Chapter X: Amphibian Millions (3)

A small flock of the young seals, one to three years old generally, will often stray from these hauling-ground margins up and beyond over the fresh mosses and grasses, and there sport and play one with another just as little puppy-dogs do: but, when weary of this gambolling, a general disposition to sleep is suddenly manifested, and they stretch themselves out and curl up in all the positions and all the postures that their flexible spines and ball-and-socket joints will permit. They seem to revel in the unwonted vegetation, and to be delighted with their own efforts in rolling down and crushing the tall stalks of grasses and umbelliferous plants. One will lie upon its back, hold up its hind flippers, and lazily wave them about, while it scratches, or rather rubs, its ribs with the fore-hands alternately, the eyes being tightly closed during the whole performance. The sensation is evidently so luxurious that it does not wish to have any side-issue draw off its blissful self-attention. Another, curled up like a cat on a rug, draws its breath, as indicated by the heaving of its flanks, quickly, but regularly, as though in heavy sleep. Another will lie flat upon its stomach, its hind flippers covered and concealed, while it tightly folds its fore-feet back against its sides, just as a fish carries its pectoral fins, and so on to no end of variety, according to the ground and the fancy of the animals.

These “bachelor” seals are, I am sure, without exception, the most restless animals, in the whole brute creation, which can boast of a high organization. They frolic and lope about over the grounds for hours without a moment’s cessation, and their sleep after this is exceedingly short, and it is ever accompanied by nervous twitchings and uneasy muscular movements. They seem to be fairly brimful and overrunning with spontaneity, to be surcharged with fervid, electric life.

Another marked feature observed among the multitudes of “holluschickie” which have come under my personal observation and auditory, and one very characteristic of this class, is that nothing like ill-humor appears in all of their playing together. They never growl or bite or show even the slightest angry feeling, but are invariably as happy, one with another, as can be imagined. This is a very singular trait. They lose it, however, with astonishing rapidity when their ambition and strength develops and carries them in due course of time to the rookery.

The pups and yearlings have an especial fondness for sporting on rocks which are just at the water’s level and awash, so as to be covered and uncovered as the surf rolls in. On the bare summit of these wave-worn spots they will struggle and clamber, in groups of a dozen or two at a time, throughout the whole day in endeavoring to push off that one of their number which has just been fortunate enough to secure a landing. The successor has, however, but a brief moment of exultation in victory, for the next roller that comes booming in, together with that pressure by its friends, turns the table, and the game is repeated, with another seal on top. Sometimes, as well as I could see, the same squad of “holluschickie” played for an entire day and night, without a moment’s cessation, around such a rock as this off “Nah Speel” rookery; still, in this observation I may be mistaken, because those seals could not be told apart.

That graceful unconcern with which fur-seals sport safely in, among, and under booming breakers, during the prevalence of numerous wild gales at the islands, has afforded me many consecutive hours of spell-bound attention to them, absorbed in watching their adroit evolutions within the foaming surf, that seemingly every moment would, in its fierce convulsions, dash these hardy swimmers, stunned and lifeless, against those iron-bound foundations of the shore which alone checked the furious rush of the waves. Not at all. Through the wildest and most ungovernable mood of a roaring tempest and storm-tossed waters attending its transit I never failed, on creeping out and peering over the bluffs in such weather, to see squads of these perfect watermen, the most expert of all amphibians, gambolling in the seething, creamy wake of mighty rollers which constantly broke in thunder-tones over their alert, dodging heads. The swift succeeding waves seemed every instant to poise those seals at the very verge of death; yet the _Callorhinus_, exulting in his skill and strength, bade defiance to their wrath and continued his diversions.

[_Characteristic pelagic attitude of the “holluschickie.”_]]

The “holluschickie” are the champion swimmers of all the seal tribe; at least, when in the water around the islands, they do nearly every fancy tumble and turn that can be executed. The grave old males and their matronly companions seldom indulge in any extravagant display, as do these youngsters, which jump out of the water like so many dolphins, describing beautiful elliptic curves sheer above its surface, rising three and even four feet from the sea, with the back slightly arched, the fore flippers folded tightly against the sides, and the hinder ones extended and pressed together straight out behind, plumping in head first, to reappear in the same manner, after an interval of a few seconds of submarine swimming, swift as the flight of a bird on its course. Sea-lions and hair-seals never leap in this manner.

