Speaking of Fort Tongas, we should not forget to mention that a native couple, educated by the missionaries, are here teaching a school of young natives numbering fifty pupils, for which our government pays them five hundred dollars per annum. The success attained by these instructors in teaching the ordinary branches of an English education is surprising. Tongas, it will be remembered, is the most southerly point of our Alaska possessions. The country teems with animal life. The sea which laves its shores and the outlying islands is so full of excellent fish as to have been a wonder in this respect since the days of the earliest navigators. The same may be said of its rivers, inlets, and lakes, the former being famous for the abundance, size, and excellence of the salmon which they produce, and which are annually packed for exportation in such large quantities to various parts of the world. We were told by the overseer of the canning factory at Pyramid Harbor that the entire product of the establishment was already—the season but just commencing—engaged by a Liverpool house. To secure the delivery the foreign merchant had cheerfully advanced five hundred pounds sterling. “The Alaska banks would be an ocean paradise to the Newfoundland fishermen,” says Professor Davidson. “The eastern part of Behring Sea ‘is a mighty reserve of cod,’ and the area within the limits of fifty fathoms of water is no less than eighteen thousand miles.” “What I have seen,” said W. H. Seward at Sitka, in 1869, “has almost made me a convert to the theory of some naturalists, that the waters of the globe are filled with stores for the sustenance of animal life surpassing the available productions of the land.” The coast also abounds in oysters, clams, mussels, and crabs. The oysters are small, but of excellent flavor, and might be greatly improved by cultivation. Clams and mussels are much esteemed by the aborigines, the first-named being large and of prime quality. They dry the clams, as they do salmon and cod, using no salt in the process, but stringing them by the score on long blades of strong grass, and in this shape laying them away for winter use. There is certainly some special preservative quality in the atmosphere here which enables the natives to keep clams unfrozen in good condition for several months. The matter of “ripeness,” however, makes no difference to these Indians, who seem actually to prefer their fish a little putrid, and oil is purposely kept until it becomes so before they will use it.