FOOTNOTES:

[107] The seal-life on the Pribylov Islands may be classified under the following heads, namely: (1) The fur-seal, Cattorhinus ursinus, the “kautickie” of the Russians; (2) the sea-lion, Eumetopias stelleri, the “seevitchie” of the Russians; (3) the hair-seal, Phoca vitulina, the “nearhpahsky” of the Russians; (4) the walrus, Odobænus obesus, the “morsjee” of the Russians.

[108] The inconsequential numbers of the hair-seal around and on the Pribylov Islands seem to be characteristic of all Alaskan waters and the northwest coast; also, the phocidæ are equally scant on the Asiatic littoral margins. Only the following four species are known to exist throughout the entire extent of that vast marine area, viz.:

Phoca vitulina—Everywhere between Bering Straits and California.

Phoca fœtida—Plover Bay, Norton’s Sound, Kuskokvim mouth, and Bristol Bay, of Bering Sea; Cape Seartze Kammin, Arctic Ocean, to Point Barrow.

Erignathus barbatus—Kamchatkan coast, Norton’s Sound, Kuskokvim mouth and Bristol Bay, of Bering Sea.

Histriophoca equestris—Yukon mouth and coast south to Bristol Bay, of Bering Sea.

[109] Those extremely heavy adult males which arrive first in the season and take their stations on the rookeries, are so fat that they do not exhibit a wrinkle or a fold of the skins enveloping their blubber-lined bodies. Most of this fatty deposit is found around the shoulders and the neck, though a warm coat of blubber covers all the other portions of the body save the flippers. This blubber-thickening of the neck and chest is characteristic of the adult males only, which are, by its provisions, enabled to sustain the extraordinary protracted fasting periods incident to their habit of life and reproduction.

When those superlatively fleshy bulls first arrive, a curious body-tremor seems to attend every movement which the animals make on land; their fat appears to ripple backward and forward under their hides, like waves. As they alternate with their flippers in walking, the whole form of the “see-catchie” fairly shakes as a bowl full of jelly does when agitated on the table before us.

[110] The distances at sea, away from the Pribylov Islands, in which fur-seals are found during the breeding season, are very considerable. Scattered records have been made of seeing large bands of them during August as far down the northwest coast as they probably range at any season of the year, viz., well out at sea in the latitude of Cape Flattery, 47° to 49° south latitude. In the winter and spring, up to middle of June, all classes are found here spread out over wide areas of ocean. Then by June 15th they will have all departed, the first and the latest, en route for the Pribylov Islands. Then, when seen again in this extreme southern range, I presume the unusually early examples of return toward the end of August are squads of the yearlings of both sexes, for this division is always the last to land on and the first to leave the Seal Islands annually.

[111] “See-catch,” is the native name for a bull on the rookeries, especially one which is able to maintain its position.

[112] “Hauling up,” is a technical term applied to the action of seals when they land from the surf and haul up or drag themselves over the beach. It is expressive and appropriate, as are most of the sealing phrases.

[113] There is also perfect uniformity in the coloration of the breeding coats of fur-seals, which is strikingly manifest while inspecting the rookeries late in July, when they are solidly massed thereon. At a quarter-mile distance the whole immense aggregate of animal life seems to be fused into a huge homogeneous body that is alternately roused up in sections and then composed, just as a quantity of iron-filings covering the bottom of a saucer will rise and fall when a magnet is passed over and around the dish.

[114] Without explanation I may be considered as making use of paradoxical language by using these terms of description, since the inconsistency of talking of “pups,” with “cows,” and “bulls,” and “rookeries,” on the breeding grounds of the same, cannot fail to be noticed; but this nomenclature has been given and used by the American and English whaling and sealing parties for many years, and the characteristic features of the seals themselves so suit the naming that I have felt satisfied to retain the style throughout as rendering my description more intelligible, especially so to those who are engaged in the business or may be hereafter. The Russians are more consistent, but not so “pat.” They call the bull “see-catch,” a term implying strength, vigor, etc.; the cow, “matkah,” or mother; the pups, “kotickie,” or little seals; the non-breeding males under six and seven years, “holluschickie,” or bachelors. The name applied collectively to the fur-seal by them is “morskie-kot,” or sea-cat.

[115] Dr. Otto Cramer: The suddenness with which fog and wind shut down and sweep over the sea here, even when the day opens most auspiciously for a short boat-voyage, has so alarmed the natives in times past that a visit is now never made by them from island to island, unless on one of the company’s vessels Several bidarrahs have never been heard from, which, in earlier times, attempted to sail, with picked crews of the natives, from one island to the other.

[116] “Do these seals drink?” is a question doubtless often uppermost and suggested to the observer’s eye, as he watches those animals going to the water from the hauling-grounds and the rookeries; at least it was in mine. I never could detect a callorhinus or a eumetopias lapping, either in the fresh-water pools and lakes, or in the brackish lagoon, or the sea; but it plunges at times into the rollers with its jaws wide open as it dives, reappearing quickly in the same manner to dip and rise again, many times in rapid succession, as it swims along, the water running in little streams from the corners of the open mouth whenever its head pops above the surface. Whether this action was simply to cool itself, or that of drinking, I am not prepared to assert positively. I think it was to meet both purposes.

[117] The old males, when grouped together by themselves, indulge in no humor or frolicsome festivities whatsoever. On the contrary, they treat each other with surly indifference. The mature females, however, do not appear to lose their good nature to anything like so marked a degree as do their lords and masters, for they will at all seasons of their presence on the islands be observed, now and then, to suddenly unbend from severe matronly gravity by coyly and amiably tickling and gently teasing one another, as they rest in the harems, or later, when strolling in September. There is no sign given, however, by these seal-mothers of a desire or attempt to fondle or caress their pups; nor do the young appear to sport with any others than the pups themselves, when together. Sometimes a yearling and a five or six months old pup will have a long-continued game between themselves. They are decidedly clannish in this respect—creatures of caste, like Hindoos.

[118] When the females first come ashore there is no sign whatever of affection manifested between the sexes. The males are surly and morose, and the females entirely indifferent to such reception. They are, however, subjected to very harsh treatment sometimes in progress of battles between the males for their possession, and a few of them are badly bitten and lacerated every season.

One of the cows that arrived at Nahspeel, St. Paul’s Island, early in June, 1872, was treated to a mutilation in this manner, under my eyes. When she had finally landed on the barren rocks of one of the numerous “see-catchie” at the water-front of this small rookery, and while I was carefully making a sketch of her graceful outlines, a rival bull, adjacent, reached out from his station and seized her with his mouth at the nape of the neck, just as a cat lifts a kitten. At the same instant, almost simultaneously, the old male that was rightfully entitled to her charms, turned, and caught her in his teeth by the skin of her posterior dorsal region. There she was, lifted and suspended in mid-air, between the jaws of the furious rivals, until, in obedience to their powerful struggles, the hide of her back gave way, and, as a ragged flap of the raw skin more than six inches broad and a foot in length was torn up and from her spine, she passed, with a rush, into the possession of the bull which had covetously seized her. She uttered no cry during this barbarous treatment, nor did she, when settled again, turn to her torn and bleeding wound to notice it in any way whatsoever that I could observe.

