USA > Alaska > Our northern domain: Alaska, picturesque, historic and commercial > Part 12
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wale of the boat until the struggling startled flock passed, like an irresistible, surging wave, over my head. Words cannot depict the amazement and curiosity with which I gazed around, after climbing up to the rocky plateau and standing among myriads of breeding birds, that fairly covered the entire surface of the island with their shrink- ing forms, while others whirled in rapid flight over my head, as wheels within wheels, so thickly inter-running that the blue and gray of the sky was hidden from my view. Add to this impression the stunning whirr of hundreds of thousands of strong beating wings, and the muf- fled croakings of the ' arries,' coupled with an indescribable, disagree- able smell which arose from the broken eggs and other decaying sub- stances, and a faint idea may be evoked of the strange reality spread before me."
Mr. Elliott and other unscientific observers of the fur-seal attribute to them almost human intelligence. He declares that the head, though small in proportion to the weight of the body, which is often in excess of five hundred pounds, is mostly occupied by brain. "The light frame-work of the skull supports an expressive pair of large bluish-hazel eyes, alternately burning with revengeful passionate light, then suddenly changing to the tones of tenderness and good nature.
" Look at it," he says, " as it comes leisurely swimming on toward the land; see how high above the water it carries its head, and how deliberately it surveys the beach, after having stepped upon it (for it may be truly said to step with its fore flippers, as they regularly alternate when it moves up), carrying the head well above them, erect and graceful, at least three feet above the ground."
Mr. Elliott claims that the expression of the cow-seal's eye is " really attractive, gentle and intelligent. The large, lustrous, blue-black eyes are humid and soft with the tenderest expression, while the small, well- formed head is poised as gracefully on her neck as can be well imag- ined. She is the very picture of benignity and satisfaction when she is poised, perched up on some convenient rock, and has an opportunity
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to quietly fan herself, the eyes half closed and the head thrown back on her gently swelling shoulders.
" Indeed one would think that the seal was a society lady just in the swim! "
Mr. Elliott is a water color artist and paints pictures with a poetic touch.
In another place he says: " The cows during the whole season do great credit to their amiable expression by their manner and behavior on the rookery. They never fight or quarrel one with the other and never or seldom utter a cry of pain or rage when they are roughly handled by the bulls."
President Jordan cruelly effaces the pretty picture, saying : " While the cows do not indulge in pitched battles, they are snappish creatures, uncivil to each other, cruel to pups not their own, and capable of giving their lords much well-deserved nagging."
The wonderful intelligence credited to the seal does not receive the expert's sanction. He says : - " The life-processes of the fur seal are perfect as clock-work, but its grade of intelligence is low. Its range of action is very slight. It is a wonderful automaton and the stress of its migrations will always keep it so."
Keeping the scientific check on our imagination, it is still interesting to study the seal from the imaginative point of view.
Early in May come the vanguard of the males. They seem " shy and sensitive," not as yet ready to come out on the land. When the sikatch or master bull climbs up on a rock he regards it as his castle and is prepared to defend it with all his might. Mr. Elliott tells of one which met and successfully fought off not less than forty or fifty desperate attempts to drive him away.
" When the fighting season was over," he says, "I saw him still there, covered with scars and frightfully gashed - raw, festering and bloody - one eye gouged out, but lording it bravely over his harem of fifteen or twenty females, who were all huddled together on the same spot of his first location and around him."
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WILD RAPIDS ON A MOUNTAIN STREAM.
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The fighting is done with the teeth. The males seize each other and clench their jaws in vise-like grip. Mr. Elliott says : - " They usually approach each other with comically averted heads, just as if they were ashamed of the rumpus which they are determined to pre- cipitate. When they get near enough to reach one another they enter upon the repetition of many feints or passes before either one or the other takes the initiative by gripping. The heads are darted out and back as quick as a flash; their hoarse roaring and shrill piping whistle never ceases, while their fat bodies writhe and swell with exertion and rage; furious lights gleam in their eyes; their hair flies in the air and their blood streams down; all combined makes a picture so fierce and so strange that from its unexpected position and its novelty it is perhaps one of the most extraordinarily brutal contests one can witness.
" In these battles of the seals the parties are always distinct - the one is offensive, the other defensive. If the latter proves the weaker, he withdraws from the position occupied, and is never followed by his conqueror, who complacently throws up one of his hind-flippers, fans himself as it were, to cool his fevered wrath and blood from the heat of the conflict and sinks into comparative quiet, only uttering a peculiar chuckle of satisfaction or contempt, with a sharp eye open for the next covetous bull or ' sea-catch.' "
The young bulls, called kholostyaki - that is to say bachelors - are always ready to get into the ranks of the sikatchi or masters. They hang around the rear of the rookeries and seize the chance to steal a cow from the " harem." Often the old bulls combine against such a seducer and the battle grows so fierce that death sometimes ensues. The fighting become fast and furious when the coming and going of the cows give better chances for such action. When a bull has chosen a station he refuses to leave it and the result is that at the end of the summer, no matter how fat and well-conditioned he may be he is greatly reduced in flesh.
The cows bring forth their young almost as soon as they " haul up " on the shore. They nurse them for a few days, very much as
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any other mammals, not allowing them to move away. After a few days the cows put out to sea for feeding purposes, some wandering away a hundred or one hundred and fifty miles. When they return they are always able to detect their own young from amidst the hun- dreds of thousands of similar young playing together. The seal at birth is about two feet long and weighs ten or a dozen pounds. Their gregarious instinct, which causes the cows to " haul up " in enormous swarms, also brings the pups into regular little gangs: these are tech- nically called pods. So with the bachelor seals which play together in the surf and often seem to amuse themselves by teasing the pups.
The noise made by a seal rookery has been compared to the roar of Niagara; it can be heard above the pounding of the surf. The cows have only one note, like the cry of a calf or old sheep, though if they are suddenly disturbed they spit or snort. But the fighting males utter a sound like a locomotive or roar hoarsely or gurgle or make a chuckling whistle. Mr. Elliott says: -- " The sound which arises from these great breeding grounds of the fur seal, where thou- sands upon ten thousands of angry vigilant bulls are roaring, chuck- ling and piping, and multitudes of seal mothers are calling in hollow, bleating tones to their young, that in their turn respond incessantly, is simply defiance to verbal description. It is at a slight distance softened into a deep booming, as of a cataract, and I have heard it, with a light fair wind to the leeward, as far as six miles out from land on the sea; and even in the thunder of the surf and the roar of heavy gales it will rise up and over to your ear for quite a considerable dis- tance away."
Mr. Elliott declares that the bachelor seals are the most restless animals in the whole brute creation. They play with each other like frisky puppies. " When weary of this gambolling," he says, " a gen- eral disposition to sleep is suddenly manifested, and they stretch them- selves out and curl up in all the positions and all the postures that their flexible spines and ball-and-socket joints will permit. They seem to revel in the unwonted vegetation and to be delighted with their
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own efforts in rolling down and crushing the tall stalks of the grasses and the umbelliferous plants; one will lie upon its back, hold up its hind flippers and lazily wave them about, while it scratches or rather rubs its ribs with the fore hands alternately, the eyes being tightly closed during the whole performance; the sensation is evidently so luxurious that it does not wish to have any side issue draw off its blissful self-attention."
Of course as swimmers they carry off the palm. There is no truth that the young pups are frequently drowned. The multitudes of dead pups seen floating in the water are either starved to death because the mothers had fallen a prey to the fishermen or they perished through the ravages of a parasitic worm which breeds in the filth of the harems. They take to the water as naturally as any other animal. One of the great sports of the young pups is to roost on rocks awash with the waves, where the surf will sweep them away and where they try to push one another off and get the better places. They dart in the midst of booming breakers and gambol on the very crest of billows that would smash a whale ship. The bachelors in the sheer exultation of their energy often leap completely out of the water like sturgeon. They swim very swiftly, keeping two or three feet under water, propelling themselves by their fore flippers and using their hind ones as guiding oars. They can stay under water a surprisingly long time without breathing.
