Our Arctic province

Belcovsky is the metropolis of the Alaskan Peninsula. It is the chief settlement of the sea-otter hunters, and the seat of the greatest rivalry and traffic in that fur-trade, based wholly upon the costly skins of the “bobear,”[59] and which constitutes the only traffic worthy of mention in which the inhabitants of the entire Aleutian and Kadiak districts can engage. Here we observe from our anchorage a little town perched upon the summit of a bluff and clinging to the flanks of a precipitous mountain that looms up behind it, usually so wreathed in fog that its summit is seldom seen. Some two hundred and sixty or seventy Aleutian sea-otter hunters and their families are living here in an oddly contrasted hamlet of frame houses and earthen barraboras; the freshly painted red roof and yellow walls of a large, new church, in the tower of which a pleasing chime of bells (but rudely struck, however), arrests the ear and the eye as the most attractive single object within the limits of the place.[60] The rival traders have run up their flags very smartly on the poles that are erected before their doors as we swing to anchor in the offing, and a great bustle is evident among the inhabitants when our boat pulls away for the landing, which is a sheltered surf-eddy right under the blackest and most forbidding of bluffs. Two rival trading-firms have each erected a landing warehouse for the reception of their stores upon the rocky beach where we step ashore. The ascent to the village above is steep, but over a sloping slide of mossy earth and rocks. A clear, brawling brook runs down through the town, and we cross it by a little foot-bridge on our way. We observe cord-wood piled upon the beach, which the traders have brought from Kadiak, and several heaps of coal that had been brought up as ballast from Vancouver’s Island. This fuel is regularly sold to the natives here, who have none, unless it be a stray stick of drift-wood or the “chicksa”[61] vines, which the women gather on the hill-sides.

Sea-otter hunting is the sole industry and topic of conversation, for within a radius of fifty miles from the site of Belcovsky fully one-half of the entire Alaskan catch of these valuable peltries is secured. Were they not hopelessly improvident, shiftless and extravagant, they would be a really wealthy community; but the notoriety of the debauches here has become a by-word and a reproach over the whole region between Cook’s Inlet and Attoo. Every dollar of their surplus earnings is squandered in orgies, stimulated by the vile “quass” or beer which they make. They dress, however, in suits of every-day clothing, such as we wear ourselves, when lounging about the village, and their women wear cloth garments and hats cut after a fashion not very remote in San Francisco.

The neatness of the villages which we have just visited at Kadiak and Cook’s Inlet has no counterpart in Belcovsky, where, in spite of its much greater trade and wealth, the filth and neglect everywhere manifested among the barraboras and their interiors, are in harsh and disagreeable contrast, while the taciturn, swelled heads of the inmates speak volumes for the strength of that carousal during the night prior to your arrival. A small frame house is pointed out as the school, where it seems that those natives actually sustain a teacher and send a large percentage of their children. It declares that these people are not vicious at heart, though they cannot resist intemperance. They read and write, however, principally in the Aleutian dialect, using an alphabet prepared for their race by the Greek Catholic missionaries in 1810-25. But, while the large capture of sea-otters and consequent flow of the traders’ money and supplies into this settlement brings these people greater wealth than that showered elsewhere, yet the real physical misery of those natives of Belcovsky proves the truth and points the moral of a very old saying which declares that riches alone do not bring contentment to the human mind, be it ever so high or ever so low.

A strong south wind is springing up, and you are told by the skipper that you must get aboard as quickly as possible, for it is sure destruction to his vessel if she lies long at anchor in the offing, since the sunken rocks and open roadstead are dangerous. The little schooner is rapidly put under way, “beating out” in the freshening gale and headed for Oonga, which is the next settlement in importance, about fifty miles east. Sailing-vessels never come into Belcovsky, except those of rival traders, because it is the most risky port that the mariner has to make in all these waters of Alaska.

Before leaving the sea-otter emporium it is well to call attention to the fact that at a small indentation of this same peninsula, twenty-nine miles to the northward, is a settlement made up entirely of the poor relatives of these Belcovsky people, some forty or fifty souls, who, however, take a great pride in their superior health and morality. They have a little chapel, and enjoy much better opportunities for hunting bear and reindeer. These animals, the reindeer leading, always followed by the bears, come down at regular intervals in large herds from a great moorland to the northeast, travelling on a well-beaten “road” or track, which leads clear to the westernmost end of the peninsula, where those bovine road-makers plunge into and cross the narrow Krenitzin Straits to renew their land march and scatter all over the rugged and extended tundra and mountain sides of Oonimak Island.

