76 THE FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



When our government took possession of Alaska, they brought with them, however, the first physicians and 

 supplies that had ever had lodgment on the Pribylov islands, and when these officers took their departure with the 

 troops, their services and stores were naturally suggested as desirable of continuance. Accordingly, the Alaska 

 Commercial Company, when it took the business control of the islands, 1870-71, promptly established a doctor and 

 a pharmacy on each island, and latterly a small hospital has been erected and sustained by it at St. Paul. These 

 physicians are agents of the company, under salary, and are directed to give their time and attention to all 

 illness on either island, free of charge; also, dispensing needful medicines, etc., gratis. Dr. Otto Cramer, a native 

 of Berlin, was the surgeon on St. Paul during my sojourn there, and I recall his sad death at sea in 1875 with 

 unfeigned regret, for he was a singularly well-read gentleman and an accomplished physician, musician, and 

 scholarly in his mind. He was a victim to acute melancholia; some heavy shadow was hanging from his early life 

 over him which none of us cared to lift. 



Stolid behavior of natives when injured. — Dr. Cramer often said, speaking of the peculiarities of the 

 natives when sick at St. Paul, that they never notified him of their illness until the diseases had usually got so firm 

 hold of the patients as to baffle all medical relief. He complained that they would let the old shamanistic doctress 

 of the village charm, drug, and weary the sick until death seemed imminent, and then stolidly send for him. " Ochta, 

 mein Gott! too late, too late, such people!" he would usually conclude his account of this case or that, as it might be. 



Native methods of cooking. — The native cooking is now all done in their houses, on small cast-iron stoves 

 of American pattern and make. In olden times the unavoidable use of fur-seal blubber in culinary operations 

 caused the erection, outside of most "barrabaras", of a small sod-walled and low dirt-roofed kitchen, in which the 

 strong-smelling blubber-fires were kindled. Indifferent as the native became to smells and smoke in the filthy life 

 of early days upon these islands, yet the acrid, stifling, asthmatic effect of the blubber clouds never failed to punish 

 him whenever he attempted to make use of such a fire in his living-room. Most of these "cookhnets", or 

 "povarniks", were in full blast when I first landed at St. Paul, and coming fi-equently into range of their smoky 

 effluvium, I was infinitely annoyed ; now, however, the complete substitution of new frame-houses for the " barrabkies" 

 Las, I believe, caused a perfect abatement of the nuisance. 



The people of the seal-islands indulge in very liberal quantities of boiled seal meat and tea ; these staples, 

 together with hard bread or soda crackers, form the routine of their bill of fare, as far as cooking goes, varied 

 at wide intervals by boiled halibut, stewed or roasted birds, and the queerly-scrambled eggs of the same. The 

 more ancient these oiilogical viands, the better for Aleutian gusto. Some of the women, however, have leai'ned 

 to bake bread and biscuits, but this consumes too much of the scant fuel at their disposal to be a popular or general 

 practice among them. They sit at tables in their houses now, on benches, and eat from plates with knives and 

 forks, instead of squatting around an iron pot on the "barrabkie" floor to dip in sans ceremonie with spoons, ladles, 

 and grimy fingers as in "ye olden tyme". They have, however, one sad failing developed by this march to a higher 

 civilization, and that is the determination of the Aleutian dish-washer to use cold water on her greasy plates. 



Great size of the fur-seal's heart: Its expanded lungs. — In opening many hundreds of these freshly- 

 killed seals, after skinning, while searching in vain for supposed food-contents of their stomachs, I was impressed by 

 the exceeding size of the heart, and the perfect organization of the lungs; while the volume of blood in proportion to 

 the size and weight is, I am sure, greater in the fur-seal than in any other animal. The enormous lungs, and the 

 veins laid bare, showed their beautiful adaptation to frequent aquatic submergence, by their great capacity toward 

 the root of the heart, and by the enormous cava or hepatic reservoir. The widened aortic arch and the diminution 

 of the abdominal aorta modify the blood-current, of which the vast muscular apparatus of the forequarters and the 

 large brain must receive the major share of supply as it comes from the enlarged heart.* 



13. MAN^NEE OF CARING FOR AND SHIPPING THE FUR-SEAL SKINS. 



Curing 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 " kenches", or bins.t The salt-house is a large barn-like 

 frame structure, so built as to afford one-third of its width in the center, from end to end, clear and open as a passage- 

 way; while on each side are rows of stanchions, with sliding planks, which are taken down and put up in the form 

 of deep bins, or boxes — "kenches," the sealers call them. As the pile of skins is laid at the bottom of an empty 

 "kench", and salt thrown in on the outer edges, these planks are also put in place, so that the salt may be kept 

 intact until the bin is filled as high up as a man can toss the skins. After lying two or three weeks in this stylo 



' I had prepared many notes upon the muscular anatomy of the fur-seal and Ihe sea-lion ; but I find that it has been anticipated so 

 well by what Dr. Murie published in the transactions of the Zoological Society of London, 1869-72, as to render their reproduction here 

 quite superfluous. These observations of Dr. Murie coustitute one of the most valuable contributions to the knowledge of the anatomy 

 of this auimal that has ever been made. He carefully dibsected a young male sea-lion after its death, which had been brought to the 

 Zoological Society's gardens from the Falkland islands. 



tThe practice of curing in early times was ijuito different from this rapid and effective process of salting. The skins were then all 

 air-dried; pegged out, wheu "green", upou the ground, or else stretched upon a wooden trellis or frame, which stood like a rude fence 



