ALASKA SALMON INVESTIGATIONS IN 1900. 
179 
winter supply of ukala is kept, inaccessible to dogs, foxes, and wolves. Salmon are 
dried in large numbers to make ukala for the winter supply. 
In the interior, where it is obtainable, timber enters largely into the construction 
of the house. Near trading posts the dress is a combination of native and European, 
though many still wear skin coats (parkas) and skin trousers and boots. They travel 
by land with dog teams, and by water in skin boats (kayaks and bidarkas). 
The Bristol Bay salmon rivers, of which we are now treating, are all large and 
How great volumes of water. The banks are frequently low, cut by numerous mud 
sloughs, in places flooded at very high water, and at low water uncovering a beach of 
mud on which a landing can not always be made. The rolling tundra through which 
these rivers flow looks like a grass-covered plain, but it is all cut up into hillocks and 
hollows, marshes and ponds, making it generally impassable, except during the winter. 
Throughout this section travel, except by boat, must be confined to the winter months, 
when everything is frozen solid. The country is treeless. A belt of timber stretches 
from the northward to Lake Becharof and then makes a wide circuit and impinges on 
the Nushagak. The rivers widen considerably at the mouth, forming broad, shallow 
bays, though still called rivers at the canneries. As there is a rise and fall of the tide 
of from 18 to 24 feet, the change in the appearance of the tidal area at high and at 
low water is striking, for at high water the lower courses are filled to the banks, 
forming rivers as wide or wider than the Mississippi, while at low water they are 
confined to narrow, shallow channels running between uncovered shoals and banks. 
This subject will be referred to later under the heads of the several rivers. 
As there seems to be some confusion in the geographical division of some of the 
rivers and bays, it is deemed advisable to state here the application of certain names 
in this report. 
By some authorities the large arm of Bristol Bay, which receives the waters of 
the Nushagak and Wood rivers, is called the Lower Nushagak River. It is about 30 
miles in length, 13 miles in breadth at the seaward entrance, and 4 miles at the head, 
and does not in any way partake of the nature of a river. Therefore this body of 
water, opening into Bristol Bay between Protection Point and Etolin Point and 
extending northward to the junction of the Nushagak and Wood rivers, will be 
called in this report Nushagak Bay, and the two rivers named will be regarded as 
emptying into the head of that bay. 
The next great arm of Bristol Bay to the eastward of Etolin Point and extend- 
ing to the northeastward will be called Kvichak Bay, for the seaward boundary of 
which will be taken a line from the southern point of entrance of the Egegak River 
to Etolin Point, and for the northern extreme a point above Koggiung, where the 
Kvichak River is confined in banks within the usual acceptation of that term. The 
Lockenuck, Kvichak, Naknek, and Egegak rivers will be considered as entering 
Kvichak Bay. 
EARLY RECORDS OF SALMON FISHERIES IN BRISTOL BAY. 
The history of the salmon fisheries of Bristol Bay for commercial purposes is 
given under the several cannery headings. The earliest record in the history is the 
salting of salmon on the Nushagak by the schooner Neptune in 1883, and the erection 
of cannery buildings that year for the Arctic Packing Company, which made a trial 
