The church “prazniks,” or festivals, are very quiet affairs, but when the Aleut determines to celebrate his birthday or “eman nimik,” he goes about it in full resolution to have a stirring and vociferous time. Therefore he brews a potential beer by putting a quantity of sugar, flour, rice, and dried apples (if he can get the latter) into a ten or twenty-gallon barrel, which is filled with water. He sends invitations out to his friends so dated as to bring them to the barrabkie when a right degree of fermentation in the kvass-barrel shall have arrived; sometimes the odor of that barrel itself is sufficient to gather them in all on time. Some one of the natives who is famous for natural and cultivated skill in playing the accordion or concertina, is given the post of honor and the best of the beer; he or she, as the case may be, soon starts the most hilarious dancing, because Aleutes are exceedingly fond of this amusement, especially so when stimulated by beer. If the apartment is large enough, the figures of an old Russian quadrille are gone through with, accompanied by indescribable grimaces and grotesque side-shuffles of the dancers, the old women and young men being the most demonstrative. Usually, however, a single waltzing couple has the floor at one time, whirling around with the liveliest hop-waltz steps, and as it settles down out of breath, a fresh pair springs up from the waiting and watching circle. The guests rapidly pass from their normal sedateness into the varying stages that rotate between slight and intense drunkenness. These kvass orgies, on such occasions, are the only exhibitions of disorder that the people of the Aleutian Islands and Kadiak ever afford. At Belcovsky, and at every point where the sea-otter industry is most remunerative to the native hunter, there you will find the greatest misery, due wholly to those beery birthday celebrations as sketched above.