THE QUEST OF THE OTTER. 137 



made in the man. He gets drunk, and bis wife too, by taking 

 sugar, flour, and dried-apples, rice or bops, if be can get tbem, in 

 certain proi^ortions, puts tbem into a barrel or cask, witb water, 

 bungs it up and waits for fermentation to do its work. Before it bas 

 worked entirely clear be draws off a tbick, sour liquid wbicb in- 

 toxicates bim most effectually — be beats bis spouse and runs ber 

 and children from tbe bouse, smashes things, and for weeks after- 

 ward the barrabkie is desolate and open as tbe result of such orgies. 

 If be continues, bis health is shattered, be rajDidly fails as a hunter, 

 and be suffers the pangs of poverty witb bis family. It is said 

 upon good authority that the brewing of this liquor was taught to 

 these people by the earliest Russian arrivals in their country, who 

 made it as an anti-scorbutic ; but it certainly bas not proved to be 

 a blessing in disguise, for it bas brought upon tbem nearly all tbe 

 misery that they are capable of understanding. 



In concluding this brief introduction to the life of the otter- 

 hunter, we may fitly call attention to tbe fact that Kahgoon and bis 

 family are devout members of the Greek Catholic Church, as are 

 all of his people, without a single exception, between Attoo and 

 Kadiak Islands — nearly five thousand souls to-day, living in scat- 

 tered hamlets all along between. 



The subtle acumen displayed by the sea-otter in the selection of 

 its habitat can only be fully aj^preciated by bim who has visited the 

 chosen land, reefs, and water of its resort. It is a region so gloomy, 

 so pitilessly beaten by wind and waves, by sleet, rain and persistent 

 fog, that tbe good Bishop Veniaminov, when he first came among 

 the natives of the Aleutian Islands, ordered tbe curriculum of hell 

 to be omitted from the church breviary, saying, as he did so, that 

 these people had enough of it here on this earth ! Tbe fury of 

 hurricane gales, tbe vagaries of swift and intricate currents in and 

 out of the passages, the eccentricities of the barometer, the black- 

 ness of tbe fog enveloping all in its dark, damp shroud, so alarm 

 and discomfit the white man that be willingly gives up the entire 

 chase of tbe sea-otter to that brown-skinned Aleut, wiio alone 

 seems to be so constituted as to dare and wrestle with these ob- 

 stacles through descent from bis hardy ancestors, who, in turn, 

 have been centuries before him engaged just as he is to-day. 



So we find tbe sea-otter-hunting of the present, as it was in the 

 past, entirely confined to the natives, with white traders here and 

 there vieing in active competition one with the other in bidding for 



