On the 26th of September, 1745, for the first time the discharge of firearms was heard on the Aleutian Islands. A native was shot on the island of Agoto by a party of Russians under Chuprof.

Then commenced a reign of lust, robbery, and bloodshed, which lasted for 50 years. One Feodor Solovief is reported to bave alone killed 3,000 Aleuts. Veniaminof, who was the leading Greek priest and first bishop in Alaska, declares that during that dreadful period Aleuts were used as targets for Russian practice in firing; that one Solovief, finding the inhabitants of several of the Unalaska villages assembled on Egg Island, made an attack, slaughtering men, women, and children, until the sea was covered with the blood of the slain. One Lazarof threw over precipices, cut with knives, and split open with axes a number of Aleuts.

Whole villages were massacred by the Russians, so that Lieut. Sary, chief of the Russian navy, who accompanied Capt. Billings's expedition in 1790, declares that it was a very moderate estimate to place the number murdered at 5,000.

This first half-century of Russian occupation can be roughly summarized as follows: On the credit side, from $15,000,000 to $20,000,000 worth of furs; on the debit side, thousands of Russians drowned, died of scurvy, and killed by natives, and thousands of natives needlessly murdered by the Russians.

A better day dawned for the poor natives of Alaska in the coming of Grigor Ivanovich Shelikof, a merchant of Okhotsk, who has been justly styled the founder of the Russian colonies in Alaska. He introduced reforms in the methods of hunting, redressed abuses, formed permanent settlements, and procured concessions and power from the Emperor.

The work commenced by him was afterwards enlarged by Alexander Baranof. The largest and most important of the Aleutian Islands is Unalaska. This island is 120 miles long and 40 wide. It contains three separate groups of mountains. It also has an active volcano, Makushin, 5,474 feet high. From a cave at the southern end of the island were taken eleven mummies for the Smithsonian Institution.

It also possesses several deep bays, of which Unalaska is one of the longest. In their season codfish, salmon, halibut, and herring abound in those waters. The island was first sighted by Lieut. Chirikof, of Bering's expedition, on the 4th of September, 1741. The first landing was made by a merchant of Turinsk, Stepan Glottof, in the vessel Yulian. This was in the fall of 1759. Glottof gave the world the first map of that region, and is said to have baptized many of the natives into the Greek faith.

To the average American the Aleutian Islands seem so remote, and concerning them so little is known, that but few think of them as having been the theater of stirring events and as having a history extending back one hundred and fifty years, but such is the case.

Unalaska shares with the other islands in that history. For thirty years it was a struggle between the rapacious, cruel, and bloody fur-trader and the Aleuts striving to preserve their homes and freedom. The end was the complete subjugation of the natives.

In January, 1762, a party of fur hunters, under the leadership of Golodof and Pushkaref, landed upon the island. Owing to their excesses against the natives, several were killed and the rest fled the island the following May. But the island was too rich in furs to be given up. That same fall another party came under the leadership of Drushinnin. Outraging the natives, the latter commenced on the 4th of December a series of attacks which resulted in the breaking up of the Russian settlement, only 4 out of 150 men escaping with their lives.

In August, 1763, Capt. Korovin, of the vessel St. Troitska, formed a settlement. This also was broken up by the natives.

In 1764 Capt. Solovief formed a settlement. His stay on the island was marked by such bloody atrocities that the few who survived were completely subjugated. His name has come through a hundred years of local tradition as the synonym of cruelty. Among other things, it is said that he experimented upon the penetrative power of his bullets by binding 12 Aleuts in a row and then firing through them at short range. The bullet stopped at the ninth man.

In 1770, when the American colonists were preparing themselves for the struggle for independence, the struggle of the Aleuts was ending. They had given their lives in vain. The few who were left could no longer maintain the unequal conflict and were reduced to practical slavery.

But Unalaska has since seen better days and been visited by a better class. On the 16th of September, 1768, Capt. Levashef, in charge of a Russian scientific expedition, dropped his anchor and wintered on the island.

