This prostration from exertion will always happen, no matter how carefully they are driven; and in the longer drives, such as two and a half and five miles from Zapadnie on the west, or Polavina on the north, to the village at St. Paul, as much as three or four per cent. of the whole drive will be thus dropped on the road; hence I feel satisfied, from my observation and close attention to this feature, that a considerable number of those that are thus rejected from the drove, and are able to rally and return to the water, die subsequently from internal injuries sustained on the trip, superinduced by this over-exertion. I therefore think it highly improper and impolitic to extend drives of the “holluschickie” over any distance on St. Paul Island exceeding a mile, or a mile and a half—it is better for all parties concerned, and the business too, that salt-houses be erected, and killing-grounds established contiguous to all of the great hauling-grounds, two miles distant from the village on St Paul Island, should the business ever be developed above the present limit, or should the exigencies of the future require a quota from all these places in order to make up the hundred thousand which may be lawfully taken.
As matters are to-day, one hundred thousand seals alone on St. Paul can be taken and skinned in less than forty working days, within a radius of one mile and a half from the village, and from the salt-house at Northeast Point; hence the driving, with the exception of two experimental droves which I witnessed in 1872, has never been made from longer distances than Tolstoi to the eastward, Lukannon to the northward, and Zoltoi to the southward of the killing-grounds at St Paul village. Should, however, an abnormal season recur, in which the larger portion of days during the right period for taking the skins be warmish and dry, it might be necessary, in order to get even seventy-five thousand seals within the twenty-eight or thirty days of their prime condition, for drives to be made from the other great hauling-grounds to the westward and northward, which are now, and have been for the last ten years, entirely unnoticed by our sealers.[134]
Peter Peeshenkov: Pribylov Sealer.
[Attired in the costume of the killing gang, when at work in wet weather.]
The seals, when finally driven up on those flats between the east landing and the village, and almost under the windows of the dwellings, are herded there until cool and rested. Such drives are usually made very early in the morning, at the first breaking of day, which is half-past one to two o’clock of June and July in these latitudes. They arrive, and cool off on the slaughtering-grounds, so that by six or seven o’clock, after breakfast, the able-bodied male population turn out from the village and go down to engage in the work of killing them. These men are dressed in their ordinary laboring-garb of thick flannel shirts, stout cassimere or canvas pants, over which the “tarbosar” boots are drawn. If it rains they wear their “kamlaykas,” made of the intestines and throats of the sea-lion and fur-seal. Thus dressed, they are each armed with a club, a stout oaken or hickory bludgeon, which has been made particularly for the purpose at New London, Conn., and imported here for this especial service. Those sealing-clubs are about five or six feet in length, three inches in diameter at their heads, and the thickness of a man’s forearm where they are grasped by the hands. Each native also has his stabbing-knife, his skinning-knife and his whetstone: these are laid upon the grass convenient, when the work of braining or knocking the seals down is in progress: this is all the apparatus which they employ for killing and skinning.
THE KILLING GANG AT WORK
Method of slaughtering Fur Seals on the Grounds near the Village of St. Paul Sealers Knocking Down a “Pod”
The Drove in Waiting Natives Skinning