CHAPTER IX.

WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS.

The Fur-seal Millions of the Pribylov Islands.—Marvellous

Exhibition of Massed Animal-life in a State of Nature.—Story of

the Discovery of these Remarkable Rookeries, July, 1786.—Previous

Knowledge of them Unknown to Man.—Sketch of the Pribylov

Islands.—Their Character, Climate, and Human Inhabitants.—A Realm

of Summer-fog.—The Seal-life here Overshadows Everything, though

the Bird Rookeries of Saint George are Wonderful.—No Harbors.—The

Roadsteads.—The Attractive Flora.—Only Islands in Alaska where

the Curse of Mosquitoes is Removed.—Natives Gathering Eggs on

Walrus Islet.—A Scene of Confusion and Uproar.—Contrast very Great

between Saint Paul and Saint George.—Good Reason of the Seals in

Resorting to these Islands to the Exclusion of all other Land in

Alaska.—Old-time Manners and Methods of the Russians Contrasted

with Our Present Control.—Vast Gain and Improvement for Seals and

Natives.—The Character of the Present Residents.—Their Attachment

to the Islands.—The History of the Alaska Commercial Company.—The

Wise Action of Congress.—The Perfect Supervision of the Agents of

the Government.—Seals are more Numerous now than at First.—The

Methods of the Company, the Government, and the Natives in Taking

the Seals.

When they the approaching time perceive,

They flee the deep, and watery pastures leave;

On the dry ground, far from the swelling tide,

Bring forth their young, and on the shores abide

Till twice six times they see the eastern gleams

Brighten the hills and tremble on the streams.

The thirteenth morn, soon as the early dawn

Hangs out its crimson folds or spreads its lawn,

No more the fields and lofty coverts please,

Each hugs her own and hastes to rolling seas.

—OVID.

The story of the gloomy grandeur of Alaskan scenery and the wild

existence of its inhabitants is not half told until that picture of

what we observe on the Pribylov Islands of Bering Sea is graphically

drawn. Here is annually presented one of the most marvellous

exhibitions of massed animal-life that is known to man, civilized

or savage; here is exhibited the perfect working of an anomalous

industry, conducted without a parallel in the history of human

enterprise, and of immense pecuniary and biological value.

In treating this subject the writer has trusted to nothing save what

he himself has seen, for, until these life-studies were made by him,

no succinct and consecutive history of the lives and movements of

these animals had been published by any man. Fanciful yarns, woven

by the ingenuity of whaling captains, in which the truth was easily

blended with that which was not true, and short paragraphs penned

hastily by naturalists of more or less repute, formed the knowledge

that we had. Best of all was the old diary of Steller, who, while

suffering bodily tortures, the legacy of gangrene and scurvy, when

wrecked with Bering on the Commander Islands, showed the nerve, the

interest, and the energy of a true naturalist. He daily crept, with

aching bones and watery eyes, over the boulders and mossy flats

of Bering Island to catch glimpses of those strange animals which

abode there then as they abide to-day. Considering the physical

difficulties that environed Steller, the notes made by him on the

sea-bears of the North Pacific are remarkably good; but, as I have

said, they fall so far from giving a fair and adequate idea of

what these immense herds are and do as to be absolutely valueless

for the present hour. Shortly after Steller’s time great activity

sprang up in the South Atlantic and Pacific over the capture and

sale of fur-seal skins taken in those localities It is extraordinary

that, though whole fleets of American, English, French, Dutch, and

Portuguese vessels engaged during a period of protracted enterprise

of over eighty years in length in the business of repairing to the

numerous rookeries of the Antarctic, returning annually laden with

enormous cargoes of fur-seal skins, yet, as above mentioned, hardly

a definite line of record has been made in regard to the whole

transaction, involving, as it did, so much labor and so much capital.

The fact is, that the acquisition of these pelagic peltries had

engaged thousands of men, and that millions of dollars had been

employed in capturing, dressing, and selling fur-seal skins during

the hundred years just passed by; nevertheless, from the time of

Steller, away back as far as 1751, up to the beginning of the last

decade, the scientific world actually knew nothing definite in regard

to the life history of this valuable animal. The truth connected

with the life of the fur-seal, as it herds in countless myriads

on the Pribylov Islands of Alaska, is far stranger than fiction.

Perhaps the existing ignorance has been caused by confounding the

hair-seal, _Phoca vitulina_, and its kind, with the creature now

under discussion. Two animals, more dissimilar in their individuality

and method of living, can, however, hardly be imagined, although they

belong to the same group, and live apparently upon the same food.

The following notes, surveys, and hypotheses herewith presented are

founded upon the writer’s personal observations in the seal-rookeries

of St. Paul and St. George, during the seasons of 1872 to 1874

inclusive, supplemented by his confirmatory inspection made in

1876. They were obtained during long days and nights of consecutive

observation, from the beginning to the close of each seal-season, and

cover, by actual surveys, the entire ground occupied by these animals.