Mr. Elliott says : - " All their movements in water, whether they are travelling to some objective point or are in sport, are quick and joyous; and nothing is more suggestive of intense satisfaction and pure physical comfort than is that spectacle which we can see every August a short distance out at sea from any rookery, where thousands of old males and females are idly rolling over on the billows side by side, rubbing and scratching with their fore and hind flippers, which are here and there stuck up out of the water by their owners, like the lateen sails of the Mediterranean feluccas, or, when the hind flippers are presented, like a cat-o'-nine tail. They sleep in the water a great
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deal, too, more than is generally supposed, showing that they do not come on land to rest."
One of the odd sights of a voyage in the Bering waters is that of a female seal asleep. They turn on their backs, fold their flippers over their breasts and by curving their hind flippers up keep themselves upright like a boat. Their nostrils are so formed that when they have breathed the walls tightly close and keep out the water.
John Burroughs speaking of the seal says :- "Lying there in masses or wriggling about upon the rocks all their lines soft and flow- ing, their motions hampered, the fur-seals suggested huge larvae, or something between the grub and the water insect. They appeared to be yet in a kind of sack or envelope. The males wriggle about like a man in a bag; but once in the water they are a part of the water, as fleet and nimble as a fish, or as a bird in the air."
The gregarious instincts of the seal make the labor of driving them comparatively slight. A few men can keep the herd in motion. When the time arrives the whole population of the village turns out to take part. Two men stationing themselves at opposite sides of the herd will segregate twenty or thirty of the bachelor seals, and, getting behind them and rattling bones and shouting, drive them away from the haul- ing ground. The young animals when driven are as docile and amiable as a flock of sheep. When they reach the killing ground, which is per- haps two or three miles distant, they are allowed to rest themselves and cool off. Then half a dozen or more experienced men armed with ash or hickory sticks bound with sheet iron, called mamlika, and made in New London, Connecticut, club the seals, one blow being generally sufficient to stun the animal. The clubbed seal is then dragged into a line and stabbed to the heart. The skinners come along and strip off the hide, spreading it evenly on the grass, flesh side down. The women take the carcass and remove such portions of the blubber of fat as they want. The meat they dry and pack into the dried stomach of the sea- lion for future consumption.
In the old days it was permitted by law to take a hundred thousand
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seals from the Pribilof; the work of slaughtering and skinning that number was accomplished in forty days. Elliott says : -
" The labor of skinning is excessively severe, and is trying even to an expert, demanding long practice ere the muscles of the back and thighs are so developed as to permit a man to bend down and finish well a fair day's work. The knives used by the natives for skinning are ordinary kitchen or case-handled butcher knives. They are sharp- ened to cutting edges as keen as razors, but something about the skin of the seal, perhaps fine comminuted sand along the abdomen, so dulls these knives as the natives work that they are constantly obliged to whet them.
" The body of the seal, preparatory to skinning, is rolled over and balanced squarely on its back. Then the native makes a single swift cut through the skin down along the neck, chest, and belly, from the lower jaw to the root of the tail, using for this purpose his long stab- bing knife. The fore and hind flippers are then successively lifted as the man straddles the seal and stoops down to this work over it, and a sweeping circular incision is made on the skin just at the point where the body fur ends. Then, seizing a flap of the hide on either one side or the other of the abdomen, the man proceeds, with his smaller, shorter butcher knife, rapidly to cut the skin clean and free from the body and. blubber, which he rolls over and out from the hide by hauling up on it as he advances with his work, standing all this time stooped over the carcass, so that his hands are but slightly above it or the ground. This operation of skinning a fair-sized 'holluschak ' [kholostyák] takes the best men only one minute and a half; but the average time made by the gang on the ground is about four minutes to the seal."
Although the odor of the seal blubber is peculiarly offensive to sen- sitive nostrils, the meat of the seal is quite appetizing if properly pre- pared.
In the old days the skins were air dried, a method which was not always effective. It is said that in 1803 seven hundred and fifty thou- sand of such skins, accumulated at Sitka, rotted and had to be thrown
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away. They are now taken immediately to the salt-house where they are piled up in " kenches " or bins with a profusion of salt spread on the flesh side. When they are sufficiently pickled they are tied up in twos, the hair side out, and are ready for shipment. Most of them are sent to London in hogsheads containing from twenty to forty. There by a secret process they are fashioned into the beautiful fur which my lady wears, in the form of a thousand dollar coat, generally to the detriment of her health.
