USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 37
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
---
--
Elliot
de canat.
A GROUP OF SEA-LIONS
Young
Adult Male and Female
Old Bull Roaring
[Eumetopias stelleri : a Life Study made at St. Paul's Island. July 16, 1872]
355
THE ALASKAN SEA-LION.
The bulk and power of the adult sea-lion male will be better appreciated when I say that it has an average length of ten and eleven feet osteologically, with an enormous girth of eight to nine feet around the chest and shoulders ; but while the anterior parts of its frame are as perfect and powerful on land as in sea, those posterior are ridiculously impotent when the huge beast leaves its favorite element. Still, when hauled up beyond the reach of the brawling surf, as it rears itself, shaking the spray from its tawny chest and short grizzly mane, it has a leonine appearance and bear- ing, greatly enhanced as the season advances by a rich golden- rufous color of its coat ; the savage gleam of its expression is due probably, to the sinister muzzle, and cast of its eye. This optical organ is not round and full, soft and limpid, like the fur-seal's, but it is an eye like that of a bull-dog : it is small and clearly shows under its heavy lids the white or sclerotic coat, with a light-brown iris. Its teeth gleam and glisten in pearly whiteness against a dark tongue and the shadowy recesses of its wide, deep mouth. The long, sharp, broad-based canines, when bared by the wrathful snarling of its gristled lips, glittered more wickedly, to my eye, than the keenest sword ever did in the hand of man.
With these teeth alone, backed by the enormous muscular power of a mighty neck and broad shoulders, the sea-lion confines its bat- tles to its kind, spurred by terrible energy and heedless and persist- ent brute courage. No animals that I have ever seen in combat pre- sented a more savage or more cruelly fascinating sight than did a brace of old sea-lion bulls which met under my eyes near the Gar- den Cove at St. George.
Here was a sea-lion rookery the outskirts of which I had trod- den upon for the first time. Two aged males, surrounded by their meek, polygamous families, were impelled towards each other by those latent fires of hate and jealousy which seemed to burst forth and fairly consume the angry rivals. Opening with a long, round, vocal prelude, they gradually came together, as the fur-seal bulls do, with averted heads, as though the sight of each other was sick- ening-but fight they must. One would play against the other for an unguarded moment in which to assume the initiative, until it had struck its fangs into the thick skin of its opponent's jowl ; then, clinching its jaws, was not shaken off until the struggles of its tortured victim literally tore them out, leaving an ugly, gaping wound-for the sharp eye-teeth cut a deeper gutter in the skin and
356
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
flesh than would have held my hand ; fired into almost supernatural rage, the injured lion retaliated, quick as a flash, in kind ; the hair flew from both of them into the air, the blood streamed down in frothy torrents, while high above the boom of the breaking waves, and shrill deafening screams of water-fowl over head, rose the ferocious, hoarse, and desperate roar of these combatants.
Though provided with flippers, to all external view, as the fur- seal is, the sea-lion cannot, however, make use of them at all in the same free manner. The fur-seal may be driven five or six miles in twenty-four hours under the most favorable conditions of cool, moist weather ; the "seevitchie," however, can only go two miles, the weather and roadway being the same. When driven, a sea-lion bal- ances and swings its long and heavy neck, as a lever, to and fro, with every hitching up behind of its posterior limbs, which it sel- dom raises from the ground, drawing them up after the fore-feet with a sliding drag over the grass or sand and rocks, as the case may be, ever and anon pausing to take a sullen and savage survey of the field and the natives who are urging it.
The sea-lion is polygamous, but it does not maintain any regu- lar system and method in preparing for and attending to its harem, like that so finely illustrated on the breeding-grounds of the fur- seal ; and it is not so numerous, comparatively speaking. There are not, according to my best judgment, over ten or twelve thou- sand of these animals altogether on the breeding-grounds of the Pribylov Islands. It does not haul more than a few rods anywhere or under any circumstances back from the sea. It cannot be visited and inspected by men as the fur-seals are, for it is so shy and sus- picious that on the slightest warning of such an approach, a stam- pede into the water is sure to result.
