FISHERIES OF THE PACIFIC COAST. 
113 
Boats . — The best boat for otter hunting is the two-hole skin bidarka; 
no other is used by the Aleuts. White men naturally prefer light-built, 
swift- rowing wooden boats, but they seldom engage personally in hunting 
this animal, as the life training and inherited habits of the native spe- 
cially fit him for the work. 
Apparatus and methods of capture. — Clubs, spears, and rifles are used 
for effecting the capture. The two former are the native weapons and 
until recently have been generally preferred by the Aleuts, because 
they could be used without noise ; but lately the white traders have 
encouraged the use of rifles, and these have largely superseded the 
primitive weapons of the natives. 
Elliott makes the following interesting remarks concerning the sea 
otter, and the methods pursued in hunting it : 
The subtle acumen displayed by the sea otter in the selection of its habitat can 
only be fully appreciated by him 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 the good Bishop Yeniaminov, when he first came 
among the natives of the Aleutian Islands, ordered the curriculum of hell to be omit- 
ted from the church breviary, saying as he did so that these people had enough of it 
here on this earth! The fury of hurricane gales, the vagaries of swift and intricate 
currents in and out of the passages, the eccentricities of the barometer, the blackness 
of the fog, enveloping all in its dark, damp shroud, so alarm and discomfit the white 
man that he willingly gives up the entire chase of the sea otter to that brown- 
skinned Aleut who alone seems to be so constituted as to dare and wrestle with these 
obstacles through descent from his hardy ancestors, who in turn have been centuries 
before him engaged just as he is to-day. 
So we find the sea-otter hunting of the present, as it was in the past, entirely con- 
fined to the natives, with white traders here and there vying in active competition 
one with the other in bidding for the quarry of those dusky captors. The traders 
erect small frame dwellings as stores in the midst of otter-hunting settlements, places 
like Uualaska, Belcovsky, Unga, aud Kadiak villages, which are the chief resorts 
of population and this trade in Alaska. They own and employ small schooners, be- 
tween 30 aud 100 tons burden, in conveying the hunting parties to and from these 
hamlets above mentioned, as they go to and return from the sea-otter hunting grounds 
of Sannak and the Chernabura Rocks, where five-sixths of all the sea otters annually 
taken in Alaska are secured. Why these animals should evince so much partiality 
for this region between the Straits of Unimak and the west end of Kadiak Island is 
somewhat mysterious, but, nevertheless, it is the great sea-otter hunting-ground of the 
country. Saunak Island, itself, is small, with a coast circuit of less thau 18 miles. 
Spots of sand beach are found here and there, but the major portion of the shore is 
composed of enormous water- worn bowlders, piled up high by the booming surf. The 
interior 'is low and rolling, with a central ridge rising into three hills, the middle 
one some 800 feet high. There is no timber here, but an abundant exhibit of grasses, 
mosses, and sphagnum, with a score of little fresh-water ponds, in which multi- 
tudes of ducks and geese are found every spring aud fall. The natives do not live 
upon the islaud because the making of fires and scattering of food-refuse, and other 
numerous objectionable matters connected with their settlement, alarm the otters 
and drive them off to parts unknown. Thus the island is only camped upon by the 
hunting squads, and fires are never made unless the wind is from the southward, 
siuce no sea otters are ever found to the northward of the ground. The sufferings, 
miseries of cold, and even hunger, to which the Aleuts subject themselves here every 
winter, going for weeks and weeks at a time without tires, even for cooking, with 
H. Mis. 274—8 
