General agreement among those who have visited the Atkhans, as traders and agents of the Government, is that these natives are the finest body of sea-otter hunters in all respects known to the business. They make long journeys from their homes, carried to the outlying islands of Semeisopochnoi, Amchitka, Tanaga, Kanaga, Adahk and Nitalikh, Siguam and Amookhta, some of them far distant, on which they establish camps and search the reefs and rocks awash, as they learn by experience where the chosen haunts of the shy sea-otter are. Here they remain engaged in the chase over extended periods of months at a time, when, in accord with a preconcerted date arranged with the traders, those schooners which carried them out from Atkha, return, pick them up, and take them back. Then the trader’s store is made a grand rendezvous for the village; the hunters tally their skins, settle their debts, make their donations to the church, and then promptly invest their surplus in every imaginable purchase which the goods displayed will warrant. The women of Atkha employ long intervals, in which their husbands and sons are absent, by making the most beautifully woven grass baskets and mats. The finest samples of this weaving ever produced by a savage or semi-civilized people are those which come from Atkha. The girls and women gather grasses at the proper season, and prepare them with exceeding care for their primitive methods of weaving; and they spare no amount of labor and pains in the execution of their designs, which are now almost entirely those suggested by the traders, such as fancy sewing-baskets, cigar-holders, table-mats, and special forms that are eagerly accepted in trade, for they find a ready sale in San Francisco. A peculiar and valuable food-fish is found in the Atkhan waters which has been attracting a great deal of attention as a substitute for the mackerel of our east coast, inasmuch as there is no such fish found oil the Alaskan coasts. Among the sea-weed that floats in immense rafts everywhere throughout the Aleutian passes, the “yellow-fish,” or “Atkha mackerel,”[82] is very abundant; it is also plentiful off the Shoomagin Islands. It is a good substitute for the real mackerel,[83] resembling it in taste after salting, as well as in size and movements.