WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS. 241 



are passive killers of time, drinking tea and sleeping, with a few 

 disagreeable exceptions, such as the gamblers. There are a half- 

 dozen of these characters at St. Paul, and perhaps as many at St. 

 George, who spend whole nights at their sittings, even during the 

 sealing season, playing games of cards taught by Russians and per- 

 sons who have been on the island since the transfer of the territory ; 

 but the majority of the men, women, and children, not being com- 

 pelled to exert themselves to obtain any of the chief or even the 

 least of the necessaries of life, such as tea and hard bread, sleep 

 the greater portion of the time, when not busy in eating and in the 

 daily observances of that routine belonging to the Greek Catholic 

 Church. The teachings, pomp, and circumstance of the religious ob- 

 servances of this faith alone preserve these people from absolute stag- 

 nation. In obedience to its promptings they gladly attend church 

 very regularly. They also make and receive calls on their saints' 

 days, and such days are very numerous. The natives add to these 

 entertainments of their saints' day and birth-festivals, or "Eman- 

 nimiks," the music of accordeons and violins. Upon the former 

 and its variation, the concertina, they play a number of airs, and 

 are real fond of the noise. A great many of the women in particu- 

 lar can render indifferently a limited selection of tunes, many of 

 which are the old battle-songs, so popular during the rebellion, 

 woven into weird Russian waltzes and love-ditties, which they have 

 jointly gathered from their former masters and our soldiers, who 

 were quartered here in 1869. From the Russians and the troops 

 also they have learned to dance various figures, and have been 

 taught to waltz. These dances, however, the old folks do not enjoy 

 very much. They will come in and sit around and look at the 

 young performers with stolid indifference ; but if they manage to 

 get a strong current of tea setting in their direction, nicely sugared 

 and toned up, they revive and join in the mirth. In old times they 

 never danced here unless they were drunk, and it was the principal 

 occupation of the amiable and mischievous treasury agents and 

 others in those early days to stimulate this beery fun. 



Seal-meat is their staple food, and in the village of St. Paul 

 they consume on an average fully five hundred pounds a day the 

 year round, and they are, by the permission of the Secretary of the 

 Treasury, allowed occasionally to kill five thousand or six thousand 

 seal-pups, or an average of twenty-two to thirty young "kotickie" 

 for each man, woman, and child in the settlements. The pups will 

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