The “Bidarrah.”
[Characteristic Alaskan boat, made by fitting sea-lion skins over a wooden frame and keel.]
The Aleutian name for this garment is unpronounceable in our language, and equally so in the more flexible Russian; hence the Alaskan “kamlayka,” derived from the Siberian “kamläia.” That is made of tanned reindeer skin, unhaired, and smoked by larch bark until it is colored a saffron yellow; and is worn over a reindeer-skin undershirt, which has the hair next to its owner’s skin, and the obverse side stained red by a decoction of alder-bark. The kamläia is closed behind and before, and a hood, fastened to the back of the neck, is drawn over the head, when leaving shelter; so is the Aleutian kamlayka; only the one of Kolyma is used to keep out piercing dry cold, while the garment of the Bering Sea is a perfect water-tight affair.
Around the natives’ houses, on St. Paul and St. George, constantly appear curious objects which, to an unaccustomed eye, resemble overgrown gourds or enormous calabashes with attenuated necks; examination proves them to be the dried, distended stomach-walls of a sea-lion, filled with its oil—which (unlike the offensive blubber of the fur-seal) boils out clear and inodorous from its fat. The flesh of an old sea-lion, while not very palatable, is tasteless and dry; but the meat of a yearling is very much like veal, and when properly cooked I think it is just as good; but the superiority of sea-lion meat over that of the fur-seal is decidedly marked. It requires some skill in the cuisine ere sausage and steaks of the Callorhinus are accepted on the table; while it does not, however, require much art, experience, or patience for good cooks to serve up the juicy ribs of a young sea-lion so that the most fastidious palate will not fail to relish it.
The carcass of a sea-lion, after it is stripped of its hide, and disembowelled, is hung up in cool weather by its hind flippers, over a rude wooden frame or “laabaas,” as the natives call such a structure, where, together with many more bodies of fur-seals treated in the same manner, it serves from November until the following season of May, as the meat-house for an Aleut on St. Paul and St. George. Exposed in this manner to open weather, the natives keep their seal-meat almost any length of time, in winter, for use; and, like our old duck and bird-hunters, they say they prefer to have this flesh tainted rather than fresh, declaring that it is most tender and toothsome when decidedly “loud.”
The tough, elastic mustache-bristles of a sea-lion are objects of great commercial activity by the Chinese, who prize them highly as pickers for their opium pipes, and several ceremonies peculiar to their joss-houses. Such lip-bristles of the fur-seal are usually too small and too elastic for this service. The natives, however, always carefully pluck them out of the Eumetopias, and get their full value in exchange.
The sea-lion also, as in the case of the fur-seal, is a fish-eater, pure and simple, though he, like the latter, occasionally varies his diet by consuming a limited amount of juicy sea-weed fronds, and tender marine crustaceans; but he hunts no animal whatever for food, nor does he ever molest, up here, the sea-fowl that incessantly hover over his head, or sit in flocks without any fear on the surface of the waters around him. He, like Callorhinus, is, without question, a mighty fisherman, familiar with every submarine haunt of his piscatorial prey; and, like his cousin, rejects the heads of all those fish which have hard horny mouths or are filled with teeth or bony plates.
Many authorities who are quoted in regard to the habits of hair-seals and southern sea-lions speak with much fine detail of having witnessed the capture of water-birds by Phocidæ and Otariidæ. To this point of inquiry on the Pribylov Islands I gave continued close attention; because, off and around all of the rookeries, large flocks of auks, arries, gulls, shags, and choochkies were swimming upon the water, and shifting thereupon incessantly, day and night, throughout the late spring, summer, and early fall. During the four seasons of my observation I never saw the slightest motion made by a fur-seal or sea-lion, a hair-seal or a walrus, toward intentionally disturbing a single bird, much less of capturing and eating it. Had these seals any appetite for sea-fowl, this craving could have been abundantly satisfied at the expense of absolutely no effort on their part. That none of these animals have any taste for water-birds I am thoroughly assured.
In concluding this recitation of that wonderful seal life belonging to those islets of Pribylov, it is well to emphasize the fact that, with an exception of the Russian and American seal islands of Bering Sea, there are none elsewhere in the world of the slightest importance to-day; the vast breeding-grounds of fur-seals bordering on the Antarctic have been, by the united efforts of all nationalities—misguided, short-sighted, and greedy of gain—entirely depopulated; only a few thousand unhappy stragglers are now to be seen throughout all that southern area, where millions once were found, and a small rookery, protected and fostered by the government of a South American State, north and south of the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. When, therefore, we note the eagerness with which our civilization calls for seal-skin fur, the fact that in spite of fashion and its caprices this fur is and always will be an article of intrinsic value and in demand, the thought at once occurs that the Government is exceedingly fortunate in having this great amphibious stock-yard, far up and away in the quiet seclusion of Bering Sea, from which it shall draw an everlasting revenue, and on which its wise regulation and its firm hand can continue the seals forever.