490 HISTORY AND METHODS OP THE FISHERIES. 



THE SPEAKING SURROUND. This is tlie orthodox native system of capture. It is the method 

 of their far-.iway ancestors, aud it reflects the highest-credit upon the Aleuts as bold, hardy 

 watermen.* 



A party of fifteen or twenty " bidarkies," with two men in each as a rule, all under the con 

 trol of a chief elected by common consent, set out in pleasant weather, or weather not too rough, 

 and spread themselves in a long line, slowly paddling over the waters where sea otters are most 

 usually found, or where they expect to surprise them. When any one of these hunters discovers an 

 otter, asleep most likely in the water, he makes a quiet signal by lifting his paddle or throwing 

 up his arms; not a word is spoken or a paddle splashed while they are scouring on this line of 

 hunting. 



He darts toward the animal, but generally the alarm is taken by this sensitive creature, which 

 instantly, dives before the Aleut can get near enough to throw his spear. The hunter, however, 

 keeps right on and stops his canoe directly over the spot where the otter disappeared, leaving the 

 circling rings of water in displacement with the floating bubbles from its quick-caught breath. 

 The other hunters, taking note of this action and of the position of this hunter, instantly deploy 

 and scatter, forming a circle of half a mile wide around the place where he last was seen, and 

 patiently wait for the reappearance of the surprised animal, a reappearance which must take place 

 at any time within from fifteen to thirty minutes, for this creature must come to the surface to 

 breathe. As soon as this happens, the hunter nearest to it in turn again darts forward in the 

 same manner as his predecessor did, while all hands shout and throw up their spears to make the 

 animal dive again, thus giving it scarcely an instant in which to recover itself and expel the 

 surcharged and poisoned air from its long-loaded lungs. A sentry is again placed over this second 

 diving wake, as before, and the circle is drawn anew ; thus the surprise is quickly and often re- 

 peated, sometimes lasting for two or three hours, until the sea-otter, from oft-interrupted respir- 

 ation becomes so filled with air or gases that he cannot sink, and is then an easy victim. 



THE CLUBBING. This is the gamey undertaking of the sea-otter hunter, and it only transpires 

 in the winter season, and then during those unfrequent intervals which occur when tremendous gales 

 of wind from the north, sweeping down over Saanach, have about blown themselves out. Then 

 the natives, that is, the very oldest of them, set out from Saanach and Chernobours to scud down 

 on the tail of the gale to those far-outlying rocks just protruding above surf-wash, where they 

 creep up from the leeward to the Bobrooksie occasionally found there at such times. The sea otter 

 ore lying with their heads pushed under and into the beds of kelp, to avoid the fierce pelting of 

 the spray from the hands of a furious gale. But the noise of the tempest is greater than that 

 made by the stealthy movement of the hunters, who, armed each with a short, heavy, wooden 

 club, dispatch the animals one after another without alarming the whole body; and in this way. 

 I am informed, two Aleuts, who were brothers, were known to have slain sevens-eight sea-otter, 

 young and old, in less than one and a half hours. The result of this fur bonanza, so speedily 

 worked, had they been provident in its investment, would have clothed and fed them for- the rest 

 of their natural lives; but, like our own coal-oil Johnny, they quickly squandered their wealth, 

 ;ind are poorer now than ever, or were so when I last heard from them. 



NETTING. The hunting by use of nets, which is a method adopted by and peculiar to the 

 Atka and Attoo Aleuts, calls up the strange dissimilarity which exists now, as it has in all times 

 past, between the practice of these Western Aleuts and that of those who, living in Oonalashka 

 aud to the eastward, never have used nets. 



'According to Crantz, in his History of Greenland (1765), this method of securing the sea-otter was the style in 

 which the Greenlanders captured hair seals (Phocida) during the period of his observation there. I do not find that 

 any modern writer speaks of such a chase in Greenland -waters, or any other ancient authority who alludes to it. 