That noteworthy, intelligent courage of a fur-seal, though it does not possess half the size nor one-quarter of the muscular strength of a sea-lion, is entirely wanting in the huge bulk and brain of the Eumetopias. A boy with a rattle or a pop-gun could stampede ten thousand sea-lion bulls in the height of a breeding- season to the water, and keep them there for the rest of the time .*
* That the sea-lion bull should be so cowardly in the presence of man, yet so ferocious and brave toward one another and other amphibious animals, struck me as a line of singular contrast with the undaunted bearing of a fur- seal " seecatch," which, though being not half the size or possessing muscular power to anything like its development in the "seevitchie," nevertheless
357
THE ALASKAN SEA-LION.
Old males come out and locate themselves over the narrow belts of rookery-grounds (sometimes, as at St. Paul, on the immediate sea-margin of fur-seal breeding-places), two or three weeks in ad- vance of the females, which arrive later, i.e., between the 1st to the 6th of June ; and these females are never subjected to that intense, jealous supervision so characteristic of the fur-seal harem. Big sea-lion bulls, however, fight savagely* among themselves, and turn off from the breeding-ground all younger and weaker males.
A cow sea-lion is not quite half the size of an adult male ; she will measure from eight to nine feet in length osteologically, with a weight of four or five hundred pounds ; she has the same general cast of countenance and build of the bull ; but, as she does not sustain any fasting period of over a week or ten days con- secutively, she never comes out so grossly fat as he does. With reference to the weight of the latter, I was particularly unfortunate in not being able to get one of those big bulls on the scales before it had been bled, and in bleeding I know that a flood of blood poured out which should have been recorded in the weight. There- fore I can only estimate this aggregate avoirdupois of one of the finest-conditioned adult male sea-lions at fourteen to fifteen hun- red pounds ; an average weight, however, might safely be recorded as touching twelve hundred pounds.t
will unflinchingly face on its station at the rookery any man to the death. The sea-lion bulls certainly fight as savagely and as desperately one with another, as the fur-seal males do. There is no question about that, and their superior strength and size only makes the result more effective in the exhibition of gaping wounds and attendant bloodshed. I have repeatedly seen examples of . these old warriors of the sea which were literally scarred from their muzzles to their posteriors so badly and so uniformly as to have fairly lost all the color or general appearance even of hair anywhere on their bodies.
* I recall in this connection the sight of an aged male sea-lion which had been defeated by a younger and more lusty rival, perhaps. It was hauled upon a lava shelf at Southwest Point, solitary and alone ; the rock around it being literally covered with pools of pus, that was oozing ont and trickling down from a score of festering wounds ; the victim stood planted squarely on its torn fore flippers, with head erect and thrown back upon its shoulders; its eyes were closed, and it gently swayed its sore neck and shoulders in a sort of troubled, painful day-dreaming or dozing. Like the fur seal, the sea-lion never notices its wounds to nurse and lick them, as dogs do, or other carniv ora ; it never pays the slightest attention to them, no matter how grievonsly it may be injured.
+ Often when the fur-seal and sea-lion bulls hanl up in the beginning of the season examples among them which are inordinately fat will be seen ;
358
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
You will notice that if you disturb and drive off any portion of the rookery, by walking up in plain sight, those nearest to you will take to the water instantly, swim out to a distance of fifty yards or so, leaving their pups behind, helplessly sprawled around and about the rocks at your feet. Huddled up all together in the surf in two or three packs or squads, the startled parents hold their heads and necks high out of the sea, and peer keenly at you : then, all roaring in an incessant concert, they make an orchestra to which those deep sonorous tones of the organ in that great Mor- mon tabernacle, at Salt Lake City, constitute the fittest and most adequate resemblance.
You will witness an endless tide of these animals travelling to the water, and a steady stream of their kind coming out, if you but keep in retirement and do not disturb them. When they first issue from the surf they are a dark chocolate brown-and-black, and glisten ; but, as their coats dry off, the color becomes an iron-gray, passing into a bright golden rufous, which covers the entire body alike-shades of darker brown on the pectoral patches and sterno- pectoral region. After getting entirely dry, they seem to grow exceedingly uneasy, and act as though oppressed by heat, until they plunge back into the sea, never staying out, as the fur-seal does, day after day, and week after week. The females and the young males frolic in and out of the water, over rocks awash, inces- santly, one with another, just as puppies play upon a green sward ; and, when weary, stretch themselves out in any attitude that will fit the character of that rock, or the lava-shingle upon which they may happen to be resting. The movements of their supple spines, and ball-and-socket joint attachments, permit of the most extra- ordinary contortions of a trunk and limbs, all of which, no matter how distressing to your eyes, they seem actually to relish. But the old battle-scarred bulls of the harem stand or lie at their posi- tions day and night without leaving them, except to take a short bath when the coast is clear, until the end of the season.
