Indians, who are employed at the fishery. This station represents an investment of over $100,000, the oil works alone having cost $70,000, and extravagant management having doubled all the necessary expenses of the first plant. As there was no water supply on the solid rock of Kenasnow, a reservoir with a storage capacity of 90,000 gallons of water was constructed; and, with cedar forests on every side, every bit of lumber used was brought by freight from below. Killisnoo was first established as a whaling station, but many causes decided the company to abandon that branch of fishery. There is a tradition that the Indians once regarded their great totemic beast, the whale, with such veneration that they would never kill it, nor eat of its flesh and blubber. The Kootznahoos have grown skeptical in many ways, and they made no objections to harpooning the whale, until the bomb exploded in 1882; and after the troubles following upon that impious adventure, the company decided that whaling was not a profitable business, and began to fish for cod and smaller fry. The codfish are caught in the deeper waters of Chatham Strait around the island, the Indians going out in the fleet of small boats to fish, and turning their catch into large scows, which are towed in by the two steam launches that are kept constantly busy. Connoisseurs pronounce this cod remarkably fine, firm, and white, and as neither hake nor haddock are ever found there, the Killisnoo codfish is not open to the same suspicions as rest on so many Eastern fish. They average in weight from three to five pounds, and the Indians are provided with boats and paid two cents apiece for every codfish caught. A difficulty in the way of drying in the open air in this moist climate has been solved by building a dryinghouse, where the process is accomplished artificially. There seems to be no limit to the quantity of fish that can be caught, and during one visit at Killisnoo a scow was towed in from Gardner Point loaded with eight thousand fine large cod, and 1,576 boxes of the dried fish were ready to be shipped south. From the end of August into January, the waters of Chatham Strait are black with herring. The Indians used to catch them with primitive rakes, made by driving nails through the end of a piece of board, and with this rude, implement they could quickly fill a canoe with herring, each nail catching two and three fish. Seines have supplanted the aborigine's hand-rake, and a thousand barrels of silver herring have been taken at a single haul, although the average haul is about half as many barrels, and requiring eleven men to each net then. Each barrel of fish yields about three gallons of oil at the oil works, which are managed by men who have had charge of menhaden fisheries on the Atlantic coast. As the result of the first year's work, 82,000 gallons of herring oil were shipped below in 1883, selling at the rate of thirty cents per gallon. Within the year an attempt was made towards supplying the cod-liver oil of pharmacy, and five cases of it sent below for trial received the highest indorsement from physicians. More picturesque and less fragrant than the buildings of the company were the log and bark houses of the Indians, who have abandoned their old village and fort of Kootznahoo, and settled around the Kil lisnoo station. The local celebrity is the famous old head chief of the Kootznahoos, Kitchnatti or Saginaw Jake, who, for the iniquities of his tribe, was carried off as a hostage in the man-of-war Saginaw in 1869. He was a prisoner for a long time on board that ship at the Mare Island Navy Yard in California, and when he was afterward returned to his people, he became an apostle of peace and the greatest friend of the white man. He is a crooked, bow-legged old fellow, and he superintended the tying up of the ship in a most energetic way. He lurched and tacked across the dock, waving his cane wildly to his underlings, and giving hoarse, guttural words of the fiercest command. He wore a derby hat with a gold band, and the uniform coat of a captain of the navy, while two immense silver stars on his breast gave his name and rank as the Killisnoo policeman, and a dangerouslooking billy was suspended from his shoulder by a variegated sash. Besides being a hostage of war, Kitchnatti was once denounced by a terrible shaman, who had an incurable patient on hand. The chief was found bound and tied for torture, and barely rescued in time by naval friends. He has now no respect for his own medicine-men, and proved it once by telling one of the curio collectors that he knew where there was a shaman's grave full of beautiful carvings and trophies. He was bidden to get them, and offered a price for his grave-robbing. In a few days Jake reappeared, looking sad and despondent. He mentioned the name of a sub-chief, and, with a tone of severe disapproval, said: "Heap bad Indian. Sell curios to trader. He rob medicine-man's grave. When Jake spied the photographers on shore, he made wild signals, ran off to his cabin, and rea peared clad in fuller regalia; then, drawing an cutlass, braced himself up in a "present-arms" a tude before the camera, and nodded for the opera to go on. He then led them to his neatly whit washed house, and showed them a cigar-box full of letters of credentials and testimonials of character given him by naval officers, ship captains, traders, and missionaries. All of these Indians have a great fancy for these letters. They beg them from every one in power, and carry them around tenderly wrapped in paper, to show them as certificates of their worth, character, and importance. Some of Jake's letters were profusely sealed with great splotches of red wax, and there is a story that he for a long time innocently showed a testimonial, which ran: “The bearer of this paper is the biggest scoundrel in Alaska. Believe nothing that he says, and look out, or he will steal everything in sight." These poor old men of letters have many funny jokes played on them in this way, and it is really touching to see the innocent pride with which they display these insignia. Jake pointed with pleasure to a row of illuminated posters and portraits of theatrical celebrities that decorated one wall of his cabin, and explained that they were pictures of his friends. The faces were those of Nat Goodwin, Gus Williams, John McCullough, Thomas Keane, and others, and the high colors and grand attitudes much pleased the old chief. In quite another vein Jake pointed to a small box tomb on the other side of the channel, where he had |