72 THE FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



It is quite impossible, liowever, to get them all of one age without an extraordinary amount of stir and bustle, 

 which the Aleuts do not like to precipitate; hence the drive will be found to consist usually of a bare majority of 

 three and four-year-olds, the rest being two-year-olds principally, aud a very few, at wide intervals, five-year-olds, 

 the yearlings seldom ever getting mixed up. 



METHOD OF LAND TRAVEL. As the drove progresses along the path to the slaughtering grounds, the seals all 

 move in about the same way; they go ahead with a kind of walking step and a sliding, shambling gallop. The 

 progression of the whole caravan is a succession of starts, spasmodic and irregular, made every few minutes, the 

 seals pausing to catch their breath, and make, as it were, a plaintive survey and mute protest. Every now and 

 then a seal will get weak in the lumbar region, then drag its posteriors along for a short distance, finally drop 

 breathless and exhausted, quivering and panting, not to revive for hours days, perhaps and often never. During 

 the driest driving-days, or those days when the temperature does not combine with wet fog to keep the path moist 

 and cool, quite a large number of the weakest animals in the drove will be thus laid out and left on the track. If 

 one of these prostrate seals is not too much heated at the time, the native driver usually taps the beast over the 

 head and removes its skin.* 



PROSTRATION OP FUR-SEALS BY HEAT. This prostration from exertion will always happen, no matter how 

 carefully they are driven; and in the longer drives, such as two and a half, and five miles from Zapadnie on the 

 west, or Polavina on the north, to the village at St. Paul, as much as three or four per cent, of the whole drive will 

 be thus dropped on the road; hence I feel satisfied, from my observation and close attention to this feature, that a 

 considerable number of those that are thus rejected from the drove, and are able to rally and return to the water, 

 die subsequently from internal injuries sustained on the trip, superinduced by this over-exertion. I, therefore, 

 think it highly improper and impolitic to extend drives of the "holluschickie" over any distance on St. Paul island 

 exceeding a mile, or a mile and a half; it is better for all parties concerned, and the business too, that salt-houses 

 be erected, and killing- grounds established contiguous and to all of the great hauling-grounds, two miles distant 

 from the village on St. Paul island, should the business ever be developed above the present limit; or should the 

 exigencies of the future require a quota from all these places, in order to make up the 100,000 which may be 

 lawfully taken. 



ABUNDANT SUPPLY OF "HOLLUSCHICKIE". As matters are to-day, 100,000 seals alone on St. Paul can be taken 

 and skinned in less than forty working days, within a radius of one mile and a half from the village, and from the 

 salt-house at Northeast point; hence the driving, with the exception of two experimental droves which I witnessed 

 in 1872, has never been made from longer distances than Tolstoi to the eastward, Lukannon to the northward, and 

 Zoltoi to the southward of the killing-grounds at St. Paul village. Should, however, an abnormal season recur, in 

 which the larger proportion of days during the right period for taking the skins be warmish and dry, it might be 

 necessary, in order to get even 75,000 seals within the twenty -eight or thirty days of their prime condition, for drives 

 to be made from the other great hauling-grounds to the westward and northward, which are now, and have been for 

 the last ten years, entirely unnoticed by the sealers. 



KILLING THE SEALS. The seals, when finally driven up on those flats between the east lauding and the" 

 village, and almost under the windows of the dwellings, are herded there until cool and rested. The drives are 

 usually made very early in the morning, at the first breaking of day, which is half-past one to two o'clock of June 

 and July in these latitudes. They arrive, and cool off on the slaughtering-grounds, so that by six or seven o'clock, 

 after breakfast, the able-bodied male population turn out from the village and go down to engage in the work 

 of slaughter. The men are dressed in their ordinary working-garb of thick flannel shirts, stout cassimere or 

 canvas pants, over which the "tarbossa" boots are drawn; if it rains they wear their "kamlaikas", made of the 

 intestines and throats of the sea-lion and fur-seaf. Thus dressed, they are each armed with a club, a stout oaken 

 or hickory bludgeon, which have been made particularly for the purpose at New London, Connecticut, and imported 

 here for this especial service. These sealing clubs are about five or six feet in length, three inches in diameter at their 

 heads, and the thickness of a man's forearm where they are grasped by the hands. Each native ftlso has his stabbing- 

 kuife, his skinning-knife, and his whetstone ; these are laid upon the grass convenient, when the work of braining 

 or knocking the seals down is in progress. This is all the apparatus which they have for killing and skinning. 



THE KILLING GANG AT WORK. When the men gather for work they are under the control of their chosen 

 foremen or chiefs; usually on St. Paul, divided into two working parties at the village, and a sub-party at 

 Northeast point, where another salt-house and slaughtering-field is established. At the signal of the chief the 

 work of the day begins by the men stepping into the drove, corraled on the flats; and, driving out from it 100 or 



*The fur-seal, like all of the pinnipeds, has no sweat-glands; hence, when it is heated, it cools off by the same process of panting which 

 is so characteristic of the dog, accompanied by the fanning that I have hitherto fully described; the heavy breathing and low grunting of 

 a tired drove of seals, on a warmer day than usual, can be heard several hundred yards away. It is surprising how quickly the hair and 

 fur will come out of the skin of a blood-heated seal literally rubs bodily off at a touch of the finger. A fine specimen of a three-year-old 

 " holluschak " fell in its tracks at the head of the lagoon while being driven to the village killing-grounds. I asked that it be skinned with 

 special reference to mounting; accordingly a native was sent for, who was on the spot, knife in hand, within less than 30 minutes from 

 the moment that this seal fell in the road; yet, soon after he had got fairly to work, patches of the fur aud hair came off here and there 

 wherever he chanced to clutch the skin. 