The seal-killing takes place in June and July. By the end of October the rookeries begin to look deserted, though some old seals remain in the vicinity very late or even all winter. The females strike di- rectly south and appear on the coast of Southern California so speedily that it is believed they make no stop on the way. Their return on the other hand is slow as they are then heavy with young. President Jor- dan says : --
" The herd as a whole takes a direct course through the Pacific Ocean obliquely to the coast of California. It is probable that the adult males go no farther south than the latitude of Cape Flattery; but the adult females are taken off the coast of Southern California within two weeks after their departure from the islands, and hence their course must be direct and rapid. On their return they move slowly back to the Ameri- can coast, reaching the passes about the first of June, whither they have already been preceded by the adult males and older bachelors."
Another of the interesting pinniped inhabitants of the Pribilof Islands is the sea-lion. It has an imposing presence and a sonorous voice, which, when put forth at full capacity of its lungs will drown the booming of the surf. It is much larger than the fur-seal, attaining a length of ten or twelve feet and huge girth around the shoulders. It is often seen rearing its mighty hulk on some rock just above the sea, and with its tawny chest and grizzly mane, its gleaming ugly teeth and sinister mouth guarded by gristly lips, it is a fierce and awe-in- spiring creature. Mr. Elliott witnessed a battle between two old males. He says : -
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" No animals that I have ever seen in combat presented a more savage or a more cruelly fascinating sight than did a brace of old sea- lion bulls which met under my eyes near the Garden Cove at St. George. Here was a sea-lion rookery, the outskirts of which I had trodden upon for the first time. These old males, surrounded by their meek polyga- mous families, were impelled toward 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 grad- ually came together, as the fur-seals do, with averted heads, as if the sight of each other was sickening - 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, clenching 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 flesh than would have held my hand. Fired into an almost super- natural 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 waterfowl overhead rose the ferocious, hoarse and desperate roar of the combatants."
Courageous as they are when fighting among themselves, Steller says the males take flight on the first appearance of man, and if sur- prised in their sleep, are panic struck, sighing deeply, and in their attempt to escape get quite confused, tumble down and tremble so much that they are scarcely able to move their limbs. The full grown adult weighs more than half a ton; as is the case with the seals, the females are much smaller, generally not half the size.
The harems of the sea-lion are organized very much like their smaller cousins. Each bull has from fifteen to twenty cows and aggregating in a single rookery from five to ten thousand. They are the most rest- less of creatures, "ever twisting and turning, coiling and uncoiling themselves over the rocks, now stretched out prone in slumber, the
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next minute up and moving; the roar of one is instantly caught up by another, so that the aggregate sound as it rises and falls from this rookery can only be compared to the hoarse sound of a tempest as it howls through the rigging of a ship " or " roaring in an incessant con- cert, making an orchestra to which those deep, sonorous tones in the great Mormon tabernacle at Salt Lake City constitute the fittest and most adequate resemblance."
The fur of the sea-lion is valueless commercially, but the natives make great use of the hide and indeed of the whole animal. They take advantage of a night when the moon is partially obscured and crawl along between the sentinels and the sea. Then at a given signal they all leap to their feet making the greatest possible din with shouts and yells and the discharge of pistols. The sea-lions frightened out of their sleep, start off in the direction in which they happen to be lying. A few jump over the cliff, others charge for the higher land where, being guided by the prodding natives, they are corraled in a circular cage made of stakes adorned with fluttering flags and stuck into the ground ten or twenty feet apart and connected by strips of cotton cloth and a thong of hide. This almost imaginary prison serves to keep them; they make no attempt to escape. When a herd or pod of two or three hundred have been thus captured they are driven to their destination, which may be ten or eleven miles away, the process taking from five days to three weeks, the natives allowing them to rest from time to time, and then stimulating them again to action by clap- ping boards and bones, rapping sticks on the rocks, firing fuses and waving flags or cotton umbrellas. The killing of the old bulls is done with a rifle-shot, fired between the eye and the ear. The cows are speared.
