From the earliest colonial time to the present the little village of Karlook, on the north side of the island, has been the busiest spot in the country. Here is a salmon-fishing settlement right on the coast at the mouth of a small river, where from the ancient date of Russian occupation there has been a salt house and packing establishment, in which the salt and dried fish used throughout the entire Alaskan region was annually secured and prepared. To-day we find two large canning establishments set up and sustained by San Francisco merchants. The run of salmon into this river of Karlook at the height of the season is so great that it interferes with the free movement of canoes in crossing the stream; while the fishermen of long experience in such matters say that twenty thousand barrels of the red-meated flesh could be easily secured and packed away at Karlook every summer and autumn. This salmon,[57] so abundant here, is much smaller in average size than is the one common in Cook’s Inlet—it does not average ten pounds in weight. But the rich red color of its flesh is an object of the canner, who soon finds out what public taste prefers. The rough, rocky islands of Trinity, which constitute the extreme southern limit of the Kadiak influence, are the chosen resort of sea-lions and many of the rare sea-otter. Their capture lures a few hardy natives to live in close juxtaposition to the favored haunts of these much-prized animals, and they have a most extended hunting range, reaching far away down to the westward and southward as low as that remarkable barren island of Ookamok, where the celebrated “Botany Bay,” of the old Russian régime, was established. That lonely, isolated, desolate spot was the point where the old-time criminals who were guilty of murder, arson, and other capital offences, were always shipped, and left largely to their own devices for a livelihood. They were literally entombed alive on this islet, where nothing but moss and lichens and scant sphagnum could exist upon the rough, rocky surfaces, where the soil was barely appreciable—elsewhere there was none. But, strange to say, upon this island great numbers of that lively little ground squirrel, Parry’s marmot, were found, and still continue to be found, which were characterized then as now by a peculiar bluish ground-tint to their fur. This color is most popular and the one so highly prized in those universal coats or cloaks used by the natives, and called “parkies” by them. Therefore the convicts were obliged, in order to get food of their liking and many small luxuries, to diligently hunt these little animals, which they did, not only for this reason alone, but in self-defence to kill time as well.