USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 22
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On account of the severe climatic conditions it is, of course, im- practicable to keep stock here with any profit or pleasure. The experiment has been tried faithfully. It is found best to bring beef-cattle up in the spring on the steamer, turn them out to past- ure until the close of the season in October and November, and then, if the snow comes, to kill them and keep the carcasses refrig- erated until consumed. Stock cannot be profitably raised here ; the proportion of severe weather annually is too great. From three to perhaps six months of every year they require feeding and water- ing, with good shelter. To furnish an animal with hay and grain up there is a costly matter, and the dampness of the growing sum- mer season on both islands renders hay-making impracticable. Perhaps a few head of hardy Siberian cattle might pick up a living on the north shore of St. Paul, among the grasses and sand-dunes there, with nothing more than shelter and water given them ; but they would need both of these attentions. Then the care of them would hardly return expenses, as the entire grazing-ground could not support any number of animals. It is less than two square
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
miles in extent, and half of this area is unproductive. Then, too, a struggle for existence would reduce the flesh and vitality of these cattle to so low an ebb that it is doubtful whether they could be put through another winter alive, especially if severe. I was then and am now strongly inclined to think that if a few of those Sibe- rian reindeer could be brought over to St. Paul and to St. George they would make a very successful struggle for existence, and be a source of a good supply, summer and winter, of fresh meat for the agents of the Government and the company who may be living upon the islands. I do not think that they would be inclined to molest or visit the seal-grounds ; at least, I noticed that the cattle and mules of the company running loose on St. Paul were careful never to poke around on the outskirts of a rookery, and deer would be more timid and less obtrusive than our domesticated animals. But I did notice on St. George that a little squad of sheep, brought up and turned out there for a summer's feeding, seemed to be so attracted by the quiet calls of the pups on the rookeries that they were drawn to and remained by the seals without disturbing them at all, to their own physical detriment, for they lost better pastur- age by so doing. The natives of St. Paul have a strange passion for seal-fed pork, and there are quite a large number of pigs on the Island of St. Paul and a few on St. George. Such hogs soon become entirely carnivorous, living, to the practical exclusion of all other diet, on the carcasses of seals.
Chickens are kept with great difficulty. In fact, it is only pos- sible to save their lives when the natives take them into their own rooms or keep them over their heads, in their dwellings, during winter.
While the great exhibition of pinnipedia preponderates over every other feature of animal life at the Seal Islands, still there is a wonderful aggregate of ornithological representation thereon. The spectacle of birds nesting and breeding, as they do on St. George Island, to the number of millions, flecking those high basaltic bluffs of its shore-line, twenty-nine miles in length, with color-patches of black, brown, and white, as they perch or cling to the mural cliffs in the labor of incubation, is a sight of exceeding attraction and constant novelty. It affords a naturalist an opportunity of a life- time for minute investigation into all the details of the reproduc- tion of these vast flocks of circumboreal water-fowl. The Island of St. Paul, owing to the low character of its shore-line, a large pro-
NETTING CHOOCHKIES A Native catching little Auks (Simorhyncus Pusillus), St. Paul's Island
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WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS.
portion of which is but slightly elevated above the sea and is sandy, is not visited and cannot be visited by such myriads of birds as are seen at St. George ; but the small rocky Walrus Islet is fairly cov- ered with sea-fowls, and the Otter Island bluffs are crowded by them to their utmost capacity of reception. The birds string them- selves anew around the bluffs with every succeeding season, like endless ribbons stretched across their rugged faces, while their numbers are simply countless. The variety is not great, however, in these millions of breeding-birds. It consists of only ten or twelve names, and the whole list of birds belonging to the Pribylov Islands, stragglers and migratory, contains but forty species. Con- spicuous among the last-named class is the robin, a straggler which was brought from the mainland, evidently against its own effort, by a storm or a gale of wind, which also brings against their will the solitary hawks, owls, and waders occasionally noticed here.
