Note 146 — Chapter XI · THE ALASKAN SEA-LION.

When slowly sketching, by measurements, the outlines of a fine adult bull sea-lion which the ball from Booterin’s rifle had just destroyed, an old “starooka” came up abruptly; not seeming to see me, she deliberately threw down a large, greasy, skin meat-bag, and whipping out a knife, went to work on my specimen. Curiosity prompted me to keep still, in spite of the first sensations of annoyance, so that I might watch her choice and use of the animal’s carcass. She first removed the skin, being actively aided in this operation by an uncouth boy; she then cut off the palms to both fore flippers; the boy at the same time pulled out its mustache-bristles; she then cut out its gullet, from the glottis to its junction with the stomach, carefully divested it of all fleshy attachments and fat; she then cut out the stomach itself, and turned it inside out, carelessly scraping its gastric walls free of copious biliary secretions, the inevitable bunch of ascaris; she then told the boy to take hold of the duodenum end of the small intestine, and, as he walked away with it, she rapidly cleared it of its attachments, so that it was thus uncoiled to its full length of at least sixty feet; then she severed it and then it was recoiled by the “melchiska,” and laid up with the other members just removed, except the skin, which she had nothing more to do with. She then cut out the liver and ate several large pieces of that workhouse of the blood before dropping it into her meat-pouch. She then raked up several handfuls of the “leaf-lard,” or hard, white fat that is found in moderate quantity around the viscera of all these pinnipeds, which she also dumped into the flesh-bag; she then drew her knife through the large heart, but did not touch it otherwise, looking at it intently, however, as it still quivered in unison with the warm flesh of the whole carcass. She and the boy then poked their fingers into the tumid lobes of the immense lungs, cutting out portions of them only, which were also put into the grimy pouch aforesaid; then she secured the gall-bladder and slipped it into a small yeast-powder tin, which was produced by the urchin; then she finished her economical dissection by cutting the sinews out of its back in unbroken bulk from the cervical vertebra to the sacrum; all these were stuffed into that skin bag, which she threw on her back and supported it by a band over her head; she then trudged back to the barrabkie from whence she sallied a short hour ago, like an old vulture to the slaughter. She made the following disposition of its contents: The palms were used to sole a pair of tarbosars, or native boots, of which the uppers and knee-tops were made of the gullets—one sea-lion gullet to each boot-top; the stomach was carefully blown up and left to dry on the barrabkie roof, eventually to be filled with oil rendered from sea-lion or fur-seal blubber. The small intestine was carefully injected with water and cleansed, then distended with air, and pegged out between two stakes, sixty feet apart, with little cross-slats here and there between to keep it clear of the ground. When it is thoroughly dry it is ripped up in a straight line with its length and pressed out into a broad band of parchment gut, which she cuts up and uses in making a water-proof “kamlayka,” sewing it with those sinews taken from the back. The liver, leaf-lard, and lobes of the lungs were eaten without further cooking, and the little gall-bag was for some use in poulticing a scrofulous sore. The mustache-bristles were a venture of the boy, who gathers all that he can, then sends them to San Francisco, where they find a ready sale to the Chinese, who pay about one cent apiece for them. When the natives cut up a sea-lion carcass or one of a fur-seal, on the killing-grounds for meat, they take only the hams and the loins. Later in the season they eat the entire carcass, which they hang up by its hind flippers on a “laabas” by their houses.