USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 30
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The pups themselves do not know their own mothers, a fact which I ascertained by careful observation ; but they are so consti- tuted that they incessantly cry ont at short intervals during the whole time they are awake, and in this way the mother can pick out from the monotonous blaating of thousands of pups her own, and
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she will not permit any other one to suckle hier. But the " kotickie " themselves attempt to nose around every seal-mother that comes in contact with then. I have repeatedly watched young pups as they made advances to nurse from another pup's mother, the result in- variably being that, while the "matkah " would permit her own off- spring to suckle freely, yet when these little strangers touched her nipples she would either move abruptly away or else turn quickly down upon her stomach, so that the maternal fountains were inac- cessible to alien and hungry "kotickie." I have witnessed so many examples of the females turning pups away to suckle only some particular other one, that I feel sure I am entirely right in say- ing that the seal-mothers know their own young, and that they will not permit any others except them to nurse. I believe that this maternal recognition is due chiefly to the mother's scent and hear- ing.
Between the end of July and August 5th or Sth of every year the rookeries are completely changed in appearance. The system- atic and regular disposition of the families or harems over the whole extent of breeding-ground has disappeared. All that clock-work order which has heretofore existed seems to be broken up. The breeding season closed, those bulls which have held their positions since May 1st leave, most of them thin in flesh and weak, and of their number a very large proportion do not come out again on land during the season ; but such as are seen at the end of Octo- ber and November are in good shape. They have a new coat of rich, dark, gray-brown hair and fur, with gray or grayish-ochire " wigs" of longer hair over the shoulders, forming a fresh, strong contrast to the dull, rusty, brown and umber dress in which they appeared to us during the summer, and which they had begun to shed about August 1st, in common with the females and the " hol- luschickie." After these males leave at the end of their season's work, and of the rutting for the year, those of them that happen to return to land in any event do not come back until the end of September and do not haul up on the rookery grounds again. As a rule, they prefer to herd altogether, like younger males, upon the sand-beaches and rocky points close to the water.
The cows and pups, together with those bulls which we have noticed in waiting at the rear of the rookeries, and which have been in retirement throughout the whole of the breeding season, now take possession, in a very disorderly manner, of these rookeries ;
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also, a large number of young, three, four, and five year old males come, which have been prevented by the menacing threats of stronger bulls from an earlier landing among the females during the breeding season.
Before the middle of August three-fourths, at least, of the cows at this date are off in the water, only coming ashore at irregular intervals to nurse and look after their pups a short time. They presented to my eye, from the summits of the bluffs round about, a picture more suggestive of entire comfort and enjoyment than any- thing I have ever seen presented by animal life. Here, just out and beyond the breaking of the rollers, they idly lie on the rocks or sand-beaches, ever and anon turning over and over, scratching their backs and sides with their fore and hind flippers. The seals on the breeding ground appear to get very lousy .*
Frequent winds and showers will drive and spatter sand into their fur and eyes, often making the latter quite sore. This occurs when they are obliged to leave the rocky rookeries and follow their pups out over the sand-ridges and flats, to which they always have a natural aversion. On the hauling-grounds they pack the soil under their feet so hard and tightly in many places that it holds water in shallow surface-depressions, just like so many rock-basins. Out of and into these puddles the pups and the females flounder
* The fur-seal spends a great deal of time, both at sea and on land, in scratching its hide ; for it is annoyed by a species of louse, a pediculus, to just about the same degree and in the same manner that our dogs are by fleas. To scratch, it sits upon its haunches, and scrapes away with the toe-nails of first one and then the other of its hind flippers, by which action it reaches readily all portions of its head, neck, chest and shoulders, and with either one or the other of its fore flippers it rubs down its spinal region back of the shoulders to the tail. By that division of labor with its feet it can promptly reduce, with every sign of comfort, any lousy irritation wheresoever on its body. This pediculus peculiar to the fur-seal attaches itself almost exclusively to the pec- toral regions ; a few also are generally found at the bases of the auricular pavilions.
