Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

FOOTNOTES:

[85] It was with peculiar pleasure that the writer undertook, at the suggestion of Professor Baird, who is the honored and beloved secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the task of examining into and reporting upon this subject; and it is also gratifying to add, that the statements of fact and the hypotheses evolved therefrom by him in 1874 have, up to the present time, been verified by an inflexible sequence of events on the ground itself. The concurrent testimony of the numerous agents of the Treasury Department and the Government generally, who have trodden in his footsteps, amply testifies to their stability.

[86] Pribylov, the discoverer of the Seal Islands, was a native of “old Russia.” His father was one of the surviving sailors of the St. Peter, which was wrecked, with Bering in command, November 4, 1741, on Bering Island. The only reference which I can find to him is the vague incidental expressions, used here and there throughout an extended series of lengthy Russian letters published by Techmainov, as illustrative of the condition of affairs in regard to the Russian American Company. Pribylov was, when cruising in 1783-86 for the rumored seal-grounds, merely the first mate of the sloop St. George. The captain and part owner was one M. Subov, who was a member of a trading association then well organized in Alaska, and widely known as the “Laybaidev Lastochin” Company. It does not appear that Pribylov took any part in the business of sealing other than that of remaining in charge of the company’s vessels. He died while in discharge of these duties at Sitka, March, 1796, on his ship The Three Saints.

Pribylov himself called these islands of his discovery after Subov; but the Russians then, and soon after unanimously, indicated the group by its present well-deserved title, “Ostrovie Pribylova.”

[87] Veniaminov says that he does feel inclined to believe this story, as the peaks of Oonimak can be seen occasionally from St. Paul. I have no hesitation in saying that they were never observed by any mortal eye from the Pribylov group. The wide expanse of water between these points, and the thick, foggy air of Bering Sea, especially so at the season mentioned in this story above, will always make the mountains of Oonimak invisible to the eye from Saint Paul Island. A mirage is almost an impossibility. It may have been much more probable if the date was a winter one.—Veniaminov: Zapieskie ob Oonalashkenskaho Otdayla, etc., 1842.

[88] A large amount of information in regard to the climate of these islands has been collected and recorded by the signal service, United States Army, and similar observations are still continued by the agents of the Alaska Commercial Company.

[89] The rise and fall of tide at the Seal Islands I carefully watched one whole season at St. Paul. The irregularity, however, of ebb and flow is the most prominent feature of the matter. The highest rise in the spring-tides was a trifle over four feet, while that of the neap-tides not much over two. Owing to the nature of the case, it is impossible to prepare a tidal calendar for Alaska, above the Aleutian Islands, which will even faintly foreshadow a correct registration in advance.

[90] The mosses at Kamminista, St. Paul, are the finest examples of their kind on the islands; they are very perfect, and many species are beautiful.

[91] That spruce-trees can be made to live transplanted from indigenous localities to the barren slopes of the Aleutian Islands, has been demonstrated; but in living these trees do nothing else, and scarcely grow to any appreciable degree. A few spruce were transferred to Oonalashka when Veniaminov was at work there in 1830-35. They are still standing and keep green, but the change which such a long lapse of time should produce by growth has been as difficult to determine as it is to find evidence of increased altitude to the mountains around them since these Sitkan trees were planted with pious hope at their feet fifty years ago. Though I can readily understand why the salmon-berries of Oonalashka should not do well on the Seal Islands (though I think they would at the Garden Cove of St. George), yet I believe that the huckleberries of that section would thrive at many places if carefully transplanted to these localities: the southern slopes of Cemetery Ridge at Zapadnie; the southern slopes of Telegraph Hill, and eastern fall of Tolstoi peninsula down to the shore of the lagoon. They might also do well set out at picked places around the Big Lake and on Northeast Point, around the little lake thereon. If these bushes really throve here, they would be the means of adding greatly to the comfort of the inhabitants; for the Oonalashka huckleberry is an exceeding pleasant, juicy fruit, large and well adapted for canning and preserving. Having less sunshine here than at Illoolook, it may not ripen up as well flavored, but will, I think, succeed. The roots of the bushes when brought up from Oonalashka in April or early May should be kept moist by wet-moss wrappings from the moment they are first taken up until they are reset, with the tops well pruned back, on the Pribylov Islands. The experiment is surely worth all the trouble of making, and I hope it will be done.

[92] Blue foxes were also, and are, natives of the Commander Islands. Steller describes their fearlessness when the shipwrecked crew of the St. Peter landed there, November 6, 1741.

In regard to these foxes the Pribylov natives declare that when the islands were first occupied by their ancestors, 1786-87, the fur was invariably blue; that the present smoky blue, or ashy indigo color, is due to the coming of white foxes across on the ice from the mainland to the eastward. The white-furred vulpes is quite numerous on the islands to-day. I should judge that perhaps one-fifth of the whole number were of this color; they do not live apart from the blue ones, but evidently breed “in and in.” I notice that Veniaminov, also, makes substantially the same statement; only differing by charging this deterioration of the blue foxes’ fur to a deportation from outside of red foxes, on ice-floes, and adds that the natives always hunted down these “krassnie peeschee” as soon as their presence was known; hence my inability, perhaps, to see any sign of their posterity in 1872-76.

The presence of these animals on the Pribylov Islands is a real source of happiness to the natives, especially so to the younger ones. The little pup-foxes make pets and playfellows for the children, while hunting the adults during the winter gives wholesome employment to the mind and body of the native who does so. They are trapped in common dead-falls, steel spring-clips, or beaver traps, and shot. A very large portion of the gossip on the islands is in relation to this business.

[93] The temerity of the fox is wonderful to contemplate, as it goes on a full run or stealthy tread up and down and along the faces of almost inaccessible bluffs, in search of old and young birds and their nests and eggs, for which the “peeschee” have a keen relish. The fox always brings an egg up in its mouth, and, carrying it back a few feet from the brink of the precipice, leisurely and with gusto breaks the larger end and sucks the contents from the shell. One of the curious sights of my notice, in this connection, was the sly, artful, and insidious advances of Reynard at Tolstoi Mees, St. George, where, conspicuous and elegant in its fluffy white dress, it cunningly stretched on its back as though dead, making no sign of life whatever, save to gently hoist its thick brush now and then; whereupon many dull, curious sea-birds, Graculus bicristatus, in their intense desire to know all about it, flew in narrowing circles overhead, lower and lower, closer and closer, until one of them came within the sure reach of a sudden spring and a pair of quick snapping jaws, while the gulls and others, rising safe and high above, screamed out in seeming contempt for the struggles of the unhappy “shag,” and rendered hideous approbation.

[94] Using the egg of our domestic fowl, the hen, as a standard, the following note made in regard to the size and quality of the eggs of the sea-birds of these waters may not be uninteresting to many. When daily served on St. George, during June and July, with eggs of indigenous sea-fowl, I recorded my gastronomic comparisons which occurred then as I ate them. Here follows a recapitulation:

Fresh-laid eggs of “lupus,” or F. glacialis: Best eggs known to the islands; can be soft-boiled or fried, etc., and are as good as our own hens’ eggs; the yolk is light and clear; the size thereof is in shape and bulk like a duck’s egg; it has a white shell. Season: June 1st to 15th, inclusive; scarce on St. Paul, and not abundant on St. George.

Fresh-laid eggs of “arrie,” or L. arra: Very good; can be soft-boiled or fried; are best scrambled; yolks are dark; no strange taste whatever to them; pyriform in shape; large as a goose-egg; shell gayly-colored; they are exceedingly abundant on Walrus Island and St. George; tons of them. Season: June 25th to July 10th, inclusive.

Fresh-laid eggs of gulls, Laridæ: Perceptibly strong; cannot be relished unless in omelettes; yolks very dark; size and shape of our hen’s egg; shell dark, clay-colored ground, mottled. Season: June 5th to July 20th, inclusive; they are in moderate supply only. The other eggs in the list, such as those of the “choochkie,” the “shag,” and the several varieties of water-fowl which breed here, are never secured in sufficient quantity to be of any consideration as articles of diet. It is, perhaps, better that a scarcity of their kind continue, judging from the strong smack of the choochkie’s, the repulsive taint of the shag’s, and the “twang” of the sea-parrot’s, all of which I tasted as a matter of investigation.

[95] The St. George natives have caught codfish just off the Tolstoi Head early in June; but it is a rare occurrence. By going out two or three miles from the village at either island during July and August the native fisherman usually captures large halibut—not in abundance, however. The St. Paul people, as well as their relatives on St. George, fish in small “two-hole” bidarkies. They go out together in squads of four to six. One man alone in the kyack is not able to secure a “bolshoi poltoos.” The method, when the halibut is hooked, is to call for your nearest neighbor in his bidarka, who paddles swiftly up. You extend your paddle to him, retaining your own hold, and he grasps it, while you seize his in turn, thus making it impossible to capsize, while the large and powerfully struggling fish is brought to the surface between the canoes and knocked on the head. It is then towed ashore and carried in triumph to its lucky captor’s house.

[96] Gasterosteus cataphractus; and pungitius; beautiful sticklebacks.

[97] United States Revenue-marine cutter Reliance, June to October, 1874.

[98] To visit Walrus Island in a boat, pleasantly and successfully, it is best to submit to the advice and direction of the natives. They leave the village in the evening, and, taking advantage of the tide, proceed along the coast as far as the bluffs of Polavina, where they rest on their oars, doze, and smoke until the dawning of daylight, or later, perhaps, until the fog lifts enough for them to get a glimpse of the islet which they seek. They row over then in about two hours with their bidarrah. They leave, however, with perfect indifference as to daylight or fog. Nothing but a southeaster can disturb their tranquillity when they succeed in landing on Walrus Island. They would find it as difficult to miss striking the extended reach of St. Paul on their return, as they found it well-nigh impossible to push off from Polavina and find “Morzovia” in a thick, windy fog and running sea.

Otter Island, or “Bobrovia,” is easily reached in almost any weather that is not very stormy, for it looms up high above the water. It takes the bidarrah about two hours to row over from the village, while I have gone across once in a whale-boat with less than one hour’s expenditure of time, sail, and oars en route.

[99] That profile of the south shore, between the village hill and Southwest Point, taken from the steamer’s anchorage off the village cove, shows its characteristic and remarkable alternation of rookery slope and low sea-level flats. This point of viewing is slightly more than half a mile true west of the village hill, to a sight which brings Bogaslov summits and Tolstoi Head nearly in line. At Zapadnie is the place where the Russian discoverers first landed in 1787, July 10th. With the exception of that bluffy west-end Einahnuhto cliffs, the whole coast of St. Paul is accessible, and affords an easy landing, except at the short reach of “Seethah” and the rookery points, as indicated. The great sand beach of this island extends from Lukannon to Polavina, thence to Webster’s house, Novastoshnah; from there over, and sweeping back and along the north shore to Nahsayvernia headland, then between Zapadnie and Tolstoi, together with the beautiful though short sand of Zoltoi. This extensive and slightly broken sandy coast is not described as peculiar to any other island in Alaska, or of Siberian waters.

There are no running streams at any season of the year on St. Paul; but an abundance of fresh water is plainly afforded by the numerous lakes, all of which are “svayjoi,” save the lagoon estuary. The four big reefs which I have located are each awash in every storm that blows from seaward over them; they are all rough, rocky ledges. That little one indicated in English Bay caused the wrecking of a large British vessel in 1847, which was coming in to anchor just without Zapadnie; a number of the crew were “masslucken,” so my native informant averred. Most of the small amount of drift-wood that is found on this island is procured at Northeast Point and Polavina; the north shore from Maroonitch to Tsammanah has also been favored with sea-waif logs in exceptional seasons, to the exclusion of all other sections of the coast. The natives say that the St. George people get much more drift-wood every year, as a rule, than they do on St. Paul. From what I could see during my four seasons of inspection, they never have got much, under the best of circumstances, on either island. They pay little attention to it now, and gather what they do during the winter season, going to Polavina and the north shore with sleds, on which they hoist sails after loading there, and scud home before strong northerly blasts.

Captain Erskine informs me that the water is free and bold all around the north shore, from Cross Hill to Southwest Point; no reefs or shoals up to within half a mile of land anywhere. English Bay is very shallow, and no sea-going vessel should attempt to enter it that draws over six feet.

[100] The profile of the coast of St. George’s Island, which I give on the map, presents clearly an idea of its characteristic, bold, abrupt elevation from the sea. From the Garden Cove around to Zapadnie beach there is no natural opportunity for a man to land; then, again, from Zapadnie beach round to Starry Arteel there is not a sign of a chance for an agile man to come ashore and reach the plateau above. From Starry Arteel to the Great Eastern rookery there is an alternation, between the several breeding-grounds, of three low and gradual slopes of the land to sea-level; these, with the landing at Garden Cove and at Zapadnie, are the only spots of the St. George coast where we can come ashore. An active person can scramble up at several steep places between the Sea Lion rookery and Tolstoi Mees, but the rest of that extended bluffy sea-wall, which I have just defined, is wholly inaccessible from the water. A narrow strip of rough, rocky shingle, washed over by every storm-beaten sea, is all that lies beneath the mural precipices.

In the spring, when snow melts on the high plateau, a beautiful cascade is seen at Waterfall Head; its feathery, filmy, silver ribbon of plunging water is thrown out into exquisite relief by the rich background of that brownish basalt and tufa over which it drops. Another pretty little waterfall is to be seen just west of the village, at this season only, where it leaps from a low range of bluffs to the sea. The first-named cascade is more than four hundred feet in sheer unbroken precipitation.

One or two small, naked, pinnacle rocks, standing close in, and almost joined to the beach at the Sea Lion rookery, constitute the only outlying islets or rocks; a stony kelp-bed at Zapadnie, and one off the Little Eastern rookery, both of limited reach seaward, are the only hindrances to a ship’s sailing boldly round the island, even to scraping the bluffs, at places, safely with her yard-arms. I have located the Zapadnie shoal by observation from the bluffs above; while Captain Baker, of the Reliance, sounded out the other.

[101] Surprise has often been genuine among those who inquire, over the fact that there is no law officer here at either village, and wonder is expressed why such provision is not made by the Government. But when the following facts relative to this subject are understood, it is at once clear that a justice of the peace and his constabulary would be entirely useless if established on the seal-islands. As these natives live here, they live as a single family in each settlement, having one common purpose in life and only one; what one native does, eats, wears, or says, is known at once to all the others, just as whatsoever any member of our household may do will soon be known to us all who belong to its organization; hence if they steal or quarrel among themselves, they keep the matter wholly to themselves, and settle it to their own satisfaction. Were there rival villages on the islands and diverse people and employment, then the case would be reversed, and the need of legal machinery apparent.

[102] The population of St. Paul in 1880 was 298. Of these, 14 were whites (13 males and 1 female), 128 male Aleutians, and 156 females. On St. George we have 92 souls: 4 white males, 35 male Aleutians, and 53 females, a total population on these islands of 390. This is an increase of between thirty and forty people since 1873. Prior to 1873 they had neither much increased nor diminished for fifty years, but would have fallen off rapidly (since the births were never equal to the deaths) had not recruits been regularly drawn from the mainland and other islands every season when the ships came up.

[103] This evil of habitual and gross intoxication under Russian rule was not characteristic of these islands alone. It was universal throughout Alaska. Sir George Simpson, speaking of the subject when in Sitka, April, 1842, says: “Some reformation certainly was wanted in this respect, for of all the drunken as well as of all the dirty places that I had visited, New Archangel (Sitka) was the worst. On the holidays in particular, of which, Sundays included, there are one hundred and sixty-five in the year, men, women, and even children were to be seen staggering about in all directions.”—Simpson: Journey Around the World, 1841-42, p. 88.

[104] I was told by a very bright Russian, who spent a season here, 1871-72, as special agent of the Treasury Department, that the Aleutian ancestors of these people when they were converted and baptized into the Greek Catholic Church received their names, brand new, from the fertile brains of priests, who, after exhausting the common run of Muscovitic titles, such as our Smiths and Joneses, were compelled to fall back upon some personal characteristics of the new claimant for civilized nomenclature. Thus we have to-day on the Seal Islands a “Stepan Bayloglazov,” or, “Son of a White Eye,” “Oseep Baizyahzeekov,” or “Son of Man without a Tongue.” A number of the old Russian governors and admirals of the imperial navy are represented here by their family names, though I do not think, from my full acquaintance with the namesakes, that the distinguished owners in the first place had anything to do with their physical embodiment on the Pribylov Islands.

[105] Living as the Seal-islanders do, and doing what they do, the seal’s life is naturally their great study and objective point. It nourishes and sustains them. Without it they say they could not live, and they tell the truth. Hence, their attention to the few simple requirements of the law, so wise in its provisions, is not forced or constrained, but is continuous. Self-interest in this respect appeals to them keenly and eloquently. They know everything that is done and everything that is said by anybody and by everybody in their little community. Every seal-drive that is made, and every skin that is taken, is recorded and accounted for by them to their chiefs and their church, when they make up their tithing-roll at the close of each day’s labor. Nothing can come to the islands, by day or by night, without being seen by them and spoken of. I regard the presence of these people on the islands at the transfer, and their subsequent retention and entailment in connection with the seal-business, as an exceedingly good piece of fortune, alike advantageous to the Government, to the company, and to themselves.

[106]

37	first-class shares, at	$451 22 each.
23	second-class shares, at	406 08 each.
4	third-class shares, at	360 97 each.
10	fourth-class shares, at	315 85 each.

These shares do not represent more than fifty-six able-bodied men.

In August, 1873, while on St. George Island, I was present at a similar division, under similar circumstances, which caused them to divide among themselves the proceeds of their work in taking and skinning twenty-five thousand seals, at forty cents a skin, $10,000. They made the following subdivision:

		Per share.
17	shares each, 961 skins	$384 40
2	shares each, 935 skins	374 00
3	shares each, 821 skins	328 40
1	share each, 820 skins	328 00
3	shares each, 770 skins	308 00
3	shares each, 400 skins	160 00

These twenty-nine shares referred to, as stated above, represent only twenty-five able-bodied men; two of them were women. This method of division as above given is the result of their own choice. It is an impossible thing for the company to decide their relative merits as workmen on the ground, so they have wisely turned its entire discussion over to them. Whatever they do they must agree to—whatever the company might do they possibly and probably would never clearly understand, and hence dissatisfaction and suspicion would inevitably arise. As it is, the whole subject is most satisfactorily settled.

CHAPTER X.
AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.

Difference between a Hair-seal and a Fur-seal.—The Fur-seal the most Intelligent of all Amphibians.—Its singularly Free Progression on Land.—Its Power in the Water.—The Old Males the First Arrivals in the Spring.—Their Desperate Battles one with Another for Position on the Breeding Grounds.—Subsequent Arrival of the Females.—Followed by the “Bachelors.”—Wonderful Strength and Desperate Courage of the Old Males.—Indifference of the Females.—Noise of the Rookeries Sounds like the Roar of Niagara.—Old Males fast from May to August, inclusive; neither Eat nor Drink, nor Leave their Stations in all that Time.—Graceful Females.—Frolicsome “Pups.”—They have to Learn to Swim!—How they Learn.—Astonishing Vitality of the Fur-seal.—“Podding” of the Pups.—Beautiful Eyes of the Fur-seal.—How the “Holluschickie,” or Bachelor Seals, Pass the Time.—They are the only ones Killed for Fur.—They Herd alone by Themselves in spite of their Inclination; Obliged to. —They are the Champion Swimmers of the Sea.—A Review of the Vast Breeding Rookeries.—Natives Gathering a Drove.—Driving the Seals to the Slaughtering Fields.—No Chasing—no Hunting of Seals.—The Killing Gang at Work: Skinning, Salting, and Shipping the Pelts.—All Sent Direct to London.—Reasons Why.—How the Skins are Prepared for Sacks, Muffs, etc.

“The web-footed seals forsake the stormy swell,

And, sleeping in herds, exhale nauseous smell.”—Homer.

A vivid realism of the fact that often truth is far stranger than fiction is strikingly illustrated in the life-history of the fur-seal: as it is the one overshadowing and superlatively interesting subject of this discussion, I shall present all its multitudinous details, even at the risk of being thought tedious. That aggregate of animal life shadowed every summer out upon the breeding grounds of the Seal Islands is so vast, so anomalous, so interesting, and so valuable, that it deserves the fullest mention; and even when I shall have done, it will be but feebly expressed.

THE HARBOR SEAL

Adult Male and Female Young, 2 months

[Phoca vitulina: a Life Study made at Zapadnie, St. Paul’s Island. July 10, 1872]

Great as it is, yet a short schedule[107] embraces the titles of all the pinnipeds found in, on, and around the island-group. Of this list the hair-seal[108] is the animal which has done so much to found that erroneous popular and scientific opinion as to what a fur-seal appears like. Phoca vitulina has, in this manner, given to the people of the world a false idea of its relatives. It is so commonly distributed all over the littoral salt waters of the earth, seen in the harbors of nearly every marine port, or basking along the loneliest and least inhabited of desolate coasts far to the north, that everybody has noticed it, if not in life, then in its stuffed skins at the museums, sometimes very grotesquely mounted. This copy, set everywhere before the eye of the naturalist, has rendered it so difficult for him to correctly discriminate between the Phocidæ and the Otariidæ, that the synonymy of the Pinnipedia has been expanded until it is replete with meaningless description and surmise.

Although the hair-seal belongs to the great group of pinnipeds, yet it does not have even a generic affinity with those seals with which it has been so persistently grouped, namely, the fur-seal and the sea-lion. It no more resembles them, than does the raccoon a black or grizzly bear.

I shall not enter into a detailed description of this seal; it is wholly superfluous, for excellent, and, I believe, trustworthy accounts have been repeatedly published by writers who have treated of the subject as it was spread before their eyes on the coasts of Labrador, Newfoundland, and Greenland; to say nothing of the researches and notes made by European scientists. It differs completely in shape and habit from its congeners on these islands. Here, where I have studied its biology, it seldom comes up from the water more than a few rods at the farthest; generally hauling and resting at the margin of the surf-wash. It takes up no position on land to hold and protect a family or harem, preferring the detached water-worn rocks, especially those on the lonely north shore of St. Paul, although I have seen it resting at “Gorbatch,” near the sea-margin of the great seal-rookery of that name, on the Reef Point of St. Paul; its cylindrical, supine, gray and white body marked in strong contrast with the erect, black, and ochre-colored forms of the Callorhinus, which swarmed round about it. On such small spots of rock, wet and isolated from the mainland, and in secluded places of the north shore, the “nearhpah” brings forth its young, a single pup, perfectly white, covered with long woolly hair, and weighing from three to seven pounds. This pup grows rapidly, and after the lapse of four or five months it tips the scales at fifty pounds; by that time it has shed its infant coat and donned the adult soft steel-gray hair over the head, limbs, and abdomen, with its back most richly mottled and barred lengthwise, by dark brown and brown-black streaks and blotches, suffused at their edges into the light steel-gray ground of the body. When they appear in the spring following, this bright gray tone to their color has ripened into a dingy ochre, and the mottling spread well over the head and down on the upper side or back of the flippers, but fades out as it progresses. It has no appreciable fur or under-wool. There is no noteworthy difference as to color or size between the sexes. So far as I have observed, they are not polygamous. They are exceedingly timid and wary at all times, and in this manner and method they are diametrically opposed, not by shape alone, but by habit and disposition, to the fashion of the fur-seal in especial, and the sea-lion. Their skin is of little value, comparatively, but their chief merit, according to the natives, is the relative greater juiciness and sweetness of their flesh, over even the best steaks of sea-lion or fur-seal pup meat.

