Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

When the men gather for work they are under the control of their chosen foremen or chiefs; usually, on St. Paul, divided into two working parties at the village, and a sub-party at Northeast Point, where another salt-house and slaughtering-field is established. At the signal of the chief the labor of the day begins by the men stepping into that drove corralled on the flats and driving out from it one hundred or one hundred and fifty seals at a time, making what they call a “pod,” which they surround in a circle, huddling the seals one on another as they narrow it down, until they are directly within reach and under their clubs. Then the chief, after he has cast his experienced eye over the struggling, writhing “kautickie” in the centre, passes the word that such and such a seal is bitten, that such and such a seal is too young, that such and such a seal is too old; the attention of his men being called to these points, he gives the word “Strike!” and instantly the heavy clubs come down all around, and every animal eligible is stretched out stunned and motionless, in less time, really, than I take to tell it. Those seals spared by order of the chief now struggle from under and over the bodies of their insensible companions and pass, hustled off by the natives, back to the sea.

The clubs are dropped, the men seize the prostrate seals by the hind flippers and drag them out so they are spread on the ground without touching each other, then every sealer takes his knife and drives it into the heart at a point between the fore flippers of each stunned form; its blood gushes forth, and the quivering of the animal presently ceases. A single stroke of a heavy oak bludgeon, well and fairly delivered, will crush in at once the slight, thin bones of a fur-seal’s skull, and lay the creature out almost lifeless. These blows are, however, usually repeated two or three times with each animal, but they are very quickly done. The bleeding, which is immediately effected, is so speedily undertaken in order that the strange reaction, which the sealers call “heating,” shall be delayed for half an hour or so, or until the seals can all be drawn out and laid in some disposition for skinning.

I have noticed that within less than thirty minutes from the time a perfectly sound seal was knocked down, it had so “heated,” owing to the day being warmer and drier than usual, that, when touching it with my foot, great patches of hair and fur scaled off. This is rather exceptionally rapid metamorphosis—it will, however, take place in every instance, within an hour, or an hour and a half on these warm days, after the first blow is struck, and the seal is quiet in death; hence no time is lost by a prudent toyone in directing the removal of the skins as rapidly as the seals are knocked down and dragged out. If it is a cool day, after bleeding the first “pod” which has been prostrated in the manner described, and after carefully drawing the slain from the heap in which they have fallen, so that the bodies will spread over the ground just free from touching one another, they turn to and strike down another “pod;” and so on, until a whole thousand or two are laid out, or the drove, as corralled, is finished. The day, however, must be raw and cold for this wholesale method. Then, after killing, they turn to work and skin; but if it is a warm day every pod is skinned as soon as it is knocked down.

The labor of skinning is exceedingly severe, and is trying even to an expert, demanding long practice ere the muscles of the back and thighs are so developed as to permit a man to bend down to, and finish well, a fair day’s work. The knives used by the natives for skinning are ordinary kitchen or case-handle butcher-knives. They are sharpened to cutting edges as keen as razors, but something about the skins of the seal, perhaps fine comminuted sand along the abdomen, so dulls these knives, as the natives work, that they are obliged to whet them constantly.

The body of the seal, preparatory to skinning, is rolled over and balanced squarely on its back; then the native makes a single swift cut through the skin down along the neck, chest, and belly, from the lower jaw to the root of the tail: he uses for this purpose his long stabbing-knife.[135] The fore and hind flippers are then successively lifted, as the man straddles a seal and stoops down to his work over it, and a sweeping circular incision is made through the skin on them just at the point where the body-fur ends; then, seizing a flap of the hide on either one side or the other of the abdomen, the man proceeds with his smaller, shorter butcher-knife, rapidly to cut the skin, clean and free from the body and blubber, which he rolls over and out from the hide by hauling up on it as he advances with his work, standing all this time stooped over the carcass so that his hands are but slightly above it, or the ground. This operation of skinning a fair-sized “holluschak” takes the best men only one minute and a half, but the average time made by the gang on the ground is about four minutes to the seal. Nothing is left of the skin upon the carcass, save a small patch of each upper lip on which the coarse mustache grows, the skin on the tip of the lower jaw, and its insignificant tail. After removal of the skin from the body of a fur-seal, the entire surface of the carcass is covered with a more or less dense layer, or envelope, of soft, oily blubber, which in turn completely conceals the muscles or flesh of the trunk and neck. This fatty substance, which we now see, resembles that met with in such seals everywhere, only possessing that strange peculiarity not shared by any other of its kind, of being positively overbearing and offensive in odor to an unaccustomed human nostril. The rotting, sloughing carcasses around about did not, when stirred up, affect me more unpleasantly than did this strong, sickening smell of the fur-seal blubber. It has a character and appearance intermediate between those belonging to the adipose tissue found on the flesh of cetacea and some carnivora.

The Carcass after Skinning—The Skin as taken therefrom.

This continuous envelope of blubber to the bodies of the “holluschickie” is thickest in deposit at those points upon the breast between the fore flippers, reaching entirely around and over the shoulders, where it is from one inch to a little over in depth. Upon the outer side of the chest it is not half an inch in thickness, frequently not more than a quarter, and it thins out considerably as it reaches the median line of the back. The neck and head are clad by an unbroken continuation of the same material, which varies from one-half to one-quarter of an inch in depth. Toward the middle line of the abdominal region there is a layer of relative greater thickness. This is coextensive with the sterno-pectoral mass; but it does not begin to retain its volume as it extends backward, where this fatty investment of the carcass upon the loins, buttocks, and hinder limbs fades out finer than on the pectoro-abdominal parts, and assumes a thickness corresponding to its depth on the cervical and dorsal regions. As it descends on the limbs this blubber thins out very perceptibly; and, when reaching the flippers, it almost entirely disappears, giving way to a glistening aureolar tissue, while the flipper skin finally descends in turn to adhere closely and firmly to the tendinous ligamentary structures beneath, which constitute the tips of the swimming-palms.

The flesh and the muscles are not lined between or within by fat of any kind: this blubber envelope contains it all, with one exception—that which is found in the folds of the small intestine and about the kidneys, where there is an abundant secretion of a harder, whiter, though still offensive-smelling fat.

It is quite natural for our people when they first eat a meal on the Pribylov Islands to ask questions in regard to what seal-meat looks and tastes like. Some of the white residents will answer, saying that they are very fond of it cooked so and so; others will reply that in no shape or manner can they stomach the dish. An inquirer must himself try the effect on his own palate. I frankly confess that I had a slight prejudice against seal-meat at first, having preconceived ideas that it would be fishy in flavor; but I soon satisfied myself to the contrary, and found that the flesh of young seals not over three years old was as appetizing and toothsome as some of the beef, mutton, and pork I was accustomed to at home. The following precautions must be rigidly observed, however, by the cook who prepares fur-seal steaks and sausage-balls for our delectation and subsistence. He will fail if he does not: