ALASKA. 81 



to the rookeries selected and held aside, so that the natives can 

 visit and take them as they would so many hogs, without dis- 

 turbing in the slightest degree the peace and quiet of the breed- 

 ing-grounds where the stock is perpetuated. 



The manner in which the natives capture and drive the hol- 

 luschickie up from the hauling-grounds to the slaughtering- 

 fields near the villages and elsewhere, cannot be improved upon, 

 and is most satisfactory. 



In the early part of the season large bodies of the young 

 bachelor seals do not haul up on land very far from the water, 

 a few rods at the most, and the men are obliged to approach 

 slyly and run quickly between the dozing seals and the surf, 

 before they take alarm and bolt into the sea, and in this way a 

 dozen Aleuts, running down the long sand-beach of English 

 Bay, some driving-morning early in June, will turn back from 

 the water thousands of seals, just as the mold-board of a 

 plow lays over and back a furrow of earth. As the sleeping 

 seals are first startled they arise, and seeing men between them 

 and the water, immediately turn, lope and scramble rapidly 

 back over the land ; the natives then leisurely walk on the 

 flanks and in the rear of the drove thus secured, and direct 

 and drive them over to the killing-grounds. 



A drove of seals on hard or firm grassy ground, in cool and 

 moist weather, may with safety be driven at the rate of half a 

 mile an hour; they can be urged along with the expenditure of 

 a great many lives in the drove,. at the speed of a mile or a mile 

 and a quarter even per hour, but this is highly injudicious and 

 is seldom ever done. A bull-seal, fat and unwieldy, cannot 

 travel with the younger ones, but it can lope or gallop as it 

 were over the ground as fast as an ordinary man can run for a 

 hundred yards, but then it falls to the earth supine, utterly ex- 

 hausted, hot and gasping for breath. 



The seals, when driven thus to the killing-grounds, require 

 but little urging; they are permitted to frequently halt and 

 cool off, as heating them injures their fur; they never show 

 fight any more than a flock of sheep would do, unless a few old 

 seals are mixed in, which usually get so weary that they prefer 

 to come to a stand-still and fight rather than to move; this 

 action on their part is of great advantage to all parties con- 

 cerned, and the old fellows are always permitted to drop behind 

 and remain, for the fur on them is of little or no value, the 

 pelage very much shorter, coarser, and more scant than in the 

 6 AL 



