THE QUEST OF THE OTTER. 133 



ure is not full-grown until it has passed its fourth season. The 

 rufous-white nose and mustache of the pup are not changed in the 

 pelage of the adult, but remain constant through life. The whis- 

 kers are short, wliite, and fine. So much for the biology of the 

 sea-otter. Now we turn to the still more interesting one of its 

 captors. 



The typical hunter is an Aleutian Islander or a native of Kadiak. 

 He is not a large man — rather below our standard — say five feet 

 five or six inches in stature. There are notable exceptions to this 

 rule, for some of them are over six feet, while others are veritable 

 dwarfs — i-esemble gnomes more than anybody else. He wears the 

 peculiar expression of a Japanese more than any other. His 

 hair is long, coarse, and black ; face is broad ; high, prominent 

 cheek bones, with an insignificant flattened nose ; the eyes are 

 small, black, and set wide in his head under faintly marked eye- 

 brows, just a faint suggestion of Mongolian obliquity ; the lips are 

 full, the mouth large, and the lower jaw square and prognathous ; 

 the ears are small, likewise his feet and liands ; his skin in youth is 

 often quite fair, with a faint flush in the cheeks, but soon weathers 

 into a yellowish-brown that again seams into deep flabby wrinkles 

 with middle and old age. He has a full, even set of good teeth, 

 while his body, as might be inferred from his habit of living so 

 much of his life in the cramped "bidarka"'* or skin boat, is well 

 developed in the chest and arms, but decidedly sprung at the knees, 

 and he is slightly unsteady in his pigeon-toed gait. 



The mate of this hunter was when young a very good-looking 

 young woman, who never could honestly be called handsome, yet 

 she was then and is now very far from being hideov;s or rejDulsive. 



* The " bidarka "' is a light framework of wooden timber.s and withes very 

 tightly lashed together with sinews in the form indicated by my illustrations. 

 It is covered with untanned sea-lion skins, which are sewed on over it while 

 they are wet and soft. When the skins dry out they contract, and bind the 

 frame, and are as taut as the parchment of a well-strung bass-drum. Then 

 the native smears the whole over with thick seal-oil, which keeps the water 

 out of the pores of the skin for quite a long period and prevents the slacken- 

 ing of the taut binding of the little vessel for twenty-four to thirty hours at a 

 single time. Then the bidarka must be hauled out and allowed to dry off in 

 the wind, when it again becomes hard and tight. Most of them are made with 

 two man-holes, some have three, and a great many have biat one. The otter- 

 hunters always go in pairs, or, in other words, use two-holed bidarkies. 



