Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

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.