All classes will invariably make these dolphin-jumps when they are surprised or are driven into the water, curiously turning their heads while sailing in the air, between the “rises” and “plumps,” to take a look at the cause of their disturbance. They all swim rapidly, with the exception of the pups, and may be said to dart under the water with the velocity of a bird on the wing. As they swim they are invariably submerged, running along horizontally about two or three feet below the surface, guiding their course with the hind flippers, as by an oar, and propelling themselves solely by the fore feet, rising to breathe at intervals which are either very frequent or else so wide apart that it is impossible to see the speeding animal when he rises a second time.[124]

How long they can remain under water without taking a fresh breath is a problem which I had not the heart to solve, by instituting a series of experiments at the island; but I am inclined to think that, if the truth were known in regard to their ability of going without rising to breathe, it would be considered astounding. On this point, however, I have no data worth discussing, but will say that in all their swimming which I have had a chance to study, as they passed under the water, mirrored to my eyes from the bluff above by the whitish-colored rocks below the rookery waters at Great Eastern rookery, I have not been able to satisfy myself how they used their long, flexible hind-feet, other than as steering media. If these posterior members have any perceptible motion, it is so rapid that my eye is not quick enough to catch it; but the fore flippers, however, can be most distinctly seen as they work in feathering forward and sweeping flatly back, opposed to the water, with great rapidity and energy. They are evidently the sole propulsive power of the fur-seal in the water, as they are its main fulcrum and lever combined for progression on land. I regret that the shy nature of the hair-seal never allowed me to study its swimming motions, but it seems to be a general point of agreement among authorities on the _Phocidæ_, that all motion in water by them arises from that power which they exert and apply with the hind-feet. So far as my observations on the hair-seal go, I am inclined to agree with this opinion.

All their movements in water, no matter whether travelling to some objective point or merely in sport, are quick and joyous, and nothing is more suggestive of intense satisfaction and pure physical comfort than is that spectacle which we can see every August a short distance at sea from any rookery, where thousands of old males and females are idly rolling over in the billows side by side, rubbing and scratching with their fore and hind flippers, which are here and there stuck up out of the water by their owners, like so many lateen-sails of Mediterranean feluccas, or, when their hind flippers are presented, like a “cat-o’-nine tails.” They sleep in the water a great deal, too, more than is generally supposed, showing that they do not come ashore to rest—very clearly not.

How fast the fur-seal can swim, when doing its best, I am naturally unable to state. I do know that a squad of young “holluschickie” followed the _Reliance_, in which I was sailing, down from the latitude of the Seal Islands to Akootan Pass with perfect ease; playing around the vessel while she was logging, straight ahead, fourteen knots to the hour.

When the “holluschickie” are up on land they can be readily separated into their several classes, as to age, by the color of their coats and size, when noted: thus, as yearlings, two, three, four, and five years old males. When the yearlings, or the first class, haul out, they are dressed just as they were after they shed their pup-coats and took on the second covering, during the previous year in September and October; and now, as they come out in the spring and summer, one year old, the males and females cannot be distinguished apart, either by color or size, shape or action; the yearlings of both sexes have the same steel-gray backs and white stomachs, and are alike in behavior and weight.

Next year those yearling females, which are now trooping out with these youthful males on the hauling-grounds, will repair to the rookeries, but their male companions will be obliged to return alone to this same spot.

About the 15th and 20th of every August they have become perceptibly “stagey,” or, in other words, their hair is well under way in shedding. All classes, with the exception of the pups, go through this renewal at this time every year. The process requires about six weeks between the first dropping or falling out of the old over-hair and its full substitution by the new: this change takes place, as a rule, between August 1st and September 28th.

The fur is shed, but it is so shed that the ability of a seal to take to the water and stay there, and not be physically chilled or disturbed during its period of moulting, is never impaired. The whole surface of these extensive breeding-grounds, traversed over by me after the seals had gone, was literally matted with shedded hair and fur. This under-fur or pelage is, however, so fine and delicate, and so much concealed and shaded by the coarser over-hair, that a careless eye or a superficial observer might be pardoned in failing to notice the fact of its dropping and renewal.

The yearling cows retain the colors of the old coat in the new, when they shed for the first time, and so repeat them from that time on, year after year, as they live and grow old. The young three-year-olds and the mature cows look exactly alike, as far as color goes, when they haul up at first and dry out on the rookeries, every June and July.

