The work bestowed by several of the Sitkan clans upon their so-called potato gardens is hardly to be designated as the “cultivation” of that tuber. It forms to-day, this vegetable does, a very important part of the food-supply, and where a white man takes hold of such a garden the result, in a small way, is very satisfactory; but the Siwash finds that the greater part of the low, flat, rich soil in this country is so thickly wooded that the task of clearing the ground is altogether too much for him to even consider, much less undertake. But when he can find a place where an old settlement once existed, though long abandoned—there the sites of decayed rancheries are sure to be of rich, warm soil—such are the spots which the Siwash calls his garden, and where his potatoes are rudely planted, little or no attention being paid to the hoeing and drilling which we deem essential, therefore the variety in use has been run down so that the size and yield is very small, and the quality watery and poor. While we observe the very general possession of firearms in every rancherie, and we hardly ever see a canoe-load of savages unless the barrels of several muskets or rifles project over the gunwale, yet these Sitkan Indians are not great hunters; but the potent fact that there is no place in all this region where foot travel is practicable into the interior, or even along the coast margin itself, affords an excellent reason; they do, however, kill a very considerable number of black bears every year, at two special seasons therein, _i.e._, when these brutes are found prowling upon the sea-beach. But they never follow bruin into the mountainous recesses, where he invariably retreats.