When swimming, the sea-lion lifts its head only above the sur- face long enough to take a deep breath, then drops down a few
their extra avoirdupois renders them very conspicuous, even among large gatherings of their kind ; they seem to exhibit a sense of self-oppression then, quite as marked as is that subsequent air of depression worn when, later, they have starved out this load of surplus blubber, and are shambling back to the sea, for recuperation and rest.
-
SEA-LION ROOKERY, AT TOLSTOI
A view of the great Sea-lion breeding ground under the high bluffs of St. George's Island, between Garden Cove and Tolstoi Mees. June, 1873
359
THE ALASKAN SEA-LION.
feet below, and propels itself, for about ten or fifteen minutes, like ยท a cigar-steamer, at the rate of six or seven knots, if undisturbed ; but, if chased or alarmed, it seems fairly to fly under water, and can easily maintain for a long time a speed of fourteen or fifteen miles per hour. Like the fur-seal, its propulsion through water is the work entirely of its powerful fore-flippers, which are simul- taneously struck out, both together, and back against the water, feathering forward again to repeat, while the hind flippers are simply used as a rudder oar in deflecting an ever-varying swift and abrupt course of the animal. On land its hind flippers are employed just as a dog uses its feet in scratching fleas-the long peculiar toe-nails thereof seeming to reach and comb those spots affected by vermin, which annoys it, as the fur-seal is, to a great extent, and causes them both to enjoy a protracted scratching.
Again, both genera, Callorhinus and Eumetopias, are happiest when the surf is strongest and wildest. Just in proportion to the. fury of a gale, so much the greater joy and animation of these ani- mals. They delight in riding on the crests of each dissolving breaker up to a moment when it fairly foams over iron-bound rocks. At that instant they disappear like phantoms beneath the creamy surge, to reappear on the crown of the next mighty billow.
When landing, they always ride on the surf, so to speak, to an objective point : and, it is marvellous to see with what remarkable agility they will worm themselves up steep, rocky landings, having an inclination greater than forty-five degrees, to flat bluff-tops above, which have an almost perpendicular drop to water.
As the sea-lion is without fur, its skin has little or no commer- cial value .* The hair is short, an inch to an inch and a half in
* The sea-lion and hair-seals of Bering Sea, having no commercial value in the eyes of civilized men, have not been subjects of interest enough to the pioneers of those waters for mention in particular ; such record, for instance, as that given of the walrus, the sea-otter, and the fur-seal. Steller was the first to draw the line clearly between them and seals in general, especially defining their separation from the fur-seal ; still his description is far from being defi- nite or satisfactory in the light of our present knowledge of the animal.
In the South Pacific and Atlantic the sea-lion has been curiously con- founded by many of our earliest writers with the sea-elephant, Macrorhinus leoninas, and its reference is inextricably entangled with the fur-seal at the Falklands, Kerguelen's Land, and the Crozettes. The proboscidean seal, how- ever, seems to be the only pinniped which visits the Antarctic continent ; but
360
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
length, being longest over the nape of the neck ; straight, and somewhat coarse, varying in color as the season comes and goes. For instance, when the Eumetopias makes its first appearance in the spring and dries out after landing, it has then a light-brownish rufous tint, with darker shades back and under the fore flippers and on the abdomen. By the expiration of a month or six weeks, about June 15th, generally, this coat will then be weathered into a glossy rufous, or ochre yellow ; this tinting remains until shed along by the middle of August, or a little earlier. After a new coat has fairly grown, and just before an animal leaves the island rookery in November, it is a light sepia or Vandyke brown, with deeper shades, almost black, upon its abdomen. The cows after shedding never color up so darkly as the bulls ; but when they come back to the land next year they return identically the same in tinting ; so that the eye, in glancing over a sea-lion rookery during June and July, cannot discern any dissimilarity in color, at all note- worthy, existing between the coats of the bulls and the cows ; also, the young males and yearlings appear in that same golden-brown and ochre, with here and there an animal which is noted as being spotted somewhat like a leopard-a yellow rufous ground predom- inating, with patelies of dark-brown, blotched and mottled, irreg- ularly interspersed over the anterior regions down to those poster- ior. I have never seen any of the old bulls or cows thus mottled, and this is likely due to some irregularity of shedding in the younger animals ; for I have not noticed it early in the season, and it seems to fairly fade away so as not to be discerned on the same animal at the close of its summer solstice. Many of the old bulls have a grizzled or "salt and pepper " look during the shedding period, which is from August 10th up to November 10th or 20th. The pups, when born, are a rich dark-chestnut brown. This coat they shed in October, and take one much lighter in its stead, still darker, however, than their parents.