The yearling males, however, make a radical change when they shed for the first time, since they come out from their “staginess” in a nearly uniform dark gray, and gray and black mixed, and lighter, with dark ochre to whitish on the upper and under parts, respectively. This coat, next year, when they appear as two-year-olds, shedding for the three-year-old coat, is a very much darker gray, and so on to the third, fourth, and fifth seasons; then after this, with age, they begin to grow more gray and brown, with a rufous-ochre and whitish-tipped “wig” on the shoulders. Some of the very old bulls change in their declining years to a uniform shade, all over, of dull-grayish ochre. The full glory and beauty of the seal’s mustache is denied to him until he has attained his seventh or eighth year.

The male does not get his full growth and weight until the close of his seventh year, but realizes most of it, osteologically speaking, by the end of the fifth; and from this it may be perhaps truly inferred that the male seals live to an average age of eighteen or twenty years, if undisturbed in a normal condition, and that the females exist ten or twelve seasons under the same favorable circumstances. Their respective weights, when fully mature and fat, in the spring, will, in regard to the male, strike an average of from four to five hundred pounds, while the females will show a mean of from seventy to eighty pounds.

The female does not gain a maximum size and weight until the end of her fourth year, so far as I have observed, but she does most of her longitudinal growing in the first two. After she has passed her fourth and fifth years, she weighs from thirty to fifty pounds more than she did in the days of her youthful maternity.[125] In the table of these weights given below it will be observed that the adult females correspond with the three years old males; also, that the younger cows weigh frequently only seventy-five pounds, and many of the older ones go as high as one hundred and twenty, but an average of eighty to eighty-five pounds is the rule. Those specimens just noted which I weighed were examples taken by me for transmission to the Smithsonian Institution, otherwise I should not have been permitted to make this record of their bulk, inasmuch as weighing them means to kill them; and the law and the habit, or rather the prejudice of the entire community up there, is unanimously in opposition to any such proceeding, for they never touch females, and never go near or disturb the breeding-grounds on such an errand. It will be noticed, also, that I have no statement of the weights of any exceedingly fat and heavy males which appear first on the breeding grounds in the spring; those which I have referred to, in the table above given, were very much heavier at the time of their first appearance, in May and June, than at the moment when they were in my hands, in July; but the cows, and the other classes, do not sustain protracted fasting, and therefore their avoirdupois may be considered substantially the same throughout the year.

Thus, from the fact that all the young seals and females do not vary much in weight from the time of their first coming out in the spring, till that of their leaving in the fall and early winter, I feel safe in saying that they feed at irregular but not long intervals, during this period when they are here under our observation, since they are constantly changing from land to water and from water to land, day in and day out. I do not think that the young males fast longer than a week or ten days at a time, as a rule.

By the end of October and November 10th, a great mass of the “holluschickie,” the trooping myriads of English Bay, Southwest Point, Reef Parade, Lukannon Sands, the table-lands of Polavina, and the mighty hosts of Novastoshnah, at St. Paul, together with the quota of St. George, had taken their departure from these shores, and had gone out to sea, feeding upon the receding schools of fish that were now retiring to the deeper waters of the North Pacific, where, in that vast expanse, over which rolls an unbroken billow, five thousand miles from Japan to Oregon, they spend the winter and the early spring, until they reappear and break up, with their exuberant life, the dreary winter-isolation of the land which gave them birth.

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.

Then, again, with regard to the probable truth of the foregoing statement of the natives, perhaps I should call attention to the fact that the entire sum of seal-life in 1836, as given by them, is just four thousand one hundred, of all classes, distributed as I have indicated above. Now, on turning to Bishop Veniaminov, by whom was published the only statement of any kind in regard to the killing on these islands from 1817 to 1837 (the year when he finished his work), I find that he makes a record of slaughter of seals in the year 1836 of four thousand and fifty-two, which were killed and taken for their skins; but if the natives’ statements are right, then only fifty seals were left on the island for 1837, in which year, however, four thousand two hundred and twenty were again killed, according to the bishop’s table, and according to which there was also a steady increase in the size of this return from that date along up to 1850, when the Russians governed their catch by the market alone, always having more seals than they knew what to do with.

Again, in this connection, the natives say that until 1847 the practice on these islands was to kill indiscriminately both females and males for skins; but after this year, 1847, that strict respect now paid to the breeding-seals, and exemption of all females, was enforced for the first time, and has continued up to date.

