370 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



death, are mounted in turn by the live animals underneath ; these 

 meet the deadly lance, in order, and so on until the whole herd is 

 quiet and stilled in the fatal ebbing of their hearts' blood. 



Although the sea-lion has little or no commercial value for us, 

 yet to the service of the natives themselves, who live all along the 

 Bering Sea coast of Alaska, Kamchatka, and the Kuriles, it is in- 

 valuable ; they set great store by it. It supplies them with its hide, 

 mustaches, flesh, fat, sinews, and intestines, which they make up in- 

 to as many necessary garments, food-dishes, etc. They have abun- 

 dant reason to treasure its skin highly, since it is the covering to 

 their neat bidarkas and bidarrahs, the former being the small kayak 

 of Bering Sea, while the latter is a boat of all work, exploration 

 and transportation. These skins are unhaired by sweating in a pile, 

 then they are deftly sewed and carefully stretched over a light keel 

 and frame of wood, making a perfectly water-tight boat that will 

 stand, uninjured, the softening influence of water for a day or two 



were also put into the grimy pouch aforesaid ; then she secured the gall-blad- 

 der and slipped it into a small yeast-powder tin, which was produced by the 

 urchin ; then she finished her economical dissection by cutting the sinews out 

 of its back in unbroken bulk from the cervical vertebra to the sacrum ; all 

 these were stuffed into that skin bag, which she threw on her back and sup- 

 ported it by a band over her head ; she then trudged back to the barrabkie 

 from whence she sallied a short hour ago, like an old vulture to the slaughter. 

 She made the following disposition of its contents: The palms were used to 

 sole a pair of tarbosars, or native boots, of which the uppers and knee-tops 

 were made of the gullets one sea-lion gullet to each boot-top ; the stomach 

 was carefully blown up and left to dry on the barrabkie roof, eventually to be 

 filled with oil rendered from sea-lion or fur-seal blubber. The small intestine 

 was carefully injected with water and cleansed, then distended with air, and 

 pegged out between two stakes, sixty feet apart, with little cross-slats here and 

 there between to keep it clear of the ground. When it is thoroughly dry it 

 is ripped up in a straight line with its length and pressed out into a broad 

 band of parchment gut, which she cuts up and uses in making a water-proof 

 "kamlayka," sewing it with those sinews taken from the back. The liver, 

 leaf lard, and lobes of the lungs were eaten without further cooking, and the 

 little gall-bag was for some use in poulticing a scrofulous sore. The mustache- 

 bristles were a venture of the boy, who gathers all that he can, then sends 

 them to San Francisco, where they find a ready sale to the Chinese, who pay 

 about one cent apiece for them. When the natives cut up a sea-lion carcass 

 or one of a fur-seal, on the killing-grounds for meat, they take only the hams 

 and the loins. Later in the season they eat the entire carcass, which they hang 

 up by its hind flippers on a " laabas " by their houses. 