I may add here that I never saw the seals under such, or any circumstances, lick or nurse their wounds as dogs or cats do; but, when severe inflammation takes place, they seek the water, disappearing promptly from scrutiny.

[119] This old Aleut, Philip Vollkov, passed to his final rest—“un konchielsah”—in the winter of 1878-79. He was one of the real characters of St. Paul. He was esteemed by the whites on account of his relative intelligence, and beloved by the natives, who called him their “wise man,” and who exulted in his piety. Philip, like the other people there of his kind, was not much comfort to me when I asked questions as to the seals. He usually answered important inquiries by crossing himself and replying, “God knows.” There was no appeal from this.

[120] The only danger which these little fellows are subject to up here is being caught by an October gale down at the surf-margin, when they have not fairly learned to swim. Large numbers have been destroyed by sudden “nips” of this character.

[121] The fur-seal spends a great deal of time, both at sea and on land, in scratching its hide; for it is annoyed by a species of louse, a pediculus, to just about the same degree and in the same manner that our dogs are by fleas. To scratch, it sits upon its haunches, and scrapes away with the toe-nails of first one and then the other of its hind flippers, by which action it reaches readily all portions of its head, neck, chest and shoulders, and with either one or the other of its fore flippers it rubs down its spinal region back of the shoulders to the tail. By that division of labor with its feet it can promptly reduce, with every sign of comfort, any lousy irritation wheresoever on its body. This pediculus peculiar to the fur-seal attaches itself almost exclusively to the pectoral regions; a few also are generally found at the bases of the auricular pavilions.

When the fur-seal is engaged in this exercise it cocks its head and wears exactly the same expression that our common house-dog does while subjugating and eradicating fleas; the eyes are partly or wholly closed; the tongue lolls out; and the whole demeanor is one of quiet but intense satisfaction.

The fur-seal appears also to scratch itself in the water with the same facility and unction so marked on land, only it varies the action by using its fore-hands principally in its pelagic exercise, while its hind-feet do most of the terrestrial scraping.

[122] It has been suggested to me that the exquisite power of scent possessed by these animals enables them to reach the breeding grounds at about the place where they left them the season previously: surely the nose of the fur-seal is endowed to a superlative degree with those organs of smell, and its range of appreciation in this respect must be very great.

I noticed in all sleeping and waking seals that the nasal apertures were never widely expanded; and that they were at intervals rapidly opened and closed with inhalation and exhalation of each breath; the nostrils of the fur-seal are, as a rule, well opened when the animal is out of water, and remain so while it is on land.

[123] The Russian term “holluschickie” or “bachelors” is very appropriate, and is usually employed.

[124] If there is any one faculty better developed than the others in the brain of the intelligent Callorhinus, it must be its “bump” of locality. The unerring directness with which it pilots its annual course back through thousands of miles of watery waste to these spots of its birth—small fly-dots of land in the map of Bering Sea and the North Pacific—is a very remarkable exhibition of its skill in navigation. While the Russians were established at Bodega and Ross, Cal., seventy years ago, they frequently shot fur-seals at sea when hunting the sea-otter off the coast between Fuca Straits and the Farallones. Many of these animals, late in May and early in June, were so far advanced in pregnancy that it was deemed certain by their captors that some shore must be close at hand upon which the near-impending birth of the pup took place. Thereupon the Russians searched over every rod of the coast-line of the mainland and the archipelago between California and the peninsula of Alaska, vainly seeking everywhere there for a fur-seal rookery. They were slow to understand how animals so close to the throes of parturition could strike out into the broad ocean to swim fifteen hundred or two thousand miles within a week or ten days ere they landed on the Pribylov group, and, almost immediately after, give birth to their offspring.

[125] I did not permit myself to fall into error by estimating this matter of weight, because I early found that the apparent huge bulk of a sea-lion bull or fur-seal male, when placed upon the scales, shrank far below my notions: I took a great deal of pains, on several occasions, during the killing-season, to have a platform scale carted out into the field, and as the seals were knocked down, and before they were bled, I had them carefully weighed, constructing the following table from my observations:

Age.Length.Girth.Gross weight of body.Weight of skin.Remarks.
Inches.Inches.Pounds.Pounds.
One week12 to 1410 to 10½6 to 7½1¼A male and female, being the only ones of the class handled, June 20, 1873.
Six months2425393A mean of ten examples, males and females, alike in size, November 28, 1872.
One year3825394½A mean of six examples, males and females, alike in size, July 14, 1873.
Two years4530585½A mean of thirty examples, all males, July 24, 1873.
Three years5236877A mean of thirty-two examples, all males, July 24, 1873.
Four years584213512A mean of ten examples, all males, July 24, 1873.
Five years655220016A mean of five examples, all males, July 24, 1873.
Six years726428025A mean of three examples, all males, July 24, 1873.
Eight to twenty75 to 8070 to 75400 to 50045 to 50An estimate only, calculating on the weight (when fat, and early in the season), of old bulls.

[126] Veniaminov: Zapieskie ob Oonalashkenskaho Otdayla, 2 vols., St. Petersburg, 1842. This work of Bishop Innocent Veniaminov is the only one which the Russians can lay claim to as exhibiting anything like a history of Western Alaska, or of giving a sketch of its inhabitants and resources, that has the least merit of truth or the faintest stamp of reliability. Without it we should be simply in the dark as to much of what the Russians were about during the whole period of their occupation and possession of that country. He served, chiefly as a priest and missionary, for nineteen years, from 1823 to 1842, mainly at Oonalashka, having the Seal Islands in his parish, and was made Bishop of all Alaska. He was soon after recalled to Russia, where he became the primate of the national church, ranking second to no man in the Empire save the Czar. He was advanced in life, being more than ninety years of age when he died at Moscow, April 22, 1879. He must have been a man of fine personal presence, judging from the following description of him, noted by Sir George Simpson, who met him at Sitka in 1842, just as he was about to embark for Russia: “His appearance, to which I have already alluded, impresses a stranger with something of awe, while in further intercourse the gentleness which characterizes his every word and deed insensibly moulds reverence into love, and at the same time his talents and attainments are such as to be worthy of his exalted station. With all this, the bishop is sufficiently a man of the world to disdain anything like cant. His conversation, on the contrary, teems with amusement and instruction, and his company is much prized by all who have the honor of his acquaintance.” Sir Edward Belcher, who saw him at Kadiak in 1837, said: “He is a formidable-looking man, over six feet three inches in his boots, and athletic. He impresses one profoundly.”

[127] Definitions for Russian Names of the Rookeries, etc.—The several titles on my map that indicate the several breeding-grounds, owe their origin and have their meaning as follows:

Zapadnie signifies “westward,” and is so used by the people who live in the village.

Zoltoi signifies “golden,” so used to express a metallic shimmering of the sand there.

Ketavie signifies “of a whale” so used to designate that point where a large right whale was stranded in 1849 (?); from Russian “keet,” or “whale.”

Lukannon—so named after one Lukannon, a pioneer Russian, that distinguished himself, with one Kaiecov, a countryman, who captured a large number of sea-otters at that point, and on Otter Island, in 1787-88.

Tonkie Mees signifies “small (or “slender”) cape” [tonkie, “thin”; mees, “cape”].