In attempting to form an approximate conception of what the seals were or might have been in those early days, as they spread themselves over the hauling and breeding grounds of these remarkable islands, I have been thrown entirely upon the vague statements given to me by the natives and one or two of the first American pioneers in Alaska. The only Russian record which touches ever so lightly upon the subject[126] contains a remarkable statement which is, in the light of my surveys, simply ridiculous now—that is, that the number of fur-seals on St. George during the first years of Russian occupation was nearly as great as that on St. Paul. A most superficial examination of the geological character portrayed on the accompanying maps of those two islands will satisfy any unprejudiced mind as to the total error of such a statement. Why, a mere tithe only of the multitudes which repair to St. Paul in perfect comfort over the sixteen or twenty miles of splendid landing ground found thereon could visit St. George, when all of the coast-line fit for their reception on this island is a scant two and a half miles; but, for that matter, there was at the time of my arrival and in the beginning of my investigation a score of equally wild and incredible legends afloat in regard to the rookeries of St. Paul and St. George. Finding, therefore, that the whole work must be undertaken _de novo_, I went about it without further delay.

Thus it will be seen that there is, frankly stated, nothing that serves as a guide to a fair or even an approximate estimate as to the numbers of the fur-seals on these two islands, prior to the result of my labor.

At the close of my investigation during the first season of my work on the ground in 1872 the fact became evident that the breeding seals obeyed implicitly an imperative and instinctive natural law of distribution—a law recognized by each and every seal upon the rookeries prompted by a fine consciousness of necessity to its own well-being. The breeding-grounds occupied by them were, therefore, invariably covered by the seals in exact ratio, greater or less, as the area upon which they rested was larger or smaller. They always covered the ground evenly, never crowding in at one place here to scatter out there. The seals lie just as thickly together where the rookery is boundless in its eligible area to their rear and unoccupied by them as they do in the little strips which are abruptly cut off and narrowed by rocky walls behind. For instance, on a rod of ground under the face of bluffs which hem it in to the land from the sea there are just as many seals, no more and no less, as will be found on any other rod of rookery ground throughout the whole list, great and small—always exactly so many seals, under any and all circumstances, to a given area of breeding-ground. There are just as many cows, bulls, and pups on a square rod at Nah Speel, near the village, where in 1874, all told, there were only seven or eight thousand, as there are on any square rod at Northeast Point, where a million of them congregate.

This fact being determined, it is evident that just in proportion as the breeding-grounds of the fur-seal on these islands expand or contract in area from their present dimensions, so the seals will increase or diminish in number.

That discovery at the close of the season of 1872 of this law of distribution gave me at once the clue I was searching for, in order to take steps by which I could arrive at a sound conclusion as to the entire number of seals herding on the Pribylov group.

I noticed, and time has confirmed my observation, that the period for taking these boundaries of the rookeries, so as to show this exact margin of expansion at the week of its greatest volume, or when they are as full as they are to be for the season, is between July 10th and 20th of every year—not a day earlier and not many days later. After July 20th the regular system of compact, even organization, breaks up. The seals then scatter out in pods or clusters, the pups leading the way, straying far back: the same number then instantly cover twice and thrice as much ground as they did the day or week before, when they laid in solid masses and were marshalled on the rookery ground proper.

There is no more difficulty in surveying these seal-margins during this week or ten days in July than there is in drawing sights along and around the curbs of a stone fence surrounding a field. The breeding-seals remain perfectly quiet under your eyes all over the rookery and almost within your touch, everywhere on the outside of their territory that you may stand or walk. The margins of massed life, which are indicated on the topographical surveys of these breeding-grounds of St. Paul and St. George, are as clean cut and as well defined against the soil and vegetation as is the shading on my maps. There is not the least difficulty in making such surveys, and in making them correctly.

Without following such a system of enumeration, persons may look over these swarming myriads between Southwest Point and Novastoshnah, guessing vaguely and wildly, at any figure from one million up to ten or twelve millions, as has been done repeatedly. How few people know what a million really is! It is very easy to talk of a million, but it is a tedious task to count it off: this makes a statement as to “millions” decidedly more conservative when the labor has been accomplished. After a thorough survey of all these great areas of reproduction the following presentation of the actual number of seals massed upon St. Paul is a fair one:

“Reef rookery” has 4,016 feet of sea-margin, with 150 feet
of average depth, making ground for 301,000

“Gorbotch rookery” has 3,660 feet of sea-margin, with 100
feet of average depth, making ground for 183,000

“Lagoon rookery” has 750 feet of sea-margin, with 100 feet
of average depth, making ground for 37,000

“Nah Speel rookery” has 400 feet of sea-margin, with 40
feet of average depth, making ground for 8,000

“Lukannon rookery” has 2,270 feet of sea-margin, with 150
feet of average depth, making ground for 170,000

“Keetavie rookery” has 2,200 feet of sea-margin, with 150
feet of average depth, making ground for 165,000

“Tolstoi rookery” has 3,000 feet of sea-margin, with 150
feet of average depth, making ground for 225,000

“Zapadnie rookery” has 5,880 feet of sea-margin, with 150
feet of average depth, making ground for 441,000

“Polavina rookery” has 4,000 feet of sea-margin, with 150
feet of average depth, making ground for 300,000

“Novastoshnah, or Northeast Point” has 15,840 feet of
sea-margin, with 150 feet of average depth, making
ground for 1,200,000
—————————
A grand total of breeding-seals and young for St. Paul
Island in 1874 of 3,030,000

The rookeries of St. George are designated and measured as below:

“Zapadnie rookery” has 600 feet of sea-margin, with 60
feet of average depth, making ground for 18,000

“Starry Arteel rookery” has 500 feet of sea-margin, with
125 feet of average depth, making ground for 30,420

“North rookery” has 750 feet of sea-margin, with 150 feet
of average depth, and 2,000 feet of sea-margin, with 25
feet of average depth, making ground in all for 77,000

“Little Eastern rookery” has 750 feet of sea-margin, with
40 feet of average depth, making ground for 13,000

“Great Eastern rookery” has 900 feet of sea-margin, with
60 feet of average depth, making ground for 25,000
———————
A grand total of the seal-life for St. George Island,
breeding-seals and young, of 163,420
—————————
Grand sum total for the Pribylov Islands (season of
1873), breeding-seals and young 3,193,420

The figures thus given show a grand massing of 3,193,420 breeding-seals and their young. This enormous aggregate is entirely exclusive of the great numbers of the non-breeding-seals that, as we have pointed out, are never permitted to come up on those grounds which have been surveyed and epitomized by the table just exhibited. That class of seals, the “holluschickie,” in general terms (all males, and those to which the killing is confined), come up on the land and sea-beaches between the rookeries, in immense straggling droves, going to and from the sea at irregular intervals, from the beginning to the closing of an entire season. The method of the “holluschickie” on these hauling-grounds is not systematic—it is not distinct, like the manner and law prescribed and obeyed by the breeding-seals—therefore it is impossible to arrive at a definite enumeration, and my estimate for them is purely a matter of my individual judgment. I think they may be safely rated at 1,500,000; thus, we have the wonderful number of 4,700,000 fur-seals assembled every summer on the rocky rookeries and sandy hauling-grounds of the Pribylov Islands!

No language can express adequately your sensations when you first stroll over the outskirts of any one of those great breeding grounds of the fur-seal on St. Paul’s Island. There is no impression on my mind more fixed than is the one stamped thereon during the afternoon of a July day when I walked around the inner margins of that immense rookery at Northeast Point—indeed, while I pause to think of this subject, I am fairly rendered dumb by the vivid spectacle which rises promptly to my view—I am conscious of my inability to render that magnificent animal-show justice in definition. It is a vast camp of parading squadrons which file and deploy over slopes from the summit of a lofty hill a mile down to where it ends on the south shore—a long mile, smooth and gradual from the sea to that hill-top; the parade-ground lying between is also nearly three-quarters of a mile in width, sheer and unbroken. Now, upon that area before my eyes, this day and date of which I have spoken, were the forms of not less than three-fourths of a million seals—pause a moment—think of the number—three-fourths of a million seals, moving in one solid mass from sleep to frolicsome gambols, backward, forward, over, around, changing and interchanging their heavy squadrons, until the whole mind is so confused and charmed by the vastness of mighty hosts that it refuses to analyze any further. Then, too, I remember that the day was one of exceeding beauty for that region—it was a swift alternation overhead of those characteristic rain-fogs, between the succession of which the sun breaks out with transcendent brilliancy through misty halos about it. This parade-field reflected the light like a mirror, and the seals, when they broke apart here and there for a moment, just enough to show its surface, seemed as though they walked upon the water. What a scene to put upon canvas—that amphibian host involved in those alternate rainbow lights and blue-gray shadows of the fog!

