Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 18, 2025
Properly speaking the name belongs to the natives of the Aleutian Islands, but the term was also applied to the natives of Kodiak Island and the surrounding islets. These speak a different language from the true Aleuts, but otherwise resemble them closely. During the hunting season they scoured the seas in their skin bidarkas, in the pursuit of fur animals.
"Come on!" called Rob; and in an instant they were hurrying to join the scene of confusion which now was enacting on the beach. As they reached the top of the sea-wall they saw for the first time the full party of natives, not more than half of whom had come over to the camp. More than thirty bidarkas lay pulled up along the beach, most of them two-hatch boats.
No landsman's still-hunt affords the thrilling excitement of the otter hunter's spearing-surrounds. Fifteen or twenty-five little skin skiffs, with two or three men in each, paddle out under a chief elected by common consent. Whether fog or clear, the spearing is done only in calm weather. The long line of bidarkas circles silently over the silver sea.
Rob could not in the least understand all this, for it seemed to him the hunt had met with failure; but there seemed to be some system about it, for nothing but satisfaction marked the faces of the hunters as they finally drew up their bidarkas again upon the beach. "Maybe so two tree day, him die now," said the chief, at last.
The method of the natives who hunt the sea-otter is to make a surround with a fleet of bidarkas, much as they hunt the whale; but this, of course, was impossible now. None the less, Jimmy, who assumed the position of master of the hunt, motioned to the Aleut boy in the dory to keep off to the left, while he and Rob circled far to the right in the bidarka.
There had been deaths from scurvy; one of the largest ships belonging to the Company had been wrecked and the entire cargo lost; of a hunting party of three hundred Aleuts in one hundred and forty bidarkas, which had gone from Sitka to Kadiak in November of the preceding year, not one had arrived at its destination, and there was reason to believe that all had been drowned or massacred; and the Russians and Aleuts at Behring's Bay settlement had been exterminated by one of the native tribes.
No sooner has the schooner sheered off the hunting-grounds, than the Aleuts are over decks with the agility of performing monkeys, the schooner captain wishing each good luck, the eager hunters leaping into their bidarkas following the lead of a chief. The schooner then returns to the home harbor, leaving the hunters on islands bare as a planed board for two, three, four months.
And in this same bay of Drake, long afterward, the Russian fur-poachers rendezvous'd their bidarkas and stole in through the Golden Gate to the forbidden waters of San Francisco Bay. Farther up the coast, in Sonoma County, we pilgrimaged to the sites of the Russian settlements.
A tannery furnished the leather for shoes, made from California hides, and also prepared the lavtaks for the bidarkas for the seal and sea-otter hunters. The burrs for the Sitka mill were of the finest French stone but those at the Redoubt were cut from the granite found on the lake shore.
There must be plenty of boats here." "Nothing but skin boats, kyaks, and bidarkas you know. Anyhow, you couldn't cross at this time of year it's too stormy; these Straits is the worst piece of water on the coast. No, you'll have to wait." Emerson sank back into his chair, and stared hopelessly at the fire. "Better have some breakfast," the trader continued; but the other only shook his head.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking