It was bitterly cold. Kalitan Tenas felt it more than he had in the long
winter, for then it was still and calm as night, and now the wind was
blowing straight in from the sea, and the river was frozen tight. A
month before, the ice had begun to break and he had thought the cold was
over, and that the all too short Alaskan summer was at hand. Now it was
the first of May, and just as he had begun to think of summer pleasures,
lo! a storm had come which seemed to freeze the very marrow of his bones.
However, our little Alaskan cousin was used to cold and trained to it,
and would not dream of fussing over a little snow-storm.

Kalitan started out to fish for his dinner, and though the snow came down
heavily and he had to break through the ice to make a fishing-hole, and
soon the ice was a wind-swept plain where even his own tracks were
covered with a white pall, he fished steadily on. He never dreamed of
stopping until he had fish enough for dinner, for, like most of his
tribe, he was persevering and industrious.

Kalitan was a Thlinkit, though, if you asked him, he would say he was
"Klinkit." This is a tribe which has puzzled wise people for a long
time, for the Thlinkits are not Esquimos, not Indians, not coloured
people, nor whites. They are the tribes living in Southeastern Alaska and
along the coast. Many think that a long, long time ago, they came from
Japan or some far Eastern country, for they look something like the
Japanese, and their language has many words similar to Japanese in it.

Perhaps, long years ago, some shipwrecked Japanese were cast upon the
coast of Alaska, and, finding their boats destroyed and the land good to
live in, settled there, and thus began the Thlinkit tribes.

The Chilcats, Haidahs, and Tsimsheans are all Thlinkits, and are by far
the best of the brown people of the Northland. They are honest, simple,
and kind, and more intelligent than the Indians living farther north, in
the colder regions. The Thlinkit coast is washed by the warm current from
the Japan Sea, and it is not much colder than Chicago or Boston, though
the winter is a little longer.

Kalitan fished diligently but caught little. He was warmly clad in
sealskin; around his neck was a white bearskin ruff, as warm as toast,
and very pretty, too, as soft and fluffy as a lady's boa. On his feet
were moccasins of walrus hide. He had been perhaps an hour watching the
hole in the ice, and knelt there so still that he looked almost