Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin

CHAPTER IX

"Well, boys, we're off for a long sail, and I'm afraid you will be rather tired with the steamer before you are done with her," said Mr. Strong. They had boarded the mail-steamer late the night before, and, going right to bed, had wakened early next day and rushed on deck to find the August sun shining in brilliant beauty, the islands quite out of sight, and nought but sea and sky around and above them.

"Oh, I don't know; we'll find something to do," said Teddy. "You'll have to tell us lots about the places we pass, and, if there aren't any other boys on board, Kalitan and I will be together. What's the first place we stop?"

"We passed the Kenai Peninsula in the night. I wish you could have caught a glimpse of some of the waterfalls, volcanoes, and glaciers. They are as fine as any in Alaska," said Mr. Strong. "Our next stop will be Kadiak Island."

"Kadiak Island was once near the mainland," said Kalitan. "There was only the narrowest passage of water, but a great Kenai otter tried to swim the pass, and was caught fast. He struggled so that he made it wider and wider, and at last pushed Kadiak way out to sea."

"He must have been a whopper," said Ted, "to push it so far away. Is that the island?"

"Yes," said his father. "There are no splendid forests on the island as there are on the mainland, but the grasses are superb, for the fog and rain here keeps them green as emerald."

"What a queer canoe that Indian has!" exclaimed Ted. "It isn't a bit like yours, Kalitan."

"It is bidarka," said Kalitan. "Kadiak people make canoe out of walrus hide. They stretch it over frames of driftwood. It holds two people. They sit in small hatch with apron all around their bodies, and the bidarka goes over the roughest sea and floats like a bladder. Big bidarka called an oomiak, and holds whole family."

"Some one has called the bidarkas the 'Cossacks of the sea,'" said Mr. Strong. "They skim along like swallows, and are as perfectly built as any vessel I ever saw."

"What are those huge buildings on the small island?" asked Ted, as the steamer wound through the shallows.

"Ice-houses," said his father. "Before people learned to manufacture ice, immense cargoes were shipped from here to as far south as San Francisco."

"It was fun to see them go fishing for ice from the steamer when we came up to Skaguay," said Ted. "The sailors went out in a boat, slipped a net around a block of ice and towed it to the side of the ship, then it was hitched to a derrick and swung on deck."

"Huh!" said Kalitan. "What people want ice for stored up? Think they'd store sunshine!"

"If you could invent a way to do that, you could make a fortune, my boy," said Mr. Strong, laughing. "The next place of any interest is Karluk. It's around on the other side of the island in Shelikoff Strait, and is famous for its salmon canneries. Nearly half of the entire salmon pack of Alaska comes from Kadiak Island, most of the fish coming from the Karluk River."

"Very bad for Indians," said Kalitan. "Used to have plenty fish. Tyee Klake said salmon used to come up this river in shoal sixteen miles long, and now Boston men take them all."

"It does seem a pity that the Indians don't even have a chance to earn their living in the canneries," said Mr. Strong. "The largest cannery in the world is at Karluk. There are thousands of men employed, and in one year over three million salmon were packed, yet with all this work for busy hands to do, the canneries employ Chinese, Greek, Portuguese, and American workmen in preference to the Indians, bringing them by the shipload from San Francisco."

"What other places do we pass?" asked Ted.

"A lot of very interesting ones, and I wish we could coast along, stopping wherever we felt like it," said Mr. Strong. "The Shumagin Islands are where Bering, the great discoverer and explorer, landed in 1741 to bury one of his crew. Codfish were found there, and Captain Cook, in his 'Voyages and Discoveries,' speaks of the same fish. There is a famous fishery there now called the Davidson Banks, and the codfishing fleet has its headquarters on Popoff Island. Millions of codfish are caught here every year. These islands are also a favourite haunt of the sea otter. Belofsky, at the foot of Mt. Pavloff, is the centre of the trade."

"What kind of fur is otter?" asked Ted, whose mind was so inquiring that his father often called him the "living catechism."

"It is the court fur of China and Russia, and at one time the common people were forbidden by law to wear it," said Mr. Strong. "It is a rich, purplish brown sprinkled with silver-tipped hairs, and the skins are very costly."

"At one time any one could have otter," said Kalitan. "We hunted them with spears and bows and arrows. Now they are very few, and we find them only in dangerous spots, hiding on rocks or floating kelp. Sometimes the hunters have to lie in hiding for days watching them. Only Indians can kill the otter. Boston men can if they marry Indian women. That makes them Indian."

