THE FUli SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 



(3.) Fry these steaks, or stew them a, la mode, with a few thin slices of sweet " breakfast" 

 bacon, seasoning with pepper and salt ; a rich brown gravy follows the cooking of the meat; serve 

 hot, and it is, strictly judged, a very excellent meal for the daintiest feeder and I hereby recom- 

 mend it confidently as a safe venture for any newcomer to make. 



MEAT OP THE SEA-LION. The flesh of young sea- lions is still better than that of the fur-seal, 

 while the natives say that the meat of the hair-seal (Phoca vitulina) is superior to both, being more 

 juicy ; fur-seal meat is exceedingly dry, hence the necessity of putting bacon into the fryiug-pau 

 or stew-pot with it ; sea-lion flesh is an improvement in this respect, and also that its fat, strange 

 to say, is wholly clear, white, and inodorous, while the blubber of the " holluschickie" is sickening 

 to the smell, and will, nine times out of ten, cause any civilized stomach to throw it up as quickly 

 as it is swallowed. The natives, however, eat a great deal of it simply because they are too lazy 

 to clean their fur-seal cuts, and not because they really relish it. 



In this connection it may be well to add, that the liver of both Callorhinus and Eumetopias is 

 sweet and wholesome; or, in other words, it is as good as liver usually is in Pulton Market; the 

 tongues are small, white, and fat ; they are regularly cut out. to some extent, and salted in ordinary 

 water-buckets for exportation to curious friends ; they have but slight claim to gastronomic 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 Ooualash!>a, do exert themselves enough every season to undergo the extra labor of 

 putting up a few barrels of fresh salted seal-meat, which, being carried down to Illoolook by the 

 company's vessels, affords a delightful variation to the steady codfish diet of the Aleutian Islanders. 



8. MANNER OF CARING FOR AND SHIPPING THE FUR-SEAL. 



CUEING THE RAW SKINS. The skins are taken from the field to the salt-house 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 " keii- 

 ches," or bins.* The salt-house is a large, barn-like frame structure, so built as to aft'ord one- 



* The practice of curing iii early times was quite different from this rapid and effective process of salting. The 

 skins were then all air-dried, pegged out, when "green," upon the ground, or else stretched upon a wooden trellis or 

 frame, which stood like a rude fence adjacent to the killing grounds ; it was the accumulation of such air-dried skin: 

 from the Pi ibylov Islands at Sitka which rotted so in 1803 that " 750,000 of them were cut up or thrown out into the 

 sea," completely destroyed. Had they been treated as they now are, such a calamity and hideous waste could noi 

 have occurred. 



The method of air-drying which the old settlers employed is well portrayed by the practice of the natives up 

 there now, who treat a few hundred sea-lion skins to the process every fall ; preparing them thus for shipment to 

 Oonalashka, where they are used by brother Aleuts in covering their bidarkies or kyacks. 



The natives, in speaking to me of this matter, said that whenever the weather was rough and the wind blowing 

 hard these air-dried seal skius, as they were tossed from the bidarrah to the ship's deck, numbers of them would 

 frequently turn in the wind and fly clean over the vessel into the water beyond, where they were lost. 



Under the old order of affairs, prior to the present management, the skins were packed up and carried oil the 

 backs of the boys and girls, women and old men, to the salt-houses or drying-frames. When I first arrived, season of 

 187si, a slight variation was made in this respect by breaking a small Siberian bull into harness and hitching it to a 

 cart, in which the pelts were hauled. Before the cart was adjusted, however, and the bull taught to pull, it was 

 led out to the killing grounds, by a ring in its nose, and literally covered with the green seal hides, which were 

 thus packed to the keuches. The natives were delighted with even this partial assistance; but now they have no 

 further concern about it at all, for several mules and carts render prompt and ample service. They were introduced 

 here, first, in 1874. The Russian Alaska Company and also the Alaska Commercial Company have brought np three 

 or four horses to Saint Paul, but they have been unfortunate in losing them all by their dying soon after landing, the 

 voyage and the climate combined being inimical to equine health ; but the inules of the present order of affairs have 

 been successful in their transportation to and residence in the Pribylov Islands. One, the first of these horses just , 

 referred to, perhaps did not have a fair chance for its life. It was saddled one morning, and several camp-kettles, 

 coffee-pots, &c., slung on the crupper for the use of the Russian agent, who was going up to Northeast Point for a 

 week or ten days' visit. He got into the saddle, and while en route, near Polaviua, a kettle or pot broke loose be- 

 hind, the alarmed horse kicked its rider promptly off, and disappeared on a full run, in tlie fog, going toward the 

 bogs of Kaniuista, where its lifeless and fox-gnawed body was eventually found several days afterwards. 

 SEC. V, VOL. II 24 



