THE GREAT ALEUTIAN CHAIN. 151 



backs and sides do not seem to arouse or alarm them in the least. 

 Down they lazily go, to soon rise again with a sonorous whistle as 

 they " blow." A cloud of whale -birds hover over and settle on the 

 watery area occupied by the feeding whales, ever and anon rising, 

 to alight again as the cetacean fleet leaves its feathered convoy 

 tossing behind on the wavelets of the sea. 



Our skipper, who has been a whaler in his youth, tells us, with 

 a quaint air of contempt for what we so much admire, that these 

 fish-like monsters are of no consequence in the eyes of a wise whal- 

 ing captain, for though they are large enough, it is true, yet they 

 are the wrong breed of whales they are lean, fighting humpbacks, 

 which, if struck with a harpoon, will run like an express engine for 

 fifty miles or more, carrying a boat and crew of our species, either 

 down in its rapid rush, or else diving in the shoals, over which it 

 feeds, it rolls the death-dealing iron out or breaks it off on the 

 bottom. 



A stiff head-wind causes the course of the vessel to frequently 

 lie close in to the shore where the massive bluffs of Akoon and 

 Akootan rise in grim defiance, and from the shelves and interstices 

 of which flocks of sea-parrots and little auks fly out in circling 

 flights of curiosity and inspection around the schooner. As we 

 watch the lazy motions of the whales, we recall the fact that on the 

 summits of these bluffs and headlands now before us, the natives of 

 Oonimak, as well as those to the country born, were in the habit of 

 standing through long vigils of daily and nightly watch, as they 

 went whale-fishing long ago after their own primitive fashion. 



Nothing fit to eat is, or was, so highly prized by the Aleutes or 

 Kaniags, as the blubber and gristle of a whale. To secure this 

 luxury these savages were in the habit of subjecting themselves to 

 infinite hardship and repeated bitter disappointment. The chase 

 of the " ahgashitnak " * and the little "akhoaks"f was the impor- 

 tant business of their lives in times of peace. The native hunter 

 used, as his sole weapon of destruction, a spear-handle of wood 

 about six feet in length ; to the head of this he lashed a neatly- 

 polished socket of walrus ivory, in which he inserted a tip of ser- 

 rated slate that resembled a gigantic arrow-point, twelve or fourteen 

 inches long and four or five broad at the barbs, and upon the point 

 of which he carved his own mark. 



* Yearling whale. f Calf whales. 