Polavina literally signifies “half way” so used by the natives because it is practically half way between the salt-houses at Northeast Point and the village. Polavina Sopka, or “half-way mountain,” gets its name in the same manner.

Novastoshnah, from the Russian “novaite,” or “of recent growth,” so used because this locality in pioneer days was an island to itself; and it has been annexed recently to the mainland of St. Paul.

Vesolia Mista, or “jolly place,” the site of one of the first settlements, and where much carousing was indulged in.

Maroonitch, the site of a pioneer village, established by one Maroon.

Nahsayvernia, or “on the north shore” from Russian, “sayvernie.”

Bogaslov, or “word of God,” indefinite in its application to the place, but is, perhaps, due to the fact that the pious Russians, immediately after landing at Zapadnie, in 1787, ascended the hill and erected a huge cross thereon. Einahnuhto, an Aleutian word, signifying the “three mammæ.”

Tolstoi, a Russian name, signifying “thick”; it is given to at least a hundred different capes and headlands throughout Alaska, being applied as indiscriminately as we do the term “Bear Creek” to little streams in our Western States and Territories.

[128] One of the natives, “stareek,” Zachar Oostigov, told me that the “Russians, when they first landed, came ashore in a thick fog” at Tolstoi Mees, near the present sea-lion rookery site. As the water is deep and “bold” there, Pribylov’s sloop, the St. George, must have jammed her bowsprit against those lofty cliffs ere the patient crew had intimation of their position. The old Aleut then showed me that steep gully there, up which the ardent discoverers climbed to a plateau above: and, to demonstrate that he was not chilled or weakened by age, he nimbly scrambled down to the surf below, some three hundred and fifty vertical feet, and I followed, half stepping and half sliding over Pribylov’s path of glad discovery and proud possession, trodden one June day by him nearly a hundred years ago.

[129] The thought of what a deadly epidemic would effect among these vast congregations of Pinnipedia was one that was constant in my mind when on the ground and among them. I have found in the “British Annals” (Fleming’s), on page 17, an extract from the notes of Dr. Trail: “In 1833 I inquired for my old acquaintances, the seals of the Hole of Papa Westray, and was informed that about four years before they had totally deserted the island, and had only within the last few months begun to reappear.... About fifty years ago multitudes of their carcasses were cast ashore in every bay in the north of Scotland, Orkney, and Shetland, and numbers were found at sea in a sickly state.” This note of Trail is the only record which I can find of a fatal epidemic among seals. It is not reasonable to suppose that the Pribylov rookeries have never suffered from distempers in the past, or are not to in the future, simply because no occasion seems to have arisen during the comparatively brief period of their human domination.

[130] Somniosus microcephalus. Some of these sharks are of very large size, and when caught by the Indians of the northwest coast, basking or asleep on the surface of the sea, they will, if transfixed by the natives’ harpoons, take a whole fleet of canoes in tow and run swiftly with them several hours before exhaustion enables the savages to finally despatch them. A Hudson Bay trader, William Manson (at Fort Alexander in 1865), told me that his father had killed one in the smooth waters of Millbank Sound which measured twenty-four feet in length, and its liver alone yielded thirty-six gallons of oil. The Somniosus lies motionless for long intervals in calm waters of the North Pacific, just under and at the surface, with its dorsal fin clearly exposed above. What havoc such a carnivorous fish would be likely to effect in a “pod” of young fur-seals can be better imagined than described.

[131] Orca gladiator. While revolving this particular line of inquiry in my mind when on the ground and among the seals, I involuntarily looked constantly for some sign of disturbance in the sea which would indicate the presence of an enemy, and, save seeing a few examples of the Orca, I never detected anything. If the killer-whale was common here, it would be patent to the most casual eye, because it is the habit of this ferocious cetacean to swim so closely at the surface as to show its peculiar sharp dorsal fin high above the water. Possibly a very superficial observer could and would confound that long trenchant fluke of the Orca with the stubby node upon the spine of a humpback whale, which that animal exhibits only when it is about to dive. Humpbacks feed around the islands, but not commonly; they are the exception. They do not, however, molest the seals in any manner whatever, and little squads of these pinnipeds seem to delight themselves by swimming in endless circles around and under the huge bodies of those whales, frequently leaping out and entirely over the cetacean’s back, as witnessed on one occasion by myself and the crew of the Reliance off the coast of Kadiak, June, 1874.

[132] I feel confident that I have placed this average of fish eaten per diem by each seal at a starvation allowance, or, in other words, it is a certain minimum of the whole consumption. If the seals can get double the quantity which I credit them with above, startling as it seems, still I firmly believe that they eat it every year. An adequate realization by icthyologists and fishermen as to what havoc the fur-seal hosts are annually making among the cod, herring, and salmon of the northwest coast and Alaska, would disconcert and astonish them. Happily for the peace of political economists who may turn their attention to the settlement and growth of the Pacific coast of America, it bids fair to never be known with anything like precision. The fishing of man, both aboriginal and civilized, in the past, present, and prospective, has never been, is not, nor will it be, more than a drop in the bucket contrasted with those piscatorial labors of these icthyophagi in the waters adjacent to their birth. What catholic knowledge of fish and fishing-banks any one of those old “seecatchie” must possess, which we observe hauled out on the Pribylov rookeries each summer! It has, undoubtedly, during the eighteen or twenty years of its life, explored every fish-eddy, bank, or shoal throughout the whole of that vast immensity of the North Pacific and Bering Sea. It has had more piscine sport in a single twelvemonth than Izaak Walton had in his whole life.

An old sea-captain, Dampier, cruising around the world just about two hundred years ago, wrote diligently thereof (or, rather, one Funnel is said to have written for him), and wrote well. He had frequent reference to meeting hair-seals and sea-lions, fur-seals, etc., and fell into repeating this maxim, evidently of his own making: “For wherever there be plenty of fysh, there be seals.” I am sure that, unless a vast abundance of good fishing-ground was near by, no such congregation of seal-life as is that under discussion on the Seal Islands could exist. The whole eastern half of Bering Sea, in its entirety, is a single fish-spawning bank, nowhere deeper than fifty to seventy-five fathoms, averaging, perhaps, forty; also, there are great reaches of fishing-shoals up and down the northwest coast, from and above the Straits of Fuca, bordering the entire southern, or Pacific coast, of the Aleutian Islands. The aggregate of cod, herring, and salmon which the seals find upon these vast icthyological areas of reproduction, must be simply enormous, and fully equal to a most extravagant demand of the voracious appetites of Callorhini.

When, however, the fish retire from spawning here, there, and everywhere over these shallows of Alaska and the northwest coast, along by the end of September to the 1st of November, every year, I believe that the young fur-seal, in following them into the depths of the great Pacific, must have a really arduous struggle for existence—unless it knows of fishing-banks unknown to us. The yearlings, however, and all above that age, are endowed with sufficient muscular energy to dive rapidly in deep soundings, and to fish with undoubted success. The pup, however, when it goes to sea, five or six months old, is not lithe and sinewy like the yearling; it is podgy and fat, a comparatively clumsy swimmer, and does not develop, I believe, into a good fisherman until it has become pretty well starved after leaving the Pribylovs.