After the dead silence of a long ice-bound winter, the arrival of large flocks of those sparrows of the north, the "choochkies," Pha- leris microceros, is most cheerful and interesting. These plump little auks are bright, fearless, vivacious birds, with bodies round and fat. They come usually in chattering flocks on or immediately after May 1st, and are caught by the people with hand-scoops or dip-nets to any number that may be required for the day's con- sumption, their tiny, rotund forms making pies of rare savory vir- tue, and being also baked and roasted and stewed in every con- ceivable shape by skilful cooks. Indeed, they are equal to the reed-birds of the South. These welcome visitors are succeeded along about July 20th by large flocks of fat, red-legged turn-stones, Strepsilas interpres, which come in suddenly from the west or north, where they have been breeding, and stop on the islands for a month or six weeks, as the case may be, to feed luxuriantly upon the flesli- flies, which we have just noticed, and their eggs. These handsome birds go in among the seals, familiarly chasing the flies, gnats, etc. They are followed as they leave in September by several species of jack-snipe and a plover, Tringa and Charadrius. These, however, soon depart, as early as the end of October and the beginning of November, and then winter fairly closes in upon the islands. The loud, roaring, incessant seal-din, together with the screams and darkening flight of innumerable water-fowl, are replaced in turn again by absolute silence, marking out, as it were, in lines of sharp and vivid contrast, summer's life and winter's death.
14
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
The author of that quaint old saying, "Birds of a feather flock together," might well have gained his inspiration had he stood under the high bluffs of St. George at any season, prehistoric or present, during the breeding of the water-birds there, where myriads of croaking murres and flocks of screaming gulls darken the light of day with their fluttering forms, and deafen the ear with their shrill, harsh cries as they do now, for music is denied to all those birds of the sea. Still, in spite of the apparent confusion, he would have taken cognizance of the fact that each species had its particular location and kept to its own boundary, according to the precision of natural law. The dreary expanse and lonely solitudes of the North owe their chief enlivenment, and their principal attrac- tiveness for man, to the presence of those vast flocks of circumbo- real water-fowl, which repair thither annually.
Over fifteen miles of the bold, basaltic, bluff line of St. George Island is fairly covered with nesting gulls (Rissa) and "arries" ( Uria), while down in the countless chinks and holes over the en- tire surface of the north side of this island millions of "chooch- kies " (Simorhyncus microceros) breed, filling the air and darkening the light of day with their cries and fluttering forms. On Walrus Islet the nests of the great white gull of the north (Larus glaucus) can be visited and inspected, as well as those of the sea-parrot or puffin (Fratercula), shags or cormorants (Graculus), and the red- legged kittiwake (Larus brevirostris). These birds are accessible on every side, can be reached, and afford the observer an unequalled opportunity of taking due notice of them through the breeding- season of their own, as it begins in May and continues until the end of September.
Not one of the water-birds found on and around the islands is exempted from a place in the native's larder ; even the delectable " oreelie " are unhesitatingly eaten by the people, and indeed these birds furnish, during the winter season in especial, an almost cer- tain source of supply for fresh meat. But the heart of the Aleut swells to its greatest gastronomic happiness when he can repair, in the months of June and July, to the basaltic cliffs of St. George, or the lava table-bed of Walrus Islet, and lay his grimy hands on the gayly-colored eggs of the "arrie " (Lomvia arra) ; and if he were not the most improvident of men, instead of taking only enough for the day, he would lay up a great store for the morrow, but he never does. On the occasion of one visit, and my first one
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WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS.
there, July 5, 1872, six men loaded a bidarrah at Walrus Islet, capable of carrying four tons, exclusive of our crew, down to the water's edge with eggs, in less than three working hours .*
During winter months these birds are almost wholly absent, especially so if ice-floes shall have closed in around the islands ; then there is nothing of the feathered kind save a stupid shag (P. bicristatus) as it clings to the leeward cliffs, or the great burgo- master gull, which sweeps in circling flight high overhead ; but, early in May they begin to make their first appearance, and they come up from the sea overnight, as it were, their chattering and their harsh carolling waking the natives from slothful sleeping, which, however, they gladly break, to seize their nets and live life anew, as far as eating is concerned. The stress of severe weather in the winter months, the driving of the snow "boorgas," and the floating ice-fields closing in to shut out the open water, are cause enough for a disappearance of all water-fowl, pro tem.