When the fur-seal is engaged in this exercise it cocks its head and wears exactly the same expression that our common house-dog does while subjugat- ing and eradicating fleas ; the eyes are partly or wholly closed ; the tongue lolls out ; and the whole demeanor is one of quiet but intense satisfaction.
The fur-seal appears also to scratch itself in the water with the same facil- ity and unction so marked on land, only it varies the action by using its fore- hands principally in its pelagic exercise, while its hind-feet do most of the terrestrial scraping.
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and patter incessantly, until evaporation slowly abates the nuisance for a time only, inasmuch as the next day, perhaps, brings more rain and the dirty pools are replenished.
The pups sometimes get so thoroughly plastered in these mud- dy, slimy puddles, that the hair falls off in patches, giving them, at first sight, the appearance of being troubled with scrofula or some other plague : from my investigations directed to this point, I be- came satisfied that they were not permanently injured, though evi- dently very much annoyed. With reference to this suggestion as to sickness or distemper among these seals, I gave the subject direct and continued attention, and in no one of the rookeries could I discover a single seal, no matter how old or young, which appeared to be suffering in the least from any physical disorder other than that which they themselves had inflicted, one upon the other, by fighting. The third season, passing directly under my observation, failed to reward my search with any manifestation of disease among the seals which congregate in such mighty numbers on those rooker- ies of St. Paul and St. George. That remarkable freedom from all such complaints enjoyed by these animals is noteworthy, and a most trenchant and penetrating cross-questioning of the natives also failed to give me any history or evidence of an epidemic in the past.
The observer will, however, notice every summer, gathered in melancholy squads of a dozen to one hundred or so (scattered along the coast where the healthy seals never go), those sick and disabled bulls which have, in the earlier part of the season, been either in- ternally injured or dreadfully scarred by the teeth of their oppo- nents in fighting. Sand is blown by strong wind into their fresh wounds, causing inflammation and sloughing which very often finishes the life of a victim. The sailors term these invalid gath- erings "hospitals," a phrase which, like the most of their homely expressions, is quite appropriate.
Early in August, usually by the 8th or 10th, I noticed one of the remarkable movements of the season. I refer to the pup's first essay in swimming. Is it not odd-paradoxical-that the young seal, from the moment of his birth until he is a month or six weeks old, is utterly unable to swim? If he is seized by the nape of the neck and pitched out a rod into the water from shore, his bullet-like head will drop instantly below the surface, and his attenuated posterior extremities flap impotently on it.
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Suffocation is the question of only a few minutes, the stupid little creature not knowing how to raise his immersed head and gain the air again. After they have attained the age indicated above, their in- stinct drives them down to the margin of the surf, where an alter- nate ebbing and flowing of its wash, covers and uncovers the rocky or sandy beaches. They first smell and then touch the moist pools, and flounder in the upper wash of the surf, which leaves them as suddenly high and dry as it immersed them at first. After this beginning they make slow and clumsy progress in learning the knack of swimming. For a week or two, when over-head in depth, they continue to flounder about in the most awkward manner, thrashing the water as little dogs do with their fore feet, making no attempt whatever to use the hinder ones. Look at that pup now, launched out for the first time beyond his depth ; see how he struggles-his mouth wide open, and his eyes fairly popping. He turns instantly to the beach, ere he has fairly struck out from the point whence he launched in, and, as the receding swell which at first carried him off his feet and out, now returning, leaves him high and dry, for a few minutes he seems so weary that he weakly crawls up, out beyond its swift returning wash, and coils himself immediately to take a recuperative nap. He sleeps a few min- utes, perhaps half an hour, then awakes as bright as a dollar, ap- parently rested, and at his swimming lesson he goes again. By repeated and persistent attempts, this young seal gradually becomes familiar with the water and acquainted with his own power over that element, which is to be his real home and his whole support. Once boldly swimming, the pup fairly revels in a new happiness. He and his brethren have now begun to haul and swarm along the entire length of St. Paul coast, from Northeast Point down and around to Zapadnie, lining the alternating sand-beaches and rocky shingle with their chunky, black forms. How they do delight in it ! They play with a zest, and chatter like our own children in the kindergartens-swimming in endless evolutions, twisting, turning, or diving-and when exhausted, drawing their plump, round bodies up again on the beach. Shaking themselves dry as young dogs would do, they now either go to sleep on the spot or have a lazy terrestrial frolic among themselves.
