Note 43 — Chapter V · COOK’S INLET AND ITS PEOPLE.

Perhaps fully half the brown-bear skins taken by the Alaskan natives are retained by them, used as bedding, and hung up as portières over the entrance-holes or doors to their houses; the smaller skins are tanned and then cut into straps and lines to use in sledge-fastenings, snowshoe network bottoms, because this leather does not stretch when moist like deer and moose skin.