In 1778 it was visited by the celebrated Capt. Cook with his ships Resolution and Discovery. On the 21st of July, 1787, Capt. Martine, in command of two Spanish vessels on a tour of exploration, landed and took possession of the island in the name of the King of Spain.

In 1709 Unalaska was visited by one of the most remarkable men of the day, Alexander Baranof, who was to rule Alaska for the next twenty-eight years, bring order out of confusion, and, carrying out and enlarging the plans of the merchant Shelikof, create a Russian empire in America.

On the 30th of September of that year, the ship Trekh Sviatiteli, upon which he had embarked for Kadiak Island, was wrecked and he was compelled to spend the winter at Unalaska. He improved his time by studying the character of the people with whom he had to deal, and forming the plans which he afterwards so successfully executed. In 1808 a rude log chapel was erected for the worship of the Greek Church. This was torn down in 1826 and a better church built in its place. In or about 1795 a Greek priest, Father Makar, took up his abode on the island, and had great success in baptizing the natives.

He was followed in 1824 by Innocentius Veniaminof, who was made bishop of all Alaska in 1840. He was subsequently recalled to Russia and made metropolitan of Moscow, the highest ecclesiastical position in the Russo-Greek Church. On the 25th of June, 1791, the island was visited by Capt. Billings, in charge of the Russian "astronomical and geographical exposition for navigating the frozen sea and describing its coasts, islands," etc.

In August, 1815, the place was visited by the Russian exploring expedition in search of the "Northwest passage" on the Rurik, Otto von Kotzebue commanding.

In 1827 a Russian exploring expedition, under the command of Capt. Lutke, visited the island.

From the beginning of Russian rule to the present day, it has been the commercial metropolis of the Aleutian Islands and Bering Sea.

But after all this stirring history of a century and a half, it is rather disappointing to learn that up to twenty years ago, when the Americans took possession, it was still a small village of barabaras or dirt huts, partly under ground, the Russian conquerors having largely adopted native ways of living. Since then the village has been greatly improved and almost rebuilt at the expense of the Alaska Commercial Company. They have erected 18 small, but comfortable frame cottages for their employés, together with residences for officers, store, wharf, and warehouses. The village has a population of from 14 to 20 white men, two white women, and about 400 Aleuts and Creoles. The Greek Church has a church and parsonage and school-house.

Upon landing, I was met by Frof. John A. Tuck, who, with his estimable wife, is in charge of the Government school. The three days that the steamer remained at Unalaska were given to the work of the school.

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The first year of their work has been unexpectedly successful, and I felt, with the teachers, that the time had come for the commencement of the Home," which the Methodist Woman's Home Missionary Society of the United States have had under advisement for two or three years, and for which, under the leadership of Mrs. L. H. Daggett, of Boston, they have been raising funds. During my stay I had the satisfaction of seeing the "Home" commenced by Professor and Mrs. Tuck taking into their family two orphan girls from the island of Attu. A suitable building for the "Home" will be erected by the Methodist ladies this coming spring.

On Sabbath morning I attended the Greek Church and saw the services in connection with the baptism of children. Fourteen infants were presented before the altar of the church. The priest had in his hand a silver spoon with a handle about a foot long, and a bowl about the size of that of a spoon for a saltcellar. With this spoon the priest dipped water from a silver cup into the mouth of the babe, the attendant priest holding a napkin under the child's chin. After receiving the water, the cup was pressed to the lips of the babe. The mother or godmother then carried it to a side table, where it received a small piece of bread, and if old enough, a drink of water to wash down the bread. From the bread table, the child was carried to the altar platform, and its lips pressed to a picture of the Virgin and Child. The babe was then kissed by its god-mother. These babes were dressed in long white dresses, with a blue or red silk ribbon or sash around the waist.

On the morning of the 17th of June the Bear sailed for Bogoslof Island. Four or five miles west of Unalaska Island is that of Umnak. From its northern side, stretching out for miles into Bering Sea, is a reef. At the time of

Capt. Cook's visit in 1778, the northern end of this reef was marked by a rock 875 feet high rising from the sea in the form of a tower. This he named "Ship Rock."