Again, the timid traveller here is delighted ; he has been re-
* Using the egg of our domestic fowl, the hen, as a standard, the following note made in regard to the size and quality of the eggs of the sea-birds of these waters may not be uninteresting to many. When daily served on St. George, during June and July, with eggs of indigenous sea-fowl, I recorded my gas- tronomic comparisons which occurred then as I ate them. Here follows a re- capitulation :
Fresh-laid eggs of "lupus," or F'. glacialis : Best eggs known to the islands ; can be soft-boiled or fried, etc., and are as good as our own hens' eggs ; the yolk is light and clear ; the size thereof is in shape and bulk like a duck's egg ; it has a white shell. Season : June 1st to 15th, inclusive ; scarce on St. Paul, and not abundant on St. George.
Fresh-laid eggs of "arrie," or L. arra : Very good ; can be soft-boiled or fried ; are best scrambled ; yolks are dark ; no strange taste whatever to them ; pyriform in shape ; large as a goose-egg ; shell gayly-colored ; they are exceed- ingly abundant on Walrus Island and St. George; tons of them. Season : June 25th to July 10th, inclusive.
Fresh-laid eggs of gulls, Laride : Perceptibly strong ; cannot be relished unless in omelettes ; yolks very dark ; size and shape of our hen's egg ; shell dark, clay-colored ground, mottled. Season : June 5th to July 20th, inclusive ; they are in moderate supply only. The other eggs in the list, such as those of the " choochkie," the " shag," and the several varieties of water-fowl which breed here, are never secured in sufficient quantity to be of any consideration as articles of diet. It is, perhaps, better that a scarcity of their kind continue, judging from the strong smack of the choochkie's, the repulsive taint of the shag's, and the "twang " of the sea-parrot's, all of which I tasted as a matter of investigation.
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
lieved of the great Alaskan curse of mosquitoes : he also walks the moors and hillsides secure in never finding a reptile of any sort whatever-no snakes, no lizards, no toads or frogs-nothing of the sort to be found on the Seal Islands.
Fish are scarce in the vicinity of these islands. Only a few rep- resentatives of those families which can secrete themselves with rare cunning are safe in visiting the Pribylovs in summer. Naturally enough, the finny tribes avoid the seal-churned waters for at least one hundred miles around. Among a few specimens, however, which
1 110th
Aleutes catching Halibut, Akootan Pass, Bering Sea.
I collected, three or four species new to natural science were found, and have since been named by experts in the Smithsonian Institution.
The presence of such great numbers of amphibian mammalia about the waters during five or six months of every year renders all fishing abortive, and unless expeditions are made seven or eight miles at least from the land, unless you desire to catch large hali- but, it is a waste of time to cast your line over the gunwale of the boat. The natives capture "poltoos " or halibut, Hippoglossus rul- garis, within two or three miles of the reef-point on St. Paul and the south shore during July and August. After this season the weather is usually so stormy and cold that fishermen venture no more until the ensuing summer. *
* The St. George natives have caught codfish just off the Tolstoi Head early in June ; but it is a rare occurrence. By going out two or three miles
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WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS.
With regard to the Mollusca of the Pribylov waters, the charac- teristic forms of Toroglossata and Rhachiglossata peculiar to this north latitude are most abundant ; of the Cephalopoda I have seen only a species of squid, sepia, or loligo. The clustering whelks (Buc- cinum) literally conceal large areas of the boulders on the beaches here and there. They are in immense numbers, and are crushed under your foot at almost every step when you pass over long reaches of rocky shingle at low tide. A few of the Neptunea are found, and the live and dead shells of Limacina are in great abun- dance wherever the floating kelp-beds afford them shelter.
On land a very large number of shells of the genera Succinea and Pupa abound all over the islands. On the bluffs of St. George, just over Garden Cove, I gathered a beautiful Helix.
The little fresh-water lakes and ponds contain a great quantity of representatives of the characteristic genera Planorbis, Melania, Limnea, and that pretty little bivalve, the Cyclas.