One common point of agreement among all authors was, by my observations of fact, so strikingly refuted, that I will here correct a prevalent error made by naturalists who, comparing the hair-seal with the fur-seal, state that in consequence of the peculiar structure of their limbs, their progression on land is “mainly accomplished by a wriggling, serpentine motion of the body, slightly assisted by the extremities.” This is not so in any respect; for, whenever I have purposely surprised these animals, a few rods from the beach-margin, they would awake and excitedly scramble, or rather spasmodically exert themselves, to reach the water instantly, by striking out quickly with both fore-feet simultaneously, lifting in this way alone, and dragging the whole body forward, without any “wriggling motion” whatever to their back or posterior parts, moving from six inches to a foot in advance every time their fore-feet were projected forward, and the body drawn along according to the violence of the effort and the character of the ground; the body of the seal then falls flat upon its stomach, and the fore-feet or flippers are free again for another similar motion. This action of Phoca is effected so continuously and so rapidly, that in attempting to head off a young “nearhpah” from the water, at English Bay, I was obliged to leave a brisk walk and take to a dog trot to do it. The hind-feet are not used when exerted in this rapid movement at all; they are dragged along in the wake of the body, perfectly limp and motionless. But they do use those posterior parts, however, when leisurely climbing up and over rocks undisturbed, or playing one with another; still it is always a weak, trembling terrestrial effort, and particularly impotent and clumsy. In their swift swimming the hind-feet of Phocidæ evidently do all the work; the reverse is a remarkable characteristic of the Otariidæ.

These remarks of mine, it should be borne in mind, apply directly to the Phoca vitulina, and I presume indirectly with equal force to all the rest of its more important generic kindred, be they as large as the big maklok, Erignathus barbata, or less.

This hair-seal is found around these islands at all seasons of the year, but in very small numbers. I have never seen more than twenty-five or thirty at any one time, and I am told that its occidental distribution, although everywhere found, above and below, from the arctic to the tropics, and especially general over the North Pacific coast, nowhere exhibits any great number at any one place; but we know that it and its immediate kindred form a vast majority of the multitudinous seal-life peculiar to our North Atlantic shores, ice-floes, and contiguous waters. The scarcity of this species, and of all its generic allies, in the waters of the Pacific, is notable as compared with those of the circumpolar Atlantic, where these hair-seals are the seals of commerce: they are found in such immense numbers between Greenland and Labrador, and thence to the eastward at certain seasons of every year, that employment is given to a fleet of about sixty sailing and steam vessels, which annually goes forth from St. John, Newfoundland, and elsewhere, fitted for seal-fishing: taking in all this cruising over three hundred thousand of these animals each season. The principal object of value, however, is the oil rendered from them: the skins have a very small commercial importance.

The fur-seal, Callorhinus ursinus, which repairs to these islands to breed and to shed its hair and fur, in numbers that seem almost fabulous, is the highest organized of all the Pinnipedia, and, indeed, for that matter, when land and water are weighed in the account together, there is no other animal known to man which may be truly classed as its superior, from a purely physical point of view. Certainly there are few, if any, creatures in the animal kingdom that can be said to exhibit a higher order of instinct, approaching even our intelligence.

GROUP OF FUR SEALS

Young Females	Old Male	Young Male	Mother Seal	Old Male “Roaring”
2 years	18 years	6 years	and Pup nursing	Young Males
				2 years

I wish to draw attention to a specimen of the finest of this race—a male in the flush and prime of his first maturity, six or seven years old, and full grown. When it comes up from the sea early in the spring, out to its station for the breeding season, we have an animal before us that will measure six and a half to seven and a quarter feet in length from tip of nose to the end of its abbreviated abortive tail. It will weigh at least four hundred pounds, and I have seen older specimens much more corpulent, which, in my best judgment, could not be less than six hundred pounds in weight.[109] The head of this animal now before us appears to be disproportionately small in comparison with an immensely thick neck and shoulders; but, as we come to examine it, we will find it is mostly all occupied by the brain. The light frame-work of its skull supports an expressive pair of large bluish-hazel eyes, alternately burning with revengeful, passionate light, then suddenly changing to the tones of tenderness and good-nature. It has a muzzle and jaws of about the same size and form observed in any full-blooded Newfoundland dog, with this difference, that the lips are not flabby and overhanging; they are as firmly lined and pressed against one another as our own. The upper lips support a yellowish-white and gray mustache, composed of long, stiff bristles, which, when not torn out and broken off in combat, sweeps down and over the shoulders as a luxuriant plume. Look at it as it comes leisurely swimming on toward the land; see how high above the water it carries its head, and how deliberately it surveys the beach, after having stepped upon it (for it may be truly said to step with its fore-flippers, as they regularly alternate when it moves up), carrying the head well above them, erect and graceful, at least three feet from the ground. The fore-feet, or flippers, are a pair of dark bluish-black hands, about eight or ten inches broad at their junction with the body, and the metacarpal joint, running out to an ovate point at their extremity, some fifteen to eighteen inches from this union—all the rest of the forearm, the ulna, radius, and humerus being concealed under the skin and thick blubber-folds of the main body and neck, hidden entirely at this season, when it is so fat. But six weeks to three months after this time of landing, when that superfluous fat and flesh is consumed by self-absorption, then those bones will show plainly under its shrunken skin. On the upper side of these flippers the hair of the body straggles down finer and fainter as it comes below to a point close by, and slightly beyond that spot of junction where the phalanges and the metacarpal bones unite, similar to that point on our own hand where our knuckles are placed; and here the hair ends, leaving the rest of the skin to the end of the flipper bare and wrinkled in places at the margin of the inner side; showing, also, five small pits, containing abortive nails, which are situated immediately over the union of the phalanges with their cartilaginous continuations to the end of the flipper.

On the under side of the flipper the skin is entirely bare from its outer extremity up to the body-connection. It is sensibly tougher and thicker than elsewhere on the body; it is deeply and regularly wrinkled with seams and furrows, which cross one another so as to leave a kind of sharp diamond-cut pattern. When they are placed by the animal upon the smoothest rocks, shining and slippery from algoid growths and the sea-polish of restless waters, they seldom fail to adhere.

When we observe this seal moving out on the land, we notice that, though it handles its fore-feet in a most creditable manner, it brings up its rear in quite a different style: for, after every second step ahead with the anterior limbs it will arch its spine, and in arching, it drags and lifts up, and together forward, the hind-feet, to a fit position under its body, giving it in this manner fresh leverage for another movement forward by the fore-feet, in which the spine is again straightened out, and then a fresh hitch is taken up on the posteriors once more, and so on as the seal progresses. This is the leisurely and natural movement on land, when not disturbed, the body all the time being carried clear of and never touching the ground; but if the creature is frightened, this method of progression is radically changed. It launches into a lope and actually gallops so fast that the best powers of a man in running are taxed to head it off. Still, it must be remembered that it cannot run far before it sinks, trembling, gasping, breathless, to the earth. Thirty or forty yards of such speed marks the utmost limit of its endurance.

The radical difference in the form and action of the hind-feet cannot fail to strike the eye at once. They are one-seventh longer than the fore-hands and very much lighter and more slender; they resemble, in broad terms, a pair of black-kid gloves, flattened out and shrivelled, as they lie in their box.

There is no suggestion of fingers on the fore-hands; but the hind-feet seem to be toes run into ribbons, for they literally flap about involuntarily from that point where the cartilaginous processes unite with the phalangeal bones. The hind-feet are also merged in the body at their junction with it, like those anterior. Nothing can be seen of the leg above the tarsal joint.

The shape of the hind flipper is strikingly like that of a human foot, provided the latter were drawn out to a length of twenty or twenty-two inches, the instep flattened down and the toes run out into thin, membranous, oval-tipped points, only skin-thick, leaving three strong cylindrical, grayish, horn-colored nails, half an inch long each, back six inches from these skinny toe-ends, without any sign of nails to mention on the outer big and little toes.

On the upper side of this hind-foot the body-hair comes down to that point where the metatarsus and phalangeal bones join and fade out. From that junction the phalanges, about six inches down to the nails above mentioned, are entirely bare and stand ribbed up in bold relief on the membrane which unites them, as the web to a duck’s foot. The nails just referred to mark the ends of the phalangeal bones and their union in turn with the cartilaginous processes, which run rapidly tapering and flattening out to the ends of the thin toe-points. Now, as we are looking at this fur-seal’s motion and progression, that which seems most odd is the gingerly manner (if I may be allowed to use the expression) in which it carries these hind flippers. They are held out at right angles from the body directly opposite the pelvis, the toe-ends or flaps slightly waving, curled, and drooping over, supported daintily, as it were, above the earth, the animal only suffering its weight behind to fall upon its heels, which are themselves opposed to each other, scarcely five inches apart.

We shall, as we see this seal again later in the season, have to notice a different mode of progression and bearing, both when it is lording over its harem or when it grows shy and restless at the end of the breeding season, then faint, emaciated, and dejected. But we will now proceed to observe him in the order of his arrival and that of his family. His behavior during the long period of fasting and unceasing activity and vigilance, and other cares which devolve upon him as the most eminent of all polygamists in the brute world, I shall carefully relate, and to fully comprehend the method of this exceedingly interesting animal it will be frequently necessary for the reader to refer to my sketch-maps of its breeding grounds or rookeries, and the islands.

The adult males are the first examples of the Callorhinus to arrive in the spring on the seal-ground, which has been deserted by all of them since the close of the preceding year.[110]

Between May 1st and 5th, usually, a few males will be found scattered over the rookeries pretty close to the water. They are at this time quite shy and sensitive, seeming not yet satisfied with the land, and a great many spend day after day idly swimming out among the breakers a little distance from the shore before they come to it, perhaps somewhat reluctant at first to enter upon the assiduous duties and the grave responsibilities before them of fighting for and maintaining their positions in the rookeries.

The first arrivals are not always the oldest bulls, but may be said to be the finest and most ambitious of their class. They are full grown and able to hold their places on the rookeries or the breeding flats, which they immediately take up after coming ashore. Their method of landing is to come collectively to those breeding grounds where they passed the prior season; but I am not able to say authoritatively, nor do I believe it, strongly as it has been urged by many careful men who were with me on the islands, that these animals come back to and take up the same position on their breeding grounds that they individually occupied when there last year. From my knowledge of their action and habit, and from what I have learned of the natives, I should say that very few, if any, of them make such a selection and keep these places year after year. Even did the seal itself intend to come directly from the sea to that spot on the rookery which it left last summer, what could it do if it came to that rookery margin a little later and found that another “see-catch” had occupied its ground? The bull could do nothing. It would either have to die in its tracks, if it persisted in attaining this supposed objective point, or do what undoubtedly it does do—seek the next best locality which it can secure adjacent.

“OLD JOHN”

A Life Study of an aged Fur Seal-Bull or “See-catch.”—Gorbatch Rookery, July 2, 1872

One aged “see-catch” was pointed out to me at the “Gorbatch” section of the Reef rookery, as an animal that was long known to the natives as a regular visitor, close by or on the same rock, every season during the past three years. They called him “Old John,” and they said they knew him because he had one of his posterior digits missing, bitten off, perhaps, in a combat. I saw him in 1872, and made careful drawings of him in order that I might recognize his individuality, should he appear again in the following year, and when that time rolled by, I found him not; he failed to reappear, and the natives acquiesced in his absence. Of course it was impossible to say that he was dead when there were ten thousand rousing, fighting bulls to the right, left, and below us, under our eyes, for we could not approach for inspection. Still, if these animals came each to a certain place in any general fashion, or as a rule, I think there would be no difficulty in recognizing the fact; the natives certainly would do so; as it is, they do not I think it very likely, however, that the older bulls come back to the same common rookery ground where they spent the previous season; but they are obliged to take up their position on it just as the circumstances attending their arrival will permit, such as finding other seals which have arrived before them, or of being whipped out by stronger rivals from their old stands.

It is entertaining to note, in this connection, that the Russians themselves, with the object of testing that mooted query, during the later years of their possession of the islands, drove up a number of young males from Lukannon, cut off their ears, and turned them out to sea again. The following season, when the droves came in from the “hauling-grounds” to the slaughtering-fields, quite a number of those cropped seals were in the drives, but instead of being found all at one place—the place from whence they were driven the year before—they were scattered examples of croppies from every point on the island. The same experiment was again made by our people in 1870 (the natives having told them of such prior undertaking), and they went also to Lukannon, drove up one hundred young males, cut off their left ears, and set them free in turn. Of this number, during the summer of 1872, when I was there, the natives found in their driving of seventy-five thousand seals from the different hauling-grounds of St. Paul up to the village killing-grounds, two on Novastoshnah rookery, ten miles north of Lukannon, and two or three from English Bay and Tolstoi rookeries, six miles west by water; one or two were taken on St. George Island, thirty-six miles to the southeast, and not one from Lukannon was found among those that were driven from there; probably, had all the young males on the two islands this season been examined, the rest of the croppies that had returned from the perils of the deep, whence they sojourned during the winter, would have been distributed quite equally about the Pribylov hauling-grounds. Although the natives say that they think the cutting off of the animal’s ear gives the water such access to its head as to cause its death, yet I noticed that those examples which we had recognized by this auricular mutilation, were normally fat and well developed. Their theory does not appeal to my belief, and it certainly requires confirmation.

These experiments would tend to prove very cogently and conclusively that when the seals approach the islands in the spring they have nothing in their minds but a general instinctive appreciation of the fitness of the land as a whole, and no special fondness or determination to select any one particular spot, not even the place of their birth. A study of my map of the distribution of the seal-life on St. Paul, clearly indicates that the landing of the seals on the respective rookeries is influenced greatly by the direction of the wind at the time of their approach to the islands in the spring and early summer. The prevailing airs, blowing, as they do at that season, from the north and northwest, carry far out to sea the odor of the old rookery flats, together with a fresh scent of the pioneer bulls which have located themselves on these breeding grounds three or four weeks in advance of their kind. The seals come up from the great North Pacific, and hence it will be seen that the rookeries of the south and southeastern shores of St. Paul Island receive nearly all the seal-life, although there are miles of perfectly eligible ground at Nahsayvernia or north shore. To settle this matter beyond all argument, however, I know is an exceedingly difficult task, since the identification of individuals, from one season to another, among the hundreds of thousands, and even millions, that come under your eye on one of these great rookeries, is well-nigh impossible. From the time of the first arrival in May up to the beginning of June, or as late as the middle of that month, if the weather be clear, is an interval in which everything seems quiet. Very few seals are added to the pioneers that have landed, as we have described. About June 1st, however, sometimes a little before, and never much later, the seal-weather—the foggy, humid, oozy damp of summer—sets in; and with it, as the gray banks roll up and shroud the islands, old bull-seals swarm from the depths by hundreds and thousands, and locate themselves in advantageous positions for the reception of the females, which are generally three weeks or a month later than this date in arrival.

It appears from my surrey of these breeding grounds that a well-understood principle exists among the able-bodied males, to-wit: that each one shall remain undisturbed on his own ground, which is usually about six to eight feet square: provided, that at the start, and from that time until the arrival of the females, he is strong enough to hold this ground against all comers; inasmuch as the crowding in of fresh arrivals often causes a removal of those which, though equally able-bodied at first, have exhausted themselves by fighting earlier and constantly, they are finally driven by these fresher animals back farther and higher up on the rookery, and sometimes off altogether.

The labor of locating and maintaining a position on the rookery is real, terrible and serious business for these bulls which come in last, and it is so all the time to those males that occupy the water-line of the breeding grounds. A constantly sustained fight between the new-comers and the occupants goes on morning, noon, and night, without cessation, frequently resulting in death to one, or even both, of the combatants. The “seecatchie” under six years of age, although hovering about the sea-margins of the breeding grounds, do not engage in much fighting there; it is the six and seven year old males, ambitious and flushed with a full sense of their reproductive ability, that swarm out and do battle with the older males of these places. A young male of this latter class is, however, no match for any fifteen or twenty year old bull, provided that an old “seecatchie” retains his teeth; for, with these weapons, his relatively harder thews and sinews give him the advantage in almost every instance among the hundreds of combats that I have witnessed. These trials of strength between the old and the young are incessant until the rookeries are mapped out; since, by common consent, the males of all classes recognize the coming of the females. After their arrival and settlement over the whole extent of the breeding grounds, about July 15th at the latest, very little fighting takes place.

Many of those bulls exhibit wonderful strength and desperate courage. I marked one veteran at Gorbatch, who was the first to take up his position early in May, and that position, as usual, directly on the water-line. This male seal had fought at least forty or fifty desperate battles, and beaten off his assailants every time—perhaps nearly as many different seals each of which had coveted his position—when the fighting season was over (after the cows are mostly all hauled up), I saw him still there, covered with scars and frightfully gashed—raw, festering, and bloody, one eye gouged out—but lording it bravely over his harem of fifteen or twenty females, which were all huddled together around him on the same spot of his first location.

This fighting between the old and adult males (for none others fight) is mostly, or rather entirely, done with the mouth. The opponents seize one another with their teeth, and thus clinching their jaws, nothing but the sheer strength of the one and the other tugging to escape can shake them loose; then, that effort invariably leaves an ugly wound, for the sharp canines tear out deep gutters in the skin and furrows in the blubber, or shred the flippers into ribbon-strips.

They usually approach each other with comically averted heads, just as though they were ashamed of the rumpus which they are determined to precipitate. When they get near enough to reach one another, they enter upon the repetition of many feints or passes before either one or the other takes the initiative by gripping. The heads are darted out and back as quick as a flash; their hoarse roaring and shrill, piping whistle never ceases, while their fat bodies writhe and swell with exertion and rage; furious lights gleam in their eyes, their hair flies in the air, and their blood streams down,—all combined makes a picture so fierce and so strange that, from its unexpected position and its novelty, it is perhaps one of the most extraordinary brutal contests which a man can witness.

In these battles of the seals the parties are always distinct; the one is offensive, the other, defensive. If the latter proves the weaker, he withdraws from the position occupied, and is never followed by his conqueror, who complacently throws up one of his hind flippers, fans himself, as it were, to cool his fevered wrath and blood from the heat of the conflict, sinks into comparative quiet, only uttering a peculiar chuckle of satisfaction or contempt, with a sharp eye open for another covetous bull or “see-catch.”[111]

OLD BULLS FIGHTING

Fur Seals in Deadly Combat: a Thousand such Conflicts are in simultaneous Action during every Minute of the Breeding Season on the Pribylov Islands

That period occupied by the males in taking and holding their positions on a rookery offers a very favorable opportunity to study them in the thousand and one different attitudes and postures assumed between the two extremes of desperate conflict and deep sleep—sleep so profound that one can, if he keeps to the leeward, approach close enough, stepping softly, to pull the whiskers of any old male taking a nap on a clear place. But after the first touch to these mustaches the trifler must jump back with electrical celerity, if he has any regard for the sharp teeth and tremendous shaking which will surely overtake him if he does not. The younger seals sleep far more soundly than the old ones, and it is a favorite pastime for the natives to surprise them in this manner—favorite, because it is attended with no personal risk. The little beasts, those amphibious sleepers, rise suddenly, and fairly shrink to the earth, spitting and coughing out in their terror and confusion.

The neck, chest, and shoulders of a fur-seal bull comprise more than two-thirds of his whole weight; and in this long, thick neck and the powerful muscles of the fore-limbs and shoulders is embodied the larger portion of his strength. When on land, with the fore-hands he does all climbing over rocks and grassy hummocks back of the rookery, or shuffles his halting way over smooth parades—the hind-feet are gathered up as useless trappings after every second step forward, which we have described at the outset of this chapter. These anterior flippers are also the propelling power when in water, and exclusive machinery with which they drive their rapid passage—the hinder ones float behind like the steering sweep to a whale-boat, and are used evidently as rudders, or as the tail of a bird is, while its wings sustain and force its rapid flight.

The covering to its body is composed of two coats, one being a short, crisp, glistening over-hair, and the other a close, soft, elastic pelage or fur, which gives a distinctive value to the pelt. I can call it readily to the mind of my readers when I say to them that the down and feathers on the breast of a duck lie relatively as the fur and hair do upon the skin of the seal.

At this season of first “hauling up”[112] in the spring the prevailing color of the bulls, after they dry off and have been exposed to the weather, is a dark, dull brown, with a sprinkling in it of lighter brown-black, and a number of hoary or grizzled gray coats peculiar to the very old males. On the shoulders of all of them—that is, the adults—the over-hair is either a gray or rufous-ochre or a very emphatic “pepper and salt.” This is called the “wig.” The body-colors[113] are most intense and pronounced upon the back of the head, neck, and spine, fading down on the flanks lighter, to much lighter ground on the abdomen; still never white or even a clean gray, so beautiful and peculiar to them when young, and to the females. The skin of the muzzle and flippers is a dark bluish-black, fading in the older examples to a reddish and purplish tint. The color of the ears and tail is similar to that of the body, perhaps a trifle lighter. The ears on a bull fur-seal are from one inch to an inch and a half in length. The pavilions or auricles are tightly rolled up on themselves, so that they are similar in shape to and exactly the size of the little finger on the human hand, cut off at the second phalangeal joint—a trifle more cone-shaped, however—as they are greater at the base than they are at the tip. They are haired and furred as the body is.

I think it probable that this animal is able to and does exert the power of compressing or dilating this scroll-like pavilion to its ear, just according as it dives deeper or rises in the water, and also I am quite sure that the hair-seal has this control over its meatus externus, from what I have seen of it. I have not been able to verify it in either case by actual observation; yet such opportunity as I have had gives me undoubted proof of the fact that the hearing of a fur-seal is wonderfully keen and surpassingly acute. If you make any noise, no matter how slight, an alarm will be given instantly by these insignificant-looking auditors, and the animal, awaking from profound sleep, assumes, with a single motion, an erect posture, gives a stare of stupid astonishment, at the same time breaking out into incessant, surly roaring, growling, and “spitting,” if it be an old male.

This spitting, as I call it, is by no means a fair or full expression of a most characteristic sound or action, so far as I have observed, peculiar to fur-seals alone, the bulls in particular. It is the usual prelude to all their combats, and it is their signal of astonishment. It follows somewhat in this way: when the two disputants are nearly within reaching or striking distance, they make a number of feints or false passes, as fencing-masters do, at one another, with the mouth wide open, lifting the lips or snarling so as to exhibit their glistening teeth; with each pass of the head and neck they expel the air so violently through the larynx as to cause a rapid choo-choo-choo sound, like steam-puffs as they escape from the smoke-stack of a locomotive when it starts a heavy train, especially while the driving-wheels slip on the rail.

