THE FUR-SEAL ISLANDS OF ALASKA. 91 



ARRIVAL, OF THE DRIVE AT THE VILLAGE. The procession of sea-lions managed in this strange manner 

 day and night for the natives never let up is finally brought to rest within a stone's throw of the village, which 

 has pleasurably anticipated, for days, and for weeks, its arrival, and rejoices in its appearance. The men get out 

 their old rifles and large sea-lion lances, and sharpen their knives, while the women look well to their oil-pouches, 

 and repair to the field of slaughter with meat-baskets on their heads. 



MANNER IN WHICH THE KILLING is CONDUCTED. No attempt is made, even by the boldest Aleut, to destroy 

 an old bull sea-lion by spearing the enraged and powerful beast, which, now familiar with man and conscious as 

 it were of his puny strength, would seize the lance between its jaws and shake it from the hands of the stoutest 

 one in a moment. Eecourse is had to the rifle. The herd is started up the sloping flanks of the Black Bluff hill- 

 side ; the females speedily take the front, while the old males hang behind. Then the marksmen, walking up to 

 within a few paces of each animal, deliberately draw their sights upon their heads and shoot them just between 

 the eye and the ear. The old males thus destroyed, the cows and females are in turn surrounded by the natives, 

 who, dropping their rifles, thrust the heavy iron lances into their trembling bodies at a point behind the fore-flip- 

 pers, touching the heart with a single lunge. It is an unparalleled spectacle, dreadfully cruel and bloody.* 



17. ECONOMIC USES OF THE SEA-LION. 



HIGH APPRECIATION OF THE SEA-LION BY THE ALEUTS. Although the sea-lion has little or no commercial 

 value for us, yet to the service of the natives themselves, who live all along the Bering sea coast of Alaska, 

 Kamtchatka, and the Kuriles, it is invaluable; they set great store by it. It supplies them with its hide, 

 moustaches, flesh, fat, sinews, and intestines, which they make np into as many necessary garments, dishes, etc. 

 They have abundant reason to treasure its skin highly, for it is the covering to their neat bidarkies and bidarrahs, 

 the former being the small kyak of Bering sea, while the latter is a boat of all work, exploration, and transportation. 

 These skins are unhaired by sweating in a pile ; then they are deftly sewed and carefully stretched over a light 

 keel and frame of wood, making a perfectly water-tight boat that will stand, uninjured, the softening influence of 

 water for a day or two at a time, if properly air-dried and oiled. After being used during the day, these skin boats 

 are always drawn out on the beach, turned bottom-side up and air-dried during the night ; in this way made ready 

 for employment again on the morrow, t 



VALUE OF THE INTESTINES. A peculiar value is attached to the intestines of the sea-lion, which, after 

 skinning, are distended with air and allowed to dry in that shape; then they are cut into ribbons and sewed strongly 



* This surrounding of the cows, is, perhaps, the strangest procedure on the islands. To fully appreciate the subject, the reader must 

 first call to his mind's eye the fact that these female sea-lions, though small beside the males, are yet large animals; seven and eight feet 

 long, and weighing, each, as much as any four or five average men. But, in spite of their strength and agility, fifteen or twenty Aleuts, 

 with a rough, iron-tipped lance in their hands, will surround a drove of 50 or 150 of them by forming a noisy, gesticulating circle, 

 gradually closing up, man to man, until the sea-lions are literally piled in a writhing, squirming, struggling mass, one above the other, 

 three or four deep, heads, flippers, bellies, backs all so woven and interwoven in this panic-stricken heap of terrified creatures, that it 

 defies adequate description. The natives spear the cows on top, which, as they sink in death, are mounted in turn by the live animals 

 underneath; these meet the deadly lance, in order, and so on until the whole herd is quiet and stilled in the fatal ebbing of their heart's 

 blood. 



tWhen slowly sketching, by measurements, the outlines of a fine adult hull sea-lion which the ball from Booterin's rifle had just 

 destroyed, an old "starooka" came np abruptly ; not seeming to see me, she deliberately threw down a large, greasy, skin meat-bag, and 

 whipping out a knife, went to work on my specimen. Curiosity prompted me to keep still in spite of the first sensations of annoyance, so 

 that I might watch her choice and use of the animal's carcass. She first removed the skin, being actively aided in this operation by an 

 uncouth boy ; she then cut off the palms to both fore-flippers ; the boy at the same time pulled out the moustache bristles; she then cut out 

 its gullet, from the glottis to its junction with the stomach, carefully divested it of all fleshy attachments, and fat; she then cut out the 

 stomach itself, and turned it inside out, carelessly scraping the gastric walls free of copious biliary secretions, the inevitable bunch of 

 ascaris; she then told the boy to take hold of the duodenum end of the small intestine, and as he walked away with it she rapidly 

 cleared it of its attachments, so that it was thus uncoiled to its full length of at least 60 feet ; then she severed it, and then it was recoiled by 

 the "melchiska", and laid up with the other members just removed, except the skin, which she had nothing more to do with. She 

 then cut out the liver and ate several large pieces of that workhouse of the blood before dropping it into the meat-pouch. She then 

 raked np several haudfuls of the "leaf-lard", or hard, white fat that is found in moderate quantity around the viscera of all 

 these pinnipeds, which she also dumped into the flesh-bag; she then drew her knife through the large heart, but did not touch 

 it otherwise, looking at it intently, however, as it still quivered in unison with the -warm flesh of the whole carcass. She and the boy 

 then poked their fingers into the tumid lobes of the immense lungs, cutting out portions of them only, which were also put into the grimy 

 pouch aforesaid ; then she secured the gall-bladder and slipped it into a small yeast-powder tin, which was produced by the urchin ; then 

 she finished her economical dissection by cutting the sinews out of the back in unbroken bulk from the cervical vertebra to the sacrum; 

 all these were stuffed into that skin bag, which she threw on her back and supported it by a band over her head ; she then trudged 

 back to the barrabkie from whence she sallied a short hour ago, like an old vulture to the slaughter ; she made the following disposition 

 of its contents : The palms were used to sole a pair of tarbosars, or native boots, of which, the uppers and knee tops were made of the gullets 

 one sea-lion gullet to each boot, top ; the stomach was carefully blown up, and left to dry on the barrabkie roof, eventually to be filled 

 with oil rendered from sea-lion or fur-seal blubber. The small intestine was carefully injected with water and cleansed, then distended 

 with air, and pegged out between two stakes, 60 feet apart, with little cross-slats here and there between to keep it clear of .the ground. 

 \\ hen it is thoroughly dry, it is ripped up in a straight line with its length and pressed out into a broad band of parchment gut, which she 

 cuts up and uses in making a water-proof "kamlaikie", sewing it with those sinews taken from the back. The liver, leaf-lard, and lobes 

 of the lungs were eaten without further cooking, and the little gall-bag was for some use in poulticing a scrofulous sore. The moustache- 



