Many of the women, like those of the South Sea and the Malacca Straits, wear nose rings and glittering bracelets, while they go about with bare legs and feet. The author has seen all sorts of rude decorations employed by savage races, but never one which seemed quite so ridiculous or so deforming as the plug which many of these women of Alaska wear thrust through their under lips. The plug causes them to drool incessantly through the artificial aperture, though it is partially stopped by a piece of bone, ivory, or wood, formed like a large cuff-button, with a flat-spread portion inside to keep it in position. This practice is commenced in youth, the plug being increased in size as the wearer advances in age, so that when she becomes aged her lower lip is shockingly deformed. It is gratifying to be able to say that this custom is becoming less and less in use among the rising generation, and the same may be said as to tattooing the chin and cheeks. The hands and feet of the women are so small as to be noticeable in that respect. The girls and boys endure great physical neglect in their youth, so that only the strongest are able to survive their childhood. It was surprising to see children of tender age of both sexes clothed only in a single cotton shirt, reaching to their knees, bare-legged, bare-footed, and bare-headed, yet apparently quite comfortable, while our woolen clothes and waterproofs were to us indispensable. We were told that in infancy these children are dipped every morning into the sea, without regard to the temperature, or season of the year, commencing the operation when they are four weeks old. This heroic, Spartan treatment of the bath will probably harden, if it does not kill, but undoubtedly the latter result is the more likely of the two. The adults of some of the tribes break holes in the ice in midwinter, and bathe with marvelous fortitude, not for purposes of cleanliness, but declaring that it makes them “brave and strong, able to resist the cold, and to live long.” The next hour, however, they may be found sitting on their hams as close to the fire in the middle of their unventilated cabins as they can get, closely wrapped in blankets, head and all. The prevalence among them of rheumatism and consumption shows that Nature cannot be outraged with impunity even by half-civilized Alaskans.