The small, sloping, pointed head of the creature gives it, to me, a peculiarly horrible appearance. It seems to have no brain, and presents an image of life with the least intelligence. It is in reality not without wits, for one needs only to watch the two or three specimens in the great tank at Woodward's Gardens, when they are getting fed, to see that they instantly recognize their keeper, and understand his voice and motion. But all their wit is applied to the basest uses. Greed for food is their ruling passion, and the monstrous lightning-like lunges through the water, the inarticulate shrieks of pleasure or of fury as he dashes after his food or comes up without it, the wild, fierce eyes, the eager and brutal vigor with which he snatches a morsel from a smaller fellow-creature, the reliance on strength alone, and the abject and panic-struck submission of the weaker to the stronger—all this shows him a brute of the lowest character.
Yet there is a wonderful snake-like grace in the lithe, swift motions of the animal when he is in the surf. You forget the savage blood-shot eyes, the receding forehead, the clumsy figure and awkward motion, as he wriggles up the steep rocks, the moment you see him at his superb sport in the breakers. It seemed to me that he was another creature. The eye looks less baleful, and even joyous; every movement discloses conscious power; the excitement of the sport sheds from him somewhat of the brutality which re-appears the moment he lands or seeks his food.
So far as I could learn, the Farallon sea-lions are seldom disturbed by men seeking profit from them. In the egging season one or two are shot to supply oil to the lamps of the eggers; and occasionally one is caught for exhibition on the main-land. How do they catch a sea-lion? Well, they lasso him, and, odd as it sounds, it is the best and probably the only way to capture this beast. An adroit Spaniard, to whom the lasso or reata is like a fifth hand, or like the trunk to the elephant, steals up to a sleeping congregation, fastens his eye on the biggest one of the lot, and, biding his time, at the first motion of the animal, with unerring skill flings his loose rawhide noose, and then holds on for dear life. It is the weight of an ox and the vigor of half a dozen that he has tugging at the other end of his rope, and if a score of men did not stand ready to help, and if it were not possible to take a turn of the reata around a solid rock, the seal would surely get away.
Moreover, they must handle the beast tenderly, for it is easily injured. Its skin, softened by its life in the water, is quickly cut by the rope; its bones are easily broken; and its huge frame, too rudely treated, may be so hurt that the life dies out of it. As quickly as possible the captured sea-lion is stuffed into a strong box or cage, and here, in a cell too narrow to permit movement, it roars and yelps in helpless fury, until it is transported to its tank. Wild and fierce as it is, it seems to reconcile itself to the tank life very rapidly. If the narrow space of its big bath-tub frets it, you do not perceive this, for hunger is its chief passion, and with a moderately full stomach the animal does well in captivity, of course with sufficient water.
The South Farallon is the only inhabited one of the group. The remainder are smaller; mere rocky points sticking up out of the Pacific. The Middle Farallon is a single rock, from fifty to sixty yards in diameter, and twenty or thirty feet above the water. It lies two and a half miles north-west by west from the light-house. The North Farallon consists, in fact, of four pyramidal rocks, whose highest peak, in the centre of the group, is one hundred and sixty feet high; the southern rock of the four is twenty feet high. The four have a diameter of one hundred and sixty, one hundred and eighty-five, one hundred and twenty-five, and thirty-five yards respectively, and the most northern of the islets bears north 64° west from the Farallon light, six and three-fifths miles distant.
All the islands are frequented by birds; but the largest, the South Farallon, on which the light-house stands, is the favorite resort of these creatures, who come here in astonishing numbers every summer to breed; and it is to this island that the eggers resort at that season to obtain supplies of sea-birds' eggs for the San Francisco market, where they have a regular and large sale.
The birds which breed upon the Farallones are gulls, murres, shags, and sea-parrots, the last a kind of penguin. The eggs of the shags and parrots are not used, but the eggers destroy them to make more room for the other birds. The gull begins to lay about the middle of May, and usually ten days before the murre. The gull makes a rude nest of brush and sea-weed upon the rocks; the murre does not take even this much trouble, but lays its eggs in any convenient place on the bare rocks.
The gull is soon through, but the murre continues to lay for about two months. The egging season lasts, therefore, from the 10th or 20th of May until the last of July. In this period the egg company which has for eighteen years worked this field gathered in 1872 seventeen thousand nine hundred and fifty-two dozen eggs, and in 1873 fifteen thousand two hundred and three dozen. These brought last year in the market an average of twenty-six cents per dozen. There has been, I was assured by the manager, no sensible decrease in the number of the birds or the eggs during twenty years.