THE PUE SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 367 



hence no time is lost by the prudent chief ill directing the removal of the skins as rapidly as the 

 seals are knocked down and dragged out. If it is a cool day, after bleeding the first " pod" which 

 has been prostrated in the manner described, and after carefully drawing the slain from the, heap 

 in which they have fallen, so that the bodies will spread over the ground just free from touching 

 one another, they turn to and strike down another "pod''; and so on, until a whole thousand or 

 two are laid out, or the drove, as corraled, is finished. The day, however, must be raw and cold 

 for this wholesale method. Then, after killing, they turn to work and skin; but, if it is a warm 

 day, every pod is skinned as soon as it is knocked down. 



The labor of skinning is exceedingly severe, and is trying even to an expert, demanding long 

 practice ere the muscles of the back and thighs are so developed as to permit a man to bend down 

 to, and finish well, a fair day's work. The knives used by the natives for skinning are ordinary 

 kitchen or case-handle butcher-knives. They are sharpened to cutting edges as keen as razors ; 

 but, something about the skins of the seal, perhaps fine comminuted sand along the abdomen, so 

 dulls these knives, as the natives work, that they are constantly obliged to whet them. 



The body of the seal, preparatory to skinning, is rolled over and balanced squarely on its back; 

 then the native makes a single swift cut through the skin down along the neck, chest, and belly, 

 from the loner jaw to the root of the tail, using, for this purpose, his long stabbing knife.* The 

 fore and hind flippers are then successively lifted, as the man straddles the seal and stoops down 

 to his work over it, and a sweeping circular incision is made through the skin on them just at the 

 point where the body-fur ends; then, seizing a flap of the hide on either one side or the other of 

 the abdomen, the man proceeds to rapidly cut with his smaller, shorter butcher-knife, the skin, 

 clean and free from the body and blubber, which he rolls over and out from the skin by hauling 

 upon it as he advances with his work, standing all this time stooped over the carcass so that his 

 hands are but slightly above it or the ground. This operation of skinning a fair-sized "holluschak" 

 takes the best men only one minute and a half; but the average time made by the gang on the 

 ground is about four minutes to the seal. Nothing is left of the skin upon the carcass save a 

 small patch of each upper lip on which the coarse mustache grows, the skin on the top of the 

 lower jaw, the insignificant tail, together with the bare hide of the flippers. 



* When turning the stunned and senseless carcasses, the only physical danger which the sealers run the slightest 

 risk of, during the whole circuit of their work, occurs thus : at this moment the prone and quivering body of the 

 "holluschak" is not wholly inert, perhaps, though it is nine times out often, and, as the native takes hold of a fbre- 

 flipper to jerk the carcass over on to its back, the half-brained seal rouses, snaps suddenly and viciously, often biting 

 the hands or legs of the unwary skinners, who then come leisurely and unconcernedly up into the surgeon's office at 

 the village for bandages, &c.; a few men are bitten every day or two during the season on the islands in this manner, 

 but I have never learned of any serious result following in any case. 



They, the sealers, as might be expected, become exceedingly expert in keeping their knives sharp, putting edges 

 on to them as keen as razors, and in an instant detect any dullness, by passing the balls of their thumbs over the 

 suspected edges to the blades. 



The white sealers of the Antarctic always used the orthodox butchers' " steel " in sharpening their knives, but 

 these natives never have, and probably never will abandon those little whetstones above referred to. 



During the Russian management, and throughout the strife in killing by our own people, in l^liS, a very large 

 number of the skins were cut through, here and there, by the slipping of the natives' knives, when they were taking 

 them from the carcasses, and "flensing" them from the superabundance, in spots, of blubber. These knife cuts 

 through the skin, no matter how slight, give great annoyance to the dresser; hence they are always marked way 

 down in price. The prompt scrutiny of each skin on the islands, by the agent of the Alaska Commercial Company, 

 who rejects every one of them thus injured, has caused the natives to exercise greater care, and the number now so 

 damaged every season is absolutely trifling. 



Another source of small loss is due to a habit which the " holluschickie " have of occasionally biting one another 

 when they are being urged along in the drives, and thus crowded once in a while one upon the other ; usually those 

 examples of " zoobiiden " are detected by the natives prior to the "knocking down," and spared; yet those which 

 have been nipped on the chest or abdomen cannot be thus noticed ; and, until the skin is lifted, the damage is not 

 apprehended. 



