“What kind of fur is otter?” asked Ted, whose mind was so inquiring that his father often called him the “living catechism.”

“It is the court fur of China and Russia, and at one time the common people were forbidden by law to wear it,” said Mr. Strong.  “It is a rich, purplish brown sprinkled with silver-tipped hairs, and the skins are very costly.”

“At one time any one could have otter,” said Kalitan.  “We hunted them with spears and bows and arrows.  Now they are very few, and we find them only in dangerous spots, hiding on rocks or floating kelp.  Sometimes the hunters have to lie in hiding for days watching them.  Only Indians can kill the otter.  Boston men can if they marry Indian women.  That makes them Indian.”

“Rather puts otter at a discount and women at a premium,” laughed Mr. Strong.  “Now we pass along near the Alaska peninsula, past countless isles and islets, through the Fox Islands to Unalaska, and then into the Bering Sea.  One of the most interesting things in this region is called the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire,’ a chain of volcanoes which stretches along the coast.  Often the passengers can see from the ships at night a strange red glow over the sky, and know that the fire mountains are burning.  The most beautiful of these volcanoes is Mt.  Shishaldin, nearly nine thousand feet high, and almost as perfect a cone in shape as Fuji Yama, which the Japanese love so much and call ‘the Honourable Mountain.’  At Unalaska or Ilinlink, the ‘curving beach,’ we stop.  If we could stay over for awhile, there are a great many interesting things we could see; an old Greek church and the government school are in the town, and Bogoslov’s volcano and the sea-lion rookeries are on the island of St. John, which rose right up out of the sea in 1796 after a day’s roaring and rumbling and thundering.  In 1815 there was a similar performance, and from time to time the island has grown larger ever since.  One fine day in 1883 there was a great shower of ashes, and, when the clouds had rolled away, two peaks were seen where only one had been, separated by a sandy isthmus.  This last was reduced to a fine thread by the earthquake of 1891, and I don’t know what new freaks it may have developed by now.  I know some friends of mine landed there not long ago and cooked eggs over the jets of steam which gush out of the mountainside.  Did you ever hear of using a volcano for a cook-stove?”

“Well, I should say not,” said Ted, amused.  “These Alaskan volcanoes are great things.”

“The one called Makushin has a crater filled with snow in a part of which there is always a cloud of sulphurous smoke.  That’s making extremes meet, isn’t it?”

“Yehl[13] made many strange things,” said Kalitan, who had been taking in all this information even more eagerly than Teddy.  “He first dwelt on Nass River, and turned two blades of grass into the first man and woman.  Then the Thlinkits grew and prospered, till darkness fell upon the earth.  A Thlinkit stole the sun and hid it in a box, but Yehl found it and set it so high in the heavens that none could touch it.  Then the Thlinkits grew and spread abroad.  But a great flood came, and all were swept away save two, who tossed long upon the flood on a raft of logs until Yehl pitied, and carried them to Mt.  Edgecomb, where they dwelt until the waters fell.”