THERE was a lot of adventure to be had in Alaska in the early twentieth century, and Hardy Trefzger tasted it all . . . hunting, fishing, prospecting, guiding, trading, trapping ... He even had a blue-fox farm for a while.

Hardy Trefzger was born in the Black Forest of Germany to Swiss parents and received much of his education in Switzerland. While still in his youth, he migrated to the United States, where he established a small interior-decorating business. After two years in New York City, he headed west to Seattle, where all the talk was of the fabulous gold strikes in the North. He was caught by the excitement too, and was soon on his way to British Columbia and thence to Alaska, where he eventually settled in a small Indian village on Yakutat Bay.

Trefzger’s first trapping trip left him stranded for five weeks with nothing but clams for sustenance. After a stint as a taxidermist in Vancouver, British Columbia, he headed for Yakutat Glacier, where there was news of good copper prospecting. The chapters on the Yakutat Indians and their customs (they are particularly noted for Tlingit basketry) are alive with all of the colors of a primitive people living on the edge of civilization. Along with his account of the Yakutat Indians as he knew them, Mr. Trefzger also includes a little-known tale of the Yakutat massacre of a Russian settlement in the early nineteenth century.

Another high point of the book includes excerpts from the diary of an Alaskan hermit during the last months of his life, before he committed suicide. Mr. Trefzger points out that most prospectors and trappers kept diaries, as that was the only way to keep track of time. Of course, the vividness of this work stems mainly from Mr. Trefzger’s careful diaries. It isn’t every man who has been privileged to see a bear fight. Mr. Trefzger’s firsthand account of a fight to death between a grizzly and a brown bear is packed with excitement. And in a way, it’s a prelude to the final adventure Mr. Trefzger recounts in this book, his brush with death when he was mauled by a bear.

Mr. Trefzger and his wife, Gladys, now live in Youngtown, Arizona. For many years of his residence in Alaska, Hardy Trefzger was United States Commissioner for his district.