"Rather puts otter at a discount and women at a premium," laughed Mr. Strong. "Now we pass along near the Alaska peninsula, past countless isles and islets, through the Fox Islands to Unalaska, and then into the Bering Sea. One of the most interesting things in this region is called the 'Pacific Ring of Fire,' a chain of volcanoes which stretches along the coast. Often the passengers can see from the ships at night a strange red glow over the sky, and know that the fire mountains are burning. The most beautiful of these volcanoes is Mt. Shishaldin, nearly nine thousand feet high, and almost as perfect a cone in shape as Fuji Yama, which the Japanese love so much and call 'the Honourable Mountain.' At Unalaska or Ilinlink, the 'curving beach,' we stop. If we could stay over for awhile, there are a great many interesting things we could see; an old Greek church and the government school are in the town, and Bogoslov's volcano and the sea-lion rookeries are on the island of St. John, which rose right up out of the sea in 1796 after a day's roaring and rumbling and thundering. In 1815 there was a similar performance, and from time to time the island has grown larger ever since. One fine day in 1883 there was a great shower of ashes, and, when the clouds had rolled away, two peaks were seen where only one had been, separated by a sandy isthmus. This last was reduced to a fine thread by the earthquake of 1891, and I don't know what new freaks it may have developed by now. I know some friends of mine landed there not long ago and cooked eggs over the jets of steam which gush out of the mountainside. Did you ever hear of using a volcano for a cook-stove?"

"Well, I should say not," said Ted, amused. "These Alaskan volcanoes are great things."

"The one called Makushin has a crater filled with snow in a part of which there is always a cloud of sulphurous smoke. That's making extremes meet, isn't it?"

"Yehl[13] made many strange things," said Kalitan, who had been taking in all this information even more eagerly than Teddy. "He first dwelt on Nass River, and turned two blades of grass into the first man and woman. Then the Thlinkits grew and prospered, till darkness fell upon the earth. A Thlinkit stole the sun and hid it in a box, but Yehl found it and set it so high in the heavens that none could touch it. Then the Thlinkits grew and spread abroad. But a great flood came, and all were swept away save two, who tossed long upon the flood on a raft of logs until Yehl pitied, and carried them to Mt. Edgecomb, where they dwelt until the waters fell."

"Old Kala-kash tells this story, and he says that one of these people, when very old, went down through the crater of the mountain, and, given long life by Yehl, stays there always to hold up the earth out of the water. But the other lives in the crater as the Thunder Bird, Hahtla, whose wing-flap is the thunder and whose glance is the lightning. The osprey is his totem, and his face glares in our blankets and totems."

"I've wondered what that fierce bird was," said Teddy, who was always quite carried away with Kalitan's strange legends.

"Well, what else do we see on the way to Nome, father?"

"The most remarkable thing happening in the Bering Sea is the seal industry, but I do not think we pass near enough to the islands to see any of that. You'd better run about and see the ship now," and the boys needed no second permission.

It was not many days before they knew everybody on board, from captain to deck hands, and were prime favourites with them all. Ted and Kalitan enjoyed every moment. There was always something new to see or hear, and ere they reached their journey's end, they had heard all about seals and sealing, although the famous Pribylov Islands were too far to the west of the vessel's route for them to see them. They sighted the United States revenue cutter which plies about the seal islands to keep off poachers, for no one is allowed to kill seals or to land on this government reservation except from government vessels. The scent of the rookeries, where millions of seals have been killed in the last hundred years, is noticed far out at sea, and often the barking of the animals can be heard by passing vessels.

"Why is sealskin so valuable, father?" asked Ted.

"It has always been admired because it is so warm and soft," replied Mr. Strong. "All the ladies fancy it, and it never seems to go out of fashion. There was a time, when the Pribylov Islands were first discovered, that sealskins were so plentiful that they sold in Alaska for a dollar apiece. Hunters killed so many, killing old and young, that soon there were scarcely any left, so a law was passed by the Russian government forbidding any killing for five years. Since the Americans have owned Alaska they have protected the seals, allowing them to be killed only at certain times, and only male seals from two to four years old are killed. The Indians are always the killers, and are wonderfully swift and clever, never missing a blow and always killing instantly, so that there is almost no suffering."

"How do they know where to find the seals?" asked Ted.

