USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 33
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48
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,
AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.
315
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.
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
I
C
L
ROOKERY
0
Sand flats and luxuriant grass
Shoal, Rocky and all awash at low tide
E
LAGOON ROOKERY
NO SPEEL RY
Village of St.Paul
0
250
500
1000
2000
Salt-Houses
Lagoon Slough
KILLING GROUNDS
V
& Salt House
P
SCALE OF FEET
Survey Showing the Close Contact of Village. Slaughter-Field and Breeding Grounds.
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 elabo- rate 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
316
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
there knocking down a drove of two or three thousand "hollu- schickie " 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 un- buried 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 ac- count, 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 ex- pansion, in spite of all these exhibitions of butchery of their kind, executed right under their eyes, and in full knowledge of their nos- trils, 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
317
AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.
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 ac- count 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 dis- tant 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 pro- ceeded 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, whichi 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 them- selves, 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
318
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
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 de- spoiled by the attrition of seal bodies and flippers. The old ceme- tery 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 ter- minated 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 Pola- vina 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
.
319
AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.
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 deploy- ing in vast platoons, hundreds abreast, in an unceasing march and countermarch. The breath that rises into the cold air from a hun- dred 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 re- quirements 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 vege- tation upon this parade has been obliterated. A few tufts of grass, capping the summits of those rocky hillocks, indicated on the east- ern 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
320
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
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 Lukan- non Bay, which rises perhaps one hundred and sixty or one hun- dred 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 fin- est 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* Point, where another large aggre- gate of rookery life rests under our eye. The hill falls away into
* DEFINITIONS FOR RUSSIAN NAMES OF THE ROOKERIES, ETC .- The sev- eral titles on my map that indicate the several breeding-grounds, owe their origin and have their meaning as follows :
ZAPADNIE signifies " westward," and is so used by the people who live in the village.
ZOLTOI signifies " golden," so used to express a metallic shimmering of the sand there.
KETAVIE signifies " of a whale," so used to designate that point where a large right whale was stranded in 1849 (?) ; from Russian " kect," or "ichale."
LUKANNON -- so named after one Lukannon, a pioneer Russian, that dis- tinguished himself, with one Kaiecov, a countryman, who captured a large number of sea-otters at that point, and on Otter Island, in 1787-88.
TONKIE MEES signifies " small (or "slender ") cape " [tonkie, "thin"; mees, " cape "].
POLAVINA literally signifies "half way," so used by the natives because it is practically half way between the salt-houses at Northeast Point and the vil- lage. POLAVINA SOPKA, or " half-way mountain," gets its name in the same manner.
NOVASTOSHNAH, from the Russian " novaite," or "of recent growth," so used because this locality in pioneer days was an island to itself; and it has been annexed recently to the mainland of St. Paul.
VESOLIA MISTA, or "jolly place," the site of one of the first settlements, and where much carousing was indulged in.
MAROONITCH, the site of a pioneer village, established by one Maroon.
NAHSAYVERNIA, or "on the north shore," from Russian, " sayrernie."
BOGASLOV, or " word of God," indefinite in its application to the place, but is, perhaps, due to the fact that the pious Russians, immediately after landing at Zapadnie, in 1787, ascended the hill and erected a huge cross thereon.
321
AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.
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 at- tempted 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 hanling-seals : this is shown very clearly on my general map. Ketavie Point is a solid basaltic shelf. Lu- kannon 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 char- acteristic, 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 " hollu- schickie " are playing like sea-birds, seeming to sport the most joy- ously 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 ex- plain 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 pos- sessed 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 hav- ing any real information. The drift of their sentiment goes to show that there never was a great assemblage of fur-seals on St. George
EINAHNUHITO, an Aleutian word, signifying the " three mamma."
TOLSTOI, a Russian name, signifying " thick"; it is given to at least a hun- dred different capes and headlands throughout Alaska, being applied as indis- criminately as we do the term " Bear Creek " to little streams in our Western States and Territories.
21
322
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
-in fact, never as many as there are to-day, insignificant as the ex- hibit is, compared with that of St. Paul. They say that at first the sea-lions owned this island, and that the Russians, becoming cogni- zant of the fact, made a regular business of driving off the "see- vitchrie," 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 hundred-fold 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 .*
The rookeries on this island, being so much less in volume, are not especially noted-still, one of them, "Starry Arteel," is unique indeed, lying as it does in a bold sweep from the sea up a very steep slope to a point where the bluffs bordering it seaward are over four hundred feet in vertical declination. The seals crowd just as closely to the edge of this precipice along its entire face as they do at the tide-level. It is a very strange sight for that visitor who may sail under these bluffs with a boat in fair weather for land- ing, and, as you walk the beach, above which the cliff-wall frowns a sheer five hundred feet, there, directly over your head, the cran- ing necks and twisting forms of restless seals, appear as if ready to launch out and fall below, ever and anon, as you glance upward, so closely and boldly do they press to the very edge of the preci-
* One of the natives, "stareek," Zachar Oostigov, told me that the " Rus- sians, when they first landed, came ashore in a thick fog" at Tolstoi Mees, near the present sea-lion rookery site. As the water is deep and " bold " there, Pribylov's sloop, the St. George, must have jammed her bowsprit against those lofty cliffs ere the patient crew had intimation of their position. The old Aleut then showed me that steep gully there, up which the ardent discoverers climbed to a plateau above : and, to demonstrate that he was not chilled or weakened by age, he nimbly scrambled down to the surf below, some three hundred and fifty vertical feet, and I followed, half stepping and half sliding over Pribylov's path of glad discovery and proud possession, trodden one June day by him nearly a hundred years ago.