All of the bulls have the power and frequent inclination to utter four distinct calls or notes. This is not the case with the sea-lion, whose voice is confined to a single bass roar, or that of the walrus, which is limited to a dull grunt, or that of the hair-seal, which is almost inaudible. This volubility of the adult male is decidedly characteristic and prominent. He utters a hoarse, resonant roar, loud and long; he gives vent to a low, entirely different gurgling growl; he emits a chuckling, sibilant, piping whistle, of which it is impossible to convey an adequate idea, for it must be heard to be understood, and this spitting or choo sound just mentioned. The cow[114] has but one note—a hollow, prolonged, bla-a-ting call, addressed only to her pup: on all other occasions she is usually silent; it is something strangely like the cry of a calf or an old sheep. She also makes a spitting sound or snort when suddenly disturbed—a kind of cough, as it were. The pups “blaat” also, with little or no variation, their sound being somewhat weaker and hoarser after birth than their mother’s. They, too, comically spit or cough when aroused suddenly from a nap or driven into a corner, opening their little mouths (like young birds in a nest) when at bay, backed up in some crevice or against grassy tussocks.

Indeed, so similar is that call of the female to the bleating of sheep that a number of the latter, which the Alaska Commercial Company had brought up from San Francisco to St. George Island during the summer of 1873, were constantly attracted to the rookeries, and were running in among the “holluschickie” so much that they neglected better pasturage on the uplands beyond, and a small boy had to be regularly employed to herd them where they would feed to advantage. These transported Ovidæ, though they could not possibly find anything in their eyes suggestive of companionship among the seals, had their ears so charmed by those sheep-like accents of the female pinnipeds as to persuade them in spite of their senses of vision and smell.

The sound which arises from these great breeding grounds of the fur-seal, where thousands upon tens of thousands of angry, vigilant bulls are roaring, chuckling, and piping, and multitudes of seal-mothers are calling in hollow, bleating tones to their young, that in turn respond incessantly, is simple defiance to verbal description. It is, at a slight distance, softened into a deep booming, as of a cataract; and I have heard it, with a light, fair wind to the leeward, as far as six miles out from land on the sea; even in the thunder of the surf and the roar of heavy gales, it will rise up and over to your ear for quite a considerable distance away. It is a monitor which the sea-captains anxiously strain their ears for, when they run their dead reckoning up, and are lying to for the fog to rise, in order that they may get their bearings of the land. Once heard, they hold on to the sound, and feel their way in to anchor. The seal-roar at “Novastoshnah” during the summer of 1872 saved the life of a surgeon,[115] and six natives belonging to the village, who had pushed out on an egging trip from Northeast Point to Walrus Island. I have sometimes thought, as I have listened all night long to this volume of extraordinary sound, which never ceases with the rising or the setting of the sun throughout the entire period of breeding, that it was fully equal to the churning boom of the waves of Niagara. Night and day, belonging to that season, vibrates with this steady and constant din upon the rookeries.

Fur-seals Scratching Themselves.

[Off the Black Bluffs, St. Paul’s Island.]

The most casual observer will notice that these seals seem to suffer great inconvenience and positive misery from a comparatively low degree of heat I have often been surprised to observe that, when the temperature was 46° and 48° Fahr. on land during the summer, they would show everywhere signs of distress, whenever they made any exertion in moving or fighting, evidenced by panting and the elevation of their hind flippers, which they used incessantly as so many fans. With the thermometer again higher, as it is at rare intervals, standing at 55° and 60°, they are then oppressed even when at rest; and at such times the eye is struck by the kaleidoscopic appearance of a rookery—in any of these rookeries where the seals are spread out in every imaginable position their lithesome bodies can assume, all industriously fan themselves: they use sometimes the fore flippers as ventilators, as it were, by holding them aloft motionless, at the same time fanning briskly with the hinder ones, according as they sit or lie. This wavy motion of fanning or flapping gives a hazy indistinctness to the whole scene, which is difficult to express in language; but one of the most prominent characteristics of the fur-seal, and perhaps the most unique feature, is this very fanning manner in which they use their flippers, when seen on the breeding grounds at this season. They also, when idle, as it were, off-shore at sea, lie on their sides in the water with only a partial exposure of the body, the head submerged, and then hoist up a fore or hind flipper clear out of the water, at the same time scratching themselves or enjoying a momentary nap; but in this position there is no fanning. I say “scratching,” because the seal, in common with all animals, is preyed upon by vermin, and it has a peculiar species of louse, or parasitic tick, which annoys it.

Speaking of seals as they rest in the water leads me to remark that they seem to sleep as sound and as comfortably, bedded on the waves or rolled by the swell, as they do on the land. They lie on their backs, fold the fore flippers down across the chest, and turn the hind ones up and over, so that the tips rest on their necks and chins, thus exposing simply the nose and the heels of the hind flippers above water, nothing else being seen. In this position, unless it is very rough, the seal sleeps as serenely as did the prototype of that memorable song, who was “rocked in the cradle of the deep.”

All the bulls, from the very first, that have been able to hold their positions, have not left them from the moment of their landing for a single instant, night or day; nor will they do so until the end of the rutting season, which subsides entirely between August 1st and 10th—it begins shortly after the coming of the cows in June. Of necessity, therefore, this causes them to fast, to abstain entirely from food of any kind, or water, for three months at least; and a few of them actually stay out four months, in total abstinence, before going back into the ocean for the first time after “hauling up” in May. They then return as so many bony shadows of what they were only a few months previously; covered with wounds, abject and spiritless, they laboriously crawl back to the sea to renew a fresh lease of life.

Such physical endurance is remarkable enough alone; but it is simply wonderful when we come to associate this fasting with the unceasing activity, restlessness, and duty devolved upon the bulls as the heads of large families. They do not stagnate like hibernating bears in caves; there is not one torpid breath drawn by them in the whole period of their fast. It is evidently sustained and accomplished by the self-absorption of their own fat, with which they are so liberally supplied when they first come out from the sea and take up their positions on the breeding grounds, and which gradually disappears, until nothing but the staring hide, protruding tendons and bones mark the limit of their abstinence. There must be some remarkable provision made by nature for the entire torpidity of the seals’ stomachs and bowels, in consequence of their being empty and unsupplied during this long period, coupled with the intense activity and physical energy of the animals throughout that time, which, however, in spite of the violation of a supposed physiological law, does not seem to affect them, for they come back just as sleek, fat, and ambitious as ever, in the following season. That the seals drink or need fresh water, I doubt; but they cool their mouths incessantly by swimming with them wide open through the waves, laving as it were their hot throats and lips in the flood.[116]

Between June 12th and 14th, the first of the cow-seals, as a rule, come up from the sea; then that long agony of the waiting bulls is over, and they signalize it by a period of universal, spasmodic, desperate fighting among themselves. Though they have quarrelled all the time from the moment they first landed, and continue to do so until the end of the season, in August, yet that fighting which takes place at this date is the bloodiest and most vindictive known to the seal. I presume that the heaviest percentage of mutilation and death among the old males from these brawls, occur in this week of the earliest appearance of the females.

A strong contrast now between the males and females looms up, both in size and shape, which is heightened by an air of exceeding peace and dove-like amiability which the latter class exhibit, in contradistinction to the ferocity and saturnine behavior of the former.[117] The cows are from four to four and a half feet in length from head to tail, and much more shapely in their proportions than the bulls; there is no wrapping around their necks and shoulders of unsightly masses of blubber; their lithe, elastic forms, from the first to the last of the season, are never altered; they are, however, enabled to keep such shape, because, in the provision of seal economy, they sustain no protracted fasting period; for, soon after the birth of their young they leave it on the ground and go to the sea for food, returning perhaps to-morrow, may be later, or even not for several days in fact, to again suckle and nourish it; having in the meantime sped far off to distant fishing banks, and satiated a hunger which so active and highly organized an animal must experience, when deprived of sustenance for any length of time.

As the females come up wet and dripping from the water, they are at first a dull, dirty-gray color, dark on the back and upper parts, but in a few hours the transformation in their appearance made by drying is wonderful. You would hardly believe that they could be the same animals, for they now fairly glisten with a rich steel and maltese gray lustre on the back of the head, the neck, and along down the spine, which blends into an almost snow-white over the chest and on the abdomen. But, this beautiful coloring in turn is again altered by exposure to the same weather; for, after a few days it will gradually change, so that by the lapse of two or three weeks it is a dull, rufous-ochre below, and a cinereous brown and gray mixed above. This color they retain throughout the breeding season, up to the time of shedding their coats in August.

The head and eye of the female are exceedingly beautiful; the expression is really attractive, gentle, and intelligent; the large, lustrous, blue-black eyes are humid and soft with the tenderest expression, while the small, well-formed head is poised as gracefully on her neck as can be well imagined; she is the very picture of benignity and satisfaction, when she is perched up on some convenient rock, and has an opportunity to quietly fan herself, the eyes half-closed and the head thrown back on her gently-swelling shoulders.

The females land on these islands, not from the slightest desire to see their uncouth lords and masters, but from an accurate and instinctive appreciation of the time in which their period of gestation ends. They are in fact driven up to the rookeries by this cause alone; the young cannot be brought forth in the water, and, in all cases marked by myself, the pups were born soon after landing, some in a few hours, but, most usually, a day or so elapses before delivery. They are noticed and received by the males at the water-line stations with attention; they are alternately coaxed and urged up on to the rocks, as far as these beach-masters can do so, by chuckling, whistling, and roaring, and then they are immediately under the most jealous supervision; but, owing to the covetous and ambitious nature of those bulls which occupy these stations to the rear of the water-line and away back, the little cows have a rough-and-tumble time of it, when they begin to arrive in small numbers at first; for no sooner is the pretty animal fairly established on the station of male number one, who has welcomed her there, than he, perhaps, sees another one of her style in the water from whence she has come, and, in obedience to his polygamous feeling, devotes himself anew to coaxing the later arrival, by that same winning manner so successful in the first case; then when bull number two, just back, observes bull number one off guard, he reaches out with his long strong neck and picks up the unhappy but passive cow by the scruff of hers, just as a cat does a kitten, and deposits her upon his seraglio ground; then bulls number three and four, and so on, in the vicinity, seeing this high-handed operation, all assail one another, especially number two, and for a moment have a tremendous fight, perhaps lasting half a minute or so, and during this commotion the little cow is generally moved, or moves, farther back from the water, two or three stations more, where, when all gets quiet again, she usually remains in peace. Her last lord and master, not having that exposure to such diverting temptation as her first, gives her such care that she not only is unable to leave, did she wish, but no other bull can seize upon her: this is only a faint and (I fully appreciate it) wholly inadequate description of the hurly-burly and that method by which the rookeries are filled up, from first to last, when the females arrive—it is only one instance of the many trials and tribulations which both parties on the rookery subject themselves to, before the harems are filled.[118]

SUNDRY SEAL SKETCHES FROM THE AUTHOR’S PORTFOLIO

On St. Paul’s Island, 1872-’76

Far back, fifteen or twenty “see-catchie” stations deep from the water-line, and sometimes more, but generally not over an average of ten or fifteen, the cows crowd in at the close of the season for arriving, which is by July 10th or 14th; then they are able to go about very much as they please, for the bulls have become so greatly enfeebled by this constant fasting, fighting, and excitement during the past two months, that they are quite content now with only one or two partners, even if they should have no more.

The cows seem to haul up in compact bodies from the water, covering in the whole ground to the rear of the rookeries, never scattering about over the surface of this area; they have mapped out, from the first, their chosen resting-places, and they will not lie quietly in any position outside of the great mass of their kind. This is due to their intensely gregarious nature, and is especially adapted for their protection. And here I should call attention to the fact that they select this rookery ground with all the skill of civil engineers. It is preferred with special reference to drainage, for it must slope so that the produce of constantly dissolving fogs and rain-clouds shall not lie upon it, since they have a great aversion to, and a firm determination not to rest on water-puddled ground. This is admirably exhibited, and will be understood by a study of my sketch-maps which follow, illustrative of these rookeries and the area and position of the seals upon them. Every one of those breeding grounds rises up gently from the sea, and on no one of them is there anything like a muddy flat.

I found it an exceedingly difficult matter to satisfy myself as to a fair general average number of cows to each bull on the rookery, but, after protracted study, I think it will be nearly correct when I assign to each male a specific ratio of from fifteen to twenty females at the stations nearest the water, and for those back, in order, from that line to the rear, from five to twelve; but there are many exceptional cases, and many instances where forty-five and fifty females are all under the charge of one male: and then, again, where there are only two or three females: hence this question was and is not entirely satisfactory in its settlement to my mind.

Near Ketavie Point, and just above it to the north, is an odd wash-out of basalt by the surf, which has chiselled, as it were, from the foundation of the island, a lava table, with a single roadway or land passage to it. Upon the summit of this footstool I counted forty-five cows, all under the charge of one old veteran. He had them penned on this table-rock by taking his stand at the gate, as it were, through which they passed up and passed down—a Turkish brute typified.

At the rear of all these rookeries there is invariably a large number of able-bodied males which have come late, and wait patiently, yet in vain, for families; most of them having had to fight as desperately for the privilege of being there as any of their more fortunately located neighbors, who are nearer the water, and in succession from there to where they are themselves; but the cows do not like to be in any outside position. They cannot be coaxed out where they are not in close company with their female mates and masses. They lie most quietly and contentedly in the largest harems, and cover the surface of the ground so thickly that there is hardly moving or turning room when they cease to come from the sea. The inaction on the part of those males in the rear during the breeding season only serves to well qualify them for moving into the places which are necessarily vacated by disabled males that are, in the meantime, obliged to leave from virile exhaustion, or incipient wounds. All the surplus able-bodied bulls, which have not been successful in effecting a landing on the rookeries cannot be seen at any one time, however, in the season, on this rear line. Only a portion of their number are in sight; the others are either loafing at sea, adjacent, or are hauled out in morose squads between the rookeries on the beaches. The cows, during the whole season, do great credit to their amiable expression by their manner and behavior on the rookery. They never fight or quarrel one with another, and never or seldom utter a cry of pain or rage when they are roughly handled by the bulls, which frequently get a cow between them and actually tear the skin from her back with their teeth, cutting deep gashes in it as they snatch her from mouth to mouth. If sand does not get into these wounds it is surprising how rapidly they heal; and, from the fact that I never could see scars on them anywhere except the fresh ones of this year, they must heal effectually and exhibit no trace the next season.

The cows, like the bulls, vary much in weight, but the extraordinary disparity in the adult size of the sexes is exceedingly striking. Two females taken from the rookery nearest to St. Paul village, right under the bluffs (and almost beneath the eaves of the natives’ houses) called “Nah Speel,” after they had brought forth their young, were weighed by myself, and their respective returns on the scales were fifty-six and one hundred pounds each; the former being about three or four years old, and the latter over six—perhaps ten. Both were fat, or rather, in good condition—as good as they ever are. Thus the female is just about one-sixth the size of the male. Among the sea-lions the proportion is just one-half the bulk of the male, while the hair-seals, as I have before stated, are not distinguishable in this respect, as far as I could observe, but my notice was limited to a few specimens only.

The courage with which the fur-seal holds his position as the head and guardian of a family is of the highest order. I have repeatedly tried to drive them from their harem-posts, when they were fairly established on their stations, and have, with very few exceptions, failed. I might use every stone at my command, making all the noise I could. Finally, to put this courage to its fullest test, I have walked up to within twenty feet of an old veteran, toward the extreme end of Tolstoi, who had only four cows in charge, and commenced with my double-barrelled fowling-piece to pepper him all over with fine mustard-seed shot, being kind enough, in spite of my zeal, not to put out his eyes. His bearing, in spite of the noise, smell of powder, and painful irritation which the fine shot must have produced, did not change in the least from the usual attitude of determined, plucky defence (which nearly all of the bulls assume) when he was attacked with showers of stones and noise. He would dart out right and left with his long neck and catch the timid cows that furtively attempted to run after each report of my gun, fling and drag them back to their places under his head; and then, stretching up to his full height, look me directly and defiantly in the face, roaring and chuckling most vehemently. The cows, however, soon got away from him: they could not endure my racket, in spite of their dread of him. But he still stood his ground, making little charges on me of ten or fifteen feet in a succession of gallops or lunges, spitting furiously, and then comically retreating, with an indescribable leer and swagger, to the old position, back of which he would not go, fully resolved to hold his own or die in the attempt.

This courage is all the more noteworthy from the fact that, in regard to man, it is invariably of a defensive character. The seal is always on the defensive; he never retreats, and he will not assail. If he makes you return when you attack him he never follows you much farther than the boundary of his station, and then no aggravation will compel him to take the offensive, so far as I have been able to observe. I was very much impressed by this trait.

It is quite beyond my power—indeed, entirely out of the question—to give a fair idea of the thousand and one positions in which seals compose themselves and rest when on land. They may be said to assume every possible attitude which a flexible body can be put into, no matter how characteristic or seemingly forced or constrained. Their joints seem to be double-hinged—in fact, fitted with ball and socket union of the bones. One favorite position, especially with the females, is to perch upon a point or edge-top of some rock, and throw their heads back upon their shoulders, with the nose held directly up and aloft; and then, closing their eyes, take short naps without changing their attitude, now and then softly lifting one or the other of their long, slender hind flippers, which they slowly wave with that peculiar fanning motion to which I have alluded heretofore. Another attitude, and one of the most common, is to curl themselves up just as a dog does on a hearth-rug, bringing the tail and nose close together. They also stretch out, laying the head close to the body, and sleep an hour or two without rising, holding one of the hind flippers up all the time, now and then gently moving it, the eyes being tightly closed.

I ought, perhaps, to define the anomalous tail of the fur-seal here. It is just about as important as the caudal appendage to a bear; even less significant. It is the very emphasis of abbreviation. In the old males it is positively only four or five inches in length, while among the females only two and a half to three inches, wholly inconspicuous, and not even recognized by the casual observer: they never wag or move it at all.

I come now to speak of another feature which interested me nearly, if not quite, as much as any other characteristic of this creature, and that is their fashion of slumber. The sleep of the fur-seal, seen on land, from the old male down to the youngest, is always accompanied by an involuntary, nervous, muscular twitching and slight shifting of the flippers, together with ever and anon quivering and uneasy rollings of the body, accompanied by a quick folding anew of the fore flippers; all of which may be signs, as it were, in fact, of their simply having nightmares, or of sporting, in a visionary way, far off in some dreamland sea. But, it may be that as an old nurse said in reference to the smiles on a sleeping child’s face, they are disturbed by their intestinal parasites. I have studied hundreds of such somnolent examples. Stealing softly up so closely that I could lay my hand upon them from the point where I was sitting, did I wish to, and watching the sleeping seals, I have always found their sleep to be of this nervous description. The respiration is short and rapid, but with no breathing (unless the ear is brought very close). The quivering, heaving of the flanks only indicates the action of the lungs. I have frequently thought that I had succeeded in finding a snoring seal, especially among the pups; but a close examination always gave some abnormal reason for it—generally a slight distemper; never anything more severe, however, than some trifle by which the nostrils were stopped to a greater or less degree.

The cows on the rookeries sleep a great deal, but the bulls have the veriest cat-naps that can be imagined. I never could time the slumber of any old male on the breeding grounds which lasted, without interruption, longer than five minutes, day or night. While away from these places, however, I have known them to lie sleeping in the manner I have described, broken by such fitful, nervous, dreamy starts, yet without opening the eyes, for an hour or so at a time.

With an exception of the pups, the fur-seal seems to have very little rest, awake or sleeping. Perpetual motion is well-nigh incarnate with its being. I naturally enough, when beginning my investigation of these seal-rookeries, expected to find the animals subdued at night, or early morning, on those breeding grounds; but a few consecutive nocturnal watches satisfied me that the family organization and noise was as active at one time as at another, throughout the whole twenty-four hours. If, however, the day preceding had chanced to be abnormally warm, I never failed then to find the rookeries much more noisy and active during the night than they were by daylight. The seals, as a rule, come and go to and from the sea, fight, roar, and vocalize as much during midnight moments as they do at noonday times. An aged native endeavored to satisfy me that the “seecatchie” could see much better by twilight and night than by daylight. I am not prepared to prove to the contrary, but I think that the fact of his not being able to see so well himself at that hour of darkness was a true cause of most of his belief in the improved nocturnal vision of the seals.[119]

As I have said before, the females, soon after landing, are delivered of their young. Immediately after the birth of the pup (twins are rare, if ever) the little creature finds its voice—a weak, husky blaat—and begins to paddle about with its eyes wide open from the start, in a confused sort of way for a few minutes, until the mother turns round to notice her offspring and give it attention, and still later, to suckle it; and for this purpose she is supplied with four small, brown nipples, almost wholly concealed in the fur, and which are placed about eight inches apart, lengthwise with the body, on the abdomen, between the fore and hind flippers, with about four inches of space between them transversely. These nipples are seldom visible, and then faintly seen through the hair and fur. The milk is abundant, rich, and creamy. The pups nurse very heartily, almost gorging themselves; so much so, that they often have to yield up the excess of what they have taken down, mewling and puking in a most orthodox manner.

The pup at birth, and for the next three months, is of a jet-black color, hair and flippers, save a tiny white patch just back of each forearm. It weighs from three to four pounds, and is twelve to fourteen inches long. It does not seem to nurse more than once every two or three days; but in this I am very likely mistaken, for it may have received attention from its mother in the night, or other times in the day when I was unable to keep up my watch over the individual which I had marked for this supervision.

The apathy with which the young are treated by the old on the breeding grounds, especially by the mothers, was very strange to me, and I was considerably surprised at it. I have never seen a seal-mother caress or fondle her offspring; and should it stray to a short distance from the harem, I could step to and pick it up, and even kill it before the mother’s eye, without causing her the slightest concern, as far as all outward signs and manifestations should indicate. The same indifference is also exhibited by the male to all that may take place of this character outside of the boundary of his seraglio; but the moment the pups are inside the limits of his harem-ground he is a jealous and a fearless protector, vigilant and determined. But if the little animals are careless enough to pass beyond this boundary, then I can go up to them and carry them off before the eye of the old Turk without receiving from him the slightest attention in their behalf—a curious guardian, forsooth!

It is surprising to me how few of these young pups get crushed to death while the ponderous bulls are floundering over them, engaged in fighting and quarrelling among themselves. I have seen two bulls dash at each other with all the energy of furious rage, meeting right in the midst of a small “pod” of forty or fifty pups, tramp over them with all their crushing weight, and bowling them out right and left in every direction by the impetus of their movements, without injuring a single one, as far as I could see. Still, when we come to consider the fact that, despite the great weight of the old males, their broad, flat flippers and yielding bodies may press down heavily on these little fellows without actually breaking bones or mashing them out of shape, it does seem questionable whether more than one per cent. of all the pups born each season on these great rookeries of the Pribylov Islands are destroyed in this manner on the breeding grounds.[120]

The vitality of a fur-seal is simply astonishing. Its physical organization passes beyond the fabled nine lives of the cat. As a slight illustration of its tenure of life, I will mention the fact that one morning Philip came to me with a pup in his arms, which had just been born and was still womb-moist, saying that the mother had been killed at Tolstoi by accident, and he supposed that I would like to have a “choochil.” I took it up into my laboratory, and, finding that it could walk about and make a great noise, I attempted to feed it, with the idea of having a comfortable subject to my pencil for life-study of the young in varied attitudes of sleep and motion. It refused everything that I could summon to its attention as food, and, alternately sleeping and walking in its clumsy fashion about the floor; it actually lived nine days, spending the half of every one in floundering over the floor, accompanying all movements with a persistent, hoarse, blasting cry, and I do not believe it ever had a single drop of its mother’s milk.