[_The shaded belt is that ground wholly covered by Fur-Seal Rookeries._]]

While Novastoshnah is the largest, yet in some respects I consider Tolstoi, with its bluffs and its long sweep which takes in the sands of English Bay, to be the most picturesque, though it be not the most impressive rookery—especially when that parade-ground belonging to it is reached by the climbing seals.

From Tolstoi at this point, circling around three miles to Zapadnie, is the broad sand-beach of English Bay, upon which and back over its gently rising flats are the great hauling-grounds of the “holluschickie,” which I have indicated on the general map, and to which I made reference in a previous section of this chapter. Gazing at these myriads of “bachelor-seals” spread out in their restless hundreds and hundreds of thousands upon this ground, one feels the utter impotency of verbal description, and reluctantly shuts his note and sketch books to view it with renewed fascination and perfect helplessness.

Survey Showing the Close Contact of Village, Slaughter-Field and Breeding Grounds.]

Looking from the village across the cove and down upon the lagoon, still another strange contradiction appears—at least it seems a natural contradiction to one’s usual ideas. Here we see the Lagoon rookery, a reach of ground upon which some twenty-five or thirty thousand breeding-seals come out regularly every year during the appointed time, and go through their whole elaborate system of reproduction, without showing the slightest concern for or attention to the scene directly east of them and across that shallow slough not eighty feet in width. There are the great slaughtering fields of St. Paul Island; there are the sand-flats where every seal has been slaughtered for years upon years back, for its skin; and even as we take this note, forty men are standing there knocking down a drove of two or three thousand “holluschickie” for their day’s work, and as they labor, the whacking of their clubs and the sounds of their voices must be as plain to those breeding-seals, which are not one hundred feet from them, as it is to us, a quarter of a mile distant! In addition to this enumeration of disturbances, well calculated to amaze, and dismay, and drive off every seal within its influence, are the decaying bodies of the last year’s catch—seventy-five thousand or eighty-five thousand unburied carcasses—that are sloughing away into the sand which, two or three seasons from now, nature will, in its infinite charity, cover with the greenest of all green grasses. The whitened bones and grinning skulls of over three million seals have bleached out on that slaughtering-spot, and are buried below its surface.

Directly under the north face of the village hill, where it falls to the narrow flat between its feet and the cove, the natives have sunk a well. It was excavated in 1857, they say, and subsequently deepened to its present condition in 1868. It is twelve feet deep, and the diggers said that they found bones of the sea-lion and fur-seal thickly distributed every foot down, from top to bottom. How much lower these osteological remains of prehistoric pinnipeds can be found no one knows as yet. The water here, on that account, has never been fit to drink, or even to cook with, but, being soft, was and is used by the natives for washing clothes, etc. Most likely, it records a spot upon which the Russians, during the heyday of their early occupation, drove the unhappy visitors of Nah Speel to slaughter. There is no Golgotha known to man elsewhere in the world as extensive as this one of St. Paul.

Yet, the natives say that this Lagoon rookery is a new feature in the distribution of the seals; that when the people first came here and located a part of the present village, in 1824 up to 1847, there never had been a breeding-seal on that Lagoon rookery of to-day; so they have hauled up here from a small beginning, not very long ago, until they have attained their present numerical expansion, in spite of all these exhibitions of butchery of their kind, executed right under their eyes, and in full knowledge of their nostrils, while the groans and low moanings of their stricken species, stretched out beneath the clubs of the sealers, must have been and are far plainer in their ears than they are in our own!

Still they come—they multiply, and they increase—knowing so well that they belong to a class which intelligent men never did molest. To-day at least they know it, or they would not submit to these manifestations which we have just cited, so close to their knowledge.

The Lagoon rookery, however, never can be a large one, on account of the very nature of this ground selected by the seals; it is a bar simply pushed up beyond the surf-wash of boulders, water-worn and rounded, which has almost enclosed and cut away the Lagoon from its parent sea. In my opinion, the time is not far distant when that estuary will be another inland lake of St. Paul, walled out from salt water and freshened by rain and melting snow, as are the other pools, lakes, and lakelets on the island.

