FISHING VESSELS AND BOATS OE THE PACIFIC COAST. 
33 
fastened over the gunwales and its edges drawn down with lashings to the battens, 
is left to dry and shrink until the whole fabric is firmly drawn together and the cover- 
ing is nearly as rigid as sheet iron. 
A model (No. 38882) of a bidarrah used at St. Michael’s, Alaska, which is now in 
the National Museum, has a single mast, which is very ingeniously supported by stays 
and shrouds of seal skin. On this is set a single square sail of coarse matting, which 
is fastened to the yard with sinews, while the braces, and all the material which on 
an ordinary boat would be of rope, are here made of seal or walrus hide. Of course it 
will be readily understood that a sail can be used on such a boat only when it is going 
before the wind. At other times it is propelled by oars or paddles. 
The following are the dimensions of a bidarrah of the type represented by the 
above-mentioned model : 
Feet. Inches. 
Length over all 23 0 
Length on bottom 15 0 
Beam, extreme 6 9 
Width of bottom amidship 3 0 
Height ami dship - 2 10£ 
Height at bow 3 0 
Height at Stern - 4 9 
Length of mast 13 6 
Length of yard 12 6 
Sail (feet square) 12 0 
Oars 10 9 
( 6 3 
Paddles < to 
( 7 9 
The illustrations of a bidarrah, figs. 3 and 3a, plate x, show the form and construc- 
tion of one of these boats which is slightly smaller than the dimensions given above. 
The finest bidarrahs for transportation seen in Alaska by Elliott were those used by 
the St. Lawrence natives. He says of them : 
These were made out of dressed walrus hides, shaved and -pared down by them to the requisite 
thickness, so that when they were sewed with sinews to the wooden whalebone-lashed frames of 
such boats they dried into a pale greenish- white prior to oiling, and were, even then almost translucent, 
tough, and strong. 
When I stepped for the first time into the baidar of St. Paul Island and went ashore from the 
Alexander, over a heavy sea, safely to the lower bight of Lukannon Bay, my sensations were emphatic 
disgust; the partially water-softened skin covering would puff up between the wooden ribs and then 
draw back as the waves rose and fell, so much like an unstable support above the cold green water 
below that I frankly expressed my surprise at such an outlandish craft. My thoughts quickly 
turned to a higher appreciation of those hardy navigators who used these vessels in circumpolar seas 
years ago, and the Eussians who, more recently, employed bidarrahs chiefly to explore Alaskan and 
Kamchatkan terras incognitce. 
Until I saw these bidarrahs of the St. Lawrence natives, in 1874, 1 was more or less inclined to believe 
that the tough, thick, and spongy hide of a walrus would be too refractory in dressing for use in 
covering such light frames, especially those of the bidarka ; but the manifest excellence and seaworthi- 
ness of those Eskimo boats satisfied me that I was mistaken. I saw, however, abundant evidence of 
a much greater labor required to tan or pare down this thick cuticle to that thin, dense transparency 
so marked on their bidarrahs ; for the pelt of a hair seal or sea lion does not need any more attention 
when applied to this service than that of simply unhairing it. This is done by first sweating the 
F. C. B. 1890—3 
