USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 32
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One year
38
25
39
41
A mean of six examples, males and females, alike in size, July 14, 1873.
Two years
45
30
58
Three years
52
36
87
Four years
58
42
135
12
A mean of thirty examples, all males. July 24, 1873. A mean of thirty-two exam- ples, all males, July 24, 1873. A mean of ten examples, all males. July 24. 1873.
Five years
65
52
200
16
A mean of five examples, all males, July 24, 1873.
Six years
72
64
280
25
A mean of three examples, all males, July 24, 1873.
Eight to twenty years. 75 to 80
70 to 75
400 to 500
45 to 50
An estimate only, calculating on the weight (when fat, and early in the season). of old bulls.
Pounds.
--
305
AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.
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 av- erage of eighty to eighty-five pounds is the rule. Those specimens just noted which I weighed were examples taken by me for trans- mission 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 unan- imously 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 avoirdu- pois 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, South- west Point, Reef Parade, Lukannon Sands, the table-lands of Pola- vina, 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 un- broken 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.
20
306
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
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 Oc- tober makes them very uneasy, and a large hauling-ground will be so disturbed by a rainy day and night that its hundreds of thou- sands 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., mon- strosities, 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 as- certain from them. I saw only three albino pups among the multi- tudes 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, chang- ing 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.
307
AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.
Undoubtedly some abnormal birth-shapes must make their ap- pearance 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 differentia- tion 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 be- neath 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 tradi- tion, 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 im- mense 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 mar- gins, 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 mid- dle or end of August, 1836.
They affirm that for this reason the fur-seals, when they at- tempted 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
30S
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
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 rook- eries 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 theReef.
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, straight- forward agreement of the natives has impressed me so that I nar- rate 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 in- dicated above. Now, on turning to Bishop Veniaminov, by whom was published the only statement of any kind in regard to the kill- ing 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,
309
AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.
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 remark- able 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 * contains a remarkable statement
* Veniaminov : Zapieskie ob Oonalashkenskaho Otdayla, 2 vols., St. Pe- tersburg, 1842. This work of Bishop Innocent Veniaminov is the only one which the Russians can lay claim to as exhibiting anything like a history of Western Alaska, or of giving a sketch of its inhabitants and resources, that has the least merit of truth or the faintest stamp of reliability. Without it we should be simply in the dark as to much of what the Russians were about dur- ing the whole period of their occupation and possession of that country. He served, chiefly as a priest and missionary, for nineteen years, from 1823 to 1842, mainly at Oonalashka, having the Seal Islands in his parish, and was made Bishop of all Alaska. He was soon after recalled to Russia, where he became the primate of the national church, ranking second to no man in the Empire save the Czar. He was advanced in life, being more than ninety years of age when he died at Moscow, April 22, 1879. He must have been a man of fine personal presence, judging from the following description of him, noted by Sir George Simpson, who met him at Sitka in 1842, just as he was about to embark for Russia : "His appearance, to which I have already alluded, impresses a stranger with something of awe, while in further inter- course the gentleness which characterizes his every word and deed insensibly moulds reverence into love, and at the same time his talents and attainments are such as to be worthy of his exalted station. With all this, the bishop is sufficiently a man of the world to disdain anything like cant. His conversa- tion, on the contrary, teems with amusement and instruction, and his com- pany is much prized by all who have the honor of his acquaintance." Sir Edward Belcher, who saw him at Kadiak in 1837, said : " He is a formidable- looking man, over six feet three inches in his boots, and athletic. He im- presses one profoundly."
310
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
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 un- prejudiced mind as to the total error of such a statement. Why, a mere tithe only of the multitudes which repair to St. Paul in per- fect comfort over the sixteen or twenty miles of splendid land- ing 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 ar- rival 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 re- sult 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, there- fore, 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 ab- ruptly 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
311
AAMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.
seven or eight thousand, as there are on any square rod at North- east 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 in- crease 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 pe- riod 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 dur- ing 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 out- side 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 sur- veys, 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 vagnely and wildly, at any figure from one million up to ten or twelve millions, as has been done repeat- edly. 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 conserva- tive when the labor has been accomplished. After a thorough sur-
312
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
vey of all these great areas of reproduction the following presenta- tion 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 aver- age 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 aver- age 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 deptlı, 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 aver- age depth, and 2,000 feet of sea-margin, with 25 feet of aver- age 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
313
AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.
The figures thus given show a grand massing of 3,193,420 breed- ing-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 impres- sion on my mind more fixed than is the one stamped thereon dur- ing the afternoon of a July day when I walked around the inner margins of that immmense 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
314
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
the day was one of exceeding beauty for that region-it was a swift alternation overhead of those characteristic rain-fogs, be- tween the succession of which the sun breaks out with transcen- dent 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 sur- face, 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 !
Sea Lions
HUTCHINSON HILL
Sea Lions
Pool
SAND
PARADE
Rank Grass
Smooth field of Cement
Pool
Lake
MCROSS HILL
TAN D. webster's House
Sea Lion Neck
& Salt House
SAND DUNES.
NORTHEAST POINT
SCALE OF FEET
0
1000
2000
4000
Survey Showing the Immense Breeding Area of Novastoshnah. [The shaded belt is that ground wholly covered by Fur-Seal Rookeries. ]
While Novastoshnah is the largest, yet in some respects I con- sider 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.
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