THE FUR-SEAL ISLANDS OF ALASKA. 99 



if it will make sope, the Kiug of Spaiue may burne some of bis Olive trees." (!) This spice of Yankee enterprise in 

 "sope", evidently, did not* come to a successful head.* 



THE \VALB us " BIDARRAH ". The finest bidarrah skin-boats of transportation that I have seen in this country, 

 were those of the St. Lawrence natives ; these were made out of dressed walrus hides, shaved and pared down by 

 them to the requisite thickness, so that when they were sewed with sinews to the wooden whalebone-lashed frames 

 of these boats, they dried into a pale, greenish- white, -prior to oiling; and were even then almost translucent, tough 

 and strong. 



USES OF WALRUS HIDES. Until I saw the bidarrahs of the St. Lawrence natives in 1874, I was more 

 or less inclined to believe that the tough, thick, and spongy hide of the walrus would be too refractory in 

 dressing for use in covering such light frames, especially those of the bidarka; but the manifest excellence and 

 seaworthiness of these Eskimo boats satisfied me that I was mistaken. I saw, however, abundant evidence of the 

 much greater labor required in tanning or paring down the thick cuticle to that thin, tough transparency so marked 

 on their bidarrahs ; for the pelt of the hair-seal, or sea-lion, does not require aiiy more attention when applied to 

 this service than simply unhairing it ; this is done by first sweating the "loughtak" in piles, then rudely, but rapidly, 

 scraping, with blunt knives or stone flensers, the hair oif in large patches at every stroke; the skin is then air-dried, 

 being stretched on a stout frame, where, in the lapse of a few weeks, it becomes as rigid as a board. When required 

 for use thereafter, it is soaked in water until soft or " green " again, then it is sewed with sinews, while in this fresh 

 condition, tightly over the slight wooden skeleton of the bidarka or the heavier frame of the bidarrah. In this 

 manner the skin-boats and lighters at the islands are covered ; then they are air-dried thoroughly before oiling, 

 which is dorfe when the skin has become well indurated, so as to bind the ribs and keel as with an iron plating ; 

 the thick, unrefined seal -oil keeps the water out for twelve to twenty hours, according to the character of the hides; 

 when, however, the skin-covering begins to "bag in" between the ribs of the frame, then it is necessary to haul the 

 bidarrah out and air-dry it again, and re-oiling. If attended to thoroughly and constantly, those skin-covered boats 

 are the best species of lighter which can be used at these islands, for they will stand more thumping and pounding 

 on the rocks and alongside ship than all wooden, or even corrugated iron lighters could endure, and remain seaworthy. 



MANNER OF DRESSING WALRUS AND SEA-LION HIDES. I noticed that the St. Lawrence Eskimo pared the 

 walrus hide down from the outer surface or hairy side; while at St. Paul, when it became necessary to reduce the 

 thickness of a sea-lion's skin at spots around the neck and shoulders, the paring was done on the fleshy side. 

 Very little thinning, however, was needed in the case of sea-lion " loughtak r .t 



GASTRONOMIC QUALITIES OF WALRUS MEAT. The flavor of the raw, rank mollusca, upon which it feeds 

 seems to permeate the fiber of the flesh, making it very offensive to the civilized palate; but the Eskimos, who do 



the greatest whaling fleet that ever floated, those vessels could not, nor can they now, approach nearer than sixty or even eighty miles of 

 the muddy shoals, sands, and bars upon -which the walrus rest there ; scattered in herds of a dozen or so in numbers np to bodies of 

 thousands; living in lethargic peace, and almost unmolested, except in several small districts which are carefully hunted over by the 

 natives of Oogashik for oil and ivory. I have been credibly informed that they also breed, in Bristol bay, and along the coast as far north 

 as Cape Avinova, during some seasons of exceptional rigor in the Arctic. 



*I depart from the Pacific walrus, for a moment, in thus speaking of its Atlantic brother with reference to the testimony of the rocks 

 as to its limit of southern range north of the equator; for the thought of herds of walrus floating do-wn on immense frigid floes over the 

 present low lauds of Virginia and North Carolina, and of Anvers and near Paris, France, is an interesting one, relative to the features of 

 the great ice age; down they came, that is certain. Van Beneden aud Leidy-have recently figured their aged bones as they are silicified 

 or cast in the marls of those southern coasts and interiors. [See Leidy, Tran*. Am. Phil. Soc., xi, 1860, Philadelphia. Van Beneden: De* 

 de 0*8. Foss. ties Envirtw <?Anters; Annales Mas. d'Hist. Xat. de Belgique, 1877, tome i, pp. 40-41.] No such bones ha-ve as yet been founp 

 on the northwest coast, or in Alaska. 



t When I stepped, for the first time, into the baidar of St. Paul island, and went ashore, from the "Alexander", over a heavy seai 

 safely to the lower bight of Lukannon bay, my sensations were of emphatic distrust; the partially water-softened skin-oovcring would 

 puff up between the wooden ribs, and then draw back, as the waves rose and fell, so much like an unstable support above the cold green 

 water below, that I frankly expressed my surprise at snch an outlandish craft. My thoughts quickly turned to a higher appreciation of 

 those hardy navigators who used these vessels in circumpolar seas years ago, and the Russians, who, more recently, employed bidarrahs 

 chiefly to explore Alaskan and Kamtchatkan terra incognita. There is an old poem in Aritus, written by a Roman as early as 445 A. D. ; it 

 describes the ravages of Saxon pirates along the southern coasts of Britain, whojised just snch vessels as is this bidarrah of St. Paul. 



Qnin et armoricns piratim Saxona tractns 



Spirabat, cui pelle falum fulcare Britannum 



Ludus, et assuto glaucnm mare findere lembo. 



These boats were probably covered with either horse or bull's hides. When used in England they were known as coracles; in Ireland 

 they were styled curachs; Pliny tells us that Ciesar moved his army in Britain over lakes and rivers in such boats. Even the Greeks used 

 them, terming them karabia; and, the Russian word of korabl', or "ship", is derived from it. King Alfred, in 870-872, tells us that the 

 Finns made sad havoc among the Swedish settlements on the numerous "meres" (lakes) in the moors of their country, by "carrying their 

 ships (baidars) overland in the meres whence they make depredations on the Northmen : their ships are small and very light". 



All air-dried seal pelts, no matter whether hair- or fur-seal, sea- lion or -n alms hides, are called by the Aleutians, and also by the 

 Kamtc-hadales, "loughtak" or "lofftak". When the natives of Kamtchatka told Steller in 1740-'42, that the large h,airrseal, Phocabarbata, 

 \\:is known to them as "loughtak", they evidently did not give him their specific upme for the seal; but rather expressed their sense of iis 

 large skin, which was so highly prized by them as to lie ''the loughtak" of all other loughtak in those waters of their country. Eriynathu* 

 barbatus has never been seen around or on these islands of the Pribylov group, but every air-dried fur-seal, or sea-lion skin, there, is i-alk-d. 

 "loughtak" by the people. 



