In order that the process of hunting the fur seal may be better understood it may be proper to give a little space to a description of them and their habits. They are usually brown or gray in color. The males reach maturity when about ten years old. They often measure eight feet from the nose to the end of the flipper, and their weight often approaches 400 pounds. Some of them live to a great age and have fine long manes on their necks. The females arrive at maturity when about three years old, and vary in weight from 40 to 100 pounds. The male seals are all congregated on the rookery in the latter part of June. The females arrive there several weeks later. As fast as the females arrive the strong old patriarchs take them in charge, each caring for as many as he can guard, usually about fifteen in number. Very soon after the female reaches the island the young one, usually known as the “pup,” is born. At birth it weighs only a couple of pounds, and grows to weigh 25 or 30 pounds during the first year. It is said the noise of fierce fighting among the many thousands male seals that gather on these wild, barren, rocky shores at breeding time is beyond the power of human speech to describe. Many thousands of them are killed every year, so fierce are their raging battles. Strange as it may seem, in most cases the young pups do not take readily to the water at first. More often than not the older ones have to teach them how to swim.
As soon as the pups can travel the herds leave the rookery and proceed southward. They go through passes that separate the Aleutian islands one from the other in the latter part of September. The 1st of November finds them drifting around in their winter quarters off the coast of Mexico. As soon as good weather returns they proceed northward slowly, congregating along the various fishing banks, where they are most successfully hunted.
The country on the main land, both on the Shumagin islands and the Alaska peninsula as well as on the Aleutian chain, is composed of ragged bluffs and deep canyons, betraying evidence of much volcanic activity in recent times. Where the rocks do not come to the surface these hills are generally covered by a thin growth of small alders which rarely grow to be more than six or seven feet in height. Between the clusters of alder there are often found growing salmon-berry bushes which seldom exceed a foot in height. Grass sprinkled with fragrant violets, grows luxuriantly in some places. In others wild strawberries and small blackberry vines are abundant.
In those latitudes strawberries and salmon-berries are ripe in the middle of August; red and black huckleberries and blackberries in the latter part of September. It is one of the few places where a cranberry marsh can be found on a steeply sloping hillside.
Sand Point station contains a store with warehouses, and customs house and such other buildings as are usually found in a frontier trading post. There is also a large hotel which was built during the administration of Mr. O’Bryon as factor for Lynde & Hough. O’Bryon has since been lost in the schooner Mary Brown which was wrecked off Queen Charlotte island on her passage down last fall. The hotel is probably the finest building in Alaska. It is furnished with many of the modern improvements, and helps to give the place the appearance of one of those boom towns that used to be seen on Puget Sound a few years ago. No one to-day knows why the hotel was built, not even the company. It is thought that O’Bryon intended establishing a pleasure resort for tourists who would go there to fish and hunt during their summer vacations. In front of the station lies the hull of the old three-masted schooner John Hancock, which was wrecked there several years ago.
The Hancock has quite an interesting history. The gunboat John Hancock was built at Charleston, S. C., in 1846. She was then a side-wheel steamer. After the Mexican war she was transferred to the Pacific coast. She was Commodore Perry’s flagship when he negotiated his famous treaty with the emperor of Japan. In later times the Hancock was purchased by Lynde & Hough, of San Francisco, and transformed into a three-masted schooner for the Alaskan trade. Her model was suited for swift sailing, having been very long and slender. She made the quickest passage ever made by a sailing vessel on that route. After she drifted ashore the wreck was filled with rock and a wharf was built out over it.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE INDIAN AND THE SOUTH WIND
Intimately associated with the legend and folk lore of the Indians of Puget Sound is the south wind, the balmy Chinook, the harbinger, the first breath of early spring time. It is the precursor of all that is glorious in pleasant days, sunshine and joy. It comes up over the land, perfumed and odorous from the sea islands. Its touch is like that of a maiden’s palm, gentle and soft. Its tread is silent like the flight of a peri, but it is strong in its coming, for snow peaks and icy crags melt before it like banks of fog. It may come in May or it may come in December, and its influence is felt for good. The Indians watch for its coming as they did for the salmon, the king of fishes, long before the white man came upon the coast to share in its benign influence.