With a line of dissipation and general misery which the rich commerce of Belcovsky causes in that settlement, we ought not to fail to include the Protassov or Morserovie village which is located on the far end of the peninsula—the extreme west end, where a much smaller community exists, though equally opulent and just as dissolute. Here is a settlement of nearly a hundred natives, who have an annual average income of about $1,000 to each family. Yet, in spite of this small fortune in such a region, when visited by an agent of the Government in 1880, they shocked him by their aspect of abject physical misery and that excessive debauchery which had stamped them more wretchedly than it had even their cousins of Belcovsky. These people, in addition to their fine natural advantages of position for hunting sea-otters, enjoy a location in close juxtaposition to walrus-banks and sea-lion spits and islands elsewhere on the Bering shore, where they find these pinnipeds in great numbers at certain seasons of the year. The flesh, skins, blubber, and sinews are both articles of essential use and of luxury to them. Also, the same reindeer and brown-bear road, which we have just noticed, passes close by the village, so that those desiderata of food-supply and trade are very accessible.

Near by the village, less than half a mile, as if planned especially by a merciful providence, there are a number of hot sulphur-springs which would afford the diseased and sickly natives infinite relief, if they could only be induced to make the necessary exertion to go to them and bathe therein. Yet this officer of the Government declares that not one of them could be induced by him to try the efficacy of the healing waters—“It was too far to walk!”

When our little vessel comes to anchor in Delarov Harbor, Oonga Island, of the Shoomagin group, we see a flag flying from the summit of a grassy knoll which caps an irregular but bluffy headland. The village lies directly over, and under the shelter of that ridge, and it opens quickly on our view as we pull around the point and land with our dingy in a deeply indented cove upon a smooth sand and pebbly beach. The town is just above, in its full extent, but it is a thickly clustered mass of fourteen frame houses, twenty or twenty-one barrabkies, and the ever-present church. It does not make near as much of a spread as does Belcovsky, although it is quite as large. This is the chief codfishing rendezvous for the white fishermen who annually come up to the Shoomagin banks from San Francisco in six or seven small schooners. The location and surroundings of the little hamlet are exceedingly picturesque, but, unfortunately, though in a somewhat less disagreeable extent, the people here are also given over to those Belcovsky orgies, inasmuch as they, too, are great and successful otter-hunters, and have an income of over six hundred dollars for each family, which wealth seems to demoralize far more than it comforts their existence.

The strong southerly and southeast winds that prevail here during the summer season are the most severe, and, strange to say, they are the ones which are the coldest and the chilliest—a north wind is always warmer! These south winds bring to Oonga its foggiest weather, its heaviest rains, and raise such a ground swell in the village harbor that the craft therein are often compelled to go to sea for safety, and it always drives the fishermen from the banks outside. Those cod-banks are best, off the southerly range of the islands, and hence, when a southeaster blows, the schooners are on a most dangerous lee-shore. They seldom ever take the risks of riding out such a gale. Old skippers who have fished for forty years on the Grand Banks and “Georges,” for the Gloucester and Boston markets, declare that the fury of the sea and wind is greater off the Shoomagins in a southeaster than anything of the kind experienced on the Atlantic. These wild gales become stronger, loaded with sleet and snow, as winter approaches, so that by the middle or end of November, until next April, all sailing-craft are practically driven from the fishing grounds.

The same method of catching cod is employed here as practised by our Gloucester men, in only one respect, however: the long, buoyed lines are not set out and regularly under-run, but instead, small boats and dories, with two men in each, are put off from the schooners, and fish with hand-lines, using what is known as “11-inch” and “12-inch” hooks. Halibut, and “squid,” or cuttle-fish, make the best bait. A good, smart man, if he is fortunate, will haul up four hundred codfish in a day’s steady labor, but this is an extraordinary streak of luck. An average of three hundred every fair day is one that gives the highest satisfaction. These fish are taken on board of the schooner, salted, and not touched again until the cargo is broken for re-drying and curing at several points chosen for that purpose in California. At first our people were disposed to hire the natives up here to do this hand-line fishing, and they did so; but a patient trial has demonstrated the fact that it pays to employ our own men instead, even at greatly advanced wages. The Aleutes are docile, and do exceedingly well in spurts, but they do not like to work in steady, well-sustained periods of any great length at a time.

