Identifier: 1870alaskaitsres00dalluoft (find matches)
Title: Alaska and its resources
Year: 1870 (1870s)
Authors: Dall, William Healey, 1845-1927
Subjects: Alaska
Publisher: Boston : Lee and Shepard
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ss of the wood. We took teain a slough, and about noon stopped at a village where the inhab-itants were engaged in fishing. It is only by personal inspectionof such a village that any one can obtain an adequate idea of theimmense quantity of fish which is annually caught and dried onthe Lower Yukon. Several acres of ground in front of the sum-mer houses were literally covered with standards and stages bear-ing line after line of fish, split and hung up to dry. The odor isborne to a great distance by the wind. The dogs, children, andother inhabitants of the village, during the fishing-season, recallthe old lines,— Jeshurun he waxed fat,And down his cheeks they hung ! while the long rows of caches are crammed with provisions for thewinter. This condition of things holds good as far as Anvik.Beyond that point the fish are scarcer, and, as previously related,Nulato is far from furnishing food of any kind in plenty. In theforeground the different parts of fish-traps were lying, in readi-
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THE YUKON TERRITORY. 229 ness to repair any damage, or put down a new trap, if the waterfell so as to render it necessary. Here some men were emptyingthe fish out of a basket, and there others were returning with acanoe-load of salmon from some distant zapor. We bought a few whitefish, and some mink. I saw two red foxcubs with collars, tied to stakes in some of the houses. Thesewere apparently intended to amuse the children. We thendeparted, and finally camped on a sand-bar which was literallyalive with wild fowl. We were now getting into the regionwhere they abound, during the spring and summer, in myriads.The report of a gun will often raise such immense flocks of geeseas literally to darken the air; sometimes a flock will be four or fivemiles long, and two or three rods wide, flying as close togetheras they can with safety. Swans whitened the surface of severallagoons, and from them down to the tiniest snipe, not weighingmore than an ounce, every kind of wild fowl abounded in pro-f

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