ALASKA. 
4 1 
the herds on Kadiak Island throve the best and became of real service in assist¬ 
ing to maintain the settlement. Here there is a very fine ranging ground for 
pasture, and in the summer there is the greatest abundance of nutritious grasses, 
but when the storms of October, freighted with snow, accompanied by cold and 
piercing gales, arrive and hold their own until the following May, the sleek, fat 
herd of September becomes very much worn and emaciated. It has given its 
owner an undue amount of trouble to shelter and feed. Hay, however, suitable 
for cattle, or at least to keep cattle alive, can be cut in almost any quantities 
desired for that purpose, but the stress of weather alone, even with abundance 
of this feed, depresses as it were and enfeebles the vitality of the stock, so that 
the herds on Kadiak Island have never increased to anything approximating a 
stock grower’s drove, rarely exceeding 15 or 20 head at the most. Notable 
examples of small flocks of sheep which have been brought up since the trans¬ 
fer and turned out at Unalaska, Unga, and elsewhere have done well. The 
mutton of the Alaskan sheep when it is rolling in its own fat, as it were, is 
pronounced by epicures to be very fine; but the severe winters, which are not 
so cold as protracted—when the weather is so violent that the animals have to 
huddle for weeks in some dark, low shelter, cause a sweating or heating of their 
wool, which is detached and falls off—greatly enfeebling and emaciating them 
by spring. The practice of the traders at some places now is to bring beef cattle 
up in the spring from San Francisco, turn them out into the grazing grounds on 
the Aleutian Islands, Kadiak, and even to the north, where they speedily round 
out and flesh up into the very finest beeves by the middle or end of October, 
when they are slaughtered. 
Horses, according to Mr. PetrofF, have been kept on Wood 
Island, Kadiak Harbor, for years. A field of 12 acres of oats is 
regularly sown for their use. The oats grow and frequently head, 
but never ripen; the planters cut the green crop for haying pur¬ 
poses. Mules and horses have no economic value, there being 
little service for them on land. 
REINDEER. 
Dr. Jackson (Report on Introduction of Domestic Reindeer 
into Alaska, 1896), says that the vast territory of central and arc¬ 
tic Alaska, unfitted for agriculture or cattle raising, is abundantly 
supplied with long, fibrous white moss, the natural food of the 
reindeer. Taking the statistics of Norway and Sweden as a guide, 