In a pup the head is the only disproportionate feature at birth when it is compared with an adult form, the neck being also relatively shorter and thicker. The eye is large, round, and full; but, almost a “navy blue” at times, it soon changes into the blue-black of adolescence.

The females appear to go to and come from the water feeding and bathing quite frequently after bearing their young and an immediate subsequent coitus with the male: they usually return to the spot or its immediate neighborhood, where they leave their pups, crying out for them and recognizing the individual replies; though ten thousand around, all together, should blaat at once, they quickly single out their own and nurse them. It would certainly be a very unfortunate matter if the mothers could not identify their young by sound, since these pups get together like a great swarm of bees, and spread out upon the ground in what the sealers call “pods,” or clustered groups, while they are young and not very large; thus, from the middle or end of September until they leave the islands for the dangers of the great Pacific in the winter, along by the first of November, they gather in this manner, sleeping and frolicking by tens of thousands, bunched together at various places all over the islands contiguous to the breeding grounds, and right on them. A mother comes up from the sea, whither she has been to wash, and perhaps to feed, for the last day or two, feeling her way along to about where she thinks her pup should be—at least, where she left it last; but perhaps she misses it, and finds instead a swarm of pups in which it has been incorporated, owing to its great fondness for society. The mother, without first entering into a crowd of thousands, calls just as a sheep does for a lamb, and out of all the din she—if not at first, at the end of a few trials—recognizes the voice of her offspring, and then advances, striking out right and left toward the position from which it replies; but if the pup happens at this time to be asleep, it gives, of course, no response, even though it were close by. In the event of such silence the cow, after calling for a time without being answered, curls herself up and takes a nap or lazily basks, to be usually more successful, or wholly so, when she calls again.

The pups themselves do not know their own mothers, a fact which I ascertained by careful observation; but they are so constituted that they incessantly cry out at short intervals during the whole time they are awake, and in this way the mother can pick out from the monotonous blaating of thousands of pups her own, and she will not permit any other one to suckle her. But the “kotickie” themselves attempt to nose around every seal-mother that comes in contact with them. I have repeatedly watched young pups as they made advances to nurse from another pup’s mother, the result invariably being that, while the “matkah” would permit her own offspring to suckle freely, yet when these little strangers touched her nipples she would either move abruptly away or else turn quickly down upon her stomach, so that the maternal fountains were inaccessible to alien and hungry “kotickie.” I have witnessed so many examples of the females turning pups away to suckle only some particular other one, that I feel sure I am entirely right in saying that the seal-mothers know their own young, and that they will not permit any others except them to nurse. I believe that this maternal recognition is due chiefly to the mother’s scent and hearing.

Between the end of July and August 5th or 8th of every year the rookeries are completely changed in appearance. The systematic and regular disposition of the families or harems over the whole extent of breeding-ground has disappeared. All that clock-work order which has heretofore existed seems to be broken up. The breeding season closed, those bulls which have held their positions since May 1st leave, most of them thin in flesh and weak, and of their number a very large proportion do not come out again on land during the season; but such as are seen at the end of October and November are in good shape. They have a new coat of rich, dark, gray-brown hair and fur, with gray or grayish-ochre “wigs” of longer hair over the shoulders, forming a fresh, strong contrast to the dull, rusty, brown and umber dress in which they appeared to us during the summer, and which they had begun to shed about August 1st, in common with the females and the “holluschickie.” After these males leave at the end of their season’s work, and of the rutting for the year, those of them that happen to return to land in any event do not come back until the end of September and do not haul up on the rookery grounds again. As a rule, they prefer to herd altogether, like younger males, upon the sand-beaches and rocky points close to the water.

The cows and pups, together with those bulls which we have noticed in waiting at the rear of the rookeries, and which have been in retirement throughout the whole of the breeding season, now take possession, in a very disorderly manner, of these rookeries; also, a large number of young, three, four, and five year old males come, which have been prevented by the menacing threats of stronger bulls from an earlier landing among the females during the breeding season.

Before the middle of August three-fourths, at least, of the cows at this date are off in the water, only coming ashore at irregular intervals to nurse and look after their pups a short time. They presented to my eye, from the summits of the bluffs round about, a picture more suggestive of entire comfort and enjoyment than anything I have ever seen presented by animal life. Here, just out and beyond the breaking of the rollers, they idly lie on the rocks or sand-beaches, ever and anon turning over and over, scratching their backs and sides with their fore and hind flippers. The seals on the breeding ground appear to get very lousy.[121]

Frequent winds and showers will drive and spatter sand into their fur and eyes, often making the latter quite sore. This occurs when they are obliged to leave the rocky rookeries and follow their pups out over the sand-ridges and flats, to which they always have a natural aversion. On the hauling-grounds they pack the soil under their feet so hard and tightly in many places that it holds water in shallow surface-depressions, just like so many rock-basins. Out of and into these puddles the pups and the females flounder and patter incessantly, until evaporation slowly abates the nuisance for a time only, inasmuch as the next day, perhaps, brings more rain and the dirty pools are replenished.

The pups sometimes get so thoroughly plastered in these muddy, slimy puddles, that the hair falls off in patches, giving them, at first sight, the appearance of being troubled with scrofula or some other plague: from my investigations directed to this point, I became satisfied that they were not permanently injured, though evidently very much annoyed. With reference to this suggestion as to sickness or distemper among these seals, I gave the subject direct and continued attention, and in no one of the rookeries could I discover a single seal, no matter how old or young, which appeared to be suffering in the least from any physical disorder other than that which they themselves had inflicted, one upon the other, by fighting. The third season, passing directly under my observation, failed to reward my search with any manifestation of disease among the seals which congregate in such mighty numbers on those rookeries of St. Paul and St. George. That remarkable freedom from all such complaints enjoyed by these animals is noteworthy, and a most trenchant and penetrating cross-questioning of the natives also failed to give me any history or evidence of an epidemic in the past.

The observer will, however, notice every summer, gathered in melancholy squads of a dozen to one hundred or so (scattered along the coast where the healthy seals never go), those sick and disabled bulls which have, in the earlier part of the season, been either internally injured or dreadfully scarred by the teeth of their opponents in fighting. Sand is blown by strong wind into their fresh wounds, causing inflammation and sloughing which very often finishes the life of a victim. The sailors term these invalid gatherings “hospitals,” a phrase which, like the most of their homely expressions, is quite appropriate.

Early in August, usually by the 8th or 10th, I noticed one of the remarkable movements of the season. I refer to the pup’s first essay in swimming. Is it not odd—paradoxical—that the young seal, from the moment of his birth until he is a month or six weeks old, is utterly unable to swim? If he is seized by the nape of the neck and pitched out a rod into the water from shore, his bullet-like head will drop instantly below the surface, and his attenuated posterior extremities flap impotently on it. Suffocation is the question of only a few minutes, the stupid little creature not knowing how to raise his immersed head and gain the air again. After they have attained the age indicated above, their instinct drives them down to the margin of the surf, where an alternate ebbing and flowing of its wash, covers and uncovers the rocky or sandy beaches. They first smell and then touch the moist pools, and flounder in the upper wash of the surf, which leaves them as suddenly high and dry as it immersed them at first. After this beginning they make slow and clumsy progress in learning the knack of swimming. For a week or two, when overhead in depth, they continue to flounder about in the most awkward manner, thrashing the water as little dogs do with their fore feet, making no attempt whatever to use the hinder ones. Look at that pup now, launched out for the first time beyond his depth; see how he struggles—his mouth wide open, and his eyes fairly popping. He turns instantly to the beach, ere he has fairly struck out from the point whence he launched in, and, as the receding swell which at first carried him off his feet and out, now returning, leaves him high and dry, for a few minutes he seems so weary that he weakly crawls up, out beyond its swift returning wash, and coils himself immediately to take a recuperative nap. He sleeps a few minutes, perhaps half an hour, then awakes as bright as a dollar, apparently rested, and at his swimming lesson he goes again. By repeated and persistent attempts, this young seal gradually becomes familiar with the water and acquainted with his own power over that element, which is to be his real home and his whole support. Once boldly swimming, the pup fairly revels in a new happiness. He and his brethren have now begun to haul and swarm along the entire length of St. Paul coast, from Northeast Point down and around to Zapadnie, lining the alternating sand-beaches and rocky shingle with their chunky, black forms. How they do delight in it! They play with a zest, and chatter like our own children in the kindergartens—swimming in endless evolutions, twisting, turning, or diving—and when exhausted, drawing their plump, round bodies up again on the beach. Shaking themselves dry as young dogs would do, they now either go to sleep on the spot or have a lazy terrestrial frolic among themselves.

Why an erroneous impression ever got into the mind of any man as to this matter of a pup’s learning to swim, I confess that I am wholly unable to imagine. I have not seen any “driving” of the young pups into the water by the old ones, in order to teach them this process, as certain authors have positively affirmed. There is not the slightest supervision by the mother or father of the pup, from the first moment of his birth, in this respect, until he leaves for the North Pacific, full-fledged with amphibious power. At the close of the breeding season, every year, the pups are restlessly and constantly shifting back and forth over the rookery ground of their birth, in large squads, sometimes numbering thousands upon thousands. In the course of this change of position they all sooner or later come in contact with the sea; they then blunder into the water for the first time, in a most awkward, ungainly manner, and get out as quick as they can; but so far from showing any fear or dislike of this, their most natural element, as soon as they rest from their exertion they are immediately ready for a new trial, and keep at it, provided the sea is not too stormy or rough. During all this period of self-tuition they seem thoroughly to enjoy the exercise, in spite of their repeated and inevitable discomfitures at the beginning.

That “podding” of these young pups in the rear of the great rookeries of St. Paul, is one of the most striking and interesting phases of this remarkable exhibition of highly-organized life. When they first bunch together they are all black, for they have not begun to shed the natal coat; they shine with an unctuous, greasy reflection, and grouped in small armies or great regiments on the sand-dune tracts at Northeast Point, they present a most extraordinary and fascinating sight. Although the appearance of the “holluschickie” at English Bay fairly overwhelms the observer with an impression of its countless multitudes, yet I am free to declare that at no one point in this evolution of the seal-life, during its reproductive season, have I been so deeply impressed by a sense of overwhelming enumeration, as I have when, standing on the summit of Cross Hill, I looked down to the southward and westward over a reach of six miles of alternate grass and sand-dune stretches, mirrored upon which were hundreds of thousands of these little black pups, spread in sleep and sport within this restricted field of vision. They appeared as countless as the grains of that sand upon which they rested!

By September 15th, all the pups born during the year have become familiar with the water; they have all learned to swim, and are now nearly all down by the water’s edge, skirting in large masses the rocks and beaches hitherto unoccupied by seals of any class this year. Now they are about five or six times their original weight, or, in other words, they are thirty to forty pounds avoirdupois, as plump and fat as butter-balls, and they begin to take on their second coat, shedding their black pup-hair completely. This second coat does not vary in color, at this age, between the sexes. They effect such transformation in dress very slowly, and cannot, as a rule, be said to have ceased their moulting until the middle or 20th of October.

That second coat, or sea-going jacket, of the pup, is a uniform, dense, light gray over-hair, with an under-fur which is slightly grayish in some, but is, in most cases, of a soft light brown hue. The over-hair is fine, close and elastic, from two-thirds of an inch to an inch in length, while the fur is not quite half an inch long. Thus the coarser hair shingles over and conceals the soft under-wool completely, giving the color by which, after the second year, the sex of the animal is recognized. A pronounced difference between the sexes is not effected, however, by color alone until the third year of the animal’s life. This over-hair of the pup’s new jacket on its back, neck, and head, is a dark chinchilla-gray, blending into stone-white, just tinged with a grayish tint on the abdomen and chest. The upper lip, upon which the whiskers or mustaches take root, is covered with hair of a lighter gray than that of the body. This mustache consists of fifteen or twenty longer or shorter bristles, from half an inch to three inches in length, some brownish, horn-colored, and others whitish-gray and translucent, on each side and back and below the nostrils, leaving the muzzle quite prominent and hairless. The nasal openings and their surroundings are, as I have before said when speaking of this feature, hairless and similar to those of a dog.[122]

The most attractive feature about the fur-seal pup, and that which holds this place as it grows on and older, is the eye. That organ is exceedingly clear, dark, and liquid, with which, for beauty and amiability, together with real intelligence of expression, those of no other animal that I have ever seen, or have ever read of, can be compared; indeed, there are few eyes in the orbits of men and women which suggest more pleasantly the ancient thought of their being “windows to the soul.” The lids to that eye are fringed with long, perfect lashes, and the slightest irritation in the way of dust or sand, or other foreign substances, seems to cause them exquisite annoyance, accompanied by immoderate weeping. This involuntary tearfulness so moved Steller that he ascribed it to the processes of a mind, and declared that seal-mothers actually “shed tears”!

I do not think a seal’s range of vision on land, or out of the water, is very great. I have frequently experimented with adult fur-seals, by allowing them to catch sight of my person, so as to distinguish it as of foreign character, three and four hundred paces off, taking the precaution of standing quietly to the leeward when the wind was blowing strong, and then walking unconcernedly up to them. I have invariably noticed that they would allow me to approach quite close before recognizing my strangeness; then, as it occurred to them, they at once made a lively noise, a medley of coughing, spitting, snorting, and blaating, and plunged in spasmodic lopes and shambled to get away from my immediate neighborhood. As to the pups, they all stupidly stare at the form of a human being until it is fairly on them, when they also repeat in miniature these vocal gymnastics and physical efforts of the older ones, to retreat or withdraw a few rods, sometimes only a few feet, from the spot upon which you have cornered them, after which they instantly resume their previous occupation of either sleeping or playing, as though nothing had happened. Perhaps it is safe to say that the greatest activity displayed by any one of the five senses of the seal is evidenced in its power of scent. This faculty is all that can be desired in the line of alertness. I never failed to awaken an adult seal from the soundest sleep, when from a half to a quarter of a mile distant, no matter how softly I proceeded, if I got to the windward, though they sometimes took alarm when I was a mile off.

They leave evidences of their being on these great reproductive fields, chiefly at the rookeries, in the hundreds of dead carcasses which mark the last of those animals that had been rendered infirm, sick, and killed by fighting among themselves in the early part of the season, or of those which have crawled far away from the scene of battle to die from death-wounds received in bitter struggles for a harem. On the rookeries, wherever these lifeless bodies rest, the living, old and young, clamber and patter backward and forward over and on the putrid remains: thus such constant stirring up of decayed matter, gives rise to an exceedingly disagreeable and far-reaching “funk.” This has been, by all writers who have dwelt on the subject, referred to as the smell which those animals emit for another reason—erroneously called the “rutting odor.” If these creatures have any odor peculiar to them when in this condition, I will frankly confess that I am unable to distinguish it from the fumes which are constantly being stirred up and arising out of those putrescent carcasses so disturbed, as well as from the bodies of the few pups which have been killed accidentally by heavy bulls fighting over them, charging back and forth against one another, so much of the time.

They have, however, a very characteristic and peculiar smell when they are driven and get heated; their breath-exhalations possess a disagreeable, faint, sickly odor, and when I have walked within its influence at the rear of a seal-drive, I could almost fancy, as it entered my nostrils, that I stood beneath an ailantus-tree in full bloom; but this odor can by no means be confounded with what is universally ascribed to another cause. It is also noteworthy that if your finger is touched ever so lightly to a little fur-seal blubber, it will smell very much like that which I have appreciated and described as peculiar to their breath, which arises from them when they are driven, only it is a little stronger. Both the young and old fur-seals have this same breath-taint at all seasons of the year.

With the precision of clock-work and the regularity of the precession of the seasons, fur-seals have adopted and enforced the following method of life on these islands of Pribylov. In this system millions of those highly organized animals sustain themselves.

First.—The earliest bulls land in a negligent, indolent way, at the opening of the season, soon after the rocks at the water’s edge are free from ice, frozen snow, etc. This is, as a rule, about the 1st to the 5th of every May. They land from the beginning to the end of the season in perfect confidence and without fear; they are very fat, and will weigh on an average five hundred pounds each; some stay at the water’s edge, some go to the tier back of them again, and so forth, until the whole rookery is mapped out by them, weeks in advance of the arrival of the first female.

Second.—That by the 10th or 12th of June, all the male stations on the rookeries have been mapped out and fought for, and held in waiting by the “see-catchie.” These males are, as a rule, bulls rarely ever under six years of age; most of them are over that age, being sometimes three, and occasionally doubtless four or five times as old.

Third.—That the cows make their first appearance, as a class, on or after the 12th or 15th of June, in very small numbers, but rapidly after the 23d and 25th of this month, every year, they begin to flock up in such numbers as to fill the harems very perceptibly, and by the 8th or 10th of July they have all come, as a rule—a few stragglers excepted. The average weight of the females now will not be much more than eighty to ninety pounds each.

Fourth.—That the breeding season is at its height from the 10th to the 15th of July every year, and that it subsides entirely at the end of this month and early in August; also, that its method and system are confined entirely to the land, never effected in the sea.

Fifth.—That the females bear their first young when they are three years old, and that the period of gestation is nearly twelve months, lacking a few days only of that lapse of time.

Sixth.—That the females bear a single pup each, and that this is born soon after landing. No exception to this rule as ever been witnessed or recorded.

Seventh.—That the “see-catchie” which have held the harems from the beginning to the end of the season, leave for the water in a desultory and straggling manner at its close, greatly emaciated, and do not return, if they do at all, until six or seven weeks have elapsed, when the regular systematic distribution of the families over the rookeries is at an end for this season. A general medley of young males now are free: they come out of the water, and wander over all these rookeries, together with many old males, which have not been on seraglio duty, and great numbers of the females. An immense majority over all others present are pups, since only about twenty-five per cent. of the mother-seals are out of the water now at any one time.

Eighth.—That the rookeries lose their compactness and definite boundaries of true breeding limit and expansion by the 25th to the 28th of July every year; then, after this date, the pups begin to haul back, and to the right and left, in small squads at first, but as the season goes on, by the 18th of August, they depart without reference to their mothers; and when thus scattered, the males, females and young swarm over more than three and four times the area occupied by them when breeding and born on the rookeries. The system of family arrangement and uniform compactness of the breeding classes breaks up at this date.

Ninth.—That by the 8th or 10th of August the pups born nearest the water first begin to learn to swim; and that by the 15th or 20th of September they are all familiar, more or less, with the exercise.

Tenth.—That by the middle of September the rookeries are entirely broken up; confused, straggling bands of females are seen among bachelors, pups, and small squads of old males, crossing and recrossing the ground in an aimless, listless manner. The season is now over.

Eleventh.—That many of the seals do not leave these grounds of St. Paul and St. George before the end of December, and some remain even as late as the 12th of January; but that by the end of October and the beginning of November every year, all the fur-seals of mature age—five and six years, and upward—have left the islands. The younger males go with the others; many of the pups still range about the islands, but are not hauled to any great extent on the beaches or the flats. They seem to prefer the rocky shore-margin, and to lie as high up as they can get on such bluffy rookeries as Tolstoi and the Reef. By the end of this month, November, they are, as a rule, all gone.

I now call the attention of the reader to another very remarkable feature in the economy of the seal-life on these islands. The great herds of “holluschickie,”[123] numbering from one-third to one-half, perhaps, of the whole aggregate of near five million seals known to the Pribylov group, are never allowed by the old “seecatchie” (which threaten frightful mutilation or death) to put their flippers on or near the rookeries.

By reference to my map, it will be observed that I have located a large extent of ground—markedly so on St Paul—as that occupied by the seals’ “hauling-ground”; this area, in fact, represents those portions of the island upon which the “holluschickie” roam in heavy squadrons, wearing away and polishing the surface of the soil, stripping every foot, which is indicated on the chart as such, of its vegetation and mosses, leaving a margin as sharply defined on those bluffy uplands and sandy flats as it is on the map itself.

The reason that so much more land is covered by the “holluschickie” than by the breeding seals—ten times as much at least—is due to the fact that, though not as numerous, perhaps, as the breeding seals, yet they are tied down to nothing, so to speak—are wholly irresponsible, and roam hither and thither as caprice and the weather may dictate. Thus they wear off and rub down a much larger area than the rookery seals occupy; wandering aimlessly, and going back, in some instances, notably at English Bay, from one-half to a whole mile inland, not travelling in desultory files along winding, straggling paths, but sweeping in solid platoons, they obliterate every spear of grass and rub down nearly every hummock in their restless marching.

All the male seals, under six years of age, are compelled to herd apart by themselves and away from the breeding grounds, in many cases far away; the large hauling-grounds at Southwest Point being about two miles from the nearest rookery. This class of seals is termed “holluschickie” or the “bachelors” by the people: a most fitting and expressive appellation.

The seals of this great subdivision are those with which the natives on the Pribylov group are the most familiar: naturally and especially so, since they are the only ones, with the exception of a few thousand pups, and occasionally an old bull or two, taken late in the fall for food and skins, which are driven up to the killing-grounds at the village for slaughter. The reasons for this exclusive attention to the “bachelors” are most cogent, and will be given hereafter when the “business” is discussed.

Since the “holluschickie” are not permitted by their own kind to land on the rookeries and stop there, they have the choice of two methods of locating, one of which allows them to rest in the rear of the rookeries, and the other on the free beaches. The most notable illustration of the former can be witnessed on Reef Point, where a pathway is left for their ingress and egress through a rookery—a path left by common consent, as it were, between the harems. On these trails of passage they come and go in steady files all day and all night during the season, unmolested by the jealous bulls which guard the seraglios on either side as they travel—all peace and comfort to the young seal if he minds his business and keeps straight on up or down, without stopping to nose about right or left; all woe and destruction to him, however, if he does not, for in that event he will be literally torn in bloody gripping, from limb to limb, by vigilant “see-catchie.”

Since the two and three year old “holluschickie” come up in small squads with the first bulls in the spring, or a few days later, such common highways as those between the rookery ground and the sea are travelled over before the arrival of the cows, and get well defined. A passage for the “bachelors,” which I took much pleasure in observing day after day at Polavina, another at Tolstoi, and two on the Reef, in 1872, were entirely closed up by the “sea-catchie” and obliterated when I again searched for them in 1874. Similar passages existed, however, on several of the large rookeries of St. Paul. One of those at Tolstoi exhibits this feature very finely, for here the hauling-ground extends around from English Bay, and lies up back of the Tolstoi rookery, over a flat and rolling summit, from one hundred to one hundred and twenty feet above the sea-level. The young males and yearlings of both sexes come through and between the harems at the height of the breeding season on two of these narrow pathways, and before reaching the ground above, are obliged to climb up an almost abrupt bluff, which they do by following and struggling in the water-runs and washes that are worn into its face. As this is a large hauling-ground, on which, every favorable day during the season, fifteen or twenty thousand commonly rest, a view of skilful seal-climbing can be witnessed here at any time during that period; and the sight of such climbing as this of Tolstoi is exceedingly novel and interesting. Why, verily, they ascend over and upon places where a lively man might, at first thought, say with great positiveness that it was utterly impossible for him to climb!

