“This Indian ain’t 200 years old.  He says he’s 200 snows, but I can’t quite figure it out.  He says he was 20 snows when he got first woman, kept her 4 snows, then she go away!  He complained that ’he had no women 4 suns and catch no women 4 snows.’  He ’got more woman, keep her 5 snows, then she eat cold (frozen to death).  Got no woman 20 snows, she good woman.’  He could not give any clue about his children only that ‘his chickens 30 to 45 snows!’ They reckon here only from what they can remember, so this buck is probably counting from about ten years old.  That would make him thirty when he first got a wife, thirty-four when she died, thirty-eight when he got his next wife, and forty-three when she died.  Counting his oldest child at 45 this would make him about seventy-five.  Where the ‘200 snows’ comes in, I don’t see.”

[Illustration:  THE CENSUS IN THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS.  Enumerator on a schooner skirting the icy shores of the glacier-fed waters of the Behring Sea. (Courtesy of the Bureau of the Census.)]

A great treat to the boy came, however, when one of the enumerators from the Second District of Alaska, who had been summoned East in the spring on business concerning some property with which he was associated, and had come as soon as the break-up permitted travel, dropped into the Census Bureau.  He made himself known to the Director, and the latter, always ready to show attention and being really proud of the Census Bureau staff, arranged to have him shown around the building.  The Alaskan was a small fellow, hard as nails, given to stretches of silence, but with a ready, infectious laugh and the ability to tell a good yarn after he got started.  Presently, just before quitting time, he reached the desk where Barnes and Hamilton were editing schedules.

“This ought to interest you,” said the Bureau official who was showing him around, “these men are just going over the Alaskan schedules before sending them to the machines to be punched and tabulated.”

Looking interested, the man bent forward and, with a muttered word of apology, picked up the schedule on which Hamilton was working at the time.  “This must be one o’ mine!” he said, with an air of surprise.

“But that is marked, ’Copy’!” said Hamilton “I was just wondering where the original was.”

“I’m willin’ to gamble quite a stack, son,” was the surprising reply, “that you’d have been wonderin’ a whole lot more if the original had come down to you.”

“Why, how’s that?”

“Well, I reckon I c’n handle dogs better’n I can a pen,” he said, “an’ when you come to try an’ write one o’ these schedules on scraps o’ dried skin you c’n count it sure’s shootin’ there’s some decipherin’ got to be done.”

Barnes looked at the official who was showing the Alaskan ’round the building, and knowing him very well, he said to the visitor, “Spin us the yarn; I’ve been up there and I’d like to hear it myself, and I know the lad is just wild to hear it.”