HABITS. 263 



" Capturing the sea-lion drive is really the only serious busi- 

 ness these people on the islands have, and when they set out 

 for the task the picked men only leave the village. At North- 

 east Point they have a barrabkie, in which they sleep and eat 

 while gathering the drove, the time of getting which depends 

 upon the weather, wind, &c. As the squads are captured, night 

 after night, they are driven up close by the barrabkie, where 

 the natives mount constant guard over them, until several hun- 

 dred animals shall have been secured, and all is ready for the 

 drive down overland to the village. 



"The drove is started and conducted in the same general 

 manner as that which I have detailed in speaking of the fur- 

 seal, only the sea-lion soon becomes very sullen and unwilling 

 to move, requiring spells of frequent rest. It canjjpt pick itself 

 up from the ground and shamble off on a loping gallop for a 

 few hundred yards, like the Callorhinus, and is not near so free 

 and agile in its movements on land, or in the water for that mat- 

 ter, for I have never seen the Eumetopias leap from the water 

 like a dolphin, or indulge in the thousand and one submarine 

 acrobatic displays made constantly by the fur-seal. 



" This ground, over which the sea-lions, are driven, is mostly 

 a rolling level, thickly grassed and mossed over, with here and 

 there a fresh-water pond into which the animals plunge with 

 great apparent satisfaction, seeming to cool themselves, and 

 out of which the natives have no trouble in driving them. The 

 distance between the sea-lion pen at Northeast Point and the 

 village is about ten miles, as the sea-lions are driven, and occu- 

 pies over five or six days under the most favorable circum- 

 stances, such as wet, cold weather ; and when a little warmer, 

 or as in July or August, a few seasons ago, they were some 

 three weeks coming down with a drove, and even then left a 

 hundred or sx> along on the road. 



"After the drove has been brought into the village on the 

 killing-grounds, the natives shoot down the bulls and then sur- 

 round and huddle up the cows, spearing them just behind the 

 fore-flippers. The killing of the sea-lions is quite an exciting 

 spectacle, a strange and unparalleled exhibition of its kind. 

 . . . . The bodies are at once stripped of their hides and 

 much of the flesh, sinews, intestines, (with which the native 

 water-proof coats, &c., are made,) in conjunction with the throat- 

 linings, (oesophagus,) and the skin of the flippers, which is ex- 

 ceedingly tough and elastic, and used for soles to their boots or 

 * tarbosars.' 