"For half the year the seals swim about the sea, but in May they return to their favourite haunts. In these rookeries families of them herd on the rocks, the male staying at home with his funny little black puppies, while the mother swims about seeking food. The seals are very timid, and will rush into the water at the least strange noise. A story is told that the barking of a little pet dog belonging to a Russian at one of the rookeries lost him a hundred thousand dollars, for the seals took fright and scurried away before any one could say 'Jack Robinson!'"

"Rather an expensive pup!" commented Ted. "But what about the seals, daddy?"

"You seem to think I am an encyclopædia on the seal question," said his father. "There is not much else to tell you."

"How can they manage always to kill the right ones?" demanded Ted.

"The gay bachelor seals herd together away from the rest and sleep at night on the rocks. Early in the morning the Aleuts slip in between them and the herd and drive them slowly to the killing-ground, where they are quickly killed and skinned and the skins taken to the salting-house. The Indians use the flesh and blubber, and the climate is such that before another year the hollow bones are lost in the grass and earth."

"What becomes of the skins after they are salted?"

"They are usually sent to London, where they are prepared for market. The work is all done by hand, which is one reason that they are so expensive. They are first worked in sawdust, cleaned, scraped, washed, shaved, plucked, dyed with a hand-brush from eight to twelve times, washed again and freed from the least speck of grease by a last bath in hot sawdust or sand."

"I don't wonder a sealskin coat costs so much," said Ted, "if they have got to go through all that performance. I wish we could have seen the islands, but I'd hate to see the seals killed. It doesn't seem like hunting just to knock them on the head. It's too much like the stock-yards at home."

"Yes, but it's a satisfaction to know that it's done in the easiest possible way for the animals.

"What a lot you are learning way up here in Alaska, aren't you, son? To-morrow we'll be at Nome, and then your head will be so stuffed with mines and mining that you will forget all about everything else."

"I don't want to forget any of it," said Ted. "It's all bully."

CHAPTER X

A low, sandy beach, without a tree to break its level, rows of plain frame-houses, some tents and wooden shanties scattered about, the surf breaking over the shore in splendid foam,—this was Teddy's first impression of Nome. They had sailed over from St. Michael's to see the great gold-fields, and both the boys were full of eagerness to be on land. It seemed, however, as if their desires were not to be realized, for landing at Nome is a difficult matter.

Nome is on the south shore of that part of Alaska known as Seward Peninsula, and it has no harbour. It is on the open seacoast and catches all the fierce storms that sweep northward over Bering Sea. Generally seacoast towns are built in certain spots because there is a harbour, but Nome was not really built, it "jes' growed," for, when gold was found there, the miners sat down to gather the harvest, caring nothing about a harbour.

Ships cannot go within a mile of land, and passengers have to go ashore in small lighters. Sometimes when they arrive, they cannot go ashore at all, but have to wait several days, taking refuge behind a small island ten miles away, lest they drag their anchors and be dashed to pieces on the shore.

There had been a tremendous storm at Nome the day before Ted arrived, and landing was more difficult than usual, but, impatient as the boys were, at last it seemed safe to venture, and the party left the steamer to be put on a rough barge, flat-bottomed and stout, which was hauled by cable to shore until it grounded on the sands. They were then put in a sort of wooden cage, let down by chains from a huge wooden beam, and swung round in the air like the unloading cranes of a great city, over the surf to a high platform on the land.

"Well, this is a new way to land," cried Ted, who had been rather quiet during the performance, and his father thought a trifle frightened. "It's a sort of a balloon ascension, isn't it?"

"It must be rather hard for the miners, who have been waiting weeks for their mail, when the boat can't land her bags at all," said Mr. Strong. "That sometimes happens. From November to May, Nome is cut off from the world by snow and ice. The only news they receive is by the monthly mail when it comes.

"Over at Kronstadt the Russians have ice-breaking boats which keep the Baltic clear enough of ice for navigation, and plow their way through ice fourteen feet thick for two hundred miles. The Nome miners are very anxious for the government to try this ice-boat service at Nome."

"Why did people settle here in such a forlorn place?" asked Ted, as they made their way to the town, which they found anything but civilized. "I like the Indian houses on the island better than this."

"Your island is more picturesque," said Mr. Strong, "but people came here for what they could get.