[133] I heard a great deal of talk among the white residents of St. Paul, when I first landed and the sealing-season opened, about the necessity of “resting” the hauling-grounds; in other words, they said if the seals were driven in repeated daily rotation from any one of the hauling-grounds, that this would so disturb these animals as to prevent their coming to any extent again thereon, during the rest of the season. This theory seemed rational enough to me at the beginning of my investigations, and I was not disposed to question its accuracy; but subsequent observation directed to this point particularly satisfied me, and the sealers themselves with whom I was associated, that the driving of the seals had no effect whatever upon the hauling which took place soon or immediately after the field, for the hour, had been swept clean of seals by the drivers. If the weather was favorable for landing, i. e., cool, moist, and foggy, the fresh hauling of the “holluschickie” would cover the bare grounds again in a very short space of time: sometimes in a few hours after the driving of every seal from Zoltoi sands over to the killing-fields adjacent, those dunes and the beach in question would be swarming anew with fresh arrivals. If, however, the weather is abnormally warm and sunny, during its prevalence, even if for several consecutive days, no seals to speak of will haul out on the emptied space; indeed, if these “holluschickie” had not been taken away by man from Zoltoi or any other hauling-ground on the islands when “tayopli” weather prevailed, most of those seals would have vacated their terrestrial loafing-places for the cooler embraces of the sea.

The importance of clearly understanding this fact as to the readiness of the “holluschickie” to haul promptly out on steadily “swept” ground, provided the weather is inviting, is very great; because, when not understood, it was deemed necessary, even as late as the season of 1872, to “rest” the hauling-grounds near the village (from which all the driving has been made since), and make trips to far-away Polavina and distant Zapadnie—an unnecessary expenditure of human time, and a causeless infliction of physical misery upon phocine backs and flippers.

[134] The fur-seal, like all of the pinnipeds, has no sweat-glands; hence, when it is heated, it cools off by the same process of panting which is so characteristic of the dog, accompanied by the fanning that I have hitherto fully described; the heavy breathing and low grunting of a tired drove of seals, on a warmer day than usual, can be heard several hundred yards away. It is surprising how quickly the hair and fur will come out of the skin of a blood-heated seal—literally rubs bodily off at a touch of the finger. A fine specimen of a three-year-old “holluschak” fell in its tracks at the head of the lagoon while being driven to the village killing-grounds. I asked that it be skinned with special reference to mounting; accordingly a native was sent for, who was on the spot, knife in hand, within less than thirty minutes from the moment that this seal fell in the road, yet soon after he had got fairly to work patches of the fur and hair came off here and there wherever he chanced to clutch the skin.

[135] When turning the stunned and senseless carcasses, the only physical danger of which the sealers run the slightest risk, during the whole circuit of their work, occurs thus: at this moment the prone and quivering body of the “holluschak” is not wholly inert, perhaps, though it is nine times out of ten; and as the native takes hold of a fore flipper to jerk the carcass over on to its back, the half-brained seal rouses, snaps suddenly and viciously, often biting the hands or legs of unwary skinners: they then come leisurely and unconcernedly up into the surgeon’s office at the village, for bandages, etc. A few men are bitten every day or two daring the season on the islands, in this manner, but I have never learned of any serious result following any case.

The sealers, as might be expected, become exceedingly expert in keeping their knives sharp, putting edges on them as keen as razors, and in an instant detect any dulness by passing the balls of their thumbs over the suspected edges to such blades.

The white sealers of the Antarctic always used an orthodox butcher’s “steel” in sharpening their knives, but these natives never have, and probably never will abandon those little whetstones above referred to.

During the Russian management, and throughout the strife in killing by our own people in 1868, a very large number of the skins were cut through, here and there, by the slipping of the natives’ knives, when they were taking them from the carcasses, and “flensing” them from the superabundance, in spots, of blubber. These knife-cuts through the skin, no matter how slight, give great annoyance to the dresser, hence they are always marked down in price. The prompt scrutiny of each skin on the islands by an agent of the Alaska Commercial Company, who rejects every one of them thus injured, has caused the natives to exercise greater care, and the number now so damaged, every season, is absolutely trifling.

Another source of small loss is due to a habit which the “holluschickie” have of occasionally biting each other when they are being urged along in the drives, and thus crowded once in a while one upon the other. Usually these examples of “zoobäden” are detected by the natives prior to the “knocking down,” and spared; yet those which have been nipped on the chest or abdomen cannot be thus noticed, and, until the skin is lifted, the damage is not apprehended.

The aim and force with which the native directs his blow determines the death of a fur-seal. If struck direct and violently, a single stroke is enough. The seals’ heads are stricken so hard sometimes that those crystalline lenses to their eyes fly out from the orbital sockets like hail-stones, or little pebbles, and frequently struck me sharply in the face, or elsewhere, while I stood near by watching a killing-gang at work.

A singular lurid green light suddenly suffuses the eye of a fur-seal at intervals when it is very much excited; as the “podding” for the clubbers is in progress and at the moment when last raising its head it sees the uplifted bludgeons on every hand above, fear seems then for the first time to possess it and to instantly gild its eye in this strange manner. When the seal is brained in this state of optical coloration I have noticed that the opalescent tinting remained well defined for many hours or a whole day after death. These remarkable flashes are very characteristic to the eyes of the old males during their hurly-burly on the rookeries, but never appear in the younger classes unless as just described, as far as I could observe.

[136] The shallow depths of Bering Sea give rise to a very bad surf, and though none of the natives can swim, as far as I could learn, yet they are quite creditable surfmen, and work the heavy “baidar” in and out from the landing adroitly and circumspectly. They put a sentinel upon the bluffs over Nah Speel, and go and come between the rollers as he signals. They are not graceful oarsmen under any circumstances, but can pull heartily and coolly together when in a pinch. The apparent ease and unconcern with which they handled their bidarrah here in the “baroon” during the fall of 1869 so emboldened three or four sailors of the United States Revenue Marine cutter Lincoln that they lost their lives in such surf through sheer carelessness. The “gig” in which they were coming ashore “broached to” in the breakers just outside the cove, and their lifeless forms were soon after thrown up by merciless waves on the Lagoon rookery. Three graves of these men are plainly marked on a western slope of the Black Bluffs.

There is a false air of listlessness and gentleness about an open sea, or roadstead roller, that is very apt to deceive even watermen of good understanding. The crushing, overwhelming power with which an ordinary breaker will hurl a large ship’s boat on rocks awash, must be personally experienced ere it is half appreciated.

CHAPTER XI.
THE ALASKAN SEA-LION.

A Pelagic Monarch.—Marked Difference between the Sea-lion and the Fur-seal.—The Imposing Presence and Sonorous Voice of the “Sea-king.”—Terrible Combats between old Sea-lion Bulls.—Cowardly in the Presence of Man, however.—Sea-lions Sporting in the Fury of Ocean Surf.—It has no Fur on its Huge Hide.—Valuable only to the Natives, who Cover their “Bidarrah” with its Skin.—Its Sweet Flesh and Inodorous Fat.—Not such Extensive Travellers as the Fur-seals.—The Difficulty of Capturing Sea-lions.—How the Natives Corral them.—The Sea-lion “Pen” at Northeast Point.—The Drive of Sea-lions.—Curious Behavior of the Animals.—Arrival of the Drove at the Village.—A Thirteen-mile Jaunt with the Clumsy Drove.—Shooting the old Males.—The Bloody “Death-whirl.”—The Extensive Economic Use made of the Carcass by the Natives.—Chinese Opium Pipes Picked with Sea-lion Mustache bristles.

