374 CALLOEHINUS URSINUS NORTHERN FUR SEAL. 



way, a kind of a walking-step and a sliding, shambling gallop,, 

 and the progression of the whole body is a succession of starts^ 

 made every few minutes, spasmodic and irregular. Every now 

 and then a seal will get weak in the lumbar region, and drag 

 his posterior after it for a short distance, but finally drops breath- 

 less and exhausted, not to revive for hours, days perhaps, and 

 often never. Quite a large number of the weaker ones, on the 

 driest driving-days, are thus laid out and left on the road; if 

 one is not too much heated at the time, the native driver usually 

 taps the beast over the head and removes its skin. This will 

 happen, no matter how carefully they are driven, and the death- 

 loss is quite large, as much as 3 or 4 per cent, on the longer 

 drives, such as three and four miles, from Zapadnie or Polavina 

 to the village on Saint Paul's, and I feel satisfied that a consid- 

 erable number of those rejected from the drove and permitted 

 to return to the water die subsequently from internal injuries 

 sustained on the drive from overexertion. I therefore think it- 

 improper to extend drives of seals over any distance exceeding 

 a mile or a mile and a half. It is better for all parties con- 

 cerned to erect salt-houses and establish killing-grounds adja- 

 cent to all of the great hauling-grounds on Saint Paul's Island 

 should the business ever be developed above the present limit. 

 As matters now are, the ninety thousand seals belonging to 

 the quota of Saint Paul last summer were taken and skinned in 

 less* than forty days within one mile from either the village, or 

 salt-house on Northeast Point. 



" KILLING THE SEALS. The seals when brought up to the kill- 

 ing-grounds are herded there until cool and rested ; then squads or 

 4 pods ' of fifty to two hundred are driven out from the body of 

 the drove, surrounded and huddled up one against and over the 

 other, by the natives, who carry each a long, heavy club of hard 

 wood, with which they strike the seals down by blows upon the 

 head; a single stroke of a heavy oak bludgeon, well and fairly 

 delivered, will crush in at once the slight, thin bones of a seal's 

 skull, laying the creature out lifeless ; these strokes are usually 

 repeated several times with each animal, but are very quickly 

 done. 



" The killing-gang, consisting usually of fifteen or twenty men- 

 at a time, are under the supervision of a chief of their own se- 

 lection, and have, before going into action, a common under- 

 standing as to what grades to kill, sparing the others which are 