"In 1898 gold was discovered on Anvil Creek, which runs into Snake River, and this turned people's eyes in the direction of Nome. Miners rushed here and set to work in the gulches inland, but it was not till the summer of 1899 that gold was found on the beach. A soldier from the barracks—you know this is part of a United States Military Reservation—found gold while digging a well near the beach, and an old miner took out $1,200 worth in twenty days. Then a perfect frenzy seized the people. They flocked to Nome from far and near; they camped on the beach in hundreds and staked their claims. Between one and two thousand men were at work on the beach at one time, yet so good-natured were they that no quarrels seem to have occurred. Doctors, lawyers, barkeepers, and all dropped their business and went to rocking, as they call beach-mining."

"Oh, dad, let's hurry and go and see it," cried Ted, as they hurried through their dinner at the hotel. "I thought gold came out of deep mines like copper, and had to be melted out or something, but this seems to be different. Do they just walk along the beach and pick it up? I wish I could."

"Well, it's not quite so simple as that," said Mr. Strong, laughing. "We'll go and see, and then you'll understand," and they went down the crooked streets to the sandy beach.

Men were standing about talking and laughing, others working hard. All manner of men were there scattered over the tundra,[14] and Ted became interested in two who were working together in silence.

"What are they doing?" he asked his father. "I can't see how they expect to get anything worth having out of this mess."

"Beach-mining is quite different from any other," said his father. "Let's watch those two men. They have evidently staked a claim together, which means that nobody but these two can work on the ground they have staked out, and that they must share all the gold they find. They came here to prospect, and evidently found a block of ground which suited them. They then dug a prospect hole down two to five feet until they struck 'bedrock,' which happens to be clay around here. They passed through several layers of sand and gravel before reaching this, and these were carefully examined to see how much gold they contained. Upon reaching a layer which seemed to be a good one, the gravel on top was stripped off and thrown aside and the 'pay streak' worked with the rocker."

"What is that?" asked Ted, who was all ears, while Kalitan was taking in everything with his sharp black eyes.

"That arrangement that looks like a square pan on a saw-buck is the rocker. The rockers usually have copper bottoms, and there is a great demand for sheet copper at Nome, but often there is not enough of it, and the miners have been known to cover them with silver coins. That man you are watching has silver dollars in his, about fifty, I should say. It seems extravagant, doesn't it, but he'll take out many times that amount if he has good luck."

The man, who had glanced up at them, smiled at that and said:

"And, if I don't have luck, I'm broke, anyhow, so fifty or sixty plunks won't make much difference. You going to be a miner, youngster?"

"Not this trip," said Ted, with a smile. "Say, I'd like to know how you get the gold out with that."

"At first we used to put a blanket in the rocker, and wash the pay dirt on that. Our prospect hole has water in it, and we can use it over and over. Some of the holes are dry, and there the men have to pack their pay dirt down to the shore and use surf water for washing. Most of our gold is so fine that the blanket didn't stop it, so now we use 'quick.' I reckon you'd call it mercury, but we call it quick. You see, it saves time, and work-time up here is so short, on account of winter setting in so early, that we have to save up our spare minutes and not waste 'em on long words."

Ted grinned cheerfully and asked: "What do you do with the quick?"

"We paint it over the bottom of the rocker, and it acts like a charm and catches every speck of gold that comes its way as the dirt is washed over it. The quick and the gold make a sort of amalgam."

"But how do you get at the gold after it amalgams, or whatever you call it?" asked Ted.

"Sure we fry it in the frying-pan, and it's elegant pancakes it makes," said the man. "See here," and he pulled from his pocket several flat masses that looked like pieces of yellow sponge. "This is pure gold. All the quick has gone off, and this is the real stuff, just as good as money. An ounce will buy sixteen dollars' worth of anything in Nome."

"It looks mighty pretty," said Ted. "Seems to me it's redder than any gold I ever saw."

"It is," said his father. "Nome beach gold is redder and brighter than any other Alaskan gold. I guess I'll have to get you each a piece for a souvenir," and both boys were made happy by the present of a quaintly shaped nugget, bought by Mr. Strong from the very miner who had mined it, which of course added to its value.

"You're gathering quite a lot of souvenirs, Ted," said his father. "It's a great relief that you have not asked me for anything alive yet. I have been expecting a modest request for a Malamute or a Husky pup, or perhaps a pet reindeer to take home, but so far you have been quite moderate in your demands."

