Alaska, Its Southern Coast and the Sitkan Archipelago. Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

of thousands of salmon, and the shores are clothed with an enchanted forest of giant pines, and the undergrowth is a tangle of ferns and salmon-berry bushes, and the ground and every log are covered with wonderful mosses, into which the foot sinks at every step.

      The splash of the leaping salmon was on every side and at every moment, and the sight of the large fish jumping above the surface and leaping through the air caused the excitable passenger at the stern to nearly capsize the small boat and steer wildly. As the sailors rowed the boat up the narrow bay, where the ship could barely swing round with the tide, the Chicago man pensively observed: “There’s a thousand dollars jumping in the air every ten minutes!”

      The anglers were maddened at the sight of these fish, for although these wild northern salmon can sometimes be deluded by trolling with a spoon-hook, they have no taste for such small things as flies, and are usually caught with seines or spears, except during those unusual salmon runs when the Indians wade in among the crowded fins and shovel the fish ashore with their canoe paddles.

      At the head of Naha Bay, over a narrow point of land, lies a beautiful mountain lake, whose surface is a trifle below the high-water mark, and at low tide there is a fine cascade of fresh water foaming from between the rocks in the narrow outlet. During the run of salmon, the pool at the foot of the fall is crowded with the struggling fish; but the net is cast in the lake as often as in the bay, and the average catch is eighty barrels of salmon a day. The salmon are cleaned, salted, and barrelled in a long warehouse overhanging the falls, and a few bark houses belonging to the Indians who work in the fishery are perched picturesquely on the little wooded point between the two waters. Floating across this lovely lake in a slimy boat that the Indians had just emptied of its last catch of salmon, the beauty of its shores was more apparent, and the overhanging trees, the thickets of ferns, bushes, and wild grasses, the network of fallen logs hidden under their thick coating of moss, and the glinting of the sunshine on bark and moss and lichens, excited our wildest enthusiasm. In Alaska one sees the greatest range of greens in nature, and it is an education of the eye in that one color to study the infinite shades, tints, tones, and suggestions of that primary color. Of all green and verdant woods, I know of none that so satisfy one with their rank luxuriance, their beauty and picturesqueness; and one feels a little sorrow for those people who, never having seen Alaska, are blindly worshipping the barren, burnt, dried-out, starved-out forests of the East. In still stretches of this lake at Naha there are mirrored the snow-capped summits whose melting snows fill its banks, and the echo from a single pistol-shot is flung back from side to side before it dies away in a roar. Beyond this lake there is a chain of lakes, reached by connecting creeks and short portages, and the few white men who have penetrated to the farthest tarn in the heart of Revillagigedo Island say that each lake is wilder and more lovely than the last one. A mile below the fishery, and back in the woods, there is a waterfall some forty feet in height; and a mountain stream, hurrying down from the clear pools and snow-banks on the upper heights, takes a leap over a ledge of rocks and covers it with foam and sparkling waters.

      The fishery and trading-post at Naha Bay was established in 1883, and shipped 338 barrels of salted salmon that first season. In 1884 over 500 barrels were shipped, and throughout June and July the salmon were leaping in the bay so thickly that at the turn of the tide their splashing was like falling rain.

CHAPTER IV.

       KASA-AN BAY.

       Table of Contents

      Kasa-an, or Karta Bay opens from Clarence Strait directly west of Naha Bay, and the long inlet runs in from the eastern shore of the Prince of Wales island for twenty miles. There are villages of Kasa-an Indians in the smaller inlets and coves opening from the bay, and carved totem poles stand guard over the large square houses of these native settlements. The bay itself is as lovely a stretch of water as can be imagined, sheltered, sunny, and calm, with noble mountains outlining its curves, and wooded islands drifted in picturesque groups at the end. It was a Scotch loch glorified, on the radiant summer days that I spent there, and it recalled one’s best memories of Lake George in the softer aspects of its shores.