When the skins have been unhaired by sweating they are sewed to- gether and stretched over a light frame-work, and this constitutes the native kyak or bidarka. The intestine pulled out to its full length of sixty feet or more is made into the water-tight kamlaika, the most useful garment they possess. The throats are made into boot-tops,
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the flippers into soles. The meat of the young sea-lion tastes like veal. The tough whiskers are greatly prized by the Chinese, who use them as pickers for their opium pipes.
When the Russians first took possession of the Pribilof Islands they were the resort of multitudes of walrus; now their haunt is on the small island already described. Gesner, in 1558, declared that the fish called Rosmarii or Morsii had heads fashioned like an ox and " a hairy skin, the hair growing as thick as straw or corn-reeds, that lie loose very largely." He says :- "They will raise themselves with their teeth, as by ladders, to the very tops of rocks that they may feed upon the dewie grasse, or fresh water, and roll themselves in it, and go then to the sea again, unless in the meantime they fall very fast asleep, and rest upon the rocks, for then the fishermen make all the haste they can, and begin at the tail, and part the skin from the fat; and into this that is parted they put most strong cords, and fasten them on the rugged rocks or trees that are near, and then they throw stones at his head, out of a sling, to raise him, and they compel him to descend spoiled of the greatest part of his skin which is fastened to the ropes; he being thereby debilitated, fearful and half dead, is made a rich prey, especially for his teeth which are very precious among the Scyth- ians, the Muscovites, Russians and Tartars (as ivory amongst the Indians) by reason of their harness, whitenesse and ponderousnesse."
James Cartier in 1534 mentioned having met " very greate beastes as greate as oxen, which have two great teeth in their mouths like unto elephants and live also in the sea." Captain Cook gave a vivid de- scription of the Pacific walrus as he saw the creature in its pristine abundance : -
" They lie in herds of many hundreds upon the ice, huddling one over the other like swine, and roar or bay very loud, so that in the night or in foggy weather they gave us notice of the vicinity of the ice before we could see it. We never found the whole herd asleep, some being always on the watch. These, on the approach of the boat, would wake those next to them, and the alarm being thus gradually communicated,
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the whole herd would be awake presently. But they were seldom in a hurry to get away till after they had once been fired at, when they would tumble one over the other into the sea in the utmost confusion, and if we did not at the first discharge kill those we fired at we gen- erally lost them, though mortally wounded. They did not appear to be that dangerous animal some authors have described, not even when attacked. They are rather more so in appearance than in reality.
" Vast number of them would follow, and some come close up to the boats, but the flash of a musket in the pan, or even the bare pointing of one at them, would send them down in an instant."
They seem to be more awkward and clumsy, both on land and in the water, as well as more slothful than the seals and sea-lions. The young are hairy, but the old ones have a skin covered with warts or pimples, wrinkled and flabby and utterly disgusting. On the land it is almost helpless because of its bulk - some of them are twelve feet long and weigh almost a ton - contrasted with its ineffectual limbs. It swims under water; when it comes to the surface it blows like a whale. It is not true that it uses its tusks as landing hooks! Like the seal and sea-lion its vision is feeble but its sense of hearing acute. The hide is very thick, in some places three inches. It feeds on crustaceans in contradistinction to the seal, in whose stomach no shell fish is said ever to have been found, and the long white tusks are supposed to be used for digging clams in the estuaries of the North. The walrus is said by the natives to be monogamous; the mother is so strongly at- tached to her young that she will defend it with her life -in strong contrast to the carelessness of the seal which never lavishes any affec- tion or very little care on the pup. The Eskimos used to kill an average of ten thousand a year up to 1867, and as their habitat is near the shal- low shore where fishing fleets can not easily reach them there is no great likelihood of the natives ever being deprived of this valuable source of livelihood. " The walrus to the Eskimo," says Elliott, " an- swers just as the cocoa palm does to the South Sea islander; it feeds him, it clothes him, it heats and illuminates his ' igloo,' and it arms
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