ARRIVAL OF THE FUR SEAL MILLIONS

Holluschickie hauling on Lukannon Sands: Myriads come out from the Sea in a single cool foggy night by this manner of progression

The other method of coming ashore, however, is the one most followed and favored. In this case they avoid the rookeries altogether, and repair to unoccupied beaches between them; and then extend themselves out all the way back from the sea, as far from the water, in some cases, as a quarter and even half of a mile. I stood on the Tolstoi sand-dunes one afternoon, toward the middle of July, and had under my eyes, in a straightforward sweep from my feet to Zapadnie, a million and a half of seals spread out on those hauling-grounds. Of these I estimated that fully one-half, at that time, were pups, yearlings, and “holluschickie.” The rookeries across the bay, though plainly in sight, were so crowded that they looked exactly as I have seen surfaces appear upon which bees had swarmed in obedience to that din and racket made by the watchful apiarian when he desires to secure a hive of restless honey-makers.

The great majority of yearlings and “holluschickie” are annually hauled out, scattered thickly over the sand-beach and upland hauling-grounds which lie between the rookeries on St. Paul Island. At St. George there is nothing of this extensive display to be seen, for here is only a tithe of the seal-life occupying St. Paul, and no opportunity whatever is afforded for an amphibious parade.

Descend with me from this sand-dune elevation of Tolstoi, and walk into that drove of “holluschickie” below us. We can do it. You do not notice much confusion or dismay as we go in among them. They simply open out before us and close in behind our tracks, stirring, crowding to the right and left as we go, twelve or twenty feet away from us on each side. Look at this small flock of yearlings—some one, others two, and even three years old—which are coughing and spitting around us now, staring up in our faces in amazement as we walk ahead. They struggle a few rods out of our reach, and then come together again behind us, showing no further sign or notice of ourselves. You could not walk into a drove of hogs at Chicago without exciting as much confusion and arousing an infinitely more disagreeable tumult; and as for sheep on the plains, they would stampede far quicker. Wild animals, indeed! You can now readily understand how easy it is for two or three men, early in the morning, to come where we are, turn aside from this vast herd in front of and around us two or three thousand of the best examples, and drive them back, up, and over to the village. That is the way they get the seals. There is no “hunting,” no “chasing,” no “capturing” of fur-seals on these islands.

While the young male seals undoubtedly have the power of going for lengthy intervals without food, they, like the female seals on the breeding grounds, certainly do not maintain any long fasting periods on land. Their coming and going from the shore is frequent and irregular, largely influenced by the exact condition of the weather from day to day. For instance, three or four thick, foggy days seem to call them out from the water by hundreds of thousands upon the different hauling-grounds (which the reader observes recorded on my map). In some cases I have seen them lie there so close together that scarcely a foot of ground, over whole acres, is bare enough to be seen. Then a clear and warmer day follows, and this seal-covered ground, before so thickly packed with animal life, will soon be almost deserted—comparatively so, at least—to be filled up immediately as before, when favorable weather shall again recur. They must frequently eat when here, because the first yearlings and “holluschickie” that appear in the spring are no fatter, sleeker, or livelier than they are at the close of the season. In other words, their condition, physically, seems to be the same from the beginning to the end of their appearance here during the summer and fall. It is quite different, however, with the “see-catch.” We know how and where it spends two to three months, because we find it on the ground at all times, day or night, during that period.

A small flock of the young seals, one to three years old generally, will often stray from these hauling-ground margins up and beyond over the fresh mosses and grasses, and there sport and play one with another just as little puppy-dogs do: but, when weary of this gambolling, a general disposition to sleep is suddenly manifested, and they stretch themselves out and curl up in all the positions and all the postures that their flexible spines and ball-and-socket joints will permit. They seem to revel in the unwonted vegetation, and to be delighted with their own efforts in rolling down and crushing the tall stalks of grasses and umbelliferous plants. One will lie upon its back, hold up its hind flippers, and lazily wave them about, while it scratches, or rather rubs, its ribs with the fore-hands alternately, the eyes being tightly closed during the whole performance. The sensation is evidently so luxurious that it does not wish to have any side-issue draw off its blissful self-attention. Another, curled up like a cat on a rug, draws its breath, as indicated by the heaving of its flanks, quickly, but regularly, as though in heavy sleep. Another will lie flat upon its stomach, its hind flippers covered and concealed, while it tightly folds its fore-feet back against its sides, just as a fish carries its pectoral fins, and so on to no end of variety, according to the ground and the fancy of the animals.

These “bachelor” seals are, I am sure, without exception, the most restless animals, in the whole brute creation, which can boast of a high organization. They frolic and lope about over the grounds for hours without a moment’s cessation, and their sleep after this is exceedingly short, and it is ever accompanied by nervous twitchings and uneasy muscular movements. They seem to be fairly brimful and overrunning with spontaneity, to be surcharged with fervid, electric life.

Another marked feature observed among the multitudes of “holluschickie” which have come under my personal observation and auditory, and one very characteristic of this class, is that nothing like ill-humor appears in all of their playing together. They never growl or bite or show even the slightest angry feeling, but are invariably as happy, one with another, as can be imagined. This is a very singular trait. They lose it, however, with astonishing rapidity when their ambition and strength develops and carries them in due course of time to the rookery.

The pups and yearlings have an especial fondness for sporting on rocks which are just at the water’s level and awash, so as to be covered and uncovered as the surf rolls in. On the bare summit of these wave-worn spots they will struggle and clamber, in groups of a dozen or two at a time, throughout the whole day in endeavoring to push off that one of their number which has just been fortunate enough to secure a landing. The successor has, however, but a brief moment of exultation in victory, for the next roller that comes booming in, together with that pressure by its friends, turns the table, and the game is repeated, with another seal on top. Sometimes, as well as I could see, the same squad of “holluschickie” played for an entire day and night, without a moment’s cessation, around such a rock as this off “Nah Speel” rookery; still, in this observation I may be mistaken, because those seals could not be told apart.

That graceful unconcern with which fur-seals sport safely in, among, and under booming breakers, during the prevalence of numerous wild gales at the islands, has afforded me many consecutive hours of spell-bound attention to them, absorbed in watching their adroit evolutions within the foaming surf, that seemingly every moment would, in its fierce convulsions, dash these hardy swimmers, stunned and lifeless, against those iron-bound foundations of the shore which alone checked the furious rush of the waves. Not at all. Through the wildest and most ungovernable mood of a roaring tempest and storm-tossed waters attending its transit I never failed, on creeping out and peering over the bluffs in such weather, to see squads of these perfect watermen, the most expert of all amphibians, gambolling in the seething, creamy wake of mighty rollers which constantly broke in thunder-tones over their alert, dodging heads. The swift succeeding waves seemed every instant to poise those seals at the very verge of death; yet the Callorhinus, exulting in his skill and strength, bade defiance to their wrath and continued his diversions.

Fur-seals rising to breathe and look around.

[Characteristic pelagic attitude of the “holluschickie.”]

The “holluschickie” are the champion swimmers of all the seal tribe; at least, when in the water around the islands, they do nearly every fancy tumble and turn that can be executed. The grave old males and their matronly companions seldom indulge in any extravagant display, as do these youngsters, which jump out of the water like so many dolphins, describing beautiful elliptic curves sheer above its surface, rising three and even four feet from the sea, with the back slightly arched, the fore flippers folded tightly against the sides, and the hinder ones extended and pressed together straight out behind, plumping in head first, to reappear in the same manner, after an interval of a few seconds of submarine swimming, swift as the flight of a bird on its course. Sea-lions and hair-seals never leap in this manner.

All classes will invariably make these dolphin-jumps when they are surprised or are driven into the water, curiously turning their heads while sailing in the air, between the “rises” and “plumps,” to take a look at the cause of their disturbance. They all swim rapidly, with the exception of the pups, and may be said to dart under the water with the velocity of a bird on the wing. As they swim they are invariably submerged, running along horizontally about two or three feet below the surface, guiding their course with the hind flippers, as by an oar, and propelling themselves solely by the fore feet, rising to breathe at intervals which are either very frequent or else so wide apart that it is impossible to see the speeding animal when he rises a second time.[124]

How long they can remain under water without taking a fresh breath is a problem which I had not the heart to solve, by instituting a series of experiments at the island; but I am inclined to think that, if the truth were known in regard to their ability of going without rising to breathe, it would be considered astounding. On this point, however, I have no data worth discussing, but will say that in all their swimming which I have had a chance to study, as they passed under the water, mirrored to my eyes from the bluff above by the whitish-colored rocks below the rookery waters at Great Eastern rookery, I have not been able to satisfy myself how they used their long, flexible hind-feet, other than as steering media. If these posterior members have any perceptible motion, it is so rapid that my eye is not quick enough to catch it; but the fore flippers, however, can be most distinctly seen as they work in feathering forward and sweeping flatly back, opposed to the water, with great rapidity and energy. They are evidently the sole propulsive power of the fur-seal in the water, as they are its main fulcrum and lever combined for progression on land. I regret that the shy nature of the hair-seal never allowed me to study its swimming motions, but it seems to be a general point of agreement among authorities on the Phocidæ, that all motion in water by them arises from that power which they exert and apply with the hind-feet. So far as my observations on the hair-seal go, I am inclined to agree with this opinion.

All their movements in water, no matter whether travelling to some objective point or merely in sport, are quick and joyous, and nothing is more suggestive of intense satisfaction and pure physical comfort than is that spectacle which we can see every August a short distance at sea from any rookery, where thousands of old males and females are idly rolling over in the billows side by side, rubbing and scratching with their fore and hind flippers, which are here and there stuck up out of the water by their owners, like so many lateen-sails of Mediterranean feluccas, or, when their hind flippers are presented, like a “cat-o’-nine tails.” They sleep in the water a great deal, too, more than is generally supposed, showing that they do not come ashore to rest—very clearly not.

How fast the fur-seal can swim, when doing its best, I am naturally unable to state. I do know that a squad of young “holluschickie” followed the Reliance, in which I was sailing, down from the latitude of the Seal Islands to Akootan Pass with perfect ease; playing around the vessel while she was logging, straight ahead, fourteen knots to the hour.

When the “holluschickie” are up on land they can be readily separated into their several classes, as to age, by the color of their coats and size, when noted: thus, as yearlings, two, three, four, and five years old males. When the yearlings, or the first class, haul out, they are dressed just as they were after they shed their pup-coats and took on the second covering, during the previous year in September and October; and now, as they come out in the spring and summer, one year old, the males and females cannot be distinguished apart, either by color or size, shape or action; the yearlings of both sexes have the same steel-gray backs and white stomachs, and are alike in behavior and weight.

Next year those yearling females, which are now trooping out with these youthful males on the hauling-grounds, will repair to the rookeries, but their male companions will be obliged to return alone to this same spot.

About the 15th and 20th of every August they have become perceptibly “stagey,” or, in other words, their hair is well under way in shedding. All classes, with the exception of the pups, go through this renewal at this time every year. The process requires about six weeks between the first dropping or falling out of the old over-hair and its full substitution by the new: this change takes place, as a rule, between August 1st and September 28th.

The fur is shed, but it is so shed that the ability of a seal to take to the water and stay there, and not be physically chilled or disturbed during its period of moulting, is never impaired. The whole surface of these extensive breeding-grounds, traversed over by me after the seals had gone, was literally matted with shedded hair and fur. This under-fur or pelage is, however, so fine and delicate, and so much concealed and shaded by the coarser over-hair, that a careless eye or a superficial observer might be pardoned in failing to notice the fact of its dropping and renewal.

The yearling cows retain the colors of the old coat in the new, when they shed for the first time, and so repeat them from that time on, year after year, as they live and grow old. The young three-year-olds and the mature cows look exactly alike, as far as color goes, when they haul up at first and dry out on the rookeries, every June and July.

The yearling males, however, make a radical change when they shed for the first time, since they come out from their “staginess” in a nearly uniform dark gray, and gray and black mixed, and lighter, with dark ochre to whitish on the upper and under parts, respectively. This coat, next year, when they appear as two-year-olds, shedding for the three-year-old coat, is a very much darker gray, and so on to the third, fourth, and fifth seasons; then after this, with age, they begin to grow more gray and brown, with a rufous-ochre and whitish-tipped “wig” on the shoulders. Some of the very old bulls change in their declining years to a uniform shade, all over, of dull-grayish ochre. The full glory and beauty of the seal’s mustache is denied to him until he has attained his seventh or eighth year.

The male does not get his full growth and weight until the close of his seventh year, but realizes most of it, osteologically speaking, by the end of the fifth; and from this it may be perhaps truly inferred that the male seals live to an average age of eighteen or twenty years, if undisturbed in a normal condition, and that the females exist ten or twelve seasons under the same favorable circumstances. Their respective weights, when fully mature and fat, in the spring, will, in regard to the male, strike an average of from four to five hundred pounds, while the females will show a mean of from seventy to eighty pounds.

The female does not gain a maximum size and weight until the end of her fourth year, so far as I have observed, but she does most of her longitudinal growing in the first two. After she has passed her fourth and fifth years, she weighs from thirty to fifty pounds more than she did in the days of her youthful maternity.[125] In the table of these weights given below it will be observed that the adult females correspond with the three years old males; also, that the younger cows weigh frequently only seventy-five pounds, and many of the older ones go as high as one hundred and twenty, but an average of eighty to eighty-five pounds is the rule. Those specimens just noted which I weighed were examples taken by me for transmission to the Smithsonian Institution, otherwise I should not have been permitted to make this record of their bulk, inasmuch as weighing them means to kill them; and the law and the habit, or rather the prejudice of the entire community up there, is unanimously in opposition to any such proceeding, for they never touch females, and never go near or disturb the breeding-grounds on such an errand. It will be noticed, also, that I have no statement of the weights of any exceedingly fat and heavy males which appear first on the breeding grounds in the spring; those which I have referred to, in the table above given, were very much heavier at the time of their first appearance, in May and June, than at the moment when they were in my hands, in July; but the cows, and the other classes, do not sustain protracted fasting, and therefore their avoirdupois may be considered substantially the same throughout the year.

Thus, from the fact that all the young seals and females do not vary much in weight from the time of their first coming out in the spring, till that of their leaving in the fall and early winter, I feel safe in saying that they feed at irregular but not long intervals, during this period when they are here under our observation, since they are constantly changing from land to water and from water to land, day in and day out. I do not think that the young males fast longer than a week or ten days at a time, as a rule.

By the end of October and November 10th, a great mass of the “holluschickie,” the trooping myriads of English Bay, Southwest Point, Reef Parade, Lukannon Sands, the table-lands of Polavina, and the mighty hosts of Novastoshnah, at St. Paul, together with the quota of St. George, had taken their departure from these shores, and had gone out to sea, feeding upon the receding schools of fish that were now retiring to the deeper waters of the North Pacific, where, in that vast expanse, over which rolls an unbroken billow, five thousand miles from Japan to Oregon, they spend the winter and the early spring, until they reappear and break up, with their exuberant life, the dreary winter-isolation of the land which gave them birth.

A few stragglers remain, however, as late as the snow and ice will permit them to, in and after December; then they are down by the water’s edge, and haul up entirely on the rocky beaches, deserting the sand altogether; but the first snow that falls in October makes them very uneasy, and a large hauling-ground will be so disturbed by a rainy day and night that its hundreds of thousands of occupants fairly deserted it. The fur-seal cannot bear, and will not endure, the spattering of sand into its eyes, which usually accompanies the driving of a rain-storm; they take to the water, to reappear, however, when that nuisance shall be abated.

The weather in which the fur-seal delights is cool, moist, foggy, and thick enough to keep the sun always obscured, so as to cast no shadows. Such weather, which is the normal weather of St. Paul and St. George, continued for a few weeks in June and July, brings up from the sea millions of fur-seals. But, as I have before said, a little sunshine, which raises the temperature as high as 50° to 55° Fahr., will send them back from the hauling-grounds almost as quickly as they came. Fortunately, these warm, sunny days on the Pribylov Islands are so rare that the seals certainly can have no ground of complaint, even if we may presume they have any at all. Some curious facts in regard to their selection of certain localities on these islands, and their abandonment of others, are now on record.

I looked everywhere and constantly, when threading my way over acres of ground which were fairly covered with seal-pups and older ones, for specimens that presented some abnormity, i.e., monstrosities, albinos, and the like, such as I have seen in our great herds of stock; but I was, with one or two exceptions, unable to note anything of the kind. I have never seen any malformations or “monsters” among the pups and other classes of the fur-seals, nor have the natives recorded anything of the kind, so far as I could ascertain from them. I saw only three albino pups among the multitudes on St. Paul, and none on St. George. They did not differ, in any respect, from the normal pups in size and shape. Their hair, for the first coat, was a dull ochre all over; the fur whitish, changing to a rich brown, the normal hue; the flippers and muzzle were a pinkish flesh-tone in color, and the iris of the eye sky-blue. After they shed, during the following year, they have a dirty, yellowish-white color, which makes them exceedingly conspicuous when mixed in among a vast majority of black pups, gray yearlings, and “holluschickie” of their kind.

Undoubtedly some abnormal birth-shapes must make their appearance occasionally; but at no time while I was there, searching keenly for any such manifestation of malformation on the rookeries, did I see a single example. The morphological symmetry of the fur-seal is one of the most salient of its characteristics, viewed as it rallies here in such vast numbers; but the osteological differentiation and asymmetry of this animal is equally surprising.

It is perfectly plain that a large percentage of this immense number of seals must die every year from natural limitation of life. They do not die on these islands; that much I am certain of. Not one dying a natural death could I find or hear of on the grounds. They evidently lose their lives at sea, preferring to sink with the rigor mortis into that cold, blue depth of the great Pacific, or beneath the green waves of Bering Sea, rather than to encumber and disfigure their summer haunts on the Pribylov Islands.

Prior to the year 1835, no native on the islands seemed to have any direct knowledge, or was even acquainted with a legendary tradition, in relation to the seals, concerning their area and distribution on the land here; but they all chimed in after that date with great unanimity, saying that the winter preceding this season (1835-36) was one of frightful severity; that many of their ancestors who had lived on these islands in large barraboras just back of the Black Bluffs, near the present village, and at Polavina, then perished miserably.

They say that the cold continued far into the summer; that immense masses of clearer and stronger ice-floes than had ever been known to the waters about the islands, or were ever seen since, were brought down and shoved high up on to all the rookery margins, forming an icy wall completely around the island, and loomed twenty to thirty feet above the surf. They further state that this frigid cordon did not melt or in any way disappear until the middle or end of August, 1836.

They affirm that for this reason the fur-seals, when they attempted to land, according to their habit and their necessity, during June and July, were unable to do so in any considerable numbers. The females were compelled to bring forth their young in the water and at the wet, storm-beaten surf-margins, which caused multitudes of mothers and all of the young to perish. In short, the result was a virtual annihilation of the breeding-seals. Hence, at the following season, only a spectral, a shadowy imitation of former multitudes could be observed upon the seal-grounds of St. Paul and St. George.

On the Lagoon rookery, now opposite the village of St. Paul, there were then only two males, with a number of cows. At Nah Speel, close by and right under the village, there were then only some two thousand. This the natives know, because they counted them. On Zapadnie there were about one thousand cows, bulls, and pups; at Southwest Point there were none. Two small rookeries were then on the north shore of St. Paul, near a place called “Maroonitch;” and there were seven small rookeries running round Northeast Point, but on all of these there were only fifteen hundred males, females, and young; and this number includes the “holluschickie,” which, in those days, lay in among the breeding-seals, there being so few old males that they were gladly permitted to do so. On Polavina there were then about five hundred cows, bulls, pups, and “holluschickie;” on Lukannon and Keetavie, about three hundred; but on Keetavie there were only ten bulls and so few young males lying in altogether that these old natives, as they told me, took no note of them on the rookeries just cited. On the Reef, and Gorbatch, were about one thousand only. In this number last mentioned some eight hundred “holluschickie” may be included, which laid with the breeding-seals. There were only twenty bulls on Gorbatch, and about ten old males on the Reef.

Such, briefly and succinctly, is the sum and the substance of all information which I could gather prior to 1835-36; and while I do not entirely credit these statements, yet the earnest, straightforward agreement of the natives has impressed me so that I narrate it here. It certainly seems as though this enumeration of the old Aleutes was painfully short.

Then, again, with regard to the probable truth of the foregoing statement of the natives, perhaps I should call attention to the fact that the entire sum of seal-life in 1836, as given by them, is just four thousand one hundred, of all classes, distributed as I have indicated above. Now, on turning to Bishop Veniaminov, by whom was published the only statement of any kind in regard to the killing on these islands from 1817 to 1837 (the year when he finished his work), I find that he makes a record of slaughter of seals in the year 1836 of four thousand and fifty-two, which were killed and taken for their skins; but if the natives’ statements are right, then only fifty seals were left on the island for 1837, in which year, however, four thousand two hundred and twenty were again killed, according to the bishop’s table, and according to which there was also a steady increase in the size of this return from that date along up to 1850, when the Russians governed their catch by the market alone, always having more seals than they knew what to do with.

Again, in this connection, the natives say that until 1847 the practice on these islands was to kill indiscriminately both females and males for skins; but after this year, 1847, that strict respect now paid to the breeding-seals, and exemption of all females, was enforced for the first time, and has continued up to date.

In attempting to form an approximate conception of what the seals were or might have been in those early days, as they spread themselves over the hauling and breeding grounds of these remarkable islands, I have been thrown entirely upon the vague statements given to me by the natives and one or two of the first American pioneers in Alaska. The only Russian record which touches ever so lightly upon the subject[126] contains a remarkable statement which is, in the light of my surveys, simply ridiculous now—that is, that the number of fur-seals on St. George during the first years of Russian occupation was nearly as great as that on St. Paul. A most superficial examination of the geological character portrayed on the accompanying maps of those two islands will satisfy any unprejudiced mind as to the total error of such a statement. Why, a mere tithe only of the multitudes which repair to St. Paul in perfect comfort over the sixteen or twenty miles of splendid landing ground found thereon could visit St. George, when all of the coast-line fit for their reception on this island is a scant two and a half miles; but, for that matter, there was at the time of my arrival and in the beginning of my investigation a score of equally wild and incredible legends afloat in regard to the rookeries of St. Paul and St. George. Finding, therefore, that the whole work must be undertaken de novo, I went about it without further delay.

Thus it will be seen that there is, frankly stated, nothing that serves as a guide to a fair or even an approximate estimate as to the numbers of the fur-seals on these two islands, prior to the result of my labor.