Zapadnie, in itself, is something like the Reef plateau on its eastern face, for it slopes up gradually and gently to the parade-plateau above—a parade-ground not so smooth, however, being very rough and rocky, but which the seals enjoy. Just around the point, a low strip of rocky bar and beach connects it with the ridge-walls of Southwest Point, a very small breeding rookery, so small that it is not worthy of a survey, is located here. I think, probably, on account of the nature of the ground, that it will never hold its own, and is more than likely abandoned by this time.

One of the prehistoric villages, the village of Pribylov’s time, was established here between that point and the cemetery ridge, on which the northern wing of Zapadnie rests. An old burying-ground, with its characteristic Russian crosses and faded pictures of the saints, is plainly marked on the ridge. It was at this little bight of sandy landing that Pribylov’s men first came ashore and took possession of the island, while others in the same season proceeded to Northeast Point and to the north shore to establish settlements of their own order. When the indiscriminate sealing of 1868 was in progress, one of the parties lived here, and a salt-house which was then erected by them still stands. It is in a very fair state of preservation, although it has never been occupied since, except by the natives who come over here from the village in the summer to pick those berries of the _Empetrum_ and _Rubus_, which abound in the greatest profusion around the rough and rocky flats that environ a little lake adjacent. The young people of St. Paul are very fond of this berry-festival, so-called among themselves, and they stay there every August, camping out, a week or ten days at a time, before returning to their homes in the village.

So abundant have been the seals that no driving of animals from the parade-grounds of Zapadnie has ever been made since 1869. It is easily reached, however, if it were desirable to do so.

Polavina has also been an old settlement site, and, for the reason cited at Zapadnie, no “holluschickie” have been driven from this point since 1872, though it is one of the easiest worked. It was in the Russian times a pet sealing-ground with them. The remains of an old village have nearly all been buried in the sand near the lake, and there is really no mark of its early habitation, unless it be the singular effect of a human graveyard being dug out and despoiled by the attrition of seal bodies and flippers. The old cemetery just above and to the right of the barrabkie, near the little lake, was originally established, so the natives told me, far away from the hauling of the “holluschickie.” It was, when I saw it in 1876, in a melancholy state of ruin. A thousand young seals (at least) moved off from its surface as I came up, and they had actually trampled out many sandy graves, rolling the bones and skulls of Aleutian ancestry in every direction. Beyond this ancient demesne which the natives established long ago, as a house of refuge during the winter when they were trapping foxes, looking to the west over the lake, is a large expanse of low, flat swale and tundra, which is terminated by the rocky ridge of Kamminista. Every foot of it has been placed there subsequent to the original elevation of the island by direct action of the sea, beyond question. It is covered with a thick growth of the rankest sphagnum, which quakes and trembles like a bog under one’s feet, but over which the most beautiful mosses ever and anon crop out, including that characteristic floral display before referred to in speaking of the island. Most of the way from the village up to the Northeast Point, as will be seen by a cursory glance at the map, with the exception of this bluff of Polavina and the terraced table setting back from its face to Polavina Sopka, the whole island is slightly elevated above the level of the sea, and its coast-line is lying just above and beyond the reach of the surf, where great ridges of sand have been piled up by the wind, capped with sheafs and tufts of rank-growing _Elymus_.

Near the village, at that little bight mapped as Zoltoi, is a famous rendezvous for the “holluschickie,” and from this place during the season the natives make regular drives, having only to step out from their houses in the morning and walk a few rods to find their fur-bearing quarry.

Passing over Zoltoi on our way down to the point, we quickly come to a basaltic ridge or back-bone over which the sand has been rifted by strong winds, and which supports a rank and luxuriant growth of the _Elymus_ and other grasses, with beautiful flowers. A few hundred feet farther along our course brings us in full view, as we look to the south, of one of the most entrancing spectacles that seals afford to man. We glance below upon and survey a full sweep of the Reef rookery along a grand promenade ground, which slopes gently to the eastward and trends southward down to the water from its abrupt walls bordering on the sea to the west; it is a parade plateau as smooth as the floor of a ball-room, 2,000 feet in length, from 500 to 1,000 feet in width, over which multitudes of “holluschickie” are filing in long strings or deploying in vast platoons, hundreds abreast, in an unceasing march and countermarch. The breath that rises into the cold air from a hundred thousand hot throats hangs like clouds of white steam in the gray fog itself; indeed, it may be said to be a seal-fog peculiar to such a spot, while the din, the roar arising over all, defies adequate description.