Why an erroneous impression ever got into the mind of any man as to this matter of a pup's learning to swim, I confess that I am wholly unable to imagine. I have not seen any " driving " of
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the young pups into the water by the old ones, in order to teach them this process, as certain authors have positively affirmed. There is not the slightest supervision by the mother or father of the pup, from the first moment of his birth, in this respect, until he leaves for the North Pacific, full-fledged with amphibious power. At the close of the breeding season, every year, the pups are restlessly and constantly shifting back and forth over the rookery ground of their birth, in large squads, sometimes numbering thou- sands upon thousands. In the course of this change of position they all sooner or later come in contact with the sea ; they then blunder into the water for the first time, in a most awkward, un- gainly manner, and get out as quick as they can ; but so far from showing any fear or dislike of this, their most natural element, as soon as they rest from their exertion they are immediately ready for a new trial, and keep at it, provided the sea is not too stormy or rough. During all this period of self-tuition they seem thoroughly to enjoy the exercise, in spite of their repeated and inevitable dis- comfitures at the beginning.
That " podding " of these young pups in the rear of the great rookeries of St. Paul, is one of the most striking and interest- ing phases of this remarkable exhibition of highly-organized life. When they first bunch together they are all black, for they have not begun to shed the natal coat ; they shine with an unctuous, greasy reflection, and grouped in small armies or great regiments on the sand-dune tracts at Northeast Point, they present a most ex- traordinary and fascinating sight. Although the appearance of the " holluschickie " at English Bay fairly overwhelms the observer with an impression of its countless multitudes, yet I am free to declare that at no one point in this evolution of the seal-life, during its re- productive season, have I been so deeply impressed by a sense of overwhelming enumeration, as I have when, standing on the summit of Cross Hill, I looked down to the southward and westward over a reach of six miles of alternate grass and sand-dune stretches, mir- rored upon which were hundreds of thousands of these little black pups, spread in sleep and sport within this restricted field of vision. They appeared as countless as the grains of that sand upon which they rested !
By September 15th, all the pups born during the year have become familiar with the water ; they have all learned to swim, and are now nearly all down by the water's edge, skirting in
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large masses the rocks and beaches hitherto unoccupied by seals of any class this year. Now they are about five or six times their original weight, or, in other words, they are thirty to forty pounds avoirdupois, as plump and fat as butter-balls, and they begin to take on their second coat, shedding their black pup-hair completely. This second coat does not vary in color, at this age, between the sexes. They effect such transformation in dress very slowly, and cannot, as a rule, be said to have ceased their moulting until the middle or 20th of October.
That second coat, or sea-going jacket, of the pup, is a uniform, dense, light gray over-hair, with an under-fur which is slightly gray- ish in some, but is, in most cases, of a soft light brown hue. The over- hair is fine, close and elastic, from two-thirds of an inch to an inch in length, while the fur is not quite half an inch long. Thus the coarser hair shingles over and conceals the soft under-wool completely, giving the color by which, after the second year, the sex of the animal is recognized. A pronounced difference between the sexes is not effected, however, by color alone until the third year of the animal's life. This over-hair of the pup's new jacket on its back, neck, and head, is a dark chinchilla-gray, blending into stone-white, just tinged with a grayish tint on the abdomen and chest. The upper lip, upon which the whiskers or mustaches take root, is covered with hair of a lighter gray than that of the body. This mustache consists of fifteen or twenty longer or shorter bristles, from half an inch to three inches in length, some brownish, horn-colored, and others whitish-gray and translucent, on each side and back and below the nostrils, leaving the muzzle quite promi- nent and hairless. The nasal openings and their surroundings are, as I have before said when speaking of this feature, hairless and similar to those of a dog .*
* It has been suggested to me that the exquisite power of scent possessed by these animals enables them to reach the breeding grounds at about the place where they left them the season previously : surely the nose of the fur-seal is endowed to a superlative degree with those organs of smnell, and its range of appreciation in this respect must be very great.
