AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS. 



345 



favor. The natives are, however, very partial to the liver ; but 

 though they like the tongues, yet they are too lazy to prepare them. 

 A few of them, in obedience to pressing and prayerful appeals from 

 relatives at Oonalashka, do exert themselves enough every season 

 to undergo the extra labor of putting up several barrels of fresh 

 salted seal-meat, which, being carried down to Illoolook by the 

 company's vessels, affords a delightful variation to the steady and 

 monotonous codfish diet of those Aleutian Islanders. 



The final acts of curing and shipping pelts of fur-seals from the 

 warehouses of the villages, rapidly follow work upon the killing- 

 grounds. The skins are taken from the field to the salt-house, 



Interior of Salt House, Village of St. Paul. 

 [Stwicing (fie method uf receiving , st lee-tiny, lynching and tailing "'green " fur-seal aliux.] 



where they are laid out, after being again carefully examined, one 

 upon another, "hair to fat," like so many sheets of paper, with salt 

 profusely spread upon the fleshy sides as they are piled up in the 

 "kenches," or bins. The salt-house is a large barn-like frame 

 structure, so built as to afford one-third of its width in the centre, 

 from end to end, clear and open as a passage-way : while on each 

 side are rows of stanchions, with sliding planks, which are taken 

 down and put up in the form of deep bins or boxes "kenches," 

 the sealers call them. As the pile of skins is laid up from the bot- 

 tom of an empty "kench" and salt thrown in on the outer edges, 

 these planks are also put in place, so that the salt may be kept in- 

 tact until that bin is filled as high up as a man can toss the skins. 

 After lying two or three weeks in this style they become "pickled," 



