The sea-otter has been driven from this immediate neighborhood by too vigorous and indiscriminate pursuit, but the sea-lion, various water-fowls, and plenty of cod, halibut, and salmon still abound among these lonely islands of the North Pacific. Occasionally a dead whale is stranded on the shore, which is considered a cause for great rejoicing, every part of the animal being utilized by the natives. No matter how putrid the flesh may be, it is eagerly eaten by these people, both raw and cooked. When a school of whales appears in sight of these shores, the natives go out in their frail boats, and with lances so prepared as to work into the vitals of the big creatures, they pierce them in the most vulnerable places, leaving the animal to die where it will, and trusting to the currents to carry the body where they can reach it. To their lances there are securely attached inflated sealskin buoys, which render diving a very laborious exertion to the whales, and which aid finally in securing the carcass. In this way, it is said, the natives get one whale out of fifteen or twenty which they succeed in harpooning. Whales, singular to say, are more esteemed as food by all the Alaskan shore tribes than any other product of the sea, or, in fact, any other sort of food. The securing of one is an event celebrated with limitless feasting and rejoicing. A New England whale-ship captain told the writer that he had seen these natives cut long strips of blubber from the body of a stranded whale, which had been so long dead that it was with difficulty he could breathe the atmosphere to leeward of the carcass, and chew upon the same with the greatest relish until it had entirely disappeared down their throats, the oil dripping all the while in small streams from the corners of their mouths. This is not a practice confined to the Aleuts, but extends throughout the several groups of islands, and is also a marked habit of the Eskimos proper, living both north and south of Behring Strait, and on the coast of the Polar Sea. “The natives would rather have a dead whale drift ashore,” says Mr. George Wardman, United States Treasury agent in Alaska, “than to own the best crop of the biggest farm in the United States. Dead whale is a great blessing in the Aleutian part of our Alaska possessions, and agricultural products are but little sought after or valued. The dead whale may be so putrid that the effluvia arising from it will blacken the white paint of a vessel lying one hundred yards distant, but, all the same, the whale is a blessing.” There is a variety store kept on Attoo by an agent of the Alaska Commercial Company, where the natives exchange their furs for tea, sugar, and hard biscuit, besides tobacco and a few fancy articles.