The time of arrival at, stay on, and departure from the islands, is about the same as that which I have recorded as characteristic of the fur-seal ; but, if a winter is an open, mild one, some of the sea-lions will frequently be seen about the shores during the whole
that is a mere inference of mine, because so little is known of those ice-bound coasts, and Wilkes, who gives the only record made of the subject, saw no other animal there save that one.
361
THE ALASKAN SEA-LION.
year ; and then the natives occasionally shoot them, long after the fur-seals have entirely disappeared. Again, it does not confine its landing to the Pribylov Islands alone, as the fur-seal unquestionably does, with reference to such terrestrial location in our own country. On the contrary, it is a frequent visitor to almost all of the Aleutian Islands : it ranges, as I have said before, over the mainland coast of Alaska, south of Bristol Bay, and about the Siberian shores to the westward, throughout the Kuriles and the Japanese northern waters .*
* The winter of 1872-73, which I passed on the Pribylov Islands, was so rig- orous that those shores were ice-bound, and the sea covered with floes from Jan- uary until May 28th ; hence I did not have an opportunity of seeing, for myself, whether the sea-lion remains about its breeding-grounds there through- out that period. The natives say that a few of them, when the sea is open, are always to be found, at any day during the winter and early spring, hauled out at Northeast Point, on Otter Island, and around St. George. They are, in my opinion, correct ; and, being in such small numbers, the " seevitchie " un- doubtedly find enough subsistence in local crustacea, pisces, and other food. The natives, also, further stated that none of the sea-lions which we observe on the islands during the breeding-season leave the waters of Bering Sea from the date of their birth to the time of their death. I am also inclined to agree with this proposition, as a general rule, though it would be strange if Pribylov sea-lions did not occasionally slip into the North Pacific, through and below the Aleutian chain, a short distance, even to travelling as far to the eastward as Cook's Inlet. Eumetopias stelleri is well known to breed at many places be- tween Attoo and Kadiak Islands. I did not see it at St. Matthew, however, and I do not think it has ever bred there, although this island is only two hun- dred miles away to the northward of the Seal Islands-too many polar bears. Whalers speak of having shot it in the ice-packs in a much higher latitude, nevertheless, than that of St. Matthew. I can find no record of its breeding anywhere on the islands or mainland coast of Alaska north of the fifty-seventh parallel or south of the fifty-third parallel of north latitude. It is common on the coast of Kamchatka, the Kurile Islands, and the Commander group, in Russian waters.
There are vague and ill-digested rumors of finding Eumetopias on the shores of Prince of Wales and Queen Charlotte Islands in breeding rookeries ; I doubt it. If it were so, it would be authoritatively known by this time. We do find it in small numbers on the Farallones Rocks, off the entrance to the harbor of San Francisco, where it breeds in company with, though sexually apart from, an overwhelming majority of Zalophus ; and it is credibly reported as breed- ing again to the southward, on the Santa Barbara. Guadaloupe, and other islands of Southern and Lower California, consorting there, as on the Faral- lones, with an infinitely larger number of the lesser-bodied Zalophus.
There is no record made which shows that the fur-seals, even, have any
362
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
When I first returned, in 1873, from the Seal Islands, those au- thors, whose conclusions were accepted prior to my studies there, had agreed in declaring that the sea-lion, so common off the port of San Francisco, was the same animal also common in Alaska, and the Pribylov Islands in especial ; but my drawings from life, and studies, quickly pointed out the error, for it was seen that the creat- ure most familiar to the Californians was an entirely different ani- mal from my subject of study on the Seal Islands. In other words, while scattered examples of the Eumetopias were, and are, unques- tionably about and off the harbor of San Francisco, yet nine tenthis of the sea-lions there observed were a different animal-they were the Zalophus californianus. This Zalophus is not much more than half the size of Eumetopias, relatively ; it has the large, round, soft eye of the fur-seal, and the more attenuated Newfoundland-dog-like muzzle ; and it never roars, but breaks out incessantly with a honk, honk, honking bark, or howl.
