Our visit was a great delight to old Atler. An inflamed eye was much relieved by the doctor's ministrations, and the natural piety which he shares with most Indians was gratified at the opportunity of worship and instruction. A good old man, according to his lights, I take Atler to be, well known for benevolence of disposition and particularly priding himself on being a friend of the white man. He told us of one unworthy representative of that race he had helped a year ago. The man had come out of the Hogatzitna (Hog River) country, entirely out of food, himself and a couple of dogs nigh to starvation, and Atler had taken care of him for several days while he recuperated and had given him grub and dog fish enough to get him to Bettles, one hundred and thirty miles away, where he could purchase supplies. The old Indian had robbed his own family's little winter stock of "white-man's grub" that this stranger might be provided, and had never heard a word from him since, though he had promised to make return when he reached Bettles. Unfortunately Alaska's white population is sprinkled with men like this, men without heart and without conscience, and it is precisely such rascals who are loudest in their contemptuous talk of the Indians. It is such men who chop down the woodwork of cabins rather than be troubled to take the axe into the forest a few rods away, who depart in the morning without making kindling and shavings, careless how other travellers may fare so themselves be warm without labour; who make "easy money" in the summer-time by dropping down the Yukon with a boat-load of "rot-gut" whisky, leaving drunkenness and riot at every village they pass; who beget children of the native women and regard them no more than a dog does his pups, indifferent that their own flesh and blood go cold and hungry. They are the curse and disgrace of Alaska, and they often go long time insolent and unwhipped because our poor lame law is not nimble enough to overtake them; "to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever," one's indignation is sometimes disposed to thunder savagely with Saint Jude; and indeed there needs a future punishment to redress the balance in this country. [Sidenote: FIDO]