At the close of my investigation during the first season of my work on the ground in 1872 the fact became evident that the breeding seals obeyed implicitly an imperative and instinctive natural law of distribution—a law recognized by each and every seal upon the rookeries prompted by a fine consciousness of necessity to its own well-being. The breeding-grounds occupied by them were, therefore, invariably covered by the seals in exact ratio, greater or less, as the area upon which they rested was larger or smaller. They always covered the ground evenly, never crowding in at one place here to scatter out there. The seals lie just as thickly together where the rookery is boundless in its eligible area to their rear and unoccupied by them as they do in the little strips which are abruptly cut off and narrowed by rocky walls behind. For instance, on a rod of ground under the face of bluffs which hem it in to the land from the sea there are just as many seals, no more and no less, as will be found on any other rod of rookery ground throughout the whole list, great and small—always exactly so many seals, under any and all circumstances, to a given area of breeding-ground. There are just as many cows, bulls, and pups on a square rod at Nah Speel, near the village, where in 1874, all told, there were only seven or eight thousand, as there are on any square rod at Northeast Point, where a million of them congregate.

This fact being determined, it is evident that just in proportion as the breeding-grounds of the fur-seal on these islands expand or contract in area from their present dimensions, so the seals will increase or diminish in number.

That discovery at the close of the season of 1872 of this law of distribution gave me at once the clue I was searching for, in order to take steps by which I could arrive at a sound conclusion as to the entire number of seals herding on the Pribylov group.

I noticed, and time has confirmed my observation, that the period for taking these boundaries of the rookeries, so as to show this exact margin of expansion at the week of its greatest volume, or when they are as full as they are to be for the season, is between July 10th and 20th of every year—not a day earlier and not many days later. After July 20th the regular system of compact, even organization, breaks up. The seals then scatter out in pods or clusters, the pups leading the way, straying far back: the same number then instantly cover twice and thrice as much ground as they did the day or week before, when they laid in solid masses and were marshalled on the rookery ground proper.

There is no more difficulty in surveying these seal-margins during this week or ten days in July than there is in drawing sights along and around the curbs of a stone fence surrounding a field. The breeding-seals remain perfectly quiet under your eyes all over the rookery and almost within your touch, everywhere on the outside of their territory that you may stand or walk. The margins of massed life, which are indicated on the topographical surveys of these breeding-grounds of St. Paul and St. George, are as clean cut and as well defined against the soil and vegetation as is the shading on my maps. There is not the least difficulty in making such surveys, and in making them correctly.

Without following such a system of enumeration, persons may look over these swarming myriads between Southwest Point and Novastoshnah, guessing vaguely and wildly, at any figure from one million up to ten or twelve millions, as has been done repeatedly. How few people know what a million really is! It is very easy to talk of a million, but it is a tedious task to count it off: this makes a statement as to “millions” decidedly more conservative when the labor has been accomplished. After a thorough survey of all these great areas of reproduction the following presentation of the actual number of seals massed upon St. Paul is a fair one:

“Reef rookery” has 4,016 feet of sea-margin, with 150 feet of average depth, making ground for	301,000
“Gorbotch rookery” has 3,660 feet of sea-margin, with 100 feet of average depth, making ground for	183,000
“Lagoon rookery” has 750 feet of sea-margin, with 100 feet of average depth, making ground for	37,000
“Nah Speel rookery” has 400 feet of sea-margin, with 40 feet of average depth, making ground for	8,000
“Lukannon rookery” has 2,270 feet of sea-margin, with 150 feet of average depth, making ground for	170,000
“Keetavie rookery” has 2,200 feet of sea-margin, with 150 feet of average depth, making ground for	165,000
“Tolstoi rookery” has 3,000 feet of sea-margin, with 150 feet of average depth, making ground for	225,000
“Zapadnie rookery” has 5,880 feet of sea-margin, with 150 feet of average depth, making ground for	441,000
“Polavina rookery” has 4,000 feet of sea-margin, with 150 feet of average depth, making ground for	300,000
“Novastoshnah, or Northeast Point” has 15,840 feet of sea-margin, with 150 feet of average depth, making ground for	1,200,000
A grand total of breeding-seals and young for St. Paul Island in 1874 of	3,030,000

The rookeries of St. George are designated and measured as below:

“Zapadnie rookery” has 600 feet of sea-margin, with 60 feet of average depth, making ground for	18,000
“Starry Arteel rookery” has 500 feet of sea-margin, with 125 feet of average depth, making ground for	30,420
“North rookery” has 750 feet of sea-margin, with 150 feet of average depth, and 2,000 feet of sea-margin, with 25 feet of average depth, making ground in all for	77,000
“Little Eastern rookery” has 750 feet of sea-margin, with 40 feet of average depth, making ground for	13,000
“Great Eastern rookery” has 900 feet of sea-margin, with 60 feet of average depth, making ground for	25,000
A grand total of the seal-life for St. George Island, breeding-seals and young, of	163,420
Grand sum total for the Pribylov Islands (season of 1873), breeding-seals and young	3,193,420

The figures thus given show a grand massing of 3,193,420 breeding-seals and their young. This enormous aggregate is entirely exclusive of the great numbers of the non-breeding-seals that, as we have pointed out, are never permitted to come up on those grounds which have been surveyed and epitomized by the table just exhibited. That class of seals, the “holluschickie,” in general terms (all males, and those to which the killing is confined), come up on the land and sea-beaches between the rookeries, in immense straggling droves, going to and from the sea at irregular intervals, from the beginning to the closing of an entire season. The method of the “holluschickie” on these hauling-grounds is not systematic—it is not distinct, like the manner and law prescribed and obeyed by the breeding-seals—therefore it is impossible to arrive at a definite enumeration, and my estimate for them is purely a matter of my individual judgment. I think they may be safely rated at 1,500,000; thus, we have the wonderful number of 4,700,000 fur-seals assembled every summer on the rocky rookeries and sandy hauling-grounds of the Pribylov Islands!

No language can express adequately your sensations when you first stroll over the outskirts of any one of those great breeding grounds of the fur-seal on St. Paul’s Island. There is no impression on my mind more fixed than is the one stamped thereon during the afternoon of a July day when I walked around the inner margins of that immense rookery at Northeast Point—indeed, while I pause to think of this subject, I am fairly rendered dumb by the vivid spectacle which rises promptly to my view—I am conscious of my inability to render that magnificent animal-show justice in definition. It is a vast camp of parading squadrons which file and deploy over slopes from the summit of a lofty hill a mile down to where it ends on the south shore—a long mile, smooth and gradual from the sea to that hill-top; the parade-ground lying between is also nearly three-quarters of a mile in width, sheer and unbroken. Now, upon that area before my eyes, this day and date of which I have spoken, were the forms of not less than three-fourths of a million seals—pause a moment—think of the number—three-fourths of a million seals, moving in one solid mass from sleep to frolicsome gambols, backward, forward, over, around, changing and interchanging their heavy squadrons, until the whole mind is so confused and charmed by the vastness of mighty hosts that it refuses to analyze any further. Then, too, I remember that the day was one of exceeding beauty for that region—it was a swift alternation overhead of those characteristic rain-fogs, between the succession of which the sun breaks out with transcendent brilliancy through misty halos about it. This parade-field reflected the light like a mirror, and the seals, when they broke apart here and there for a moment, just enough to show its surface, seemed as though they walked upon the water. What a scene to put upon canvas—that amphibian host involved in those alternate rainbow lights and blue-gray shadows of the fog!

Survey Showing the Immense Breeding Area of Novastoshnah.

[The shaded belt is that ground wholly covered by Fur-Seal Rookeries.]

While Novastoshnah is the largest, yet in some respects I consider Tolstoi, with its bluffs and its long sweep which takes in the sands of English Bay, to be the most picturesque, though it be not the most impressive rookery—especially when that parade-ground belonging to it is reached by the climbing seals.

From Tolstoi at this point, circling around three miles to Zapadnie, is the broad sand-beach of English Bay, upon which and back over its gently rising flats are the great hauling-grounds of the “holluschickie,” which I have indicated on the general map, and to which I made reference in a previous section of this chapter. Gazing at these myriads of “bachelor-seals” spread out in their restless hundreds and hundreds of thousands upon this ground, one feels the utter impotency of verbal description, and reluctantly shuts his note and sketch books to view it with renewed fascination and perfect helplessness.

LAGOON ROOKERY

Survey Showing the Close Contact of Village, Slaughter-Field and Breeding Grounds.

Looking from the village across the cove and down upon the lagoon, still another strange contradiction appears—at least it seems a natural contradiction to one’s usual ideas. Here we see the Lagoon rookery, a reach of ground upon which some twenty-five or thirty thousand breeding-seals come out regularly every year during the appointed time, and go through their whole elaborate system of reproduction, without showing the slightest concern for or attention to the scene directly east of them and across that shallow slough not eighty feet in width. There are the great slaughtering fields of St. Paul Island; there are the sand-flats where every seal has been slaughtered for years upon years back, for its skin; and even as we take this note, forty men are standing there knocking down a drove of two or three thousand “holluschickie” for their day’s work, and as they labor, the whacking of their clubs and the sounds of their voices must be as plain to those breeding-seals, which are not one hundred feet from them, as it is to us, a quarter of a mile distant! In addition to this enumeration of disturbances, well calculated to amaze, and dismay, and drive off every seal within its influence, are the decaying bodies of the last year’s catch—seventy-five thousand or eighty-five thousand unburied carcasses—that are sloughing away into the sand which, two or three seasons from now, nature will, in its infinite charity, cover with the greenest of all green grasses. The whitened bones and grinning skulls of over three million seals have bleached out on that slaughtering-spot, and are buried below its surface.

Directly under the north face of the village hill, where it falls to the narrow flat between its feet and the cove, the natives have sunk a well. It was excavated in 1857, they say, and subsequently deepened to its present condition in 1868. It is twelve feet deep, and the diggers said that they found bones of the sea-lion and fur-seal thickly distributed every foot down, from top to bottom. How much lower these osteological remains of prehistoric pinnipeds can be found no one knows as yet. The water here, on that account, has never been fit to drink, or even to cook with, but, being soft, was and is used by the natives for washing clothes, etc. Most likely, it records a spot upon which the Russians, during the heyday of their early occupation, drove the unhappy visitors of Nah Speel to slaughter. There is no Golgotha known to man elsewhere in the world as extensive as this one of St. Paul.

Yet, the natives say that this Lagoon rookery is a new feature in the distribution of the seals; that when the people first came here and located a part of the present village, in 1824 up to 1847, there never had been a breeding-seal on that Lagoon rookery of to-day; so they have hauled up here from a small beginning, not very long ago, until they have attained their present numerical expansion, in spite of all these exhibitions of butchery of their kind, executed right under their eyes, and in full knowledge of their nostrils, while the groans and low moanings of their stricken species, stretched out beneath the clubs of the sealers, must have been and are far plainer in their ears than they are in our own!

Still they come—they multiply, and they increase—knowing so well that they belong to a class which intelligent men never did molest. To-day at least they know it, or they would not submit to these manifestations which we have just cited, so close to their knowledge.

The Lagoon rookery, however, never can be a large one, on account of the very nature of this ground selected by the seals; it is a bar simply pushed up beyond the surf-wash of boulders, water-worn and rounded, which has almost enclosed and cut away the Lagoon from its parent sea. In my opinion, the time is not far distant when that estuary will be another inland lake of St. Paul, walled out from salt water and freshened by rain and melting snow, as are the other pools, lakes, and lakelets on the island.

Zapadnie, in itself, is something like the Reef plateau on its eastern face, for it slopes up gradually and gently to the parade-plateau above—a parade-ground not so smooth, however, being very rough and rocky, but which the seals enjoy. Just around the point, a low strip of rocky bar and beach connects it with the ridge-walls of Southwest Point, a very small breeding rookery, so small that it is not worthy of a survey, is located here. I think, probably, on account of the nature of the ground, that it will never hold its own, and is more than likely abandoned by this time.

One of the prehistoric villages, the village of Pribylov’s time, was established here between that point and the cemetery ridge, on which the northern wing of Zapadnie rests. An old burying-ground, with its characteristic Russian crosses and faded pictures of the saints, is plainly marked on the ridge. It was at this little bight of sandy landing that Pribylov’s men first came ashore and took possession of the island, while others in the same season proceeded to Northeast Point and to the north shore to establish settlements of their own order. When the indiscriminate sealing of 1868 was in progress, one of the parties lived here, and a salt-house which was then erected by them still stands. It is in a very fair state of preservation, although it has never been occupied since, except by the natives who come over here from the village in the summer to pick those berries of the Empetrum and Rubus, which abound in the greatest profusion around the rough and rocky flats that environ a little lake adjacent. The young people of St. Paul are very fond of this berry-festival, so-called among themselves, and they stay there every August, camping out, a week or ten days at a time, before returning to their homes in the village.

So abundant have been the seals that no driving of animals from the parade-grounds of Zapadnie has ever been made since 1869. It is easily reached, however, if it were desirable to do so.

Polavina has also been an old settlement site, and, for the reason cited at Zapadnie, no “holluschickie” have been driven from this point since 1872, though it is one of the easiest worked. It was in the Russian times a pet sealing-ground with them. The remains of an old village have nearly all been buried in the sand near the lake, and there is really no mark of its early habitation, unless it be the singular effect of a human graveyard being dug out and despoiled by the attrition of seal bodies and flippers. The old cemetery just above and to the right of the barrabkie, near the little lake, was originally established, so the natives told me, far away from the hauling of the “holluschickie.” It was, when I saw it in 1876, in a melancholy state of ruin. A thousand young seals (at least) moved off from its surface as I came up, and they had actually trampled out many sandy graves, rolling the bones and skulls of Aleutian ancestry in every direction. Beyond this ancient demesne which the natives established long ago, as a house of refuge during the winter when they were trapping foxes, looking to the west over the lake, is a large expanse of low, flat swale and tundra, which is terminated by the rocky ridge of Kamminista. Every foot of it has been placed there subsequent to the original elevation of the island by direct action of the sea, beyond question. It is covered with a thick growth of the rankest sphagnum, which quakes and trembles like a bog under one’s feet, but over which the most beautiful mosses ever and anon crop out, including that characteristic floral display before referred to in speaking of the island. Most of the way from the village up to the Northeast Point, as will be seen by a cursory glance at the map, with the exception of this bluff of Polavina and the terraced table setting back from its face to Polavina Sopka, the whole island is slightly elevated above the level of the sea, and its coast-line is lying just above and beyond the reach of the surf, where great ridges of sand have been piled up by the wind, capped with sheafs and tufts of rank-growing Elymus.

Near the village, at that little bight mapped as Zoltoi, is a famous rendezvous for the “holluschickie,” and from this place during the season the natives make regular drives, having only to step out from their houses in the morning and walk a few rods to find their fur-bearing quarry.

Passing over Zoltoi on our way down to the point, we quickly come to a basaltic ridge or back-bone over which the sand has been rifted by strong winds, and which supports a rank and luxuriant growth of the Elymus and other grasses, with beautiful flowers. A few hundred feet farther along our course brings us in full view, as we look to the south, of one of the most entrancing spectacles that seals afford to man. We glance below upon and survey a full sweep of the Reef rookery along a grand promenade ground, which slopes gently to the eastward and trends southward down to the water from its abrupt walls bordering on the sea to the west; it is a parade plateau as smooth as the floor of a ball-room, 2,000 feet in length, from 500 to 1,000 feet in width, over which multitudes of “holluschickie” are filing in long strings or deploying in vast platoons, hundreds abreast, in an unceasing march and countermarch. The breath that rises into the cold air from a hundred thousand hot throats hangs like clouds of white steam in the gray fog itself; indeed, it may be said to be a seal-fog peculiar to such a spot, while the din, the roar arising over all, defies adequate description.

We notice to our right and to our left an immense solid mass of the breeding-seals at Gorbotch, and another stretching and trending nearly a mile from our feet, far around to the Reef Point below and opposite that parade-ground, with here and there a neutral passage left open for the “holluschickie” to go down and come up from the waves.

The adaptation of this ground of the Reef rookery to the requirements of the seal is perfect. It so lies that it falls gently from its high Zoltoi Bay margin, on the west, to the sea on the east, and upon its broad expanse not a solitary puddle of mud-spotting is to be seen, though everything is reeking with moisture, and the fog even dissolves into rain as we view the scene. Every trace of vegetation upon this parade has been obliterated. A few tufts of grass, capping the summits of those rocky hillocks, indicated on the eastern and middle slope, are the only signs of botanical life which the seals have suffered to remain.

A small rock, “Seevitchie Kammin,” five or six hundred feet right to the southward and out at sea, is also covered with the black and yellow forms of fur-seals and sea-lions. It is environed by shoal-reefs, rough and kelp-grown, which navigators prudently avoid.

At Lukannon and Ketavie there is a joint blending of two large breeding-grounds, their continuity broken by a short reach of sea-wall right under and at the eastern foot of Lukannon Hill. The appearance of these rookeries is, like all the others, peculiar to themselves. There is a rounded, bulging hill, at the foot of Lukannon Bay, which rises perhaps one hundred and sixty or one hundred and seventy feet from the sea, abruptly at the point, but swelling out gently up from the sand-dunes in Lukannon Bay to its summit at the northwest and south. The big rookery rests upon its northern slope. Here is a beautiful adaptation of the finest drainage, with a profusion of those rocky nodules scattered everywhere over it, upon which the female seals so delight in resting.

Standing on the bald summit of Lukannon Hill, we turn to the south, and look over Ketavie[127] Point, where another large aggregate of rookery life rests under our eye. The hill falls away into a series of faintly terraced tables, which drop down to a flat that again abruptly descends to the sea at Ketavie Point. Between us and Ketavie rookery is the parade-ground of Lukannon,—a sight almost as grand as is that on the Reef which we have feebly attempted to portray. The sand-dunes to the west and to the north are covered with the most luxuriant grass, abruptly emarginated by sharp abrasions of the hauling-seals: this is shown very clearly on my general map. Ketavie Point is a solid basaltic shelf. Lukannon Hill, the summit of it, is composed of volcanic tufa and cement, with irregular cubes and fragments of pure basalt scattered all over its flipper-worn slopes. This is that place, down along the flat shoals of Lukannon Bay, where the sand-dunes are most characteristic, as they rise in their wind-whirled forms just above surf-wash. Here also is where the natives come from the village during the early mornings of the season for driving, to get any number of “holluschickie” required.

It is a beautiful sight, glancing from the summit of this great rookery hill, up to the north over that low reach of the coast to Tonkie Mees, where the waves seem to roll in with crests which rise in unbroken ridges for a mile in length each, ere they break so grandly and uniformly on the beach. In these rollers the “holluschickie” are playing like sea-birds, seeming to sport the most joyously at the very moment when a heavy billow breaks and falls upon them.

The precipitous shore-line of St. George is enough in itself to explain the small number of seals found there, when contrasted with the swarming myriads of her more favorably adapted sister island. Nevertheless that Muscovitic sailor, Pribylov, not knowing then of the existence of St. Paul, was as well satisfied as if he had possessed the boundless universe when he first found it. As in the case of St. Paul Island, I have been unable to learn much here in regard to the early status of the rookeries, none of the natives having any real information. The drift of their sentiment goes to show that there never was a great assemblage of fur-seals on St. George—in fact, never as many as there are to-day, insignificant as the exhibit is, compared with that of St. Paul. They say that at first the sea-lions owned this island, and that the Russians, becoming cognizant of the fact, made a regular business of driving off the “seevitchie,” in order that fur-seals might be encouraged to land. Touching this statement, with my experience on St. Paul, where there is no conflict at all between the fifteen or twenty thousand sea-lions which breed around on the outer edge of the seal rookeries there and at Southwest Point, I cannot agree to the St. George legend. I am inclined to believe, however—indeed, it is more than probable—that there were a great many more sea-lions on and about St. George before it was occupied by men—a hundredfold greater, perhaps, than now, because a sea-lion is an exceedingly timid, cowardly creature when it is in the proximity of man, and will always desert any resting-place where it is constantly brought into contact with him.[128]

The rookeries on this island, being so much less in volume, are not especially noted—still, one of them, “Starry Arteel,” is unique indeed, lying as it does in a bold sweep from the sea up a very steep slope to a point where the bluffs bordering it seaward are over four hundred feet in vertical declination. The seals crowd just as closely to the edge of this precipice along its entire face as they do at the tide-level. It is a very strange sight for that visitor who may sail under these bluffs with a boat in fair weather for landing, and, as you walk the beach, above which the cliff-wall frowns a sheer five hundred feet, there, directly over your head, the craning necks and twisting forms of restless seals, appear as if ready to launch out and fall below, ever and anon, as you glance upward, so closely and boldly do they press to the very edge of the precipice. I have been repeatedly astonished at an amazing power possessed by the fur-seal of resistance to shocks which would certainly kill any other animal. To explain clearly, the reader will observe by reference to the maps that there are a great many cliffy places between the rookeries on the shore-lines of the islands. Some of these bluffs are more than one hundred feet in abrupt elevation above the surf and rocks awash below. Frequently “holluschickie,” in ones, or twos, or threes, will stray far away back from the great masses of their kind and fall asleep in the thick grass and herbage which covers these mural reaches. Sometimes they will repose and rest very close to the edge, and then as you come tramping along you discover and startle them and yourself alike. They, blinded by their first transports of alarm, leap promptly over the brink, snorting, coughing, and spitting as they go. Curiously peering after them and looking down upon the rocks, fifty to one hundred feet below, instead of seeing their stunned and motionless bodies, you will invariably catch sight of them rapidly scrambling into the water, and, when in it, swimming off like arrows from the bow. Three “holluschickie” were thus inadvertently surprised by me on the edge of the west face to Otter Island. They plunged over from an elevation there not less than two hundred feet in sheer descent, and I distinctly saw them fall; in scrambling, whirling evolutions, down, thumping upon the rocky shingle beneath, from which they bounded as they struck, like so many rubber balls. Two of them never moved after the rebound ceased; but the third one reached the water and swam away swift as a bird on the wing.

While they seem to escape without bodily injury incident to such hard falls as ensue from dropping fifty or sixty feet upon pebbly beaches and rough boulders below, and even greater elevations, yet I am inclined to think that some internal injuries are necessarily sustained in almost every case, which soon develop and cause death. The excitement and the vitality of the seal at the moment of the terrific shock are able to sustain and conceal a real injury for the time being.

Driving the “holluschickie” on St. George, owing to the relative scantiness of hauling area for those animals there, and consequent small numbers found upon these grounds at any one time, is a very arduous series of daily exercises on the part of the natives who attend to it. Glancing at the map, the marked considerable distance over an exceedingly rough road will be noticed between Zapadnie and the village, yet in 1872 eleven different drives across the island of four hundred to five hundred seals each were made in the short four weeks of that season.

