Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

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.