Still sailing northward, large numbers of ebon-hued cormorants are seen feeding on the low, kelp-covered rocks, contrasting with the snowy whiteness of the gulls. Big flocks of snipe, ducks, and other aquatic birds line the water’s edge, or rise in clouds from some sheltered nook to settle again in our wake. Higher up in air a huge bald-headed eagle is in sight nearly all the while, as we sail along the winding watercourse. The eagles of Alaska, unlike those of other sections of the globe, are not a solitary bird, but congregate in considerable numbers, and residents told us they had seen a score of them roasting together on the branches of the same tree, but we must confess to never having seen even two together. Elsewhere the eagle is certainly a bird whose solitary habits are one of its marked characteristics. We observe here and there near native villages, more square boxes and totem-poles indicating the resting-places of the dead. Some tribes continue to burn their dead, and these boxes contain only the ashes, but the missionaries and the whites generally have so opposed the idea of cremation that many of the natives have abandoned it. The burial above-ground in the square boxes referred to is a peculiar idea. These coffins, if they may be so called, are about three feet and a half long by two and a half wide, and are often elaborately carved and painted with grotesque figures. The corpse is disjointed and doubled up in order to get it into this compass, though why this is done when a longer box would so much simplify matters, no one seems to know. We were told that some of the Alaskan tribes used to place their dead in trees, or on the top of four raised poles, a similar practice to that which once prevailed among certain tribes of our Western Indians, but the mode just described is that which most generally prevails. There seems to be some difference of opinion as regards the real significance of the totem-poles. They appear to be designed in part to commemorate certain deeds in the lives of the departed, near whose grave they are reared, as well as to indicate the family arms of those for whom they are erected. Thus, on seeing one special totem-post surmounted by a wolf carved in wood, beneath which a useless gun was lashed, inquiry was made as to its significance, whereupon we were told that the deceased by whose grave it stood had been killed while hunting wolves in the forest. This was certainly a very literal way of recording the fate of the hunter.