THE SEA-LION HUNT. 471 



MANKKK IN WHICH THE KILLING is CONDUCTED. No attempt is made, even by the boldest 

 Aleut, to destroy an old bull sea-lion by spearing the enraged and powerful beast, which, now 

 familiar witli man and conscious as it were of his puny strength, would seize the lance between 

 its jaws and shake it from the hands of the stoutest one in a moment. Eecoiirse is had to the 

 rifle. The herd is started up the sloping flanks of the black, bluff hill-sides; the females speedily 

 take the front, while the old males hang behind. Then the marksmen, walking up to within a few 

 paces of each animal, deliberately draw their sights upon their heads and shoot them just between 

 the eye and the ear. The old males thus destroyed, the cows and females are in turn surrounded 

 by the natives, who, dropping their rifles, thrust the ueavyjron lances into their trembling bodies 

 at a point behind the fore-flippers, touching the heart with a single lunge. It is an unparalleled 

 spectacle, dreadfully cruel and bloody. 



This surround of the cows is, perhaps, the strangest procedure on the islands. To fully 

 appreciate the subject, the reader must first call to his mind's eye the fact that these female sea- 

 lions, though small beside the males, are yet large animals, 7 and 8 feet long, and weighing, each, 

 as much as any five or six average men. But, in spite of their strength and agility, fifteen 01 

 twenty Aleuts, with a rough, iron-tipped lance in their hands, will surround a drove of fifty or 

 one hundred and fifty of them by forming a noisy, gesticulating circle, gradually closing up, man 

 to man, until the sea-lions are literally piled in a writhing, squirming, struggling mass, one above 

 the other, three or four deep, heads, flippers, bellies, backs all so woven and interwoven in this 

 panic-stricken heap of terrified creatures, that it defies adequate description. The natives spear 

 the cows on top, which, as they sink in 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. 



2. ECONOMIC CTSES OF THE SEA-LION. 



HIGH APPRECIATION OF THE SEA-LION BY THE ALEUTS. 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, Kamtchatka, and the Kuriles, it is invaluable ; they sot great store by it. 

 It supplies them with its hide, mustaches, flesh, fat, sinews, and intestines, which they make up 

 into as many necessary garments, dishes, &c. They have abundant reason to treasure its skin 

 highly, for it is covering to their neat "bid*rkies" and "bidarrahs," the former being the small "kyak" 

 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 soften- 

 ing influence of water for a day or two at a time, if properly air-dried and oiled. After being used 

 during the day, these skin boats are always drawn out on the beach, turned bottom-side up and 

 air dried during the night, in this way made ready for employment again on the morrow. 



When slowly sketching, by measurements, the outlines of a flue adult bull sea lion which the ball 

 from Booterin's rifle had just destroyed, an old "starooka" came up abruptly ; not seeming to see 

 me, she deliberately threw down a large, greasy, skin meat-bag, and whipping out a knife, went 

 to work on my specimen. Curiosity prompted me to keep still in spite of the first sensations of 

 annoyance, so that I might watch her choice and use of the animal's carcass. She first removed 

 the skin, being actively aided in this operation by an uncouth boy ; she then cut off the palms to 

 both fore flippers; the boy at the same time pulled out the mustache bristles ; she then cut out 

 its gullet, from the glottis to its junction with the stomach, carefully divested it of all fleshy 

 attachments, fat, &c. ; she then cut out the stomach itself, and turned it inside out, carelessly 



