364 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



By reference to my sketch-map of Northeast Point rookery the 

 reader will notice a peculiar neck or boot- shaped point, which I 

 have designated as Sea-lion Neck. That area is a spot upon which 

 a large number of sea-lions are always to be found during the 

 season. As they are so shy and sure to take to water upon the ap- 

 pearance or presence of man near by, the natives adopt this plan : 

 Along by the middle or end of September, as late sometimes as 

 November, and after the fur-seal rookeries have broken up for the 

 year, fifteen or twenty of the very best men in the village are se- 

 lected by one of their chiefs for a sea-lion rendezvous at Northeast 

 Point. They go up there with their provisions, tea, and sugar, and 

 blankets, and make themselves at home in the barrabora and house 

 which I have located on the sketch-map of Novastoshnah, prepared 

 to stay, if necessary, a month, or until they shall get the whole 

 drove together of two or three hundred sea-lions. 



The " seevitchie," as the natives call those animals, cannot be 

 approached successfully by daylight, so these hunters lie by in this 

 house of Webster's until a favorable night comes along, one in 

 which the moon is partially obscured by drifting clouds and the 

 wind blows over them from the rookery where the sea-lions lie. 

 Such an opportunity being afforded, they step down to the beach 

 at low water and proceed to creep on all fours across surf-beaten 

 sand and boulders up between the dozing herd, and the high-water 

 mark where it rests. In this way a small body of natives, crawl- 

 ing along in Indian file, may pass unnoticed by sea-lion sentries, 

 which doubtless in that uncertain light see, but confound the forms 

 of their human enemies with those of seals. When the creeping 

 Aleutes have all reached the strip of beach that is left bare by ebb- 

 tide, and is between the surf and those unsuspecting animals, at a 

 given signal from their crawling leader they at once leap to their 

 feet, shout, yell, brandishing their arms and firing off pistols, while 

 the astonished and terrified lions roar, and flounder in every direc- 

 tion. 



If at the moment of surprise seevitchie are sleeping with their 

 heads pointed toward the water, as they rise up in fright they 

 charge straight on in that direction, right over the men themselves ; 

 but those which have been resting at this instant, when startled, 

 pointed landward, up they rise and follow that course just as 

 desperately, and nothing will turn them either one way or the 

 other. These sea-lions which charged for the water are lost, of 