No example of Zalophus has ever been observed in the waters of Bering Sea, nor do I believe that it goes northward of Cape Flattery, or really much above Mendocino, Cal.
According to the natives of St. George, some sixty or seventy years ago the Eumetopias held almost exclusive possession of that island being there in great numbers, some two or three hundred
regular or direct course of travel up or down the northwest coast. They are principally seen in the open sea, eight or ten miles from land, outside the heads of the Straits of Fuca, and from there as far north as Dixon Sound. During May and June they are aggregated in greatest numbers here, though examples are reported the whole year around. The only fur-seal which I saw, or was noted by the crew of the Reliance, in her cruise, June 1st to 9th, from Port Townsend to Sitka, was a solitary "holluschak " that we disturbed at sea well ont from the lower end of Queen Charlotte's Islands ; then, from Sitka to Kadiak, we saw nothing of the fur-seal until we hauled off from Point Gre- ville, and coming down to Ookamok Islet, a squad of agile "holluschickie " suddenly appeared among a school of humpback whales, sporting in the most extravagant manner around, under, and even leaping over the wholly indif- ferent cetacea. From this eastern extremity of Kadiak Island clear up to the Pribylov group we daily saw them here and there in small bands, or also as lonely voyageurs, all headed for one goal. We were badly outsailed by them ; indeed, the chorus of a favorite "South Sea pirate's" song, as inces- santly sung on the cutter's "'tween decks," seemed to have special adaptation to them :
" For they bore down from the wind wiard,
A sailin' seven knots to our four'n."
363
THE ALASKAN SEA-LION.
thousand strong ; and they aver, also, that the fur-seals then were barely permitted to land by these animals, and in no great number ; therefore, they assert they were directed by the Russians (i.e., their own ancestry) to hunt and worry the sea-lions off from the island : the result was that, as the sea-lions left, the fur-seals came, so to-day Callorhinus occupies nearly the same ground which Eumeto- pias alone covered sixty years ago. I call attention to this state- ment of the people because it is, or seems to be, corroborated in the notes of a French naturalist and traveller, who, in his description of the Island of St. George, which he visited sixty years ago, makes substantially the same representation .*
That great intrinsic value to the domestic service of the Aleutes rendered by the flesh, fat, and sinews of this animal, together with its skin, arouses the natives of St. Paul and St. George, who annu- ally make drives of " seevitchie," by which they capture two or three hundred, as the case may be. On St. George driving is positively difficult, owing to the character of the land itself : hence, a few only are secured there ; but at St. Paul unexceptional advan- tages are found on Northeast Point for the capture of these shy and timid brutes. The natives of St. Paul, therefore, are depended upon to secure the necessary number of skins required by both islands for their boats and other purposes. This capture of the sea-lion is the only serious business which the people have on St. Paul. It is a labor of great care, industry, and some physical risk for the Aleutian hunters.+
* Choris : Voyage Pittoresque antour du Monde.
+ A curious, though doubtless authentic, story was told me in this connec- tion illustrative of the strength and energy of the sea-lion bull when at bay. Many years ago (1847), on St. Paul Island, a drive of September sea- lions was brought down to the village in the usnal style ; but when the na- tives assembled to kill them, on account of a great scarcity at that time of powder on the island, it was voted best to lance the old males also, as well as the females, rather than shoot them in the customary style. The people had hardly set to work at the task when one of their number, a small, elderly, though tough, able-bodied Alent, while thrusting his lance into the " life " of a large bull, was suddenly seen to fall on his back directly under that huge brute's head. Instantly the powerful jaws of the "seevitchie " closed upon the waist band, apparently, of the native, and, lifting the yelling man aloft as & cat would a kitten, the sea-lion shook and threw him high into the air, away over the heads of his associates, who rushed up to the rescue and quickly destroyed the animal by a dozen furious spear-thrusts; yet death did not loosen its clinched jaws, in which were the tattered fragments of Ivan's clothing.
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.