170 " HOSSACS." 



they will then spend the greater part of the remainder of the 

 night in revelling, with only a few hours of sleep between this 

 and another day of the same sort. Nor do I exaggerate a particle, 

 when I say that this life is continued sometimes a month at a time, 

 through all sorts of weather. Such is the life of these hardy people 

 in winter when they go out for a ''good time ;" and in summer, 

 during the fishing season, it is fully as bad ; but the people are, 

 for the most part, pleasant and friendly, and a stranger has no 

 cause to complain for want of being favored. 



The fancy work in which the ladies indulge to a greater or less 

 extent, especially in the winter evenings, may be known as pouches, 

 pockets, ^' hossacs,'" watch cases, and sometimes cushions and a 

 variety of beadvvork of all sorts and patterns, — the latter being 

 mostly worked by Indian squaws, who, with the men, often live in 

 tents near the coast in the spring and summer time when they sell 

 all sorts of articles of their own manufacture and handiwork. While 

 watches are rare on the coast, the various patterns for watch cases, 

 of beadwork or cloth or on sealskin, are various and very pretty. 

 As I am writing I have one now hung on the wall at my right. It 

 is about six inches long, and three broad at the widest part ; the 

 shape is rather sharp ovoid. The main part is of harbor sealskin 

 plainly but very neatly worked with colored beads on the upper 

 part, while the outside of the pocket has three little knots of the 

 same on either side of the round opening for the face of the watch, 

 which opening, with the upper edge of the pocket, and the whole 

 outer edge of the case has an edging of purple ribbon, on which 

 a string of white beads is sewed in small scallops entirely around 

 it ; the inside pocket lining, as shown through the opening 

 in front, is of red silk, and the back of the whole affair is of 

 brown cotton cloth. It is really very ornamental, and quite useful ; 

 various patterns are made besides this ; but, as a rule, the plainer 

 and simpler the more attractive they are. Hossacks are long strips 

 of cloth on which a series of three, four, or even more pockets, of 

 a variety of depth and width to suit the maker, are sewed, the 

 top of each pocket just reaching to the bottom of the other, and the 