"Kalitan never asks for anything," said Ted. "I asked him once why it was, and he said Indian boys never got what they asked for; that sometimes they had things given to them that they hadn't asked for, but, if he asked the Tyee for anything, all he got was 'Good Indian get things for himself,' and he had to go to work to get the thing he wanted. I guess it's a pretty good plan, too, for I notice that I get just as much as I did when I used to tease you for things," Teddy added, sagely.

"Wise boy," said his father. "You're certainly more agreeable to live with. The next thing you are to have is a visit to an Esquimo village, and, if I can find some of the Esquimo carvings, you shall have something to take home to mother. Kalitan, what would you like to remember the Esquimos by?"

Kalitan smiled and replied, simply, "Mukluks."

"What are mukluks?" demanded Ted.

"Esquimo moccasins," said Mr. Strong. "Well, you shall both have a pair, and they are rather pretty things, too, as the Esquimos make them."

CHAPTER XI

The Esquimo village was reached across the tundra, and Teddy and Kalitan were much interested in the queer houses. Built for the long winter of six or eight months, when it is impossible to do anything out-of-doors, the eglu[15] seems quite comfortable from the Esquimo point of view, but very strange to their American cousins.

"I thought the Esquimos lived in snow houses," said Ted, as they looked at the queer little huts, and Kalitan exclaimed:

"Huh! Innuit queer Indian!"

"No," said Mr. Strong; "his hut is built by digging a hole about six feet deep and standing logs up side by side around the hole. On the top of these are placed logs which rest even with the ground. Stringers are put across these, and other logs and moss and mud roofed over it, leaving an opening in the middle about two feet square. This is covered with a piece of walrus entrail so thin and transparent that light easily passes through it, and it serves as a window, the only one they have. A smoke-hole is cut through the roof, but there is no door, for the hut is entered through another room built in the same way, fifteen or twenty feet distant, and connected by an underground passage about two feet square with the main room. The entrance-room is entered through a hole in the roof, from which a ladder reaches the bottom of the passage."

"Can we go into a hut?" asked Ted.

"I'll ask that woman cooking over there," said Mr. Strong, as they went up to a woman who was cooking over a peat fire, holding over the coals an old battered skillet in which she was frying fish. She nodded and smiled at the boys, and, as Esquimos are always friendly and hospitable souls, told them to go right into her eglu, which was close by.

They climbed down the ladder, crawled along the narrow passage to where a skin hung before an opening, and, pushing it aside, entered the living-room. Here they found an old man busily engaged in carving a walrus tooth, another sewing mukluks, while a girl was singing a quaint lullaby to a child of two in the corner.

The young girl rose, and, putting the baby down on a pile of skins, spoke to them in good English, saying quietly:

"You are welcome. I am Alalik."

"May we see your wares? We wish to buy," said Mr. Strong, courteously.

"You may see, whether you buy or not," she said, with a smile, which showed a mouth full of even white teeth, and she spread out before them a collection of Esquimo goods. There were all kinds of carvings from walrus tusks, grass baskets, moccasins of walrus hide, stone bowls and cups, parkas made of reindeer skin, and one superb one of bird feathers, ramleikas, and all manner of carved trinkets, the most charming of which, to Ted's eyes, being a tiny oomiak with an Esquimo in it, made to be used as a breast-pin. This he bought for his mother, and a carving of a baby for Judith; while his father made him and Kalitan happy with presents.

"Where did you learn such English?" asked Mr. Strong of Alalik, wondering, too, where she learned her pretty, modest ways, for Esquimo women are commonly free and easy.

"I was for two years at the Mission at Holy Cross," she said. "There I learned much that was good. Then my mother died, and I came home."

She spoke simply, and Mr. Strong wondered what would be the fate of this sweet-faced girl.

"Did you learn to sew from the sisters?" asked Ted, who had been looking at the garments she had made, in which the stitches, though made in skins and sewn with deer sinew, were as even as though done with a machine.

"Oh, no," she said. "We learn that at home. When I was no larger than Zaksriner there, my mother taught me to braid thread from deer and whale sinew, and we must sew very much in winter if we have anything to sell when summer comes. It is very hard to get enough to live. Since the Boston men come, our people waste the summer in idleness, so we have nothing stored for the winter's food. Hundreds die and many sicknesses come upon us. In the village where my people lived, in each house lay the dead of what the Boston men called measles, and there were not left enough living to bury the dead. Only we escaped, and a Black Gown came from the Mission to help, and he took me and Antisarlook, my brother, to the school. The rest came here, where we live very well because there are in the summer, people who buy what we make in the winter."

