FUR-SEAL FISHERIES OF ALASKA. 93 



knife to rapidly cut the skiu clean aud free from the body (and blubber), 

 which he rolls over and out from the hide, by hauling up on it as he 

 advances with his work, standing all this time stooped over the carcass 

 so that his hands are but slightly above it, or the ground. This opera- 

 tion of skinning a fair-sized holluschickie tal-es the best men only one 

 minute and a half! but the average time made by the gang on the 

 ground is about ^ur minutes to the seal. Nothing is left of the skin 

 ui)on the carcass save a small patch of each upper lip on which the 

 coarse mustache grows, the skin on the tip of the lower jaw, the insigni- 

 ticant tail,' together with the bare hide of the flippers. 



During the last live, six, or seven years, a somewhat diiferent method 

 has been in vogne, by which change the work has been exi)edited very 

 much. Two or three white men, servants of the comi)auy leasing the 

 islands, together with two or three of the natives, alone constitute the 

 killing or clubbiug force. They make the selection and knock down 

 the killable seals as the pods are driven up by them in swift rotation; 

 then, four or five of the younger sealers constitute a force known as the 

 "flippering" and stabbing or "sticking" men. These workmen seize 

 each seal, immediately after it is knocked down, and i^lunge a long knife 

 into its heart at a i>oint directly in the center of its chest between its 

 fore flippers; then, with a single swift sweep of this knife, the skin of 

 the prostrate seal is cut through to the blubber in a straight line from 

 the rims of the lower Jaws to the fundament; another circular sweep 

 cuts the skiu right around the head so as to just leave all that forward 

 of the eyes and the tip of the lower jaws; then another sweep of the 

 keen blade cuts the furred skin clear from its junction into each naked 

 fore flipper, and a final sweep separates it from the same junction with 

 its hind flippers and the abortive tail. This done, the work of the flip- 

 pering man ceases : and, he is succeeded in turn by the regular skinner, 

 who steps in soon after, aud quickly completes the skinning out of the 

 carcass, as was done in 1871} and described above. 



The wooden clubs and steel knives are not essentially different 

 to-day from those used in 1872: and, the treatment of the skins not 

 materially changed in the salt houses; only they are cured more rap- 

 idly: salted over, and changed five days after first salting, into a fresh 

 kench, where they lie ready for final binding in ten or twelve days' 

 time from date of first salting. 1 say five days after first salting, 

 because it is done as soon as that, if possible, though it is not essen- 

 tial — ten days often elapses. This resalting is necessary to insure a 

 complete curing of the edges of the pelts. If it is not done, then a 



'This tail of the fur seal is just a suggestion of the article and that is all. Unlike 

 the abbreviated caudal extremities of the bear or the rabbit, it does not seem to be 

 under the slightest control of its owner — at least I never could see it move to any 

 appreciable degree — when the seal is in .action on land. Certainly there is no service 

 re<iuired of it: but it does appear to me rather singular that none of the cliaugeful 

 moods of Callorhimis are capable of giving rise to even a tremor in its short stump 

 of a tail. It is never raised or depressed, aud in fact amounts to a mere excrescence, 

 which many casual observers would not notice. The shrinking, twitching move- 

 ments of the seal skin here and there at irregular intervals are especially uoticed 

 when that animal is asleep, so that even when awake I believe that dermatological 

 motion is an involuntary one. The tail of the sea lion is equally inconsequential; 

 that of the walrus, even more so, while Phoca v'ltulina has one a trifle longer, rela- 

 tively, and much stouter, fleshier than that of the fur seal. 



I found that the natives here were pronounced evolutionists, as are all the many 

 Indian tribes with which I have been thrown in contact during my travels from 

 Mexico to the head of the Stickeen River. They declare that their remote ancestry 

 undoubtedly were fur seals. Indeed, there is a better showing for the brain cases of 

 the fur seal over that of the monkey's skull, as to weight with reference to physical 

 bulk, while their tails are as short or even shorter than most of the anthropoid 

 apes! 



