WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS. 237 



crow flies from the village, and right under Telegraph HilL This is 

 quite a journey, and \vhen it is remembered that they drink so much 

 tea, and that water has to go with it, some idea of the labor of the 

 old and young females can be derived from an inspection of the 

 map. Latterly, within the last four or five years, the company have 

 opened a spring less than half a mile from the " gorode," which 

 they have plumbed and regulated, so that it supplies them with 

 water now and renders the labor next to nothing, compared with 

 all former difficulty. But to-day, when water is wanted in the 

 Aleutian houses at St. Paul, the man has to get it the woman does 

 not ; he trudges out with a little wooden firkin or tub on his back 

 and brings it to the house. 



Some of the natives save their money ; yet there are very few 

 among them, perhaps not more than a dozen, who have the slight- 

 est economical tendency. What they cannot spend for luxuries, 

 groceries, and tobacco they manage to get away with at the gam- 

 ing-table. They have their misers and their spendthrifts, and they 

 have the usual small proportion who know how to make money, 

 and then how to spend it. A few among them who are in the habit 

 of saving have opened a regular bank-account with the company. 

 Some of them have to-day two or three thousand dollars saved, 

 drawing an interest of nine per cent. 



When the ships arrive and go, the severe and necessary labor of 

 lightering their cargoes off and on from the roadsteads where they 

 anchor is principally performed by these people, and they are paid 

 so much a day for their labor : from fifty cents to one dollar, accord- 

 ing to the character of the service they render. This operation, 

 however, is much dreaded by the ship-captains and sea-going men, 

 whose habits of discipline and automatic regularity and effect of 

 working render them severe critics and impatient coadjutors of the 

 natives, who, to tell the truth, hate to do anything after they have 

 pocketed their reward for sealing ; and when they do labor after 

 this, they regard it as an act of very great condescension on their 

 part. 



As they are living to-day up there, there is no restraint, such as 

 the presence of policemen, courts of justice, fines, etc., which we 

 employ for the suppression of disorder and maintenance of the law 

 in our own land. They understand that if it is necessary to make 

 them law-abiding, and to punish crime, such officers will be among 

 them, and hence, perhaps, is due the fact that from the time that 