"How do you get your skins so soft?" asked Ted, feeling the exquisite texture of a bag she had just finished. It was a beautiful bit of work, a tobacco-pouch or "Tee-rum-i-ute," made of reindeer skin, decorated with beads and the soft creamy fur of the ermine in its summer hue.

"We scrape it a very long time and pull and rub," she said. "Plenty of time for patience in winter."

"Your hands are too small and slim. I shouldn't think you could do much with those stiff skins," said Teddy.

Alalik smiled at the compliment, and a little flush crept into the clear olive of her skin. She was clean and neat, and the eglu, though close from being shut up, was neater than most of the Esquimo houses. The bowl filled with seal oil, which served as fire and light, was unlighted, and Alalik's father motioned to her and said something in Innuit, to which she smilingly replied:

"My father wishes you to eat with us," she said, and produced her flint bag. In this were some wads of fibrous material used for wicks. Rolling a piece of this in wood ashes, she held it between her thumb and a flint, struck her steel against the stone, and sparks flew out which lighted the fibre so that it burst into flame. This was thrown into the bowl of oil, and she deftly began preparing tea. She served it in cups of grass, and Ted thought he had never tasted anything nicer than the cup of afternoon tea served in an eglu.

"Alalik, what were you singing as we came in?" asked Ted.

"A song my mother always sang to us," she replied. "It is called 'Ahmi,' and is an Esquimo slumber song."

"Will you sing it now?" asked Mr. Strong, and she smiled in assent and sang the quaint, crooning lullaby of her Esquimo mother—

Thanking Alalik for the quaint song, sung in a sweet, touching voice, they all took their departure, laden with purchases and delighted with their visit.

"But you must not think this is a fair sample of Esquimo hut or Esquimo life," said Mr. Strong to the boys. "These are near enough civilized to show the best side of their race, but theirs must be a terrible existence who are inland or on islands where no one ever comes, and whose only idea of life is a constant struggle for food."

"I think I would rather be an American," remarked Ted, while Kalitan said, briefly:

"I like Thlinkit."

CHAPTER XII

The tundra was greenish-brown in colour, and looked like a great meadow stretching from the beach, like a new moon, gently upward to the cones of volcanic mountains far away.

The ground, frozen solid all the year, thaws out for a foot or two on the surface during the warm months, and here and there were scattered wild flowers; spring beauties, purple primroses, yellow anemone, and saxifrages bloomed in beauty, and wild honey-bees, gay bumblebees, and fat mosquitoes buzzed and hummed everywhere.

Ted and Kalitan were going to see the reindeer farm at Port Clarence, and, as this was to be their last jaunt in Alaska, they were determined to make the best of it. Next day they were to take ship from Cape Prince of Wales and go straight to Sitka. Here Ted was to start for home, and Mr. Strong was to leave Kalitan at the Mission School for a year's schooling, which, to Kalitan's great delight, was to be a present to him from his American friends.

"Tell us about the reindeer farms, daddy. Have they always been here?" demanded Ted, as they tramped over the tundra, covered with moss, grass, and flowers.

"No," said his father. "They are quite recent arrivals in Alaska. The Esquimos used to live entirely upon the game they killed before the whites came. There were many walruses, which they used for many things; whales, too, they could easily capture before the whalers drove them north, and then they hunted the wild reindeer, until now there are scarcely any left. There was little left for them to eat but small fish, for you see the whites had taken away or destroyed their food supplies.

"One day, in 1891, an American vessel discovered an entire village of Esquimos starving, being reduced to eating their dogs, and it was thought quite time that the government did something for these people whose land they had bought. Finding that people of the same race in Siberia were prosperous and healthy, they sent to investigate conditions, and found that the Siberian Esquimos lived entirely by means of the reindeer. The government decided to start a reindeer farm and see if it would not benefit the natives."

"How does it work?" asked Ted.

"Very well, indeed," said his father. "At first about two hundred animals were brought over, and they increased about fifty per cent. the first year. Everywhere in the arctic region the tundra gives the reindeer the moss he lives on. It is never dry in summer because the frost prevents any underground drainage, and even in winter the animals feed upon it and thrive. There are, it is said, hundreds of thousands of square miles of reindeer moss in Alaska, and reindeer stations have been established in many places, and, as the natives are the only ones allowed to raise them, it seems as if this might be the way found to help the industrious Esquimos to help themselves."

