The natives are good-natured but not prepossessing in looks or cleanly.  They live in dwellings kept very hot, and both men and women injure themselves by immoderate indulgence in the banya, a small Turkish bath, often attached to the barabaras, or native huts.  It is made like a small barabara, except there is no smoke hole, has a similar frame, is thatched with straw, and can be made air-tight.  The necessary steam is furnished by pouring water on stones previously heated very hot.

The women are frail and many die of consumption.  When once sick, they appear to have no physical or mental resistance.  They must be attractive, however, as there is a considerable population of white men here who have taken native wives.  From a condition of comparative wealth, eight or ten years ago, when fur was plenty and money came easily, and was as promptly spent on all sorts of unnecessary luxuries, these people are now rapidly coming down to salmon, codfish and potatoes.  When a native wants anything, he will sell whatever he owns for it, even to his rifle or wife.  They almost all belong to the Greek Church, the Russians, when we bought Alaska, having reserved the right to keep their priests in the country.

The baidarka, the most valuable possession of the native in a country so cut up by waterways that little traveling is done by land, deserves a word.  These are trusted in the roughest water more than any other craft, except the largest.  A trip from Kadiak to Seattle in a baidarka is in fact on record.  With a light framework of wood, covered, bottom and deck, excepting the hatches, with the skin of the hair seal, it is lighter than any other canoe, pliable, but very staunch, and works its way over the waves more like a snake than a boat.  The lines are such that friction is done away with, and driven through the water by good men, it is the most graceful craft afloat.  It has a curious split prow, so made for ease in lifting with one hand, and may have one, two, or three hatches, according to its size.  The paddles used are curiously narrow and pointed.

What still remains unexplained is the native one-sided method of paddling; that is to say, in a two-hatch baidarka, both natives make six or seven short strokes on one side together, and then change to the other side.  An absolutely straight course is thus impossible, but the Aleut is a creature of habit, and smiles at all new suggestions.

In the canoe is plenty of room for provisions and live stock.  I speak of the latter because a native will often carry his wife, children, and dog inside a one-hatch baidarka while he paddles.

Water is kept out of the hatches by the kamlaykas which the natives wear.  This is a long jacket made of bears’ intestines, very light and water tight, and when the neck and sleeve bands are made fast, and the skirts secured about the hatch with a thong, man and canoe alike are dry as a chip.