MORSE AND MAHLEMOOT. 453 



enough with a rifle, and expert at distance calculation, to shoot fur- 

 seals successfully from the deck of a vessel on the ocean. The 

 Indians of Cape Flattery do most of their pelagic fur-sealing by 

 cautiously approaching from the leeward when these animals are 

 asleep, and then throw line-darts or harpoons into them before they 

 awaken. 



The finest bidarrah skin-boats of transportation that I have seen 

 in this country were those of the St. Lawrence natives. These were 

 made out of dressed walrus-hides, shaved and pared down by them 

 to the requisite thickness, so that when they were sewed with 

 sinews to the wooden whalebone-lashed frames of such boats they 

 dried into a pale greenish-white prior to oiling, and were even then 

 almost translucent, tough and strong. 



When I stepped, for the first time, into the baidar of St. Paul 

 Island, and went ashore, from the Alexander, over a heavy sea, 

 safely to the lower bight of Lukannon Bay, my sensations were of 

 emphatic distrust ; the partially water-softened skin-covering would 

 puff up between the wooden ribs, and then draw back, as the waves 

 rose and fell, so much like an unstable support above the cold, green 

 water below, that I frankly expressed my surprise at such an 

 outlandish craft. My thoughts quickly turned to a higher ap- 

 preciation of those hardy navigators who used these vessels in cir- 

 cumpolar seas years ago, and of the Russians who, more recently, 

 employed bidarrahs chiefly to explore Alaskan and Kamchatkan 

 terrce incognita. There is an old poem in Avitus, written by a 

 Roman as early as 445 A.D. ; it describes the ravages of Saxon 

 pirates along the southern coasts of Britain, who used just such 

 vessels as this bidarrah of St Paul. 



" Quin et armoricus piratim Saxona tractus 

 Spirabat, cui pelle falum fulcare Britannum 

 Ludus, et assuto glaucum mare findere lembo. '' 



These boats were probably covered with either horse's or bulls' 

 hides. When used in England they were known as coracles; in 

 Ireland they were styled curachs. Pliny tells us that Caesar moved 

 his army in Britain over lakes and rivers in such boats. Even the 

 Greeks used them, terming them karabia ; and the Russian word 

 of korabl', or " ship," is derived from it. King Alfred, in 870-872, 

 tells us that the Finns made sad havoc among many Swedish set- 

 tlements on the numerous " meres " (lakes) in the moors of that 



