ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 125 



now, on benches, and eat from plates with knives and forks, instead 

 of squatting around an iron pot on the "barrabkie" floor to dip in, 

 sans ceremonie, with spoons, ladles, and grimy fingers, as in "ye olden 

 tyme." They have, however, one sad failing developed by this march 

 to a higher civilization, and that is the determination of the Aleutian 

 dishwasher to use cold water on her greasy plates. 



Great size of the pur seal's heart: Its expanded lungs. — 

 In Oldening many hundreds of these freshly-killed seals after skinning, 

 while searching in vain for supposed food contents of their stomachs, I 

 was impressed by the exceeding size of the heart and the perfect organi- 

 zation of the lungs, while the volume of blood in ijroportion to the 

 size and weight is, I am sure, greater in the fur seal than in any other 

 animal. The enormous lungs and the veins, laid bare, showed their 

 beautiful adaptation to frequent aquatic submergence by their great 

 capacity toward the root of the heart and by the enormous cava or 

 hepatic reservoir. The widened aortic arch and the diminution of the 

 abdominal aorta modify the blood current, of which the vast muscu- 

 lar apparatus of the f orequarters and the large brain must receive the 

 major share of supply, as it comes from the enlarged heart. ^ 



manner of caring for and shipping the fur-seal skins. 



Curing the raw skins. — The skins are taken from the field to the 

 salt house, where they are laid out, after being again carefulh^ exam- 

 ined, one upon another, "hair to fat," like so many sheets of paper, 

 with salt profusely spread upon the fleshy sides as they are piled up 

 in the " kenches," or bins.^ The salt house is a large barn-like frame 



' I had prepared many notes upon the muscular anatomy of the fur seal.and the 

 sea lion, but I find that it has been anticipated so well by what Dr. Murie pub- 

 lished in tiie transactions of the Zoological Society of London, 18f)9-1872, as to ren- 

 der their reproduction here quite superfluous. These observations of Dr. Murie 

 constitute one of the most valuable contributions to the knowledge of the anatomy 

 of this animal that has ever been made. He carefully dissected a young male sea 

 lion after its death, which had been brought to the Zoological Society's gardens 

 from the Falkland Islands. 



- The practice of curing in early times was quite different from this rapid and 

 effective process of salting. The skins were then all air dried; pegged out, when 

 " green,'" upon the ground, or else stretched upon a wooden trellis or frame, which 

 stood like a rude fence adjacent to the killing grounds; it was the accumulation of 

 such air-dried skins from the Pribilof Islands, at Sitka, wiiich rotted so in 1803 that 

 " 750,000 of them were cut up, or thrown out into the sea," completely destroyed. 

 Had they been treated as they now are, such a cal amity and hideous waste could 

 not have occurred. The method of air drying which the old settlers employed is 

 well portrayed by the practice of the natives now, who treat a few hundred sea- 

 lion skins to the process every fall; pi-eparing them thus for shipment to Una- 

 laska, where they are used by brother Aleuts in covering their bidarkies or kyacks. 

 The natives, in speaking to me of this matter, said that whenever the weather 

 was rough and the wind blowing hard, these air-dried seal skins, as they were 

 tossed from the bidarrah to the ship's deck, numbers of them would frequently 

 turn in the Avind and fly clean over the vessel into the water beyond, where they 

 were lost. Under the old order of affairs, prior to the present management, the 

 skins were packed up and carried on the backs of the boys and girls, women and 

 old men, to the salt houses, or drying frames. When I first arrived, season of 

 1872, a slight variation was made in this respect by breaking a small Siberian bull 

 into harness and hitching it to a cart, in which the joelts were hauled. Before the 

 cart was adjusted, however, and the ••bulk" taught to pull, it was led out to the 

 killing grounds, by a ring in its nose, and literally covered with the green seal 

 hides, which were thus packed to the kenches. The natives were delighted with 

 even this partial assistance; but now they have no further concern about it at all, 

 for several mules a'hd carts render prompt and ample service. They were intro- 

 duced here, first, in 1874. The Russian- American Company and also the Alaska 



