When approaching a landing or anchorage, a signal gun is fired from the forecastle of the ship, creating a series of echoes deep, sonorous, and startling, but especially remarkable for the number of times the sound is repeated. One single gun becomes multiplied to a whole broadside. The report is taken up again and again by other localities, and thus is conveyed for miles away, finally sinking to a whisper, as it were, among the foot-hills of the giant elevations. The most impressive scenes realized by the traveler are those of moonlight and midnight. How a love of the stars and the sea grows upon one, and life has so few moments of perfect contentment! What melody and magic permeate the pure, placid atmosphere, bounded by the sapphire sea and the azure sky! How tender and beautiful is the utter stillness of the hour! Such scenes of gladness make the heart almost afraid,—afraid lest there should be some keen sorrow lurking in ambush to awaken us from pleasant dreams to the stern, disenchanting experiences of real life. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIV. The Alaskan’s Habit of Gambling.—Extraordinary Domestic Carvings.—Silver Bracelets.—Prevailing Superstitions.—Disposal of the Dead.—The Native “Potlatch.”—Cannibalism.—Ambitions of Preferment.—Human Sacrifices.— The Tribes slowly decreasing in Numbers.—Influence of the Women.— Witchcraft.—Fetich Worship.—The Native Canoes.—Eskimo Skin Boats. The aborigines of Alaska are slow in their movements, and in this respect resemble the Lapps of Scandinavia, having also a drawling manner of speech entirely in consonance with their bodily movements. They are as inveterate gamblers as the Chinese, often passing whole days and nights absorbed in the occupation, the result of which is in no way contingent upon intelligence or skill, until finally one of the party walks off winner of all the stakes. Their principal gambling game is played with a handful of small sticks of different colors, which are called by various names, such as the crab, the whale, the duck, and so on. The player shuffles all the sticks together, then counting out a certain number he places them under cover of bunches of moss. The object seems to be to guess in which pile is the whale, and in which the crab, or the duck. Individuals often lose at this seemingly trifling game all their worldly possessions. We were told of instances where, spurred on by excitement, a native risks his wife and children, and if he loses, they become the recognized property of the winner, nor would any one think of interfering with such a settlement. These extreme cases, of course, are rare. It is impossible to see the aborigines eagerly absorbed in the game without recalling Dr. Johnson’s characteristic definition of gambling, namely, “A mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.”