ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 119 



ou St. Paul, divided into two worli:ing parties at the village and a 

 siibparty at Northeast Point, where another salt house and slaughter- 

 ing field is established. At the signal of the chief the work of the 

 day begins by the men stepping intio the drove, corraled on tlie flats, 

 and, driving out from it 100 or 150 seals at a time, make what they 

 call a "pod," which they surround in a circle, huddling the seals one 

 on another as they narrow it down, until they are directly within 

 reach and under their clubs. Then the chief, after he has cast his 

 experienced eye over the struggling, writhing "kautickie" in the 

 center, passes the word that sucli and such a seal is bitten, that such 

 and such a seal is too young, that such and such a seal is too old ; the 

 attention of his men being called to these points, he gives the word 

 " Strike! " and instantly the heavy clubs come down all around, and 

 every one that is eligible is stretched out stunned and motionless, in 

 less time, really, than I take to tell it. Those seals spared by order 

 of the chief now struggle from under and over the bodies of their 

 insensible companions and pass, hustled off by the natives, back to 

 the sea.^ 



Method of Aleuts in skinning fur seals. — The clubs are 

 dropped, the men seize the prostrate seals by the hind flippers and 

 drag them out, so they are spread on the ground without touching 

 each other; then every sealer takes his knife and drives it into the 

 heart at a point between the fore flippers of each stunned form; the 

 blood gushes forth, and the quivering of the animal presently ceases. 

 A single stroke of a heavy oak bludgeon, well and fairly delivered, 

 will crusli in at once the slight, thin bones of a fur seal's skull, and 

 lay the creature out almost lifeless. These blows are, however, 

 usually repeated two or three times with each animal, but they are 

 very quickly done. The bleeding, which is immediately effected, is 

 so speedily undertaken in order that the strange reaction, which the 

 sealers call "heating," shall be delayed for half an hour or so, or 

 until the seals can all be drawn out and laid in some disposition for 

 skinning. 



I have noticed that within less than thirty minutes from the time 

 a perfectly sound seal was knocked down it had so "heated," owing 

 to the day being warmer and drier than usual, that, when touching it 

 with my foot, great patches of hair and fur scaled off. This is a 

 rather exceptionally rapid metamorphosis — it will, however, take 

 place in every instance within an hour or an hour and a half on 

 these warm days after the first blow is struck and the seal is quiet 

 in death; hence no time is lost by the jjrudent chief in directing the 

 removal of the skins as rapidly as the seals are knocked down and 



' The aim and force with which the native directs his blow determines the death 

 of the seal; If struck direct and violently, a single stroke is enough; the seals' 

 heads are stricken so hard sometimes that those crystalline lenses to their eyes fly 

 ont from the orbital sockets like hailstones, or little pebbles, and frequently struck 

 me sharply in the face or elsewhere while I stood near by watching the killing 

 gang at work. A singular lurid-green light suddenly suffuses the eye of the fur 

 seal at intervals when it is verj' much excited, as the "podding" for the clubbers 

 is in progress, and at the moment when last raising its head, as it sees the uplifted 

 bludgeons on every hand above, fear seems then for the first time to possess it and 

 to instantly gild its eye in this strange manner. When the seal is brained in this 

 state of optical coloration, I have noticed that the opalescent tinting remained 

 well defined for many hour?, or a whole day after death: these remarkable flashes 

 are very characteristic to the eyes of the old males during their hurly-burly on 

 the rookeries, but never appear in the younger classes unless as just described, as 

 far as I could observe. 