The peculiarly rough character to this trail is given by large, loose, sharp-edged basaltic boulders which are strewn thickly over all those lower levels that bridge the island between the high bluffs at Starry Arteel and the slopes of Ahluckeyak Hill. The summits of the two broader, higher plateaux, east and west respectively, are comparatively smooth and easy to travel over, and so is the sea-level flat at Zapadnie itself. On the map of St. George a number of very small ponds will be noticed. They are the fresh-water reservoirs of the island. The two largest of these are near the summit of this rough divide. The seal-trail from Zapadnie to the village runs just west of them and comes out on the north shore, a little to the eastward of the hauling-grounds of Starry Arteel, where it forks and unites with that path. A direct line between the village and Zapadnie, though nearly a mile shorter on the chart, is equal to five miles more of distance by reason of its superlative rocky inequalities.

One question is always sure to be asked in this connection. The query is: “At the present rate of killing seals it will not be long ere they are exterminated—how much longer will they last?” My answer is now as it was then: “Provided matters are conducted on the Seal Islands in the future as they are to-day, 100,000 male seals under the age of five years and over one may be safely taken every year from the Pribylov Islands without the slightest injury to the regular birth-rate or natural increase thereon; provided also that the fur-seals are not visited by plagues or by pests, or any such abnormal cause for their destruction, which might be beyond the control of men, and to which, like any other great body of animal life, they must ever be subjected to the danger of.”[129] From my calculations given above it will be seen that 1,000,000 pups or young seals, in round numbers, are born upon these islands of the Pribylov group every year. Of this million, one-half are males. These 500,000 young males, before they leave the islands for sea during October and November, and when they are between five or six months old, fat, and hardy, have suffered but a trifling loss in numbers—say one per cent.—while on and about the islands of their birth, surrounding which and upon which they have no enemies whatever to speak of; but after they get well down to the Pacific, spread out over an immense area of watery highways in quest of piscatorial food, they form the most helpless of their kind to resist or elude the murderous teeth and carnivorous attacks of basking sharks[130] and killer-whales.[131] By these agencies, during their absence from the islands until their reappearance in the following year, and in July, they are so perceptibly diminished in number that I do not think, fairly considered, more than one-half of the legion which left the ground of their birth last October come up the next July to these favorite landing-places—that is, only 250,000 of them return out of the 500,000 born last year. The same statement in every respect applies to the going and the coming of the 500,000 female pups, which are identical in size, shape, and behavior.

As yearlings, however, these 250,000 survivors of last year’s birth have become strong, lithe, and active swimmers, and when they again leave the hauling grounds, as before, in the fall, they are fully as able as are the older class to take care of themselves, and when they reappear next year, at least 225,000 of them safely return in the second season after birth. From this on I believe that they live out their natural lives of fifteen to twenty years each, the death-rate now caused by the visitation of marine enemies affecting them in the aggregate but slightly. And, again, the same will hold good touching the females, the average natural life of which, however, I take to be only nine or ten years each.

Out of these two hundred and twenty-five thousand young males we are required to save only one-fifteenth of their number to pass over to the breeding-grounds, and meet there the two hundred and twenty-five thousand young females; in other words, the polygamous habit of this animal is such that, by its own volition, I do not think that more than one male annually out of fifteen born is needed on the breeding-grounds in the future; but in my calculations, to be within the margin and to make sure that I save two-year-old males enough every season, I will more than double this proportion, and set aside every fifth one of the young males in question. That will leave one hundred and eighty thousand seals, in good condition, that can be safely killed every year, without the slightest injury to the perpetuation of the stock itself forever in all of its original integrity.

In the above showing I have put a very extreme estimate upon that loss sustained at sea by the pup-seals—too large, I am morally certain; but, in attempting to draw this line safely, I wish to place the matter in the very worst light in which it can be put, and to give the seals the full benefit of every doubt. Surely I have clearly presented the case, and certainly no one will question the premises after they have studied the habit and disposition of the rookeries; hence, it is a positive and tenable statement, that no danger of the slightest appreciable degree of injury to the interests of the Government on the Seal Islands of Alaska exists, as long as the present law protecting it, and the management executing it, continues.

These fur-seals of the Pribylov group, after leaving the islands in the autumn and early winter, do not visit land again until the time of their return, in the following spring and early summer, to these same rookery and hauling-grounds, unless they touch, as they are navigating their lengthened journey back, at the Russian Islands, Copper and Bering, seven hundred miles to the westward of the Pribylov group. They leave our islands by independent squads, each one looking out for itself. Apparently all turn by common consent to the south, disappearing toward the horizon, and are soon lost in the vast expanse below, where they spread themselves over the entire Pacific as far south as the 48th and even the 47th parallels of north latitude: within this immense area between Japan and Oregon, doubtless, many extensive submarine fishing-shoals and banks are known to them; at least, it is definitely understood that Bering Sea does not contain them long when they depart from the breeding rookeries and the hauling-grounds therein. While it is carried in mind that they sleep and rest in the water with soundness and with the greatest comfort on its surface, and that even when around the land, during the summer, they frequently put off from the beaches to take a bath and a quiet snooze just beyond the surf, we can readily agree that it is no inconvenience whatever, when the reproductive functions have been discharged, and their coats renewed, for them to stay the balance of the time in their most congenial element—the briny deep.

That these animals are preyed upon extensively by killer-whales (Orca gladiator), in especial, and by sharks, and probably other submarine foes now unknown, is at once evident; for, were they not held in check by some such cause, they would, as they exist to-day on St. Paul, quickly multiply, by arithmetical progression, to so great an extent that the island, nay, Bering Sea itself, could not contain them. The present annual killing of one hundred thousand out of a yearly total of over a million males does not, in an appreciable degree, diminish the seal-life, or interfere in the slightest with its regular, sure perpetuation on the breeding-grounds every year. We may, therefore, properly look upon this aggregate of four and five millions of fur-seals, as we see them every season on these Pribylov Islands, as that maximum limit of increase assigned to them by natural law. The great equilibrium which nature holds in life upon this earth must be sustained at St. Paul as well as elsewhere.

Think of the enormous food-consumption of these rookeries and hauling-grounds; what an immense quantity of finny prey must pass down their voracious throats as every year rolls by! A creature so full of life, strung with nerves, muscles like bands of steel, cannot live on air, or absorb it from the sea. Their food is fish, to the practical exclusion of all other diet. I have never seen them touch, or disturb with the intention of touching it, one solitary example in the flocks of water-fowl which rest upon the surface of the water all about the islands. I was especially careful in noting this, because it seemed to me that the canine armature of their mouths must suggest flesh for food at times as well as fish; but fish we know they eat. Whole windrows of the heads of cod and wolf-fishes, bitten off by these animals at the nape, were washed up on the south shore of St. George during a gale in the summer of 1873. This pelagic decapitation evidently marked the progress and the appetite of a band of fur-seals to the windward of the island, as they passed into and through a stray school of these fishes.

How many pounds per diem is required by an adult seal, and taken by it when feeding, is not certain in my mind. Judging from the appetite, however, of kindred animals, such as sea-lions fed in confinement at Woodward’s Gardens, San Francisco, I can safely say that forty pounds for a full-grown fur-seal is a fair allowance, with at least ten or twelve pounds per diem to every adult female, and not much less, if any, to the rapidly growing pups and young “holluschickie.” Therefore, this great body of four and five millions of hearty, active animals which we know on the Seal Islands, must consume an enormous amount of such food every year. They cannot average less than ten pounds of fish per diem, which gives the consumption, as exhibited by their appetite, of over six million tons of fish every year! What wonder, then, that nature should do something to hold these active fishermen in check.[132]

During the winter solstice—between the lapse of the autumnal and the verging of the vernal equinoxes—in order to get this enormous food-supply, the fur-seals are necessarily obliged to disperse over a very large area of fishing-ground, ranging throughout the North Pacific, five thousand miles across between Japan and the Straits of Fuca. In feeding, they are brought to the southward all this time; and, as they go, they come more and more in contact with those natural enemies peculiar to the sea of these southern latitudes, which are almost strangers and are really unknown to the waters of Bering Sea; for I did not observe, with the exception of ten or twelve perhaps, certainly no more, killer-whales, a single marine disturbance, or molestation, during the three seasons which I passed upon the islands, that could be regarded in the slightest degree inimical to the peace and life of the Pinnipedia; and thus, from my observation, I am led to believe that it is not until they descend well to the south of the Aleutian Islands, and in the North Pacific, that they meet with sharks to any extent, and are diminished by the butchery of the killer whales.

But I did observe a very striking exhibition, however, of this character one afternoon while looking over Lukannon Bay. I saw a “killer” chasing the alert “holluschickie” out beyond the breakers, when suddenly, in an instant, the cruel cetacean was turned toward the beach in hot pursuit, and in less time than this is read the ugly brute was high and dry upon the sands. The natives were called, and a great feast was in prospect when I left the carcass.

But this was the only instance of the orca in pursuit of seals that came directly under my observation; hence, though it does undoubtedly capture a few here every year, yet it is an insignificant cause of destruction, on account of its rarity.

The young fur-seals going out to sea for the first time, and following in the wake of their elders, are the clumsy members of the family. When they go to sleep on the surface of the water, they rest much sounder than the others; and their alert and wary nature, which is handsomely developed ere they are two seasons old, is in its infancy. Hence, I believe that vast numbers of them are easily captured by marine foes, as they are stupidly sleeping, or awkwardly fishing.

I must not be understood as saying that fish alone constitute the diet of the Pribylov pinnipeds; I know that they feed, to a limited extent, upon crustaceans and upon the squid (Loligo), also eating tender algoid sprouts; I believe that the pup-seals live for the first five or six months at sea largely, if not wholly, upon crustaceans and squids; they are not agile enough, in my opinion, to fish successfully, in any great degree, when they first depart from the rookeries.

In this connection I wish to record an impression very strongly made upon my mind, in regard to their diverse behavior when out at sea away from the islands, and when congregated thereon. As I have plainly exhibited in the foregoing, they are practically without fear of man when he visits them on the land of their birth and recreation; but the same seal that noticed you with quiet indifference at St. Paul, in June and July, and the rest of the season while he was there, or gambolled around your boat when you rowed from the ship to shore, as a dog will play about your horses when you drive from the gate to the house, that same seal, when you meet him in one of the passes of the Aleutian chain, one hundred or two hundred miles away from here, as the case may be, or to the southward of that archipelago, is the shyest and wariest creature your ingenuity can define. Happy are you in getting but a single glimpse of him, first; you will never see him after, until he hauls out, and winks and blinks across Lukannon sands.

But the companionship and the exceeding number of the seals, when assembled together annually, makes them bold; largely due, perhaps, to their fine instinctive understanding, dating, probably, back many years, seeming to know that man, after all, is not wantonly destroying them; and what he takes, he only takes from the ravenous maw of the killer-whale or the saw-tipped teeth of the Japan shark. As they sleep in the water, off the Straits of Fuca, and the northwest coast as far as Dixon’s Sound, the Indians belonging to that region surprise them with spears and rifle, capturing quite a number every year, chiefly pups and yearlings.

When fur-seals were noticed, by myself, far away from these islands, at sea, I observed that then they were as shy and as wary as the most timorous animal would be, in dreading man’s proximity—sinking instantly on apprehending the approach or presence of the ship, seldom to reappear to my gaze. But, when gathered in such immense numbers at the Pribylov Islands, they are suddenly metamorphosed into creatures wholly indifferent to my person. It must cause a very curious sentiment in the mind of him who comes for the first time, during a summer season, to the Island of St. Paul—where, when the landing boat or lighter carries him ashore from the vessel, this whole short marine journey is enlivened by the gambols and aquatic evolutions of fur-seal convoys to the “bidarrah,” which sport joyously and fearlessly round and round his craft, as she is rowed lustily ahead by the natives; the fur-seals then, of all classes, “holluschickie” principally, pop their dark heads up out of the sea, rising neck and shoulders erect above the surface, to peer and ogle at him and at his boat, diving quickly to reappear just ahead or right behind, hardly beyond striking distance from the oars. These gymnastics of Callorhinus are not wholly performed thus in silence, for it usually snorts and chuckles with hearty reiteration.

The sea-lion up here also manifest much the same marine interest, and gives the voyager an exhibition quite similar to the one which I have just spoken of, when a small boat is rowed in the neighborhood of its shore rookery; it is not, however, so bold, confident, and social as the fur-seal under the circumstances, and utters only a short, stifled growl of surprise, perhaps; its mobility, however, of vocalization is sadly deficient when compared with the scope and compass of its valuable relative’s polyglottis.

The hair-seals (Phoca vitulina) around these islands never approached our boats in this manner, and I seldom caught more than a furtive glimpse of their short, bull-dog heads when traversing the coast by water.

The walrus (Rosmarus obesus) also, like Phoca vitulina, gave undoubted evidence of sore alarm over the presence of my boat and crew anywhere near its proximity in similar situations, only showing itself once or twice, perhaps, at a safe distance, by elevating nothing but the extreme tip of its muzzle and its bleared, popping eyes above the water; it uttered no sound except a dull, muffled grunt, or else a choking, gurgling bellow.

What can be done to promote the increase of fur seals? We cannot cause a greater number of females to be born every year than are born now; we do not touch or disturb these females as they grow up and live; and we never will, if the law and present management is continued. We save double—we save more than enough males to serve; nothing more can be done by human agency; it is beyond our power to protect them from their deadly marine enemies as they wander into the boundless ocean searching for food.

NATIVES GATHERING A “DRIVE”

Aleutes selecting Holluschickie for the day’s killing at English Bay, St. Paul’s Island

In view, therefore, of all these facts, I have no hesitation in saying, quite confidently, that under the present rules and regulations governing the sealing interests on these islands, the increase or diminution of the seal-life thereon will amount to nothing in the future; that the seals will exist, as they do exist, in all time to come at about the same number and condition recorded by this presentation of the author.

By reference to the habit of the fur-seal, which I have discussed at length, it is now plain and beyond doubt that two-thirds of all the males which are born, and they are equal in numbers to the females born, are never permitted by the remaining third, strongest by natural selection, to land upon the same breeding-ground with the females, which always herd thereupon en masse. Hence this great band of “bachelor” seals, or “holluschickie,” so fitly termed, when it visits the island, is obliged to live apart wholly—sometimes and in some places, miles away from the rookeries; and, by this admirable method of nature are those seals which can be killed without injury to the rookeries selected and held aside of their own volition, so that the natives can visit and take them without disturbing, to the least degree, that entire quiet of those breeding-grounds where the stock is perpetuated.

The manner in which the natives capture and drive up “holluschickie” from the hauling-grounds to the slaughter-fields near the two villages of St. Paul and St. George, and elsewhere on the islands, cannot be improved upon. It is in this way: At the beginning of every sealing-season, that is, during May and June, large bodies of the young “bachelor” seals do not haul up on land very far from the water—a few rods at the most—and, when these first arrivals are sought after, the natives, to capture them, are obliged to approach slyly and run quickly between the dozing seals and the surf, before they can take alarm and bolt into the sea; in this manner a dozen Aleutes, running down the sand beach of English Bay, in the early morning of some June day, will turn back from the water thousands of seals, just as the mould-board of a plough lays over and back a furrow of earth. When the sleeping seals are first startled, they arise, and, seeing men between them and the water, immediately turn, lope and scramble rapidly back up and over the land; the natives then leisurely walk on the flanks and in the rear of this drove thus secured, directing and driving it over to the killing-grounds, close by the village. The task of getting up early of a morning, and going out to the several hauling-grounds, closely adjacent, is really all there is of that labor expended in securing the number of seals required for a day’s work on the killing-grounds. The two, three, or four natives upon whom, in rotation, this duty is devolved by the order of their chief, rise at first glimpse of dawn, between one and two o’clock, and hasten over to Lukannon, Tolstoi, or Zoltoi, as the case may be, “walk out” their “holluschickie,” and have them duly on the slaughtering field before six or seven o’clock, as a rule, in the morning. In favorable weather the “drive” from Tolstoi consumes from two and a half to three hours’ time; from Lukannon, about two hours, and is often done in an hour and a half; while Zoltoi is so near by that the time is merely nominal.

A drove of seals on hard or firm grassy ground, in cool and moist weather, may be driven with safety at the rate of half a mile an hour; they can be urged along, with the expenditure of a great many lives, however, at the speed of a mile or a mile and a quarter per hour; but that is seldom done. An old bull-seal, fat and unwieldy, cannot travel with the younger ones, though it can lope or gallop as it starts across the ground as fast as an ordinary man can run, over one hundred yards—then it fails utterly, falls to the earth supine, entirely exhausted, hot, and gasping for breath.

The “holluschickie” are urged along over paths leading to the killing-ground with very little trouble, and require only three or four men to guide and secure as many thousand at a time. They are permitted frequently to halt and cool off, as heating them injures their fur. These seal-halts on the road always impressed me with a species of sentimentalism and regard for the creatures themselves. When the men drop back for a few moments, that awkward shambling and scuffling of the march at once ceases, and the seals stop in their tracks to fan themselves with their hind flippers, while their heaving flanks give rise to subdued panting sounds. As soon as they apparently cease to gasp for want of breath, and are cooled off comparatively, the natives step up once more, clatter a few bones, with a shout along the line, and this seal-shamble begins again—their march to death and the markets of the world is taken up anew.[133]

I was also impressed by the singular docility and amiability of these animals when driven along the road. They never show fight any more than a flock of sheep would do; if, however, a few old seals get mixed in, they usually grow so weary that they prefer to come to a stand-still and fight rather than move; otherwise no sign whatever of resistance is made by the drove from the moment it is intercepted, and turned up from the hauling-grounds, to the time of its destruction at the hands of the sealing-gang.

This disposition of the old seals to fight rather than endure the panting torture of travel, is of great advantage to all parties concerned, for they are worthless commercially, and the natives are only too glad to let them drop behind, where they remain unmolested, eventually returning to the sea. The fur on them is of little or no value; their under-wool being very much shorter, coarser, and more scant than in the younger; especially so on the posterior parts along the median line of the back.

This change for the worse or deterioration of the pelage of the fur-seal takes place, as a rule, in the fifth year of their age—it is thickest and finest in texture during the third and fourth year of life; hence, in driving the seals on St. Paul and St. George up from the hauling-grounds the natives make, as far as practicable, a selection only from males of that age. It is quite impossible, however, to get them all of one age without an extraordinary amount of stir and bustle, which the Aleutes do not like to precipitate; hence the drive will be found to consist usually of a bare majority of three and four-year-olds, the rest being two-year-olds principally, and a very few, at wide intervals, five-year-olds, the yearlings seldom ever getting mixed up in it.

As this drove progresses along that path to those slaughtering-grounds, the seals all move in about the same way; they go ahead with a kind of walking step and a sliding, shambling gallop. The progression of the whole caravan is a succession of starts, spasmodic and irregular, made every few minutes, the seals pausing to catch their breath, making, as it were, a plaintive survey and mute protest. Every now and then a seal will get weak in the lumbar region, then drag its posteriors along for a short distance, finally drop breathless and exhausted, quivering and panting, not to revive for hours—days, perhaps—and often never. During the driest driving-days, or those days when the temperature does not combine with wet fog to keep the earth moist and cool, quite a large number of the weakest animals in the drove will be thus laid out and left on the track. If one of these prostrate seals is not too much heated at the time, the native driver usually taps the beast over the head and removes its skin.

NATIVES DRIVING “HOLLUSCHICKIE”

The Drove passing over the Lagoon Flats to the Killing Grounds under the Village of St. Paul. Looking S. W. over the Village Cove and the Lagoon Rookery

This prostration from exertion will always happen, no matter how carefully they are driven; and in the longer drives, such as two and a half and five miles from Zapadnie on the west, or Polavina on the north, to the village at St. Paul, as much as three or four per cent. of the whole drive will be thus dropped on the road; hence I feel satisfied, from my observation and close attention to this feature, that a considerable number of those that are thus rejected from the drove, and are able to rally and return to the water, die subsequently from internal injuries sustained on the trip, superinduced by this over-exertion. I therefore think it highly improper and impolitic to extend drives of the “holluschickie” over any distance on St. Paul Island exceeding a mile, or a mile and a half—it is better for all parties concerned, and the business too, that salt-houses be erected, and killing-grounds established contiguous to all of the great hauling-grounds, two miles distant from the village on St Paul Island, should the business ever be developed above the present limit, or should the exigencies of the future require a quota from all these places in order to make up the hundred thousand which may be lawfully taken.

As matters are to-day, one hundred thousand seals alone on St. Paul can be taken and skinned in less than forty working days, within a radius of one mile and a half from the village, and from the salt-house at Northeast Point; hence the driving, with the exception of two experimental droves which I witnessed in 1872, has never been made from longer distances than Tolstoi to the eastward, Lukannon to the northward, and Zoltoi to the southward of the killing-grounds at St Paul village. Should, however, an abnormal season recur, in which the larger portion of days during the right period for taking the skins be warmish and dry, it might be necessary, in order to get even seventy-five thousand seals within the twenty-eight or thirty days of their prime condition, for drives to be made from the other great hauling-grounds to the westward and northward, which are now, and have been for the last ten years, entirely unnoticed by our sealers.[134]

Peter Peeshenkov: Pribylov Sealer.

[Attired in the costume of the killing gang, when at work in wet weather.]

The seals, when finally driven up on those flats between the east landing and the village, and almost under the windows of the dwellings, are herded there until cool and rested. Such drives are usually made very early in the morning, at the first breaking of day, which is half-past one to two o’clock of June and July in these latitudes. They arrive, and cool off on the slaughtering-grounds, so that by six or seven o’clock, after breakfast, the able-bodied male population turn out from the village and go down to engage in the work of killing them. These men are dressed in their ordinary laboring-garb of thick flannel shirts, stout cassimere or canvas pants, over which the “tarbosar” boots are drawn. If it rains they wear their “kamlaykas,” made of the intestines and throats of the sea-lion and fur-seal. Thus dressed, they are each armed with a club, a stout oaken or hickory bludgeon, which has been made particularly for the purpose at New London, Conn., and imported here for this especial service. Those sealing-clubs are about five or six feet in length, three inches in diameter at their heads, and the thickness of a man’s forearm where they are grasped by the hands. Each native also has his stabbing-knife, his skinning-knife and his whetstone: these are laid upon the grass convenient, when the work of braining or knocking the seals down is in progress: this is all the apparatus which they employ for killing and skinning.

THE KILLING GANG AT WORK

Method of slaughtering Fur Seals on the Grounds near the Village of St. Paul Sealers Knocking Down a “Pod”

The Drove in Waiting Natives Skinning

When the men gather for work they are under the control of their chosen foremen or chiefs; usually, on St. Paul, divided into two working parties at the village, and a sub-party at Northeast Point, where another salt-house and slaughtering-field is established. At the signal of the chief the labor of the day begins by the men stepping into that drove corralled on the flats and driving out from it one hundred or one hundred and fifty seals at a time, making what they call a “pod,” which they surround in a circle, huddling the seals one on another as they narrow it down, until they are directly within reach and under their clubs. Then the chief, after he has cast his experienced eye over the struggling, writhing “kautickie” in the centre, passes the word that such and such a seal is bitten, that such and such a seal is too young, that such and such a seal is too old; the attention of his men being called to these points, he gives the word “Strike!” and instantly the heavy clubs come down all around, and every animal eligible is stretched out stunned and motionless, in less time, really, than I take to tell it. Those seals spared by order of the chief now struggle from under and over the bodies of their insensible companions and pass, hustled off by the natives, back to the sea.

