HUNTING THE SEA OTTER. 67 



thirty-five skins, mostly very large ones, some measuring 

 as much as eighty-two inches in length. He had run 

 across with two American hunters to Honolulu, where 

 they completed their crew with Kanakas. These men 

 make capital sailors and are in much request amongst 

 whalers and sealers, being both active and obedient. 

 The two hunters, brothers, we subsequently met on many 

 occasions, and being accustomed to that terrible product 

 of civilisation, the " whitewashed " Yankee, generally an 

 Englishman or Irishman who has adopted all the vices 

 and none of the virtues of the American character, we 

 were agreeably surprised to find what good fellows they 

 were. As they seldom "guessed" or "calculated," and 

 rarely used bad language, we got to like them very 

 much. They told us that their usual life was duck- 

 shooting and punting in the Chesapeake, while in summer 

 they went otter hunting and sealing a sufficiently 

 hard and adventurous life to suit the greatest lovers of 

 excitement. 



The island of Yetorup lies nearly N.E. and S.W. It is 

 about one hundred and ten miles in length, varying in width 

 from about two and a half to twenty miles where the 

 peninsulas on which the mountains of Atosa and Chirituba, 

 respectively 4050 and 5040 feet in height, project almost 

 at right angles to the general lie of the land. The total 

 area of the island is about nine hundred and thirty square 

 miles. Hitokatpu Bay, or Jap Bay, as we always called it, 

 the largest indentation on the south-east coast, is situated 

 about the centre of the island. It is about six miles deep 

 and about the same in w r idth, the two points of entrance 

 lying almost east and west of each other. With the 

 exception of Roku Bay, where we saw our first otter, and 

 which is not marked on the chart, it is the only well-defined 

 bay on the whole of the south-eastern seaboard. It affords 

 but little protection from the Pacific, whose great rolling 

 seas break almost continually upon its shores. A long, low- 

 reef of rocks runs straight out to sea from its southern 



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