The sea-lion is also a characteristic pinniped of the Pribylov Islands, but ranks much below the fur-seal in perfected physical organization and intelligence. It can, as well as its more sagacious and valuable relative, the Callorhinus, be seen, perhaps, to better advantage on these islands than elsewhere in the whole world that I know of. The marked difference between a sea-lion and the fur-seal up here is striking, the former being twice the size of its cousin.

The size and strength of a northern sea-lion, Eumetopias stelleri, its perfect adaptation to its physical surroundings, unite with a singular climatic elasticity of organization. It seems to be equally well satisfied with the ice-floes of the Kamchatka Sea to the northward, or with the polished boulders and the hot sands of the coast of California. It is an animal as it appears upon its accustomed breeding grounds at Northeast Point, where I first saw it, that commanded my involuntary admiration by its imposing presence and sonorous voice, as it reared itself before me, with head, neck, and chest upon its powerful forearms, over six feet in height, while its heavy bass voice drowned the booming of the surf that thundered on the rocks beneath its flanks.

A GROUP OF SEA-LIONS

Young Adult Male and Female Old Bull Roaring

[Eumetopias stelleri: a Life Study made at St. Paul’s Island. July 16, 1872]

The bulk and power of the adult sea-lion male will be better appreciated when I say that it has an average length of ten and eleven feet osteologically, with an enormous girth of eight to nine feet around the chest and shoulders; but while the anterior parts of its frame are as perfect and powerful on land as in sea, those posterior are ridiculously impotent when the huge beast leaves its favorite element. Still, when hauled up beyond the reach of the brawling surf, as it rears itself, shaking the spray from its tawny chest and short grizzly mane, it has a leonine appearance and bearing, greatly enhanced as the season advances by a rich golden-rufous color of its coat; the savage gleam of its expression is due probably, to the sinister muzzle, and cast of its eye. This optical organ is not round and full, soft and limpid, like the fur-seal’s, but it is an eye like that of a bull-dog: it is small and clearly shows under its heavy lids the white or sclerotic coat, with a light-brown iris. Its teeth gleam and glisten in pearly whiteness against a dark tongue and the shadowy recesses of its wide, deep mouth. The long, sharp, broad-based canines, when bared by the wrathful snarling of its gristled lips, glittered more wickedly, to my eye, than the keenest sword ever did in the hand of man.

With these teeth alone, backed by the enormous muscular power of a mighty neck and broad shoulders, the sea-lion confines its battles to its kind, spurred by terrible energy and heedless and persistent brute courage. No animals that I have ever seen in combat presented a more savage or more cruelly fascinating sight than did a brace of old sea-lion bulls which met under my eyes near the Garden Cove at St. George.

Here was a sea-lion rookery the outskirts of which I had trodden upon for the first time. Two aged males, surrounded by their meek, polygamous families, were impelled towards each other by those latent fires of hate and jealousy which seemed to burst forth and fairly consume the angry rivals. Opening with a long, round, vocal prelude, they gradually came together, as the fur-seal bulls do, with averted heads, as though the sight of each other was sickening—but fight they must. One would play against the other for an unguarded moment in which to assume the initiative, until it had struck its fangs into the thick skin of its opponent’s jowl; then, clinching its jaws, was not shaken off until the struggles of its tortured victim literally tore them out, leaving an ugly, gaping wound—for the sharp eye-teeth cut a deeper gutter in the skin and flesh than would have held my hand; fired into almost supernatural rage, the injured lion retaliated, quick as a flash, in kind; the hair flew from both of them into the air, the blood streamed down in frothy torrents, while high above the boom of the breaking waves, and shrill deafening screams of water-fowl over head, rose the ferocious, hoarse, and desperate roar of these combatants.

Though provided with flippers, to all external view, as the fur-seal is, the sea-lion cannot, however, make use of them at all in the same free manner. The fur-seal may be driven five or six miles in twenty-four hours under the most favorable conditions of cool, moist weather; the “seevitchie,” however, can only go two miles, the weather and roadway being the same. When driven, a sea-lion balances and swings its long and heavy neck, as a lever, to and fro, with every hitching up behind of its posterior limbs, which it seldom raises from the ground, drawing them up after the fore-feet with a sliding drag over the grass or sand and rocks, as the case may be, ever and anon pausing to take a sullen and savage survey of the field and the natives who are urging it.

The sea-lion is polygamous, but it does not maintain any regular system and method in preparing for and attending to its harem, like that so finely illustrated on the breeding-grounds of the fur-seal; and it is not so numerous, comparatively speaking. There are not, according to my best judgment, over ten or twelve thousand of these animals altogether on the breeding-grounds of the Pribylov Islands. It does not haul more than a few rods anywhere or under any circumstances back from the sea. It cannot be visited and inspected by men as the fur-seals are, for it is so shy and suspicious that on the slightest warning of such an approach, a stampede into the water is sure to result.

That noteworthy, intelligent courage of a fur-seal, though it does not possess half the size nor one-quarter of the muscular strength of a sea-lion, is entirely wanting in the huge bulk and brain of the Eumetopias. A boy with a rattle or a pop-gun could stampede ten thousand sea-lion bulls in the height of a breeding-season to the water, and keep them there for the rest of the time.[137]

Old males come out and locate themselves over the narrow belts of rookery-grounds (sometimes, as at St. Paul, on the immediate sea-margin of fur-seal breeding-places), two or three weeks in advance of the females, which arrive later, i.e., between the 1st to the 6th of June; and these females are never subjected to that intense, jealous supervision so characteristic of the fur-seal harem. Big sea-lion bulls, however, fight savagely[138] among themselves, and turn off from the breeding-ground all younger and weaker males.

A cow sea-lion is not quite half the size of an adult male; she will measure from eight to nine feet in length osteologically, with a weight of four or five hundred pounds; she has the same general cast of countenance and build of the bull; but, as she does not sustain any fasting period of over a week or ten days consecutively, she never comes out so grossly fat as he does. With reference to the weight of the latter, I was particularly unfortunate in not being able to get one of those big bulls on the scales before it had been bled, and in bleeding I know that a flood of blood poured out which should have been recorded in the weight. Therefore I can only estimate this aggregate avoirdupois of one of the finest-conditioned adult male sea-lions at fourteen to fifteen hundred pounds; an average weight, however, might safely be recorded as touching twelve hundred pounds.[139]

You will notice that if you disturb and drive off any portion of the rookery, by walking up in plain sight, those nearest to you will take to the water instantly, swim out to a distance of fifty yards or so, leaving their pups behind, helplessly sprawled around and about the rocks at your feet. Huddled up all together in the surf in two or three packs or squads, the startled parents hold their heads and necks high out of the sea, and peer keenly at you: then, all roaring in an incessant concert, they make an orchestra to which those deep sonorous tones of the organ in that great Mormon tabernacle, at Salt Lake City, constitute the fittest and most adequate resemblance.