"But if it all belongs to the government, how can it help the natives?" asked Ted.

"Of course they have to be taught the business," said Mr. Strong. "The government brought over some Lapps and Finlanders to care for the deer at first, and these took young Esquimos to train. Each one serves five years as herder, having a certain number of deer set apart for him each year, and at the end of his service goes into business for himself."

"Why, I think that's fine," cried Ted. "Oh, Daddy, what is that? It looks like a queer, tangled up forest, all bare branches in the summer."

"That's a reindeer herd lying down for their noonday rest. What you see are their antlers. How would you like to be in the midst of that forest of branches?" asked Mr. Strong.

"No, thank you," said Teddy, but Kalitan said:

"Reindeer very gentle; they will not hurt unless very much frightened."

"What queer-looking animals they are," said Ted, as they approached nearer. "A sort of a cross between a deer and a cow."

"Perhaps they are more useful than handsome, but I think there is something picturesque about them, especially when hitched to sleds and skimming over the frozen ground."

The farm at Teller was certainly an interesting spot. Teddy saw the deer fed and milked, the Lapland women being experts in that line, and found the herders, in their quaint parkas tied around the waist, and conical caps, scarcely less interesting than the deer. Two funny little Lapp babies he took to ride on a large reindeer, which proceeding did not frighten the babies half so much as did the white boy who put them on the deer. A reindeer was to them an every-day occurrence, but a Boston boy was quite another matter.

Better than the reindeer, however, Teddy and Kalitan liked the draught dogs who hauled the water at the station. A great cask on wheels was pulled by five magnificent dogs, beautiful fellows with bright alert faces.

"They are the most faithful creatures in the world," said Mr. Strong, "devoted to their masters, even though the masters are cruel to them. Reindeer can work all day without a mouthful to eat, living on one meal at night of seven pounds of corn-meal mush, with a pound or so of dried fish cooked into it. On long journeys they can live on dried fish and snow, and five dogs will haul four hundred pounds thirty-five miles a day. They carry the United States mails all over Alaska."

"I should think the dog would be worth more than the reindeer," said Ted.

"Many Alaskan travellers say he is by far the best for travelling, but he cannot feed himself on the tundra, nor can he be eaten himself if necessary. The Jarvis expedition proved the value of the reindeer," said Mr. Strong.

"What was that?" asked Ted.

"Some years ago a whale fleet was caught in the ice near Point Barrow, and in danger of starving to death, and word of this was sent to the government. The President ordered the revenue cutter Bear to go as far north as possible and send a relief party over the ice by sledge with provisions.

"When the Bear could go no farther, her commander landed Lieutenant Jarvis, who was familiar with the region, and a relief party. They were to seek the nearest reindeer station and drive a reindeer herd to the relief of the starving people. The party reached Cape Nome and secured some deer, and the rescue was made, but under such difficulties that it is one of the most heroic stories of the age. These men drove four hundred reindeer over two thousand miles north of the Arctic Circle, over frozen seas and snow-covered mountains, and found the starving sailors, who ate the fresh reindeer meat, which lasted until the ice melted in the spring and set them free."

"I think that was fine," said Ted. "But it seems a little hard on the reindeer, doesn't it, to tramp all that distance just to be eaten?"

"Animals made for man," said Kalitan, briefly.

A golden glory filled the sky, running upwards toward the zenith, spreading there in varying colours from palest yellow to orange and deepest, richest red. Glowing streams of light streamed heavenward like feathery wings, as Ted and Kalitan sailed southward, and Ted exclaimed in wonder: "What is it?"

"The splendour of Saghalie Tyee,"[16] said Kalitan, solemnly.

"The Aurora Borealis," said Mr. Strong, "and very fortunate you are to see it. Indeed, Teddy, you seem to have brought good luck, for everything has gone well this trip. Our faces are turned homeward now, but we will have to come again next summer and bring mother and Judith."

"I'll be glad to get home to mother again," said Ted, then noting Kalitan's wistful face, "We'll find you at Sitka and go home with you to the island," and he put his arm affectionately over the Indian boy's shoulder. Kalitan pointed to the sky, whence the splendour was fading, and a flock of birds was skimming southwards.

"From the sky fades the splendour of Saghalie Tyee," he said. "The summer is gone, the birds fly southward. The light goes from me when my White Brother goes with the birds. Unless he return with them, all is dark for Kalitan!"