150 ALA.SKA INDUSTRIES. 



women look well to their oil jjonches, and repair to the field of 

 slaughter with meat baskets on their heads. 



Manner in which the killing is conducted. — No attempt is 

 made, even by the boldest Aleut, to destroy an old bull sea lion by 

 spearing the enraged and powerful l)east, which, now familiar with 

 man and conscious, as it were, of his puny strength, would seize the 

 lance between its jaws and shake it from the hands of the stoutest 

 one in a moment. Recourse is had to the rifle. The herd is started 

 up the sloi)ing flanks of the Black Bluff hillside. The females speedily 

 take the front, while the old males hang behind. Then the marks- 

 men, walking up to within a few paces of each animal, deliberately 

 draw their sights upon their heads and shoot them just between the 

 eye and the ear. The old males thus destroyed, the cows and females 

 are in turn surrounded by the natives, who, dropping their rifles, 

 thrust the heavy iron lances into their trembling bodies at a point 

 behind the fore flippers, touching the heart with a single lunge. It 

 is an unparalleled spectacle, dreadfully cruel and bloody.^ 



ECONOMIC USES OF THE SEA LION. 



High appreciation op the sea lion by the Aleuts. — Although 

 the sea lion Ims little or no commercial value for us, yet to the service 

 of the natives themselves, who live all along the Bering Sea coast of 

 Alaska, Kamchatka, and the Kuriles, it is invaluable. They set great 

 store by it. It supplies them with its hide, mustaches, flesh, fat, sinews, 

 and intestines, which they make up into as many necessary garments, 

 dishes, etc. Thej^ liave abundant reason to treasure its skin highly, 

 for it is tlie covering to their neat bidarkas and bidarrahs, the former 

 being the small kyak of Bering Sea, while the latter is a boat of all 

 work, exploration, and transportation. These skins are unhaired by 

 sweating in a pile; then they are deftly sewed and carefully stretched 

 over a light keel and frame of wood, making a perfectly water-tight 

 boat that will stand, uninjured, the softening influence of water for 

 a day or two at a time, if i)roperly air dried and oiled. After being 

 used during the day these skin boats are always drawn out on the 

 beach, turned bottom side up, and air dried during the night; in this 

 way made ready for employment again on the morrow.^ 



' This surrounding of the cows is, jierhaps, the strangest procedure on the 

 islands. To fully appreciate the subject, the reader must first call to his mind's 

 ej'e the fact that these female sea lions, though small beside the males, are yet 

 large animals, 7 and 8 feet long and weighing, each, as much as any four or five 

 average men. But in s^nte of their strength and agility fifteen or twenty Aleiits, 

 with a rough, iron- tipped lance in their hands, will surround a drove of 50 or 151) 

 of them by forming a noisy, gesticulating circle, gradually closing up. man to 

 man, until the sea lious are literally piled in a writhing, squirming, struggling 

 mass, one above the other, three or four deep, heads, flippers, bellies, backs all so 

 woven and interwoven in this panic stricken heap of terrified creatures that it 

 defies adequate description. The natives spear the cows on to]i. which, as they 

 sink in death, are mounted in turn by the live animals underneath. Tnese meet 

 the deadly lance in order, and so on until the whole herd is quiet and stilled in 

 the fatal ebbing of their heart's blood. 



'-^ When slowly sketching, by measurements, the oiitlines of a fine adult bull sea 

 lion which the ball i'rom Booterin's rifle had just destroj*ed, an old "starooka" 

 came up abruptly. Not seeming to see me, she deliberately threw down a large, 

 greasy, skin meat bag, and, whipping out a knife, went to work on my specimen. 

 Curiosity prompted me to keep still in spite of the first sensations of annoyance, so 

 that I might watch her choice and use of the anima^/s carcass. She first removed 

 the skin, being actively aided in this operation l)y an uncouth boy. She them cut 

 off the palms to both fore flippers. The boy at the same time pulled out the mus- 