On the 18th of May, 1796, during a violent storm, from the northwest, the inhabitants of Unalaska and Umnak Islands were startled by distant explosions and rumbling shocks of an earthquake. On the morning of the third day, when the sky had cleared, it was found that an island 1 miles long, and three-fourths of a mile wide, in the form of a cone 2,240 feet high, had been thrown up out of the sea 1,200 feet distant from Ship Rock. Eight years afterwards, some hunters visiting the spot found the adjacent sea still warm and the rocks too hot for landing. The island continued to grow in circumference and height until 1823. Since then it has gradually decreased in height until in 1884 it measured but 324 feet. In 1882 the natives reported Bogoslof as again smoking. On the 27th of September, 1883, Capt. Anderson, of the schooner Mathew Turner, sailed partly around the island. He reported that a new island had appeared one-half of a mile in circumference, and was throwing out great masses of rock and smoke and steam. On the 20th of October, 1883, a shower of volcanic ashes fell at Unalaska, and was supposed to come from this island. The first landing and official investigation was made on the 21st of May, 1884, by Capt. M. A. Healy, commanding United States Revenue Steamer Corwin.

The new cone proved to be about 1,760 feet from the old one, the two being connected by a low sandspit 326 feet wide, with Ship Rock on the spit between the two cones. The extreme length of the island was found to be 7,904 feet, its general trend SE. by E. and NW. by W.

From the 17th to the 22d of last February the sky was obscured with a cloud of ashes, a liberal shower of which fell in the village of Unalaska, 50 miles away. A pillar of flame and smoke ascended high into the heavens. It has been variously estimated from 4 to 15 miles high.

The first white man to pass by was Capt. Everett E. Smith, of the steam whaling bark Balana, who reported the appearance of four new islands in the vicinity.

It was therefore with feelings of more than ordinary interest that in the early morning of Tuesday, June 17, we steamed from Unalaska, bound for Bogoslof. Long before we reached the island, great white clouds of steam were seen upon the horizon. As we approached nearer all eyes were eagerly bent and glasses trained upon the land looming above the horizon. But the captain was puzzled. He could not make out his landmarks. The two volcanic cones were all right, but where was Ship Rock? Soon we were among myriads of birds which had chosen these inaccessible and warm rocks for their breeding ground.

Capt. Healy with his glass went to the masthead. Two men were placed in the chains to throw the lead. We steamed on and on until it seemed as if we would steam into the volcano itself; sulphurous smoke enveloped us, almost strangled us. Amid the roar of the breakers and the screaming of the birds the leadman called out, "No bottom at 17." Where previously the captain had anchored in 8 fathoms of water, no bottom was now found at 100 fathoms. Apparently the bottom of the sea had fallen out, carrying with it the four islands reported only a few weeks before by Capt. Smith. We steamed in safety over their former sites. More than that, the center of the island had dropped out, and where for centuries Ship Rock had stood, a well-known mark to the mariner, was now a lake.

It was with peculiar sensations that we steamed partly around the island, so close that we could look into the sulphur-lined steam vents, and, enveloped in its steam, could almost imagine that we saw "fire and brimstone."

The captain had intended making a landing and an investigation of the phenomena, but failing to find an anchorage, and the wind having freshened so that it was unsafe landing through the breakers, he reluctantly turned away and steamed for the Seal Islands.

For years the careful observers of the movements of the seal among the early hunters on the Aleutian Islands had noticed that they went north in spring and returned in the fall, accompanied by their young, and a tradition existed among the natives that an Aleut had once been cast away upon islands to the north, which they called Amik. When in 1781 the usual catch of furs began to decrease upon the Aleutian Islands, efforts were made to discover this supposed island. In 1786 the search was joined by Master Gerassim Gavrilovich Pribylof, in the vessel St. George. But so well has nature hidden these islands, the favorite home of the fur seal, among the fogs of Bering Sea, that Pribylof cruised three weeks in their vicinity, with every evidence of being in the neighborED 90-80

hood of land, and yet unable to discover it. But at length the fog lifted, and early in June land was sighted, which he called St. George. A party of hunters were left on the island for the winter and they in turn discovered the larger island of St. Paul.

