[66] It is a fact, coincident with the diminution of the sea-otter life under the pressure of Russian greed, that the population of the Aleutian Islands fell off at the same time and in the same ratio. The Slavonians regarded the lives of these people as they did those of dogs, and treated them accordingly. They impressed and took, under Baranov’s orders, in 1790-1806, and his subordinates, hunting-parties of five hundred to one thousand picked Aleutes, eleven or twelve hundred miles to the eastward from their homes at Oonalashka, Oomnak, Akoon, and Akootan. This terrible sea-journey was made by these natives in skin “baidars” and bidarkies, traversing one of the wildest and roughest of coasts. They were used not only for the drudgery of otter-hunting in Cook’s Inlet and the Sitkan archipelago, but forced to fight the Koloshians and other savages all the way up and down those inhospitable coasts. That soon destroyed them—very few ever got back to the Aleutian Islands alive. [67] The “bidarka” is a light framework of wooden timbers and withes very tightly lashed together with sinews in the form indicated by my illustrations. It is covered with untanned sea-lion skins, which are sewed on over it while they are wet and soft. When the skins dry out they contract, and bind the frame, and are as taut as the parchment of a well-strung bass-drum. Then the native smears the whole over with thick seal-oil, which keeps the water out of the pores of the skin for quite a long period and prevents the slackening of the taut binding of the little vessel for twenty-four to thirty hours at a single time. Then the bidarka must be hauled out and allowed to dry off in the wind, when it again becomes hard and tight. Most of them are made with two man-holes, some have three, and a great many have but one. The otter-hunters always go in pairs, or, in other words, use two-holed bidarkies. [68] Sixteen to 18 feet long, 6 to 10 feet wide, with coarse meshes; made nowadays of twine, but formerly of seal and sea-lion sinews. CHAPTER VIII. THE GREAT ALEUTIAN CHAIN.