A few stragglers remain, however, as late as the snow and ice will permit them to, in and after December; then they are down by the water’s edge, and haul up entirely on the rocky beaches, deserting the sand altogether; but the first snow that falls in October makes them very uneasy, and a large hauling-ground will be so disturbed by a rainy day and night that its hundreds of thousands of occupants fairly deserted it. The fur-seal cannot bear, and will not endure, the spattering of sand into its eyes, which usually accompanies the driving of a rain-storm; they take to the water, to reappear, however, when that nuisance shall be abated.
The weather in which the fur-seal delights is cool, moist, foggy, and thick enough to keep the sun always obscured, so as to cast no shadows. Such weather, which is the normal weather of St. Paul and St. George, continued for a few weeks in June and July, brings up from the sea millions of fur-seals. But, as I have before said, a little sunshine, which raises the temperature as high as 50° to 55° Fahr., will send them back from the hauling-grounds almost as quickly as they came. Fortunately, these warm, sunny days on the Pribylov Islands are so rare that the seals certainly can have no ground of complaint, even if we may presume they have any at all. Some curious facts in regard to their selection of certain localities on these islands, and their abandonment of others, are now on record.
I looked everywhere and constantly, when threading my way over acres of ground which were fairly covered with seal-pups and older ones, for specimens that presented some abnormity, i.e., monstrosities, albinos, and the like, such as I have seen in our great herds of stock; but I was, with one or two exceptions, unable to note anything of the kind. I have never seen any malformations or “monsters” among the pups and other classes of the fur-seals, nor have the natives recorded anything of the kind, so far as I could ascertain from them. I saw only three albino pups among the multitudes on St. Paul, and none on St. George. They did not differ, in any respect, from the normal pups in size and shape. Their hair, for the first coat, was a dull ochre all over; the fur whitish, changing to a rich brown, the normal hue; the flippers and muzzle were a pinkish flesh-tone in color, and the iris of the eye sky-blue. After they shed, during the following year, they have a dirty, yellowish-white color, which makes them exceedingly conspicuous when mixed in among a vast majority of black pups, gray yearlings, and “holluschickie” of their kind.
Undoubtedly some abnormal birth-shapes must make their appearance occasionally; but at no time while I was there, searching keenly for any such manifestation of malformation on the rookeries, did I see a single example. The morphological symmetry of the fur-seal is one of the most salient of its characteristics, viewed as it rallies here in such vast numbers; but the osteological differentiation and asymmetry of this animal is equally surprising.
It is perfectly plain that a large percentage of this immense number of seals must die every year from natural limitation of life. They do not die on these islands; that much I am certain of. Not one dying a natural death could I find or hear of on the grounds. They evidently lose their lives at sea, preferring to sink with the rigor mortis into that cold, blue depth of the great Pacific, or beneath the green waves of Bering Sea, rather than to encumber and disfigure their summer haunts on the Pribylov Islands.
Prior to the year 1835, no native on the islands seemed to have any direct knowledge, or was even acquainted with a legendary tradition, in relation to the seals, concerning their area and distribution on the land here; but they all chimed in after that date with great unanimity, saying that the winter preceding this season (1835-36) was one of frightful severity; that many of their ancestors who had lived on these islands in large barraboras just back of the Black Bluffs, near the present village, and at Polavina, then perished miserably.
They say that the cold continued far into the summer; that immense masses of clearer and stronger ice-floes than had ever been known to the waters about the islands, or were ever seen since, were brought down and shoved high up on to all the rookery margins, forming an icy wall completely around the island, and loomed twenty to thirty feet above the surf. They further state that this frigid cordon did not melt or in any way disappear until the middle or end of August, 1836.
They affirm that for this reason the fur-seals, when they attempted to land, according to their habit and their necessity, during June and July, were unable to do so in any considerable numbers. The females were compelled to bring forth their young in the water and at the wet, storm-beaten surf-margins, which caused multitudes of mothers and all of the young to perish. In short, the result was a virtual annihilation of the breeding-seals. Hence, at the following season, only a spectral, a shadowy imitation of former multitudes could be observed upon the seal-grounds of St. Paul and St. George.
On the Lagoon rookery, now opposite the village of St. Paul, there were then only two males, with a number of cows. At Nah Speel, close by and right under the village, there were then only some two thousand. This the natives know, because they counted them. On Zapadnie there were about one thousand cows, bulls, and pups; at Southwest Point there were none. Two small rookeries were then on the north shore of St. Paul, near a place called “Maroonitch;” and there were seven small rookeries running round Northeast Point, but on all of these there were only fifteen hundred males, females, and young; and this number includes the “holluschickie,” which, in those days, lay in among the breeding-seals, there being so few old males that they were gladly permitted to do so. On Polavina there were then about five hundred cows, bulls, pups, and “holluschickie;” on Lukannon and Keetavie, about three hundred; but on Keetavie there were only ten bulls and so few young males lying in altogether that these old natives, as they told me, took no note of them on the rookeries just cited. On the Reef, and Gorbatch, were about one thousand only. In this number last mentioned some eight hundred “holluschickie” may be included, which laid with the breeding-seals. There were only twenty bulls on Gorbatch, and about ten old males on the Reef.
Such, briefly and succinctly, is the sum and the substance of all information which I could gather prior to 1835-36; and while I do not entirely credit these statements, yet the earnest, straightforward agreement of the natives has impressed me so that I narrate it here. It certainly seems as though this enumeration of the old Aleutes was painfully short.