Over 500,000 skins were taken during the year, and the islands early began to be the "bank" from which Baranof raised the funds to carry on his gov ernment in Alaska. If he needed a ship's load of provisions and supplies for his colonies, all he had to do was to kill more seal and pay in seal skins. So great was the slaughter that the Government was compelled to interfere and in 1805 prohibited their killing for a period of five years. From 1820 to 1867, the year of the transfer, 42,000 skins were annually exported to England, the United States, and Canada.

The first years after the transfer of Alaska to the United States again witnessed an indiscriminate slaughter by different firms, until Congress was compelled to interfere and authorize the Treasury Department to lease the islands under suitable restrictions to a responsible company.

This was the origin of the Alaska Commercial Company of San Francisco, which has held the lease for the past twenty years, paying the Government annually a rental of $55,000, and a royalty of $2.624 on each of the 100,000 skins allowed to be taken. This produced a revenue of $317,500 per year. Last spring the islands were relet for another twenty years to the North American Commercial Company of San Francisco. By the terms of the new lease the Government will be the recipient of about $1,000,000 per year.

At 9:30 p. m. on June 18, the captain dropped anchor in Southwest Harbor, St. George Island. Being unable to land through the breakers, the next day the ship sailed around the southern end of the island and anchored at noon in Garden Cove. The chart said that there was a trail to the village, 2 or 3 miles distant. At the village they called it 4 miles; the young officers that walked it came to the conclusion that it was nearer 14 miles.

At 9:15 p.m. the anchor was weighed and we steamed northward for St. Paul Island.

Going on deck about 6 o'clock on the morning of June 20, the ship was abreast of St. Paul Island, in full sight of the village. Behind us was Otter Island with its bluff shore, and still further behind in the hazy distance the Island of St. George. To our right was Walrus Island, and to our left St. Paul, with its gentle slopes of green grass and moss, its bleak rocks and sand beaches covered in the season with the fur seal. To the right of the village were seen men driving a herd of seal to the killing grounds. Upon a hill near the village floated the stars and stripes, together with the flag of the North American Commercial Company, the lessees of the island. The stars and stripes also floated over the building occupied by Mr. Charles J. Goff, the United States Treasury agent.

From the bay the village presents a more pleasing and inviting appearance than any other in Alaska. The large houses occupied by the North American Commercial Company for their own use, the house of the Treasury agent, the Greek church and the priest's residence, the schoolhouse and the neat white cottages of the people, with their orderly arrangement by streets, ranged as they are on the gentle slope of a hill, make an attractive picture. Before we rose from an early breakfast, Messrs. Goff, Tingle, Redpath, and Elliott were announced. They had come to get their mail, which Capt. Healy had brought up for them. After breakfast I went ashore with Mr. Goff, who with his assistant, Mr. Nettleton, of Minneapolis, also Mr. H. W. Elliott, of Washington, and Mr. Tingle, the company's agent, did all in their power to make the day pleasant and profitable to me.

Soon after landing Mr. Goff announced that a killing had commenced, and we walked over to the grounds to witness the process. A band of 200 or 300 seals were huddled together in the care of keepers. From this band 15 to 20 seals would be taken at a time, and driven a few yards from the main band. Four or five men with long clubs then took charge of the small band, and selecting those of suitable size and age, killed them by one blow on the head. The men with clubs were followed by others with knives, who stabbed the seals to let out the blood. They were followed by the skin men, who took off the skin with the layer of fat adhering to it. These in turn were followed by those who separated the fat from the skin. The skins were then carried to the salting house, where they were carefully counted and salted down. While this was going on, a score of women and girls were filling skin bags with masses of fat, which were carried on their backs to their homes, and then fried out into oil (butter) for winter use. The flesh was also carried home, cut into thin strips, and hung on poles to dry.