Of the Crustacea, the Annelidce, and Echinodermata, there is abundant representation here. The sea-urchins, "repkie " of the natives, are eagerly sought for at low tide and eaten raw by them. The arctic sea-clam, Mya truncata, is once in a long time found here (it is the chief food of the walrus of Alaska), and the species of Mytilus, the mussels, so abundant in the Aleutian archipelago, are almost absent here at St. Paul and only sparingly found at St. George. Frequently the natives have brought a dish of sea-urchins' viscera for our table, offering it as a great delicacy. I do not think any of us did more than to taste it. The native women are the chief hunters for echinoida, and during the whole spring and sum- mer seasons they will be seen at both islands, wading in the pools at low water, with their scanty skirts high up, eagerly laying pos- sessive hands upon every "bristling egg " that shows itself. They
from the village at either island during July and August the native fisherman usually captures large halibut-not in abundance, however. The St. Paul people, as well as their relatives on St. George, fish in small "two-hole " bi- darkies. They go out together in squads of four to six. One man alone in the kyack is not able to secure a "bolshoi poltoos." The method, when the halibut is hooked, is to call for your nearest neighbor in his bidarka, who paddles swiftly up. You extend your paddle to him, retaining your own hold, and he grasps it, while yon seize his in turn, thus making it impossible to capsize, while the large and powerfully struggling fish is brought to the surface between the canoes and knocked on the head. It is then towed ashore and carried in triumph to its lucky captor's house.
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
vary this search by poking, with a short-handled hook, into holes and rocky crevices for a small cottoid fish, which is also found here at low water in this manner. Specimens of this cottoid which I brought down declared themselves as representatives of a new de- parture from all other recognized forms in which the sculpin is known to sport ; hence the name, generic and specific. The " sand- cake," echinarachinus, is also very common here.
By May 28th to the middle of June a fine table-crab, large, fat, and sweet, with a light, brittle shell, is taken while it is skurrying in and out of the lagoon as the tide ebbs and flows. It is the best- flavored crustacean known to Alaskan waters. They are taken no- where else at St. Paul, and when on St. George I failed to see one. I am not certain as to the accuracy of the season of running, viz. : May 28th to June 15th, inasmuch as one of my little note-books on which this date is recorded turns out to be missing at the pres- ent writing, and I am obliged to give it from memory. The only economic shell-fish which the islands afford is embodied in this Chionoecetes opilto (?). The natives affirm an existence of mussels here in abundance when the Pribylov group was first discovered ; but now only a small supply of inferior size and quality is to be found.
With reference to the jelly-fishes, Medusce, which are so abun- dant in the waters around these islands, their exceeding number and variety and beauty startled and enchanted me. An enormous ag- gregate of these creatures, some of them exquisitely delicate and translucent, ride in and out of the lagoon at St. Paul when the spring-tides flow and ebb. Myriads of them are annually stranded, to decay on the sandy flats of this estuary.
As to sea-weeds, or mosses,-the extent, luxuriance, variety, and beauty of the algæ forests of those waters of Bering Sea which lave the coasts of the Pribylov Islands, call for more detail of de- scription than space in this volume will allow, since anything like a fair presentation of the subject would require the reproduction of my water-colored drawings. After all heavier gales, especially the southeasters in October, if a naturalist will take the trouble to walk the sand-beach between Lukannon and northeast point of St. Paul Island, he will be rewarded by the memorable sight. He will find thrown up by the surf a vast windrow of kelp along the whole eight or ten miles of this walk-heaped, at some spots, nearly as high as his head ; the large trunks of Melanosperma, the small,
North East P.
Lake:
CROSS HILL
Webster
Nahsayvernia
" Maroonitch"
NORTH HILL
Lake
"Tsammanah"
IN-AH-NUH-TO HELLS
LOW BILL
600 ET
LITTLE POLAVINA
CRATER HILL
Sand
Dune
BOGA SLOV. 600-ET
POLAVINA SOPKA 550 FT
LAKE HILL
S CONC HILL
FOX HILL
Seethah"
RIDGE WALL
South West Pt ..
KAMMINISTA
POLAVINA
"Kursoolaly
fametery
House
ZAPADNIE
Lakes
Lake
Lakes!
English Bay
O
TELEGRAPH HILL
Tonkie Mees
Hauling Grounds
TOLSTOI
LAGOON
LUKANNON
Sal Ho.
Village+
KETAVIE
BLACK BLUFFS
1
2
3
4
Scale: Statute Miles
REEF PT
Showing the Area and Position of the Fur Seal Rookeries and Hauling Grounds. Surveyed and drawn (1873-74) by HENRY W. ELLIOTT.
True N
Var. 22°40'16"E.
Lake
Polavina P:
Breeding
do
MAP OF ST. PAUL ISLAND-PRIBYLOV GROUP.