I noticed in all sleeping and waking seals that the nasal apertures were never widely expanded ; and that they were at intervals rapidly opened and closed with inhalation and exhalation of each breath ; the nostrils of the fur- seal are, as a rule, well opened when the animal is out of water, and remain so while it is on land.
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The most attractive feature about the fur-seal pup, and that which holds this place as it grows on and older, is the eye. That organ is exceedingly clear, dark, and liquid, with which, for beauty and ami- ability, together with real intelligence of expression, those of no other animal that I have ever seen, or have ever read of, can be compared ; indeed, there are few eyes in the orbits of men and women which suggest more pleasantly the ancient thought of their being " windows to the soul." The lids to that eye are fringed with long, perfect lashes, and the slightest irritation in the way of dust or sand, or other foreign substances, seems to cause them exquisite annoyance, accompanied by immoderate weeping. This involuntary tearfulness so moved Steller that he ascribed it to the processes of a mind, and declared that seal-mothers actually "shed tears " !
I do not think a seal's range of vision on land, or out of the water, is very great. I have frequently experimented with adult fur-seals, by allowing them to catch sight of my person, so as to distinguish it as of foreign character, three and four hundred paces off, taking the precaution of standing quietly to the leeward when the wind was blowing strong, and then walking unconcernedly up to them. I have invariably noticed that they would allow me to ap- proach quite close before recognizing my strangeness ; then, as it occurred to them, they at once made a lively noise, a medley of coughing, spitting, snorting, and blaating, and plunged in spasmodic lopes and shambled to get away from my immediate neighborhood. As to the pups, they all stupidly stare at the form of a human being until it is fairly on them, when they also repeat in miniature these vocal gymnastics and physical efforts of the older ones, to retreat or withdraw a few rods, sometimes only a few feet, from the spot upon which you have cornered them, after which they instantly re- sume their previous occupation of either sleeping or playing, as though nothing had happened. Perhaps it is safe to say that the greatest activity displayed by any one of the five senses of the seal is evidenced in its power of scent. This faculty is all that can be desired in the line of alertness. I never failed to awaken an adult seal from the soundest sleep, when from a half to a quarter of a mile distant, no matter how softly I proceeded, if I got to the windward, though they sometimes took alarm when I was a mile off.
They leave evidences of their being on these great reproductive fields, chiefly at the rookeries, in the hundreds of dead carcasses
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which mark the last of those animals that had been rendered in- firm, sick, and killed by fighting among themselves in the early part of the season, or of those which have crawled far away from the scene of battle to die from death-wounds received in bitter struggles for a harem. On the rookeries, wherever these lifeless bodies rest, the living, old and young, clamber and patter backward and forward over and on the putrid remains : thus such constant stirring up of decayed matter, gives rise to an exceedingly disagree- able and far-reaching " funk." This has been, by all writers who have dwelt on the subject, referred to as the smell which those ani- mals emit for another reason-erroneously called the "rutting odor." If these creatures have any odor peculiar to them when in this condition, I will frankly confess that I am unable to distinguish it from the fumes which are constantly being stirred up and arising out of those putrescent carcasses so disturbed, as well as from the bodies of the few pups which have been killed accidentally by heavy bulls fighting over them, charging back and forth against one another, so much of the time.
They have, however, a very characteristic and peculiar smell when they are driven and get heated ; their breath-exhalations possess a disagreeable, faint, sickly odor, and when I have walked within its influence at the rear of a seal-drive, I could almost fancy, as it entered my nostrils, that I stood beneath an ailantus-tree in full bloom ; but this odor can by no means be confounded with what is universally ascribed to another cause. It is also noteworthy that if your finger is touched ever so lightly to a little fur-seal blubber, it will smell very much like that which I have appreciated and described as peculiar to their breath, which arises from them when they are driven, only it is a little stronger. Both the young and old fur-seals have this same breath-taint at all seasons of the year.
