36 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
house. Hence men, women, and cliildren are engaged in the work, each family trying 
to bring in as many skins as possible. This system has been found necessary tliere, 
as the population would have been entirely inadequate to handle the catch if the 
Bering Island scheme had been adopted. It has resulted in overworking the Copper 
Islanders, expecially the females; but I am not certain that their more cheerful and 
independently open character, as contrasted Avith the more sulky and indifferent aspect 
of the Bering Island natives, is not due to the competition, on one hand, and the iiara- 
lyzing communism on the other. 
The religion of the natives is, of course, the orthodox Eussian Greek-Catholic 
faith. They liaA^e built a fine and expensive church on each island. They also suiiport 
ax>riest on each island, and on Bering Island an assistant priest or “diakon.” The moral 
plane of the church — its methods, men, and members — is similar to that of the same 
institution in Alaska. 
Schools are provided for both islands and housed in roomy and well-lighted build- 
ings, very creditable in every resiiect. The children are provided with all the modern 
improvements in school furniture, as well as apparatus for object lessons, maps, and 
colored charts of animals and plants decorating the walls, on Avhich, over the teacher’s 
rostrum, also hang the portraits of the tsar and the tsarina. Whether the knoAvledge 
received by the boys and girls is uj> to the fine apparatus, I am not able to say. Any- 
way, the boys used to write a good hand, at least when the late Mr. Volokitin taught 
them. I also saw the apparatus of a modern school gymnasium, but as it was outside 
the schoolhouse and being painted dead-black, I surndse that the authorities had come 
to the conclusion that it was carrying coal to Newcastle to give the outdoor children 
of Aleut extraction the additional physical exercise of indoor gymnastics. 
A doctor, appointed and paid by the Government, is now stationed on Bering 
Island, with a good drug store on each island. He has for an assistant a “feltcher” or 
barber, a native boy who has undergone a training at Vladivostok. The midwife, sent 
out from St. Petersburg by the authorities there, must also be regarded as the doctor’s 
assistant. 
A.— BERING ISLAND. 
GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 
Bering Island, the northwestern island of the Commander group, is situated 
between (approximately) 55° 22' and 54° 42' north latitude and 165° 40' and 10(5° 41' 
east longitude (pi. 4). Its greatest length from northwest to southeast is a little less 
than 50 miles, the average width being about 10 miles. 
Two outlying islets, both not far from the northwestern extremity, properly 
belong here — Toporhof Island, a fiat-topped, low island, about 2 miles west of the 
main village, and Art Kamen, on older charts usually called Sivutchi Kamen, a 
higher basaltic rock, witli a two-peaked top, 4J miles farther west. 
Tbe southern two-thirds of Bering Island are exceedingly mountainous, Avith 
lAeaks rising to about 2,200 feet. The maximum elevation is nearer the western side 
than the eastern, and the rise from the sea consequently more abrupt along the 
former coast, the mountains sloping more gently toward the east. The valleys, as a 
rule, are shorter, narroAver, and V-shaped on the west side, longer and more open on 
the other. The passes are usually high, 000 to 1,000 feet, but at one idace, auz, 
between Oladlcovslcaya on the west coast and Polavino on the east, the two valleys 