Were it not for the intense physical discomfort of the rapidly recurring fog, sleet, and rain-laden gales, Oonga would undoubtedly be a site well chosen for a neat New England fishing village. Many of those white men now employed up there in the cod-fishery declare that they would bring their wives and children into the country, to permanently settle, if they thought that they could be happy under the conditions of climate which prevail. But they argue that where they themselves cannot peacefully exist the year round, it would be idle to suppose that a civilized settlement could be well established. We will find, however, quite a number of genial, sociable fellows, men of our race, who are well educated, and who have had excellent opportunities, and who to-day are roaming here, there, and everywhere in Alaska, hunting, fishing, and trading, or prospecting. They appear to be entirely happy, not a bit cynical, and never express the slightest desire to return with us to the world which they have left behind them voluntarily. Alaska to them is a perfect Mecca of peace, and they have no desire to see it changed. They unite usually in saying that their wants are few, easily supplied, and they scarcely remember what care was—it does not trouble them now.

The cod-fishermen do not make their working headquarters in this village, but across, over the bay on Popov Islet, at a spot which is called Pirate Cove. They are not annoyed by idle villagers there, and are also somewhat nearer to the fishing-resorts which are just outside. They are most likely not far from that spot where Bering landed, August 30, 1741, to bury one of his seamen named Shoomagin, and to refill his water-casks. The exact locality, or even the precise islet of the many that form this Shoomagin group, on which the then sick and sadly demoralized explorer and his crew interred the remains of their dead comrade, will never be satisfactorily established; the cross of wood set up was immediately pulled down, after his departure, by the natives, who were then decidedly hostile, and who eyed him and his vessel with unaffected dislike and apprehension.[62] When the St. Peter, six days later, hauled off from those islands and turned her prow for Kamchatka, perhaps that gloomy, timid Dane commanding her may have had an astral premonition of the wreck of this vessel, which soon followed—and his own death too, in a self-made sand grave beneath the black shadows of the bluffs at “Kommandor”—this may have caused him to earn that reproach which has been so lavishly laid upon his conduct of a most remarkable and disastrous voyage.

The Shoomagins are all bold and bluffy, with high uplands and lofty ridges; on Oonga the most elevated summits are to be seen. Bare of timber, but covered with sphagnum and mosses and clumps of dwarfed crab-apples and willows, they stand as rock-ribbed break-waters against the full sweep of the mighty uninterrupted roll of a vast ocean. The surf that dashes foaming and booming upon their firm foundations is of unrivalled force, and fear-inspiring.

Oonga Island has also been the base of a very extended and thorough attempt to develop a large vein of coal which is found cropping out on the face of a bluff in a small inlet of its north shore. The oldest coal-mine in the region of Alaska is located in Cook’s Inlet near its mouth, at a spot still indicated on maps as Coal Harbor. Here the Russians, eager to be able to obtain fuel for the use of their steam-vessels, began, in 1852, a most active and systematic series of mining operations; they brought machinery and ran it by steam-power; experienced German miners were engaged to superintend and direct a large force of Muscovitic laborers sent up from Sitka. In 1857 the work had been so energetically pushed that shafts had been sunk, and a drift run into the vein for a distance of one thousand seven hundred feet; during this period, and three following years, two thousand seven hundred tons of coal were mined, the value of which was forty-six thousand rubles, but the result was a net loss. The thickness of the vein was found to vary from nine to twelve feet, and its extent was practically unlimited. But the Russians found out then, as our people at Oonga did afterward, that this Alaskan lignite was utterly unfit for use in the furnaces of the steamers—that it was so highly charged with sulphur as to burn like a flash and eat out, fuse and warp the grate-bars—even melting down the smoke-stacks! Steam-vessels now bring their own coal with them from San Francisco, Puget Sound or Nanaimo, or have it sent up from there by sailing-tenders to depots previously designated.[63]

As we leave the sheltering bluffs of Oonga, our course seems to be laid directly south; so much so, that for once we express our surprise to the skipper, who, feeling sure that he understands our dread of losing time in reaching Oonalashka, spreads out his chart and calls us to the table. A moment’s inspection shows the wisdom of the roundabout course, for a forest of rough, rocky islets studs the ocean directly to the west and many to the south. To sail through the intricate passages of the Chernaboors and the reefs of Saanak would be to invite certain destruction. Therefore, as we make a long detour to clear the path of our progress from all danger, we will give the reader some interesting facts relative to the chase of the sea-otter, which is the sole object of those natives who hunt in this district.