With the precision of clock-work and the regularity of the pre- cession of the seasons, fur-seals have adopted and enforced the following method of life on these islands of Pribylov. In this sys- tem millions of those highly organized animals sustain themselves.
First .- The earliest bulls land in a negligent, indolent way, at the opening of the season, soon after the rocks at the water's edge are free from ice, frozen snow, etc. This is, as a rule, about the Ist to the 5th of every May. They land from the beginning to the end of the season in perfect confidence and without fear ; they are
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very fat, and will weigh on an average five hundred pounds each ; some stay at the water's edge, some go to the tier back of them again, and so forth, until the whole rookery is mapped out by them, weeks in advance of the arrival of the first female.
Second .- That by the 10th or 12th of June, all the male stations on the rookeries have been mapped out and fought for, and held in waiting by the " see-catchie." These males are, as a rule, bulls rarely ever under six years of age ; most of them are over that age, being sometimes three, and occasionally doubtless four or five times as old.
Third .- That the cows make their first appearance, as a class, on or after the 12th or 15th of June, in very small numbers, but rapidly after the 23d and 25th of this month, every year, they begin to flock up in such numbers as to fill the harems very perceptibly, and by the 8th or 10th of July they have all come, as a rule-a few stragglers excepted. The average weight of the females now will not be much more than eighty to ninety pounds each.
Fourth .- That the breeding season is at its height from the 10th to the 15th of July every year, and that it subsides entirely at the end of this month and early in August ; also, that its method and system are confined entirely to the land, never effected in the sea.
Fifth .- That the females bear their first young when they are three years old, and that the period of gestation is nearly twelve months, lacking a few days only of that lapse of time.
Sixth .- That the females bear a single pup each, and that this is born soon after landing. No exception to this rule as ever been witnessed or recorded.
Seventh .- That the " see-catchie " which have held the harems from the beginning to the end of the season, leave for the water in a desultory and straggling manner at its close, greatly emaciated, and do not return, if they do at all, until six or seven weeks have elapsed, when the regular systematic distribution of the families over the rookeries is at an end for this season. A general medley of young males now are free : they come out of the water, and wall- der over all these rookeries, together with many old males, which have not been on seraglio duty, and great numbers of the females. An immense majority over all others present are pups, since only about twenty-five per cent. of the mother-seals are out of the water now at any one time.
Eighth .- That the rookeries lose their compactness and definite
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boundaries of true breeding limit and expansion by the 25th to the 28th of July every year ; then, after this date, the pups begin to haul back, and to the right and left, in small squads at first, but as the season goes on, by the 18th of August, they depart without ref- erence to their mothers ; and when thus scattered, the males, fe- males and young swarm over more than three and four times the area occupied by them when breeding and born on the rookeries. The system of family arrangement and uniform compactness of the breeding classes breaks up at this date.
Ninth .- That by the 8th or 10th of August the pups born near- est the water first begin to learn to swim ; and that by the 15th or 20th of September they are all familiar, more or less, with the ex- ercise.
Tenth .- That by the middle of September the rookeries are en- tirely broken up ; confused, straggling bands of females are seen among bachelors, pups, and small squads of old inales, crossing and recrossing the ground in an aimless, listless manner. The season is now over.
Eleventh .- That many of the seals do not leave these grounds of St. Paul and St. George before the end of December, and some re- main even as late as the 12th of January ; but that by the end of October and the beginning of November every year, all the fur- seals of mature age-five and six years, and upward-have left the islands. The younger males go with the others; many of the pups still range about the islands, but are not hauled to any great extent on the beaches or the flats. They seem to prefer the rocky shore- margin, and to lie as high up as they can get on such bluffy rook- eries as Tolstoi and the Reef. By the end of this month, Novem- ber, they are, as a rule, all gone.
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