In shape and gesture proudly eminent.
Matka, the wife, is an embodiment of her sex. Kotik is the child of her choice. All her offspring are veritable children: the uncles are uncles, the aunts are aunts, the cousins are cousins, and the rest are the rest. Even the “supers” appear in the nebulous names of the drama.
The point of the “Tale of the Mist-Islands,” the great lesson of it, is the horrid abuses and cruelties to which the seals have been subjected by the brutal fur-pirates who have thronged the Alaskan waters in the past two decades, and whose intolerable lust of slaughter and devastation has threatened the extinction of the fur-seal race. If the story of “Matka and Kotik” could be perused, as it should be, by the American people, the very mothers of the country would rise up against the piratical butchers of the Pribilofs, who would quail under their frown. Meanwhile, diplomacy drags its length, and official reports carry to Congressional Committees a vague statistical account of what has been done and is still doing in the Alaskan waters.
I most heartily commend to all who are interested—and who is not?—in the fur-seal question and in the manner of its solution, Dr. Jordan’s interesting little book. I have hardly ever seen a better piece of English than this. The author’s style is admirable. I scarcely recall another book so monosyllabic and terse. Whoever commences to read “Matka and Kotik” will continue to the end. The story fascinates while it instructs. I dare say that Dr. Jordan, in the scientific sketches which are cunningly scattered in these paragraphs, is always correct.
If our space permitted, we should be glad to make extended quotations in illustration of the sterling merits of this tale of our far Northwest. I shall be obliged to conclude the review with only a single extract, but must first remark that “Matka and Kotik” is illustrated with forty-two striking photographic reproductions, the beauty and excellency of which can hardly be too highly praised. To these are added thirty-four pen sketches by Miss Chloe Frances Lesley, a student in zoölogy in Leland Stanford Junior University. The illustrations which appear are adapted to the text with perfect good taste. We also note “The Calendar of the Mist-Islands.” This is appended to the story proper, as is also the map of the Mist-Island. In the calendar Dr. Jordan gives a diary of the movements of the seals beginning January 1st and ending November 15th. These notes convey a great amount of scientific information in the most condensed and interesting form. It is evident that Dr. Jordan has written under a strong sense of the significance of the scenes which he wishes to portray. At the close, he says:
And when Kotik came back in the spring and climbed over the broken ice-floes to take his place at Tolstoi, Atagh was sleeping yet. [It was the sleep of death!]
And now the dreary days have come to the twin Mist-Islands. The ships of the Pirate Kings swarm in the Icy Sea. To the Islands of the Four Mountains they have found the way. The great Smoke-Island has ceased to roar, because it cannot keep them back. The blood of the silken-haired ones, thousand by thousand, stains the waves as they rise and fall. The decks of the schooners are smeared with their milk and their blood, while their little ones are left on the rocks to wail and starve. The cries of the little ones go up day and night from all the deserted homes, from Tolstoi and Zoltoi, from Lukanin and Vostochni, and from the sister island of Staraya Artil.
Meanwhile, Kotik and Unga, Polsi and Holostiak, stand in their places, roaring and groaning, waiting for the silken-haired ones that never come.
Their call comes across the green waves as I write. I turn my eyes away from Tolstoi Head and put aside my pen. It is growing very chill. The mist is rising from the Salt Lagoon, and there is no brightness on the Zoltoi sands.