year near the mouth of the Heren- 

 deen Bay, where there is a station for 

 catching and salting salmon. 



The next thing to do was to get our 

 boat, but this was impossible for the pres- 

 ent, as there were still 22 inches of ice 

 in Herendeen Bay, and it was not until 

 the 23d of May that we started for our 

 real hunting grounds on Port Moller, and 

 before that time we were fortunate 



enough to find two men whom we en- 

 gaged to go with us. One of them, Mike 

 Munson, a Swede, was a trapper, and 

 the other, Andrew, an Aleut native, came 

 as cook. It turned out that Mike knew 

 but little and Andrew nothing at all about 

 the country, but both proved excellent 

 fellows and willing workers. Andrew 

 was from a small Indian village on the 

 Bering Sea coast at the mouth of Bear 

 River, the largest stream we found, which 

 was composed of perhaps 20 "barabaras" 

 or native houses. 



The Indians are all Greek Catholics 

 (due to the former Russian control of the 

 country), and are clean, though rather 

 lazy. There are also a few Eskimo who 

 have drifted down from Cape Nome, the 

 southern boundary of their original dis- 

 trict, and these are far more industrious 

 than the native Aleuts. We found a 

 small band of them camped at a hot 

 sulphur spring near the shore of Port 

 Moller. 



We gradually became accustomed to 

 the sudden heavy wind squalls (known 

 as wooleys) and the incessant rain, which 

 are the rule during May and the first half 

 of June, and soon learned to pitch our 

 tents in the middle of a thick clump of 

 alders and to build wind-breaks around 

 them. Nor did it take long to find a way 

 to arrange our belongings indoors to give 

 plenty of room near the stove for drying 

 racks of alder sticks. It was very early 

 on the trip, too, that we learned the in- 

 flammability of the paraffined silk of 

 which our main tent was made, for a de- 

 fective asbestos ring around the stove- 

 pipe set fire to the cloth, so that at least 

 a third of it burned before we could ex- 

 tinguish it. 



After this accident we used what was 

 left of the old tent, and added to it an 

 extension about seven feet long, which 

 we christened the portico. The old part, 

 now about nine feet square, we used for 

 a sleeping-room, and put our stove, drying 

 racks, etc., in the portico, which we made 

 from the canvas tarpaulins from our 

 blanket-rolls. 



At this work Mike was invaluable, as 

 he had been a sailor and was quite at 