323
AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.
pice. I have been repeatedly astonished at an amazing power possessed by the fur-seal of resistance to shocks which would cer- tainly kill any other animal. To explain clearly, the reader will observe by reference to the maps that there are a great many cliffy places between the rookeries on the shore-lines of the islands. Some of these bluffs are more than one hundred feet in abrupt ele- vation above the surf and rocks awash below. Frequently "hollu- schickie," in ones, or twos, or threes, will stray far away back from the great masses of their kind and fall asleep in the thick grass and herbage which covers these mural reaches. Sometimes they will repose and rest very close to the edge, and then as you come tramping along you discover and startle them and yourself alike. They, blinded by their first transports of alarm, leap promptly over the brink, snorting, coughing, and spitting as they go. Curiously peering after them and looking down upon the rocks, fifty to one hundred feet below, instead of seeing their stunned and motionless bodies, you will invariably catch sight of them rapidly scrambling into the water, and, when in it, swimming off like arrows from the bow. Three "holluschickie " were thus inadvertently surprised by me on the edge of the west face to Otter Island. They plunged over from an elevation there not less than two hundred feet in sheer de- scent, and I distinctly saw them fall, in scrambling, whirling evo- lutions, down, thumping upon the rocky shingle beneath, from which they bounded as they struck, like so many rubber balls. Two of them never moved after the rebound ceased ; but the third one reached the water and swam away swift as a bird on the wing.
While they seem to escape without bodily injury incident to such hard falls as ensue from dropping fifty or sixty feet upon peb- bly beaches and rough boulders below, and even greater elevations, yet I am inclined to think that some internal injuries are necessa- rily sustained in almost every case, which soon develop and cause death. The excitement and the vitality of the seal at the moment of the terrific shock are able to sustain and conceal a real injury for the time being.
Driving the "holluschickie " on St. George, owing to the rela- tive scantiness of hauling area for those animals there, and conse- quent small numbers found upon these grounds at any one time, is a very arduous series of daily exercises on the part of the natives who attend to it. Glancing at the map, the marked considerable distance over an exceedingly rough road will be noticed between
324
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
Zapadnie and the village, yet in 1872 eleven different drives across the island of four hundred to five hundred seals each were made in the short four weeks of that season.
The peculiarly rough character to this trail is given by large, loose, sharp-edged basaltic boulders which are strewn thickly over all those lower levels that bridge the island between the high bluffs at Starry Arteel and the slopes of Alıluckeyak Hill. The summits of the two broader, higher plateaux, east and west respec- tively, are comparatively smooth and easy to travel over, and so is the sea-level flat at Zapadnie itself. On the map of St. George a number of very small ponds will be noticed. They are the fresh- water reservoirs of the island. The two largest of these are near the summit of this rough divide. The seal-trail from Zapadnie to the village runs just west of them and comes out on the north shore, a little to the eastward of the hauling-grounds of Starry Arteel, where it forks and unites with that path. A direct line between the village and Zapadnie, though nearly a mile shorter on the chart, is equal to five miles more of distance by reason of its superlative rocky inequalities.
One question is always sure to be asked in this connection. The query is : " At the present rate of killing seals it will not be long ere they are exterminated-how much longer will they last?" My answer is now as it was then : "Provided matters are conducted on the Seal Islands in the future as they are to-day, 100,000 male seals under the age of five years and over one may be safely taken every year from the Pribylov Islands without the slightest injury to the reg- ular birth-rate or natural increase thereon ; provided also that the fur-seals are not visited by plagues or by pests, or any such abnormal cause for their destruction, which might be beyond the control of men, and to which, like any other great body of animal life, they must ever be subjected to the danger of."* From my calculations
* The thought of what a deadly epidemic would effect among these vast congregations of Pinnipedia was one that was constant in my mind when on the ground and among them. I have found in the "British Annals" (Flem- ing's), on page 17, an extract from the notes of Dr. Trail: "In 1833 I in- quired for my old acquaintances, the seals of the Hole of Papa Westray, and was informed that about four years before they had totally deserted the island, and
had only within the last few months begun to reappear. About fifty years ago multitudes of their carcasses were cast ashore in every bay in the north of Scotland, Orkney, and Shetland, and numbers were found at sea in a sickly state." This note of Trail is the only record which I can find of a
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.