We notice to our right and to our left an immense solid mass of the breeding-seals at Gorbotch, and another stretching and trending nearly a mile from our feet, far around to the Reef Point below and opposite that parade-ground, with here and there a neutral passage left open for the “holluschickie” to go down and come up from the waves.

The adaptation of this ground of the Reef rookery to the requirements of the seal is perfect. It so lies that it falls gently from its high Zoltoi Bay margin, on the west, to the sea on the east, and upon its broad expanse not a solitary puddle of mud-spotting is to be seen, though everything is reeking with moisture, and the fog even dissolves into rain as we view the scene. Every trace of vegetation upon this parade has been obliterated. A few tufts of grass, capping the summits of those rocky hillocks, indicated on the eastern and middle slope, are the only signs of botanical life which the seals have suffered to remain.

A small rock, “Seevitchie Kammin,” five or six hundred feet right to the southward and out at sea, is also covered with the black and yellow forms of fur-seals and sea-lions. It is environed by shoal-reefs, rough and kelp-grown, which navigators prudently avoid.

At Lukannon and Ketavie there is a joint blending of two large breeding-grounds, their continuity broken by a short reach of sea-wall right under and at the eastern foot of Lukannon Hill. The appearance of these rookeries is, like all the others, peculiar to themselves. There is a rounded, bulging hill, at the foot of Lukannon Bay, which rises perhaps one hundred and sixty or one hundred and seventy feet from the sea, abruptly at the point, but swelling out gently up from the sand-dunes in Lukannon Bay to its summit at the northwest and south. The big rookery rests upon its northern slope. Here is a beautiful adaptation of the finest drainage, with a profusion of those rocky nodules scattered everywhere over it, upon which the female seals so delight in resting.

Standing on the bald summit of Lukannon Hill, we turn to the south, and look over Ketavie[127] Point, where another large aggregate of rookery life rests under our eye. The hill falls away into a series of faintly terraced tables, which drop down to a flat that again abruptly descends to the sea at Ketavie Point. Between us and Ketavie rookery is the parade-ground of Lukannon,—a sight almost as grand as is that on the Reef which we have feebly attempted to portray. The sand-dunes to the west and to the north are covered with the most luxuriant grass, abruptly emarginated by sharp abrasions of the hauling-seals: this is shown very clearly on my general map. Ketavie Point is a solid basaltic shelf. Lukannon Hill, the summit of it, is composed of volcanic tufa and cement, with irregular cubes and fragments of pure basalt scattered all over its flipper-worn slopes. This is that place, down along the flat shoals of Lukannon Bay, where the sand-dunes are most characteristic, as they rise in their wind-whirled forms just above surf-wash. Here also is where the natives come from the village during the early mornings of the season for driving, to get any number of “holluschickie” required.

It is a beautiful sight, glancing from the summit of this great rookery hill, up to the north over that low reach of the coast to Tonkie Mees, where the waves seem to roll in with crests which rise in unbroken ridges for a mile in length each, ere they break so grandly and uniformly on the beach. In these rollers the “holluschickie” are playing like sea-birds, seeming to sport the most joyously at the very moment when a heavy billow breaks and falls upon them.

The precipitous shore-line of St. George is enough in itself to explain the small number of seals found there, when contrasted with the swarming myriads of her more favorably adapted sister island. Nevertheless that Muscovitic sailor, Pribylov, not knowing then of the existence of St. Paul, was as well satisfied as if he had possessed the boundless universe when he first found it. As in the case of St. Paul Island, I have been unable to learn much here in regard to the early status of the rookeries, none of the natives having any real information. The drift of their sentiment goes to show that there never was a great assemblage of fur-seals on St. George—in fact, never as many as there are to-day, insignificant as the exhibit is, compared with that of St. Paul. They say that at first the sea-lions owned this island, and that the Russians, becoming cognizant of the fact, made a regular business of driving off the “seevitchie,” in order that fur-seals might be encouraged to land. Touching this statement, with my experience on St. Paul, where there is no conflict at all between the fifteen or twenty thousand sea-lions which breed around on the outer edge of the seal rookeries there and at Southwest Point, I cannot agree to the St. George legend. I am inclined to believe, however—indeed, it is more than probable—that there were a great many more sea-lions on and about St. George before it was occupied by men—a hundredfold greater, perhaps, than now, because a sea-lion is an exceedingly timid, cowardly creature when it is in the proximity of man, and will always desert any resting-place where it is constantly brought into contact with him.[128]