      Smaller inlets opening from the bay afford glimpses into shady recesses in the mountain-sides, and one little gap in the shores at last gave us a sight of the trader’s store, the long row of lichen-covered and moss-grown sheds of the fishery, with the usual cluster of bark houses and tents above a shelving beach strewn with narrow, black canoes. A group of Indians gathered on shore, their gay blankets, dresses, and cotton kerchiefs adding a fine touch of color to the scene, and the men in the fishery, in their high rubber boots and aprons, flannel shirts and big hats, were heroic adjuncts to the picturesque and out-of-the-way scene.

      There was a skurrying to and fro and great excitement when the big steamer rounded slowly up to the little wharf, and bow line, stern line, and breast lines were thrown out, fastened to the piles and to the trees on shore, and the slack hauled in at the stentorian commands of the mate. Karta, or Kasa-an Bay has been a famous place for salmon for a score of years, and is best known, locally, as the Baronovich fishery. Old Charles V. Baronovich was a relic of Russian days, and a character on the coast. He was a Slav, and gifted with all the cunning of that race, and after the transfer of the country to the United States, he disturbed the serenity of the customs officials by the steady smuggling that he kept up from over the British border. He would import all kinds of stores, but chiefly bales of English blankets, by canoe, and when the collector or special agent would penetrate to this fastness of his, they found no damaging proof in his store, and only a peppery, hot-headed old pirate, who swore at them roundly in a compound language of Russian, Indian, and English, and shook his crippled limbs with rage. He was also suspected of selling liquor to the Indians, and a revenue cutter once put into Kasa-an Bay, with a commander whom smugglers seldom baffled, and who was bound to uncover Baronovich’s wickedness. The wily old Slav received the officers courteously. He listened to the formal announcement of the purpose of their visit, and bade them search the place and kindly do him the honor of dining with him when they finished. Baronovich dozed and smoked, and idled the afternoon away, while a watch kept a close eye upon him, and the officers and men searched the packing-house, the Indian houses and tents, and the canoes on the beach. They followed every trail and broken pathway into the woods, tapped hollow trees, dug under the logs, and peered down into the waters of the bay, and finally gave up the search, convinced that there was no liquor near the place. Baronovich gave them a good dinner, and towards the close a bottle of whiskey was set before each officer, and the host led with a toast to the captain of the cutter and the revenue marine.

      This queer old fellow married one of the daughters of Skowl, the Haida chief who ruled the bay. She is said to have been a very comely maiden when Baronovich married her, and is now a stately, fine-looking woman, with good features and a creamy complexion. While Baronovich was cleaning his gun one day, it was accidentally discharged, and one of his children fell dead by his own hand. The Indians viewed this deed with horror, and demanded that Skowl should take his life in punishment. As it was proved an accident, Skowl defended his son-in-law from the charge of murder, and declared that he should go free. Ever after that the Indians viewed Baronovich with a certain fear, and ascribed to him that quality which the Italians call the “evil eye.”

      With the passion of his race for fine weapons and fine metal work, Baronovich possessed many old arms that are worthy of an art museum. A pair of duelling pistols covered with fine engraving and inlaying were bought of his widow by one of the naval officers in command of the man-of-war on this station, and an ancient double-barrelled flint-lock shot-gun lately passed into the hands of another officer. The shot-gun has the stock and barrels richly damascened with silver and gold, after the manner of the finest Spanish metal work, and the clear gray flints in the trigger give out a shower of sparks when struck. Gunnell of London was the maker of this fine fowling-piece, and it is now used in the field by its new owner, who prefers it to the latest Remington.

      Baronovich was a man with a long and highly-colored history by all the signs, but he died a few years since with no biographer at hand, and his exploits, adventures, and oddities are now nearly forgotten. The widow Baronovich still lives at Kasa-an, unwilling to leave this peaceful sunny nook in the mountains, but the fishery is now