The Nome nugget., 1903-05-27
ICE PACKS RAVAGES
 AMONG WHALERS
Great Losses of Sailing Ships.--Summer and Winter tjales That Have Occurred During the Last Forty Years.-Causes of the Decrease
 of the Native Inhabitants of
 Northwestern Alaska.

seen. From one to three would be lost every year, but not many lives were lost until the bark Little Ohio came ashore at Point Hope. About two thirds of her crew were drowned. The same year five vessels were taken away in the pack: one came ashore and the Jane Gray was saved; the |. $. cutter Thetis, Commander Emery, righted her up and lowed her to San Francisco. where she was turned over to her own CTS. In those years steam whalers were being introduced as an experiment, and they soon increased in numbers and drove the whales to remote waters.
 There are but few whales now cap turcd in Bering sea or this side of the Mckenzie river by steamers. Stations and Indian tribes capture few on their annual migrations to their re- mote home. The young whales were easy game and furnished the principal food of the natives in winter. The flesh was put in deep underground houses where it remained frozen through the summer. The supply of late years is very uncertain, for the reason that steam whalers follow the whales up nearly as fast as the ice breaks, and this game does not loiter and play on the route. It's different with walrus: they migrate also, and are the easiest to capture of any game in Northwestern Alaska.
 Blossom shoals, and from Icy cape to SeahorSe islands, are where they would find hundreds of thousands of those amphibiOuS mammals. The females haul out on the ice and SIcllle their young, the old males also hauling out with them, fighting and basking Tn the sun. They will sometimes crowd up in such large numbers that in d short time the ice will soon break under the the great weight and heat from their bodies. While thus sleeping and bask- ing in the sun, they were easy game to approach. Sometimes the hunter after shooting few from the boat could get on the ice and then crawl around among the dead ones until he killed the whole herd or as many as the ship could take in her blubber room. From one thousand to fifteen hundred would be captured by each ship during the summer months. With fleet of from fifty to sixty ships slaughtering every season as long as oil and ivory were profitable, the reader need not be surprised at those herds becoming ex- terminated and leaving their breeding and feeding grounds on the Alaskan side.
 The Siberian shore from Cape Serdge to Cape North. is another locality where the warus rear their young, and many a Yankee blubber hunter cap tured cargo of oil on that shore. Off the mouths of all large rivers and where there are shoals, these animals are to be found in the months of July and August lying on he ice and feeding on shell fish. In late years the herds are returning to Blossom shoals, and the Alaskan side, and are getting quite numerous. There is no demand for their oil, and the ivory is a. second grade article.
 The young bowhead whale and the walrus were the principal food supply of the tribes from Point Hope to Point Barrow, giving them abundant food during the winter months. Those tribes have passed away. Let the che chako, the prospector and the traveller observe as he camps along this desolate. unlnhabited stretch of coast. the many deserted villages, the human skeletons, with their grinning skulls and long black hair, the Hesh not yet decayed in many places: the many gruesome sights will cause him to ask, ''Is there none left to tell the sad tale?" Well, reader. few have escaped to more favored localities and before we begin telling about winter and summer storms I will tell some of the causes that brought this about. The natives of Northwest ern Alaska would have held their own against natural conditions, such as the loss of few on the treacherous moving ice pack, the attacks of wild animals. colds and bronchial troubles with which they are sometimes afflicted, and an occasional war-the last was in the six. ties These and few other conditions the Eskimos would have resisted at every step, and would, I think, have held their own, but New England whal. CTS came sailing along and lying at anchor along the coast, and if the read. CT could talk to one of those old doc. tors (anchoots) he would tell him some very interesting stories. He would talk in this manner: 'Long ago (hipa. pukf when ships first came we didn't trade and barter like we do now; we