You will witness an endless tide of these animals travelling to the water, and a steady stream of their kind coming out, if you but keep in retirement and do not disturb them. When they first issue from the surf they are a dark chocolate brown-and-black, and glisten; but, as their coats dry off, the color becomes an iron-gray, passing into a bright golden rufous, which covers the entire body alike—shades of darker brown on the pectoral patches and sterno-pectoral region. After getting entirely dry, they seem to grow exceedingly uneasy, and act as though oppressed by heat, until they plunge back into the sea, never staying out, as the fur-seal does, day after day, and week after week. The females and the young males frolic in and out of the water, over rocks awash, incessantly, one with another, just as puppies play upon a green sward; and, when weary, stretch themselves out in any attitude that will fit the character of that rock, or the lava-shingle upon which they may happen to be resting. The movements of their supple spines, and ball-and-socket joint attachments, permit of the most extraordinary contortions of a trunk and limbs, all of which, no matter how distressing to your eyes, they seem actually to relish. But the old battle-scarred bulls of the harem stand or lie at their positions day and night without leaving them, except to take a short bath when the coast is clear, until the end of the season.

SEA-LION ROOKERY, AT TOLSTOI

A view of the great Sea-lion breeding ground under the high bluffs of St. George’s Island, between Garden Cove and Tolstoi Mees. June, 1873

When swimming, the sea-lion lifts its head only above the surface long enough to take a deep breath, then drops down a few feet below, and propels itself, for about ten or fifteen minutes, like a cigar-steamer, at the rate of six or seven knots, if undisturbed; but, if chased or alarmed, it seems fairly to fly under water, and can easily maintain for a long time a speed of fourteen or fifteen miles per hour. Like the fur-seal, its propulsion through water is the work entirely of its powerful fore-flippers, which are simultaneously struck out, both together, and back against the water, feathering forward again to repeat, while the hind flippers are simply used as a rudder oar in deflecting an ever-varying swift and abrupt course of the animal. On land its hind flippers are employed just as a dog uses its feet in scratching fleas—the long peculiar toe-nails thereof seeming to reach and comb those spots affected by vermin, which annoys it, as the fur-seal is, to a great extent, and causes them both to enjoy a protracted scratching.

Again, both genera, Callorhinus and Eumetopias, are happiest when the surf is strongest and wildest. Just in proportion to the fury of a gale, so much the greater joy and animation of these animals. They delight in riding on the crests of each dissolving breaker up to a moment when it fairly foams over iron-bound rocks. At that instant they disappear like phantoms beneath the creamy surge, to reappear on the crown of the next mighty billow.

When landing, they always ride on the surf, so to speak, to an objective point: and, it is marvellous to see with what remarkable agility they will worm themselves up steep, rocky landings, having an inclination greater than forty-five degrees, to flat bluff-tops above, which have an almost perpendicular drop to water.

As the sea-lion is without fur, its skin has little or no commercial value.[140] The hair is short, an inch to an inch and a half in length, being longest over the nape of the neck; straight, and somewhat coarse, varying in color as the season comes and goes. For instance, when the Eumetopias makes its first appearance in the spring and dries out after landing, it has then a light-brownish rufous tint, with darker shades back and under the fore flippers and on the abdomen. By the expiration of a month or six weeks, about June 15th, generally, this coat will then be weathered into a glossy rufous, or ochre yellow; this tinting remains until shed along by the middle of August, or a little earlier. After a new coat has fairly grown, and just before an animal leaves the island rookery in November, it is a light sepia or Vandyke brown, with deeper shades, almost black, upon its abdomen. The cows after shedding never color up so darkly as the bulls; but when they come back to the land next year they return identically the same in tinting; so that the eye, in glancing over a sea-lion rookery during June and July, cannot discern any dissimilarity in color, at all noteworthy, existing between the coats of the bulls and the cows; also, the young males and yearlings appear in that same golden-brown and ochre, with here and there an animal which is noted as being spotted somewhat like a leopard—a yellow rufous ground predominating, with patches of dark-brown, blotched and mottled, irregularly interspersed over the anterior regions down to those posterior. I have never seen any of the old bulls or cows thus mottled, and this is likely due to some irregularity of shedding in the younger animals; for I have not noticed it early in the season, and it seems to fairly fade away so as not to be discerned on the same animal at the close of its summer solstice. Many of the old bulls have a grizzled or “salt and pepper” look during the shedding period, which is from August 10th up to November 10th or 20th. The pups, when born, are a rich dark-chestnut brown. This coat they shed in October, and take one much lighter in its stead, still darker, however, than their parents.

The time of arrival at, stay on, and departure from the islands, is about the same as that which I have recorded as characteristic of the fur-seal; but, if a winter is an open, mild one, some of the sea-lions will frequently be seen about the shores during the whole year; and then the natives occasionally shoot them, long after the fur-seals have entirely disappeared. Again, it does not confine its landing to the Pribylov Islands alone, as the fur-seal unquestionably does, with reference to such terrestrial location in our own country. On the contrary, it is a frequent visitor to almost all of the Aleutian Islands: it ranges, as I have said before, over the mainland coast of Alaska, south of Bristol Bay, and about the Siberian shores to the westward, throughout the Kuriles and the Japanese northern waters.[141]

When I first returned, in 1873, from the Seal Islands, those authors, whose conclusions were accepted prior to my studies there, had agreed in declaring that the sea-lion, so common off the port of San Francisco, was the same animal also common in Alaska, and the Pribylov Islands in especial; but my drawings from life, and studies, quickly pointed out the error, for it was seen that the creature most familiar to the Californians was an entirely different animal from my subject of study on the Seal Islands. In other words, while scattered examples of the Eumetopias were, and are, unquestionably about and off the harbor of San Francisco, yet nine tenths of the sea-lions there observed were a different animal—they were the Zalophus californianus. This Zalophus is not much more than half the size of Eumetopias, relatively; it has the large, round, soft eye of the fur-seal, and the more attenuated Newfoundland-dog-like muzzle; and it never roars, but breaks out incessantly with a honk, honk, honking bark, or howl.

No example of Zalophus has ever been observed in the waters of Bering Sea, nor do I believe that it goes northward of Cape Flattery, or really much above Mendocino, Cal.

According to the natives of St. George, some sixty or seventy years ago the Eumetopias held almost exclusive possession of that island being there in great numbers, some two or three hundred thousand strong; and they aver, also, that the fur-seals then were barely permitted to land by these animals, and in no great number; therefore, they assert they were directed by the Russians (i.e., their own ancestry) to hunt and worry the sea-lions off from the island: the result was that, as the sea-lions left, the fur-seals came, so to-day Callorhinus occupies nearly the same ground which Eumetopias alone covered sixty years ago. I call attention to this statement of the people because it is, or seems to be, corroborated in the notes of a French naturalist and traveller, who, in his description of the Island of St. George, which he visited sixty years ago, makes substantially the same representation.[142]

That great intrinsic value to the domestic service of the Aleutes rendered by the flesh, fat, and sinews of this animal, together with its skin, arouses the natives of St. Paul and St. George, who annually make drives of “seevitchie,” by which they capture two or three hundred, as the case may be. On St. George driving is positively difficult, owing to the character of the land itself: hence, a few only are secured there; but at St Paul unexceptional advantages are found on Northeast Point for the capture of these shy and timid brutes. The natives of St. Paul, therefore, are depended upon to secure the necessary number of skins required by both islands for their boats and other purposes. This capture of the sea-lion is the only serious business which the people have on St. Paul. It is a labor of great care, industry, and some physical risk for the Aleutian hunters.[143]

By reference to my sketch-map of Northeast Point rookery the reader will notice a peculiar neck or boot-shaped point, which I have designated as Sea-lion Neck. That area is a spot upon which a large number of sea-lions are always to be found during the season. As they are so shy and sure to take to water upon the appearance or presence of man near by, the natives adopt this plan: Along by the middle or end of September, as late sometimes as November, and after the fur-seal rookeries have broken up for the year, fifteen or twenty of the very best men in the village are selected by one of their chiefs for a sea-lion rendezvous at Northeast Point. They go up there with their provisions, tea, and sugar, and blankets, and make themselves at home in the barrabora and house which I have located on the sketch-map of Novastoshnah, prepared to stay, if necessary, a month, or until they shall get the whole drove together of two or three hundred sea-lions.

