350 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



not rub off or " crock " the whitest linen when moistened ; and it 

 will wear the weather, as I have myself seen it on the form of a sea- 

 captain's wife, for six and seven successive seasons, without show- 

 ing the least bit of dimness or raggedness. I speak of dyeing 

 alone ; I might say the earlier steps of unhairing, in which the over- 

 hair is deftly combed out and off from the skin, heated to such a 

 point that the roots of the fur are not loosened, while those to the 

 coarser hirsute growth are. If this is not done with perfect uni- 

 formity, the fur will never lie smooth, no matter how skilfully dyed; 

 it will always have a rumpled, ruffled look. Therefore the hastily- 

 dyed sacks are cheap ; and are enhanced in order of value just as 

 the labor of dyeing is expended upon them. 



Another singular and striking characteristic of the Island of St. 

 Paul, is the fact that this immense slaughtering-field, upon which 

 seventy-five thousand to ninety thousand fresh carcasses lie every 

 season, sloughing away into the sand beneath, does not cause any 

 sickness among the people who live right over them, so to speak. 

 A cool, raw temperature, and strong winds, peculiar to the place, 

 seem to prevent any unhealthy effect from that fermentation of de- 

 cay. An Elymus and other grasses once more take heart and 

 grow with magical vigor over the unsightly spot, to which the seal- 

 ing-gang again return, repeating their work upon this place which 

 we have marked before, three years ago. In that way this strip of 

 ground, seen on my map between the village, the east landing, and 

 the lagoon, contains the bones and the oil-drippings and other frag- 

 ments thereof, of more than three million seals slain since 1786 

 thereon, while the slaughter-fields at Novashtoshnah record the end 

 of a million more ! 



I remember well those unmitigated sensations of disgust which 

 possessed me when I first landed, April 28, 1872, on the Pribylov 

 Islands, and passed up from the beach, at Lukannon, to the village 

 over the killing-grounds ; though there was a heavy coat of snow on 

 the fields, yet each and every one of seventy-five thousand decaying 

 carcasses was there, and bare, having burned, as it were, their way 

 out to the open air, polluting the same to a sad degree. I was 

 laughed at by the residents who noticed my facial contortions, and 

 assured that this state of smell was nothing to what I should soon 

 experience when the frost and snow had fairly melted. They were 

 correct ; the odor along by the end of May was terrific punishment 

 to my olfactories, and continued so for several weeks until my sense 