The clubs are dropped, the men seize the prostrate seals by the hind flippers and drag them out so they are spread on the ground without touching each other, then every sealer takes his knife and drives it into the heart at a point between the fore flippers of each stunned form; its blood gushes forth, and the quivering of the animal presently ceases. A single stroke of a heavy oak bludgeon, well and fairly delivered, will crush in at once the slight, thin bones of a fur-seal’s skull, and lay the creature out almost lifeless. These blows are, however, usually repeated two or three times with each animal, but they are very quickly done. The bleeding, which is immediately effected, is so speedily undertaken in order that the strange reaction, which the sealers call “heating,” shall be delayed for half an hour or so, or until the seals can all be drawn out and laid in some disposition for skinning.

I have noticed that within less than thirty minutes from the time a perfectly sound seal was knocked down, it had so “heated,” owing to the day being warmer and drier than usual, that, when touching it with my foot, great patches of hair and fur scaled off. This is rather exceptionally rapid metamorphosis—it will, however, take place in every instance, within an hour, or an hour and a half on these warm days, after the first blow is struck, and the seal is quiet in death; hence no time is lost by a prudent toyone in directing the removal of the skins as rapidly as the seals are knocked down and dragged out. If it is a cool day, after bleeding the first “pod” which has been prostrated in the manner described, and after carefully drawing the slain from the heap in which they have fallen, so that the bodies will spread over the ground just free from touching one another, they turn to and strike down another “pod;” and so on, until a whole thousand or two are laid out, or the drove, as corralled, is finished. The day, however, must be raw and cold for this wholesale method. Then, after killing, they turn to work and skin; but if it is a warm day every pod is skinned as soon as it is knocked down.

The labor of skinning is exceedingly severe, and is trying even to an expert, demanding long practice ere the muscles of the back and thighs are so developed as to permit a man to bend down to, and finish well, a fair day’s work. The knives used by the natives for skinning are ordinary kitchen or case-handle butcher-knives. They are sharpened to cutting edges as keen as razors, but something about the skins of the seal, perhaps fine comminuted sand along the abdomen, so dulls these knives, as the natives work, that they are obliged to whet them constantly.

The body of the seal, preparatory to skinning, is rolled over and balanced squarely on its back; then the native makes a single swift cut through the skin down along the neck, chest, and belly, from the lower jaw to the root of the tail: he uses for this purpose his long stabbing-knife.[135] The fore and hind flippers are then successively lifted, as the man straddles a seal and stoops down to his work over it, and a sweeping circular incision is made through the skin on them just at the point where the body-fur ends; then, seizing a flap of the hide on either one side or the other of the abdomen, the man proceeds with his smaller, shorter butcher-knife, rapidly to cut the skin, clean and free from the body and blubber, which he rolls over and out from the hide by hauling up on it as he advances with his work, standing all this time stooped over the carcass so that his hands are but slightly above it, or the ground. This operation of skinning a fair-sized “holluschak” takes the best men only one minute and a half, but the average time made by the gang on the ground is about four minutes to the seal. Nothing is left of the skin upon the carcass, save a small patch of each upper lip on which the coarse mustache grows, the skin on the tip of the lower jaw, and its insignificant tail. After removal of the skin from the body of a fur-seal, the entire surface of the carcass is covered with a more or less dense layer, or envelope, of soft, oily blubber, which in turn completely conceals the muscles or flesh of the trunk and neck. This fatty substance, which we now see, resembles that met with in such seals everywhere, only possessing that strange peculiarity not shared by any other of its kind, of being positively overbearing and offensive in odor to an unaccustomed human nostril. The rotting, sloughing carcasses around about did not, when stirred up, affect me more unpleasantly than did this strong, sickening smell of the fur-seal blubber. It has a character and appearance intermediate between those belonging to the adipose tissue found on the flesh of cetacea and some carnivora.

The Carcass after Skinning—The Skin as taken therefrom.

This continuous envelope of blubber to the bodies of the “holluschickie” is thickest in deposit at those points upon the breast between the fore flippers, reaching entirely around and over the shoulders, where it is from one inch to a little over in depth. Upon the outer side of the chest it is not half an inch in thickness, frequently not more than a quarter, and it thins out considerably as it reaches the median line of the back. The neck and head are clad by an unbroken continuation of the same material, which varies from one-half to one-quarter of an inch in depth. Toward the middle line of the abdominal region there is a layer of relative greater thickness. This is coextensive with the sterno-pectoral mass; but it does not begin to retain its volume as it extends backward, where this fatty investment of the carcass upon the loins, buttocks, and hinder limbs fades out finer than on the pectoro-abdominal parts, and assumes a thickness corresponding to its depth on the cervical and dorsal regions. As it descends on the limbs this blubber thins out very perceptibly; and, when reaching the flippers, it almost entirely disappears, giving way to a glistening aureolar tissue, while the flipper skin finally descends in turn to adhere closely and firmly to the tendinous ligamentary structures beneath, which constitute the tips of the swimming-palms.

The flesh and the muscles are not lined between or within by fat of any kind: this blubber envelope contains it all, with one exception—that which is found in the folds of the small intestine and about the kidneys, where there is an abundant secretion of a harder, whiter, though still offensive-smelling fat.

It is quite natural for our people when they first eat a meal on the Pribylov Islands to ask questions in regard to what seal-meat looks and tastes like. Some of the white residents will answer, saying that they are very fond of it cooked so and so; others will reply that in no shape or manner can they stomach the dish. An inquirer must himself try the effect on his own palate. I frankly confess that I had a slight prejudice against seal-meat at first, having preconceived ideas that it would be fishy in flavor; but I soon satisfied myself to the contrary, and found that the flesh of young seals not over three years old was as appetizing and toothsome as some of the beef, mutton, and pork I was accustomed to at home. The following precautions must be rigidly observed, however, by the cook who prepares fur-seal steaks and sausage-balls for our delectation and subsistence. He will fail if he does not:

1. The meat must be perfectly cleaned of every vestige of blubber or fat, no matter how slight.

2. Cut the flesh then into very thin steaks or slices and soak them from six to twelve hours in salt and water, a tablespoon of fine salt to a quart of fresh water. This whitens the meat and removes the residuum of dark venous blood that will otherwise give a slightly disagreeable taste, hardly definable, though existing.

3. Fry these steaks, or stew them à la mode, with a few thin slices of sweet “breakfast” bacon, seasoning with pepper and salt. A rich brown gravy follows the cooking of the meat. Serve hot, and it is, strictly judged, a very excellent meat for the daintiest feeder, and I hereby recommend it confidently as a safe venture for any newcomer to make.

The flesh of young sea-lions is still better than that of the fur-seal, while the natives say that the meat of the hair-seal (Phoca vitulina) is superior to both, being more juicy. Fur-seal meat is exceedingly dry; hence the necessity of putting bacon into the frying-pan or stew-pot with it. Sea-lion flesh is an improvement in this respect, and also that its fat, strange to say, is wholly clear, white, and inodorous, while the blubber of the “holluschickie” is sickening to the smell, and will, nine times out of ten, cause any civilized stomach to throw it up as quickly as it is swallowed. The natives, however, eat a great deal of it, simply because they are too lazy to clean their fur-seal cuts and not because they really relish it.

In this connection it may be well to add that the liver of both Callorhinus and Eumetopias is sweet and wholesome; or, in other words, it is as good as liver usually is in Fulton Market. The tongues are small, white, and fat. They are regularly cut out to some extent and salted in ordinary water-buckets for exportation to curious friends. They have but slight claim to gastronomic favor. The natives are, however, very partial to the liver; but though they like the tongues, yet they are too lazy to prepare them. A few of them, in obedience to pressing and prayerful appeals from relatives at Oonalashka, do exert themselves enough every season to undergo the extra labor of putting up several barrels of fresh salted seal-meat, which, being carried down to Illoolook by the company’s vessels, affords a delightful variation to the steady and monotonous codfish diet of those Aleutian Islanders.

Interior of Salt House, Village of St. Paul.

[Showing the method of receiving, selecting, kenching and salting “green” fur-seal skins.]

The final acts of curing and shipping pelts of fur-seals from the warehouses of the villages, rapidly follow work upon the killing-grounds. The skins are taken from the field to the salt-house, where they are laid out, after being again carefully examined, one upon another, “hair to fat,” like so many sheets of paper, with salt profusely spread upon the fleshy sides as they are piled up in the “kenches,” or bins. The salt-house is a large barn-like frame structure, so built as to afford one-third of its width in the centre, from end to end, clear and open as a passage-way: while on each side are rows of stanchions, with sliding planks, which are taken down and put up in the form of deep bins or boxes—“kenches,” the sealers call them. As the pile of skins is laid up from the bottom of an empty “kench” and salt thrown in on the outer edges, these planks are also put in place, so that the salt may be kept intact until that bin is filled as high up as a man can toss the skins. After lying two or three weeks in this style they become “pickled,” and they are suited then at any time to be taken up and rolled into bundles of two skins to the package, with the hairy side out, tightly corded, ready for shipment from the islands.

The average weight of a two-year-old skin is five and one-half pounds; of a three-year-old skin, seven pounds, and of a four-year-old skin, twelve pounds, so that, as the major portion of the catch is two or three year olds, these bundles of two skins each have a general weight of from twelve to fifteen pounds. In this form they go into the hold of the company’s steamer at St. Paul, and are counted out from it in San Francisco. Then they are either at once shipped to London by the Isthmus of Panama in the same shape, only packed up in large hogsheads of from twenty to forty bundles to the package, or expressed by railroad, via New York, to a similar destination.

The work of bundling the skins is not usually commenced by the natives until the close of the last week’s sealing; or, in other words, those skins which they first took, three weeks ago, are now so pickled by the salt in which they have been lying ever since, as to render them eligible for this operation and immediate shipment. The moisture of the air dissolves and destroys a very large quantity of that saline preservative which the company brings up annually in the form of rock-salt, principally obtained at Carmen Island, Lower California.

The Alaska Commercial Company, by the provisions of law under which they enjoy their franchise, are permitted to take one hundred thousand male seals annually, and no more, from the Pribylov Islands. This they do in June and July of every year. After that season the skins rapidly grow worthless, as the animals enter into shedding, and, if taken, would not pay for transportation and the tax.

The bundled skins are carried from the salt-houses to the beach, when an order for shipment is given, pitched into a bidarrah, one by one, and rapidly stowed; seven hundred to twelve hundred bundles make an average single load; then, when alongside the steamer, they are again tossed up from the lighter and onto her deck, whence they are stowed in the hold.[136]

The method of air-drying which the old settlers employed is well portrayed by the practice of the natives now, who treat a few hundred sea-lion skins to that process every fall, preparing them thus for shipment to Oonalashka, where they are used by brother Aleutes in covering their bidarkies or kayaks.

The natives, in speaking to me of this matter, said that whenever the weather was rough and the wind blowing hard, these air-dried seal-skins, as they were tossed from the bidarrah to the ship’s deck, numbers of them, would frequently turn in the wind and fly clean over the vessel into the water beyond, where they were lost.

Under the old order of affairs, prior to the present management, the skins were packed up and carried on the backs of the boys and girls, women and old men, to the salt-houses, or drying-frames. When I first arrived, season of 1872, a slight variation was made in this respect by breaking a small Siberian bull into harness and hitching it to a cart, in which the pelts were hauled. Before the cart was adjusted, however, and the “buik” taught to pull, it was led out to the killing-grounds by a ring in its nose, and literally covered with the green seal-hides, which where thus packed to the kenches. The natives were delighted with even this partial assistance; but now they have no further concern about it at all, for several mules and carts render prompt and ample service.

The common or popular notion in regard to seal-skins is, that they are worn by those animals just as they appear when offered for sale; that the fur-seal swims about, exposing the same soft coat with which our ladies of fashion so delight to cover their tender forms during inclement winter. This is a very great mistake; few skins are less attractive than a seal-skin is when it is taken from the creature. The fur is not visible; it is concealed entirely by a coat of stiff over-hair, dull, gray-brown, and grizzled. It takes three of them to make a lady’s sack and boa; and in order that a reason for their costliness may be apparent, I take great pleasure in submitting a description of the tedious and skilful labor necessary to their dressing by the furriers ere they are fit for use: a leading manufacturer, writing to me, says:—

“When the skins are received by us in the salt, we wash off the salt, placing them upon a beam somewhat like a tanner’s beam, removing the fat from the flesh side with a beaming-knife, care being required that no cuts or uneven places are made in the pelt. The skins are next washed in water and placed upon the beam with the fur up, and the grease and water removed by the knife. The skins are then dried by moderate heat, being tacked out on frames to keep them smooth. After being fully dried, they are soaked in water and thoroughly cleansed with soap and water. In some cases they can be unhaired without this drying process, and cleansed before drying. After the cleansing process they pass to the picker, who dries the fur by stove-heat, the pelt being kept moist. When the fur is dry he places the skin on a beam, and while it is warm he removes the main coat of hair with a dull shoeknife, grasping the hair with his thumb and knife, the thumb being protected by a rubber cob. The hair must be pulled out, not broken. After a portion is removed the skin must be again warmed at the stove, the pelt being kept moist. When the outer hairs have been mostly removed, he uses a beaming-knife to work out the fine hairs (which are shorter), and the remaining coarser hairs. It will be seen that great care must be used, as the skin is in that soft state that too much pressure of the knife would take the fur also; indeed, bare spots are made. Carelessly cured skins are sometimes worthless on this account. The skins are next dried, afterward dampened on the pelt side, and shaved to a fine, even surface. They are then stretched, worked, and dried, afterward softened in a fulling-mill, or by treading them with the bare feet in a hogshead, one head being removed and the cask placed nearly upright, into which the workman gets with a few skins and some fine, hardwood sawdust, to absorb the grease while he dances upon them to break them into leather. If the skins have been shaved thin, as required when finished, any defective spots or holes must now be mended, the skin smoothed and pasted with paper on the pelt side, or two pasted together to protect the pelt in dyeing. The usual process in the United States is to leave the pelt sufficiently thick to protect them without pasting.

“In dyeing, the liquid dye is put on with a brush, carefully covering the points of the standing fur. After lying folded, with the points touching each other, for some time, the skins are hung up and dried. The dry dye is then removed, another coat applied, dried, and removed, and so on, until the required shade is obtained. One or two of these coats of dye are put on much heavier and pressed down to the roots of the fur, making what is called the ground. From eight to twelve coats are required to produce a good color. The skins are then washed clean, the fur dried, the pelt moist. They are shaved down to the required thickness, dried, working them some while drying, then softened in a hogshead, and sometimes run in a revolving cylinder with fine sawdust to clean them. The English process does not have the washing after dyeing.”

On account of the fact that all labor in this country, especially skilled labor, commands so much more per diem in the return of wages than it does in London or Belgium, it is not practicable for the Alaska Commercial Company, or any other company here, to attempt to dress and put upon the market its catch of Bering Sea, which is in fact the entire catch of the whole world. Our people understand the theory of dressing these skins perfectly; but they cannot compete with the cheaper labor of the Old World. Therefore, nine-tenths, nearly, of the fur-seal skins taken every year are annually purchased and dressed in London, and from thence distributed all over the civilized world where furs are worn and prized.

The great variation in the value of seal-skin sacks, ranging from seventy-five dollars up to three hundred and fifty dollars, and even five hundred dollars, is not often due to a variance in the quality of the fur originally; but it is due to that quality of the work whereby the fur was treated and prepared for wear. For instance, cheap sacks are so defectively dyed that a little moisture causes them to soil the collars and cuffs of their owners, and a little exposure makes them speedily fade and look ragged. A properly dyed skin, one that has been conscientiously and laboriously finished (for it is a labor requiring great patience and great skill), will not rub off or “crock” the whitest linen when moistened; and it will wear the weather, as I have myself seen it on the form of a sea-captain’s wife, for six and seven successive seasons, without showing the least bit of dimness or raggedness. I speak of dyeing alone; I might say the earlier steps of unhairing, in which the over-hair is deftly combed out and off from the skin, heated to such a point that the roots of the fur are not loosened, while those to the coarser hirsute growth are. If this is not done with perfect uniformity, the fur will never lie smooth, no matter how skilfully dyed; it will always have a rumpled, ruffled look. Therefore the hastily-dyed sacks are cheap; and are enhanced in order of value just as the labor of dyeing is expended upon them.

Another singular and striking characteristic of the Island of St. Paul, is the fact that this immense slaughtering-field, upon which seventy-five thousand to ninety thousand fresh carcasses lie every season, sloughing away into the sand beneath, does not cause any sickness among the people who live right over them, so to speak. A cool, raw temperature, and strong winds, peculiar to the place, seem to prevent any unhealthy effect from that fermentation of decay. An Elymus and other grasses once more take heart and grow with magical vigor over the unsightly spot, to which the sealing-gang again return, repeating their work upon this place which we have marked before, three years ago. In that way this strip of ground, seen on my map between the village, the east landing, and the lagoon, contains the bones and the oil-drippings and other fragments thereof, of more than three million seals slain since 1786 thereon, while the slaughter-fields at Novastoshnah record the end of a million more!

I remember well those unmitigated sensations of disgust which possessed me when I first landed, April 28, 1872, on the Pribylov Islands, and passed up from the beach, at Lukannon, to the village over the killing-grounds; though there was a heavy coat of snow on the fields, yet each and every one of seventy-five thousand decaying carcasses was there, and bare, having burned, as it were, their way out to the open air, polluting the same to a sad degree. I was laughed at by the residents who noticed my facial contortions, and assured that this state of smell was nothing to what I should soon experience when the frost and snow had fairly melted. They were correct; the odor along by the end of May was terrific punishment to my olfactories, and continued so for several weeks until my sense of smell became blunted and callous to such stench by long familiarity. Like the other old residents I then became quite unconscious of the prevalence of this rich “funk,” and ceased to notice it.

Those who land here, as I did, for the first time, nervously and invariably declare that such an atmosphere must breed a plague or a fever of some kind in the village, and hardly credit the assurance of those who have resided in it for the whole period of their lives, that such a thing was never known to St. Paul, and that the island is remarkably healthy. It is entirely true, however, and, after a few weeks’ contact, or a couple of months’ experience, at the longest, the most sensitive nose becomes used to that aroma, wafted as it is hourly, day in and out, from decaying seal-flesh, viscera, and blubber; and, also, it ceases to be an object of attention. The cool, sunless climate during the warmer months has undoubtedly much to do with checking too rapid decomposition and consequent trouble therefrom, which would otherwise arise from those killing-grounds.

The freshly-skinned seal bodies of this season do not seem to rot substantially until the following year; then they rapidly slough away into the sand upon which they rest; the envelope of blubber left upon each body seems to act as an air-tight receiver, holding most of the putrid gases that evolved from the decaying viscera until their volatile tension causes it to give way; fortunately the line of least resistance to that merciful retort is usually right where it is adjacent to the soil, so both putrescent fluids and much of the stench within is deodorized and absorbed before it can contaminate the atmosphere to any great extent. The truth of my observation will be promptly verified, if the sceptic chooses to tear open any one of the thousands of gas-distended carcasses in the fall, that were skinned in the killing-season; if he does so, he will be smitten by the worst smell that human sense can measure; and should he chance to be accompanied by a native, that callous individual, even, will pinch his grimy nose and exclaim, it is a “keeshla pahknoot!”

At the close of the third season after skinning, a seal’s body will have so rotted and sloughed down, as to be marked only by the bones and a few of the tendinous ligaments; in other words, it requires from thirty to thirty-six months’ time for such a carcass to rot entirely away, so that nothing but whitened bones remain above ground. The natives govern their driving of the seals and laying out of the fresh bodies according to this fact—they can, and do, spread this year a whole season’s killing out over the same spot of the field previously covered with such fresh carcasses three summers ago; by alternating with the seasons thus, the natives are enabled to annually slaughter all of the “holluschickie” on a relatively small area, close by the salt-houses and the village, as I have indicated on my map of St. Paul.

The St. Paul village site is located wholly on the northern slope of the village hill, where it drops from its greatest elevation, at the flagstaff of one hundred and twenty-five feet, gently down to those sandy killing-flats below and between it and the main body of the island. The houses are all placed facing north at regular intervals along the terraced streets, which run southeast and northwest. There are seventy-four or eighty native houses, ten large and smaller buildings of the company, a Treasury agent’s residence, a church, cemetery crosses, and a school building which are all standing here in coats of pure white paint. No offal or decaying refuse of any kind is allowed to rest around the dwellings or lie in the streets. It required much determined effort on the part of the whites to effect this sanitary reform; but now most of the natives take equal pride in keeping their surroundings clean and unpolluted. The killing-ground of St. Paul is a bottomless sand-flat only a few feet above high water, and which unites the village hill and the reef with the island itself. It is not a stone’s throw from the heart of the settlement; in fact, it is right in town, not even suburban.

The site of the St. George settlement is more exposed and bleak than is the one we have just referred to on St. Paul. It is planted directly on a rounded summit of one of the first low hills that rise from the sea on the north shore. Indeed, it is the only hill that does slope directly and gently to the salt water on the island. Here are twenty-four to thirty native cottages, laid with their doors facing the opposite sides of a short street between, running also east and west, as at St. Paul. There, however, each house looks down upon the rear of its neighbor in front and below—here the houses face each other on the top of the hill. The Treasury agent’s quarters, the company’s six or seven buildings, the school-house, and the church, are all neatly painted: therefore this settlement, by its prominent position, shows from the sea to a much better advantage than the larger one of St. Paul does. The same municipal sanitary regulations are enforced here. Those who may visit the St. George and St. Paul of to-day will find their streets dry and hard as floors for they have been covered with a thick layer of volcanic cinders on both islands.

On St. George the “holluschickie” are regularly driven to that northeast slope of the village hill which drops down gently to the sea, where they are slaughtered, close by and under the houses, as at St Paul. Those droves which are brought in from the North rookery to the west, and also Starry Arteel, are frequently driven right through the village itself. This killing-field of St. George is hard tufa and rocky, but it slopes away to the ocean rapidly enough to drain itself well; hence the constant rain and humid fogs of summer carry off that which would soon clog and deprive the natives from using the ground year after year in rotation, as they do. Several seasons have occurred, however, when this natural cleansing of the place, above mentioned, has not been as thorough as must be, so as to be used again immediately: then the seals were skinned back of the village hill and in that ravine to the westward on the same slope from its summit.

This village site of St. George to-day, and the killing-grounds adjoining, used to be, during early Russian occupation, in Pribylov’s time, a large sea-lion rookery, the finest one known to either island, St. Paul or St. George. Natives are living now, who told me that their fathers had been employed in shooting and driving these sea-lions, so as to deliberately break up a breeding-ground, and thus rid the island of what they considered a superabundant supply of the Eumetopias, and thereby to aid and encourage a fresh and increased accession of fur-seals from the vast majority peculiar to St. Paul, which could not ensue while big sea-lions held the land.