The “seevitchie,” as the natives call those animals, cannot be approached successfully by daylight, so these hunters lie by in this house of Webster’s until a favorable night comes along, one in which the moon is partially obscured by drifting clouds and the wind blows over them from the rookery where the sea-lions lie. Such an opportunity being afforded, they step down to the beach at low water and proceed to creep on all fours across surf-beaten sand and boulders up between the dozing herd, and the high-water mark where it rests. In this way a small body of natives, crawling along in Indian file, may pass unnoticed by sea-lion sentries, which doubtless in that uncertain light see, but confound the forms of their human enemies with those of seals. When the creeping Aleutes have all reached the strip of beach that is left bare by ebb-tide, and is between the surf and those unsuspecting animals, at a given signal from their crawling leader they at once leap to their feet, shout, yell, brandishing their arms and firing off pistols, while the astonished and terrified lions roar, and flounder in every direction.

ALEUTES CAPTURING SEA-LIONS

Natives creeping up between a herd of dozing Sea-lions and the water, at low tide during a moonlight night, at Garden Cove, St. George’s Island; getting into position for “springing the alarm”

THE SEA-LION PEN

Method of corralling Sea-lions at Novastoshnah, St. Paul’s Island, while the Natives are getting a Drove together for driving to the Village

If at the moment of surprise seevitchie are sleeping with their heads pointed toward the water, as they rise up in fright they charge straight on in that direction, right over the men themselves; but those which have been resting at this instant, when startled, pointed landward, up they rise and follow that course just as desperately, and nothing will turn them either one way or the other. These sea-lions which charged for the water are lost, of course;[144] but the natives promptly follow up the land-turned animal with a rare combination of horrible noises and demoniacal gesticulations until the first frenzied spurt and exertions of the terrified creatures so completely exhaust them that they fall panting, gasping, prone upon the earth, extended in spite of their bulk and powerful muscles, helpless, and at the mercy of their cunning captors, who, however, instead of slaying them as they lie, rudely rouse them up again and urge the herd along to the house in which they have been keeping watch during the several days past.

Here at this point is a curious stage in such proceeding. The natives drive up to that “Webster’s” house those twenty-five or thirty or forty sea-lions, as the case may be, which they have just captured—they seldom get more at any one time—and keep them in a corral or pen close by the barrabora, on the flattened surface of a sand-ridge, in the following comical manner: When they have huddled up the “pod,” they thrust stakes down around it at intervals of ten to twenty feet, to which strips of cotton cloth are fluttering as flags, and a line or two of sinew-rope or thong of hide is strung from pole to pole around the group, making a circular cage, as it were. Within this flimsy circuit the stupid sea-lions are securely imprisoned, and, though they are incessantly watched by two or three men, the whole period of caging and penning which I observed, extending over nine or ten days and nights, passed without a single effort being made by the “seevitchie” to break out of their flimsy bonds, and it was passed by these animals, not in stupid quiescence, but in alert watchfulness, roaring, writhing, twisting, turning one upon and over the other.

By this method of procedure, after the lapse usually of two or three weeks, a succession of favorable nights will have occurred: then the natives secure their full quota, which, as I have said before, is expressed by a herd of two or three hundred of these animals.

The Sea-lion Caravan.

[Natives driving a drove over the plain of Polavina, en route from Northeast Point to St. Paul.]

When that complement is filled, the natives prepare to drive their herd back to the village over the grassy and mossy uplands and intervening stretches of sand-dune tracts, fully eleven miles: preferring thus to take the trouble of prodding such clumsy brutes, wayward and obstinate as they are, rather than to pack their heavy hides in and out of boats, making in this way each sea-lion carry its own skin and blubber down to the doors of their houses in the village. If the weather is normally wet and cold, this drive or caravan of sea-lions can be driven to its point of destination in five or six days; but should it be dry and warmer than usual, three weeks, and even longer, will elapse before the circuit is traversed.

SPRINGING THE ALARM

Natives surprising a Herd of Sea-lions at Tolstoi, St. George’s Island. August 3, 1673

When the drive is started, the natives gather around the herd on all sides, save an opening which they leave pointing to that direction they desire the animals to travel; in this manner they escort and urge the “seevitchie” along to their final resting and slaughter near the village. The young lions and the females, being much lighter than old males, less laden with fat or blubber, take the lead, for they travel twice and thrice as easy and as fast as the latter; these, by reason of their immense avoirdupois, are incapable of moving ahead more than a few rods at a time, then they are completely checked by sheer loss of breath, though the vanguard of the females allures them on; but when an old sea-lion feels his wind coming short, he is sure to stop, sullenly and surlily turning upon the drivers, not to move again until his lungs are clear.

In this method and manner of direction the natives stretch a herd out in extended file, or as a caravan, over the line of march, and as the old bulls pause to savagely survey the field and catch their breath, showing their wicked teeth, the drivers have to exercise every art and all their ingenuity in arousing them to fresh efforts. This they do by clapping boards and bones together, firing fusees, and waving flags; and of late, and best of all, the blue gingham umbrella repeatedly opened and closed in the face of an old bull has been a more effective starter than all the other known artifices or savage expedients of the natives.[145]

The procession of sea-lions, managed in this strange manner day and night—for the natives never let up—is finally brought to rest within a stone’s throw of the village, which has pleasurably anticipated for days and for weeks its arrival, and rejoices in its appearance. The men get out their old rifles and large sea-lion lances, and sharpen their knives, while the women look well to their oil-pouches, and repair to the field of slaughter with meat-baskets on their heads.