Vegolia Mistacom
Sand Dunes
Konglah
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WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS.
but brilliant red and crimson fronds of Rhodosperic interwoven with the emerald-green leaves of the Chlorosperme. The first- named group is by far the most abundant, and upon its decaying, fermenting brown and ochre heaps, he will see countless numbers of a buccinoid whelk, and a limnaca, feeding as they bore or suck out myriads of tiny holes in the leaf-fronds of the strong growing species. Actinia or sea-anemones, together with asteroids or star- fishes, Discophorce or jelly-fishes, are also interwoven and heaped up with the "kapoosta " or sea-cabbages just referred to ; also, many rosy "sea-squirts," yellow " cucumbers," and other forms of Holo- thuride.
On the old killing-fields, on those spots where the slonghing carcasses of repeated seasons have so enriched the soil as to render it like fire to most vegetation, a silken green Conferre grows luxu- riantly. This terrestrial algoid covering appears here and there, on these grounds, like so many door-mats of pea-green wool. That confervoid flourishes only on those spots where nothing but pure decaying animal matter is found. An admixture of sand or earth will always supplant it by raising np instead those strong growing grasses which I have alluded to elsewhere, and which constitute the chief botanical life of the killing-grounds.
In order that the reader can follow easily the narrative of that remarkable life-system which is conducted by the fur-seal as it an- nually rests and breeds upon the Pribylov group, I present a care- ful chart of each island and the contiguous islets, which are the only surveys ever made upon the ground. The reader will observe, as he turns to these maps, the striking dissimilarity which exists be- tween them, not only in contonr but in physical structure, the Island of St. Paul being the largest in superficial area, and receiv- ing a vast majority of the Pinnipedia that belong to both. As it lies in Bering Sea to-day, this island is, in its greatest length, be- tween northeast and southwest points, thirteen miles, air-line ; and a little less than six at points of greatest width. It has a super- ficial area of about thirty-three square miles, or twenty-one thon- sand one hundred and twenty acres, of diversified, rough and rocky uplands, rugged hills, and smooth, volcanic cones, which either set down boldly to the sea or fade out into extensive wet and mossy flats, passing at the sea-margins into dry, drifting, sand-dune tracts. It has forty-two miles of shore-line, and of this coast sixteen and a half miles are hauled over by fur-seals en masse. At the time of its
.
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
first upheaval above the sea, it doubtless presented the appearance of ten or twelve small rocky, bluffy islets and points, upon some of which were craters that vomited breccia and cinders, with little or no lava overflowing. Active plutonic agency must have soon ceased after this elevation, and then the sea round about commenced a work which it is now engaged in-of building on to the skeleton thus created ; and it has progressed to-day so thoroughly and suc- cessfully in its labor of sand-shifting, together with the aid of ice- floes, in their action of grinding, lifting, and shoving, that nearly all of these scattered islets within the present area of the island, and marked by its bluffs and higher uplands, are completely bound to- gether by ropes of sand, changed into enduring bars and ridges of water-worn boulders. These are raised above the highest tides by winds that whirl the sand up, over and on them, as it dries out from the wash of the surf and from the interstices of rocks, which are lifted up and pushed by ice-fields.
The sand that plays so important a part in the formation of the Island of St. Paul, and which is almost entirely wanting in and around the others of this Pribylov group, is principally composed of Foraminifera, together with Diatomacea, mixed in with a volcanic base of fine comminuted black and reddish lavas and old friable gray slates. It constitutes the chief beauty of the sea-shore here, for it changes color like a chameleon, as it passes from wet to dry, being a rich steely-black at the surf-margin and then drying out to a soft purplish-brown and gray, succeeding to tints most delicate of reddish and pale neutral, when warmed by the sun and drifting up on to the higher ground with the wind. . The sand-dune tracts on this island are really attractive in the summer, especially so during those rare days when the sun comes out, and the unwonted light shimmers over them and the most luxuriant grass and variety of beautiful flowers which exist in profusion thereon. In past time, as these sand and boulder bars were forming on St. Paul Island, they, in making across from islet to islet, enclosed small bodies of sea-water. These have, by evaporation and time, by the flooding of rains and annual melting of snow, become, nearly every one of them, fresh ; they are all, great and small, well shown on my map, which locates quite a large area of pure water. In them, as I have hinted, are no reptiles ; but an exquisite species of a tiny fish* ex-
* Gasterosteus cataphractus ; and pungitius ; beautiful sticklebacks.
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