After being dried, it is stuffed into the stomachs of the sea lion, which have been cleaned and prepared for the purpose. After filling it with the dried meat, seal oil is poured in, filling up all the vacant spaces. You then have a huge sausage between two and three feet in diameter. This is stowed away for winter use.

In passing through the village we saw women at work cleaning the intestines of the sea lion, very much as eastern farm-wives prepare intestines for sausages. After being cleansed they are hung out to dry; when dry they are slit lengthwise and form a band 3 or 4 inches wide and from 75 to 100 feet long. From these strips are made the famous kamileka, or waterproof coats worn by these people. These coats are much lighter, stronger, and dryer, resisting rain longer and better than the rubber goods of commerce. Among the Eskimo of the Arctic the larger intestines of the walrus are used, making a correspondingly wider band.

The Greek church at this place is the best painted and neatest kept of any that I have seen in the Territory. The silver candlesticks and other ornaments when not in use were kept from the dust by bag coverings. The church is rich, being supported by a certain percentage of the wages of the whole population. In the adjoining graveyard a large Greek cross made from 2-inch plank stood at the head of each grave. With but two or three exceptions, these contained no name or date, nothing to indicate who was buried there. A gentleman who has attended many of their funerals says he never saw any, even the nearest relative of the deceased, shed a tear or give any outward sign of grief. They say it is good to die. After the burial all the friends are invited to the former residence of the deceased to tea.

With Mr. Goff I also visited the company's schoolhouse. It is well built, commodious, and well furnished in its appointments. Owing to the opposition of the Greek Church, which does not wish the children to learn English, but little progress has apparently been made. The school has been in operation for twenty years, and yet I could not find a child who could converse in the English language, although I was informed that some of them understood what I said to them. I greatly regret that it was vacation time and that I could not see the school in session.

Mr. H. W. Elliott, who is here under appointment from the Secretary of the Treasury to report on the present condition of seal life, pointed out to me the location of the leading seal rookeries, and lamented the seeming fact that the seal were greatly decreasing in numbers. At dinner we were all the guests of Mr. Tingle; the principal fresh meat being roasted seal. I found it very palatable.

The population of the island consists of 5 whites and 217 natives. There are 23 boys and 41 girls between the ages of 5 and 17.

About 4:30, the tide favoring, we returned to the ship after a very enjoyable day on shore. At 5 p. m. the steamer got under way. We rounded the southern end of the island and fetched our course for Asia.

SIBERIA.

Siberia, the battle-ground of conquering Cossack and free-booting Promyshlenki in their century's march across Asia, is, in its northern and northwestern section, a dreary waste of low-rolling and frozen tundra or rugged, snowcovered and storm-swept mountains, the land of the fierce howling poorga, of wild beasts and scattered tribes of brave, hardy, and half-civilized people.

Its bleak, ice-skirted, snow-covered shore north of Kamchatka was our next landing place. Off this coast on the 5th of May, 1885, the whaling bark Napoleon was caught and crushed in the ice. The disaster came so suddenly that the crew had barely time to spring into the boats without provisions or extra clothing. There were four boats with nine in each. Four days after the wreck two of the boats were seen by the bark Fleetwing, and their crews rescued, five of them dying from the effects of the exposure. The remaining eighteen men after seven days' tossing about in the sea, took refuge upon a large field of ice, where they remained twenty-six days. During this time one-half of their number died from exhaustion and starvation. While on the ice all they had to eat were two small seals, which were caught. One of the men, Mr. J. B. Vincent, being unable to eat the raw seal, had not a mouthful of nourishment for eleven days.

On the 7th of June the nine survivors again took to the boat, and in three days effected a landing on the Siberian coast, to the southwest of Cape Navarin. The day after they landed, five of the remaining died, being so badly frozen that their limbs dropped off. Rogers, the mate, Lawrence, a boat steerer, and Wal