No attempt is made, even by the boldest Aleut, to destroy an adult bull sea-lion by spearing the enraged, powerful beast, which, now familiar with man and conscious, as it were, of his puny strength, would seize the lance between its jaws and shake it from the hands of the stoutest one in a moment. Recourse is had to a rifle. The herd is started up those sloping flanks of the Black Bluff hillside; the females speedily take the front, while the old males hang behind. Then the marksmen, walking up to within a few paces of each animal, deliberately draw gun-sight upon their heads and shoot them just between the eye and the ear. The old males thus destroyed, the cows and females are in turn surrounded by the natives, who, dropping their rifles, thrust big heavy iron lances into their trembling bodies at a point behind the fore flippers, touching the heart with a single lunge. It is an unparalleled spectacle, dreadfully cruel and bloody.[146]

This surrounding of the cows is, perhaps, the strangest procedure on the islands. To fully appreciate this subject the reader must first call to his mind’s eye the fact that these female sea-lions, though small beside the males, are yet large animals; seven and eight feet long and weighing each as much as any four or five average men. But, in spite of their strength and agility, fifteen or twenty Aleutes, with rough, iron-tipped lances in their hands, will surround a drove of fifty or one hundred and fifty of them by forming a noisy, gesticulating circle, gradually closing up, man to man, until the sea-lions are literally piled in a writhing, squirming, struggling mass, one above the other, three or four deep, heads, flippers, bellies, backs, all so woven and interwoven in this panic-stricken heap of terrified creatures that it defies adequate description. The natives spear those cows on top, which, as they sink in death, are mounted in turn by the live animals underneath; these meet the deadly lance, in order, and so on until the whole herd is quiet and stilled in the fatal ebbing of their hearts’ blood.

Although the sea-lion has little or no commercial value for us, yet to the service of the natives themselves, who live all along the Bering Sea coast of Alaska, Kamchatka, and the Kuriles, it is invaluable; they set great store by it. It supplies them with its hide, mustaches, flesh, fat, sinews, and intestines, which they make up into as many necessary garments, food-dishes, etc. They have abundant reason to treasure its skin highly, since it is the covering to their neat bidarkas and bidarrahs, the former being the small kayak of Bering Sea, while the latter is a boat of all work, exploration and transportation. These skins are unhaired by sweating in a pile, then they are deftly sewed and carefully stretched over a light keel and frame of wood, making a perfectly water-tight boat that will stand, uninjured, the softening influence of water for a day or two at a time, if properly air-dried and oiled. After being used during the day these skin boats are always drawn out on the beach, turned bottom-side up and air-dried during the night—in this way made ready for employment again on the morrow.

A peculiar value is attached to the intestines of the sea-lion, which, after skinning, are distended with air and allowed to dry in that shape; then they are cut into ribbons and sewed strongly together into that most characteristic rain-proof garment of the world, known as the “kamlayka,” which, while being fully as water-repellant as india-rubber, has far greater strength, and is never affected by grease and oil. It is also transparent in its fitting over dark clothes. The sea-lions’ throats are treated in a similar manner, and when cured, are made into boot tops, which are in turn soled by very tough skin that composes the palms of this animal’s fore flippers.

The “Bidarrah.”

[Characteristic Alaskan boat, made by fitting sea-lion skins over a wooden frame and keel.]

The Aleutian name for this garment is unpronounceable in our language, and equally so in the more flexible Russian; hence the Alaskan “kamlayka,” derived from the Siberian “kamläia.” That is made of tanned reindeer skin, unhaired, and smoked by larch bark until it is colored a saffron yellow; and is worn over a reindeer-skin undershirt, which has the hair next to its owner’s skin, and the obverse side stained red by a decoction of alder-bark. The kamläia is closed behind and before, and a hood, fastened to the back of the neck, is drawn over the head, when leaving shelter; so is the Aleutian kamlayka; only the one of Kolyma is used to keep out piercing dry cold, while the garment of the Bering Sea is a perfect water-tight affair.

Around the natives’ houses, on St. Paul and St. George, constantly appear curious objects which, to an unaccustomed eye, resemble overgrown gourds or enormous calabashes with attenuated necks; examination proves them to be the dried, distended stomach-walls of a sea-lion, filled with its oil—which (unlike the offensive blubber of the fur-seal) boils out clear and inodorous from its fat. The flesh of an old sea-lion, while not very palatable, is tasteless and dry; but the meat of a yearling is very much like veal, and when properly cooked I think it is just as good; but the superiority of sea-lion meat over that of the fur-seal is decidedly marked. It requires some skill in the cuisine ere sausage and steaks of the Callorhinus are accepted on the table; while it does not, however, require much art, experience, or patience for good cooks to serve up the juicy ribs of a young sea-lion so that the most fastidious palate will not fail to relish it.

The carcass of a sea-lion, after it is stripped of its hide, and disembowelled, is hung up in cool weather by its hind flippers, over a rude wooden frame or “laabaas,” as the natives call such a structure, where, together with many more bodies of fur-seals treated in the same manner, it serves from November until the following season of May, as the meat-house for an Aleut on St. Paul and St. George. Exposed in this manner to open weather, the natives keep their seal-meat almost any length of time, in winter, for use; and, like our old duck and bird-hunters, they say they prefer to have this flesh tainted rather than fresh, declaring that it is most tender and toothsome when decidedly “loud.”

The tough, elastic mustache-bristles of a sea-lion are objects of great commercial activity by the Chinese, who prize them highly as pickers for their opium pipes, and several ceremonies peculiar to their joss-houses. Such lip-bristles of the fur-seal are usually too small and too elastic for this service. The natives, however, always carefully pluck them out of the Eumetopias, and get their full value in exchange.

The sea-lion also, as in the case of the fur-seal, is a fish-eater, pure and simple, though he, like the latter, occasionally varies his diet by consuming a limited amount of juicy sea-weed fronds, and tender marine crustaceans; but he hunts no animal whatever for food, nor does he ever molest, up here, the sea-fowl that incessantly hover over his head, or sit in flocks without any fear on the surface of the waters around him. He, like Callorhinus, is, without question, a mighty fisherman, familiar with every submarine haunt of his piscatorial prey; and, like his cousin, rejects the heads of all those fish which have hard horny mouths or are filled with teeth or bony plates.

Many authorities who are quoted in regard to the habits of hair-seals and southern sea-lions speak with much fine detail of having witnessed the capture of water-birds by Phocidæ and Otariidæ. To this point of inquiry on the Pribylov Islands I gave continued close attention; because, off and around all of the rookeries, large flocks of auks, arries, gulls, shags, and choochkies were swimming upon the water, and shifting thereupon incessantly, day and night, throughout the late spring, summer, and early fall. During the four seasons of my observation I never saw the slightest motion made by a fur-seal or sea-lion, a hair-seal or a walrus, toward intentionally disturbing a single bird, much less of capturing and eating it. Had these seals any appetite for sea-fowl, this craving could have been abundantly satisfied at the expense of absolutely no effort on their part. That none of these animals have any taste for water-birds I am thoroughly assured.

In concluding this recitation of that wonderful seal life belonging to those islets of Pribylov, it is well to emphasize the fact that, with an exception of the Russian and American seal islands of Bering Sea, there are none elsewhere in the world of the slightest importance to-day; the vast breeding-grounds of fur-seals bordering on the Antarctic have been, by the united efforts of all nationalities—misguided, short-sighted, and greedy of gain—entirely depopulated; only a few thousand unhappy stragglers are now to be seen throughout all that southern area, where millions once were found, and a small rookery, protected and fostered by the government of a South American State, north and south of the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. When, therefore, we note the eagerness with which our civilization calls for seal-skin fur, the fact that in spite of fashion and its caprices this fur is and always will be an article of intrinsic value and in demand, the thought at once occurs that the Government is exceedingly fortunate in having this great amphibious stock-yard, far up and away in the quiet seclusion of Bering Sea, from which it shall draw an everlasting revenue, and on which its wise regulation and its firm hand can continue the seals forever.