During the progress of heated controversies that took place pending

the negotiation which ended in the acquisition of Alaska by our

Government, frequent references were made to the fur-seal. Strange

to say, this animal was so vaguely known at that time, even to

scientific men, that it was almost without representation in any of

the best zoölogical collections of the world; even the Smithsonian

Institution did not possess a perfect skin and skeleton. The writer,

then as now, an associate and collaborator of that establishment, had

his curiosity very much excited by these stories; and in March, 1872,

he was, by the joint action of Professor Baird and the Secretary of

the Treasury, enabled to visit the Pribylov Islands for the purpose

of studying the life and habits of these animals.[85]

All writers on the subject of Alaskan exploration and enterprise

agree as to the cause of the discovery of the Pribylov Islands in

the last century. It was due to the feverish anxiety of a handful

of Russian fur-gatherers, who desired to find new fields of gain

when they had exhausted those last uncovered. Altasov and his band

of Russians, Tartars, and Cossacks arrived at Kamtchatka toward the

end of the seventeenth century, and they were the first discoverers

of the beautiful, costly fur of the sea-otter. The animal bearing

this pelage abounded then on that coast, but by the middle of the

eighteenth century they and those who came after them had entirely

extirpated it from that country. Then the survivors of Bering’s

second voyage of observation, in 1741-42, and Tschericov brought

back an enormous number of skins from Bering Island; then Michael

Novodiskov discovered Attoo and the contiguous islands in 1745;

Paicov came after him, and opened out the Fox Islands, in the same

chain, during 1759; then succeeded Stepan Glottov, of infamous

memory, who determined Kadiak in 1763; the peninsula of Alaska was

discovered by Krenitzin in 1768. During these long years, from the

discovery of Attoo until the last date mentioned above, a great many

Russian companies fitted out at the mouth of the Amoor River and

in the Okotsk Sea; they prospected therefrom this whole Aleutian

archipelago in search of the sea-otter. There were, perhaps,

twenty-five or thirty different companies, with quite a fleet of

small vessels; and so energetic and thorough were they in their

search and capture of the sea-otter that as early as 1772 and 1774

the catch in that group had dwindled from thousands and tens of

thousands at first to hundreds and tens of hundreds at last. As all

men do when they find that that which they are engaged in is failing

them, a change of search and inquiry was in order; and, then the

fur-seal, which had been noted, but not valued much, every year as

it went north in the spring through the passes and channels of the

Aleutian chain, then going back south again in the fall, became the

source of much speculation as to where it spent its time on land and

how it bred. No one had ever known of its stopping one solitary hour

on a single rock or beach throughout all Alaska or the northwest

coast. The natives, when questioned, expressed themselves as entirely

ignorant, though they believed, as they believe in many things of

which they have no knowledge, that these seals repaired to some

unknown land in the north every summer and left it every winter. They

also reasoned then, that when they left the unknown land to the north

in the fall, and went south into the North Pacific, they travelled

to some other strange island or continent there, upon which in turn

to spend the winter. Naturally the Russians preferred to look for

the supposed winter resting-places of the fur-seal, and forthwith

a hundred schooners and shallops sailed into storm and fog, to the

northward occasionally, and always to the southward, in search of

this rumored breeding-ground. Indeed, if the record can be credited,

the whole bent of this Russian attention and search for the fur-seal

islands was devoted to that region south of the Aleutian Islands,

between Japan and Oregon.

Hence it was not until 1786, after more than eighteen years of

unremitting search by hardy navigators, that the Pribylov Islands

were discovered. It seems that a rugged Muscovitic “stoorman,”

or ship’s “mate,” Gerassim Pribylov by name, serving under the

direction and in the pay of one of the many companies engaged in

the fur-business at that time, was much moved and exercised in his

mind by the revelations of an old Aleutian shaman at Oonalashka, who

pretended to recite a legend of the natives, wherein he declared that

certain islands in Bering Sea had long been known to the Aleutes.

Pribylov[86] commanded a small sloop, the _St. George_, which he

employed for three successive years in constant, though fruitless,

explorations to the northward of Oonalashka and Oonimak, ranging over

the whole of Bering Sea from the straits above. His ill-success does

not now seem strange as we understand the currents, the winds, and

fogs of those waters. Why, only recently the writer himself has been

on one of the best-manned vessels that ever sailed from any port,

provided with good charts and equipped with all the marine machinery

known to navigation, and that vessel has hovered for nine successive

days off the north point and around St. Paul Island, sometimes almost

on the reef, and never more than ten miles away, without actually

knowing where the island was! So Pribylov did well, considering,

when at the beginning of the third summer’s tedious search, in July,

1786, his old sloop ran up against the walls of Tolstoi Mees, at St.

George, and, though the fog was so thick that he could see scarce the

length of his vessel, his ears were regaled by the sweet music of

seal-rookeries wafted out to him on the heavy air. He knew then that

he had found the object of his search, and he at once took possession

of the island in the Russian name and that of his craft.

His secret could not long be kept. He had left some of his men behind

him to hold the island, and when he returned to Oonalashka they were

gone; and ere the next season fairly opened, a dozen vessels were

watching him and trimming in his wake. Of course, they all found the

island, and in that year, July, 1787, the sailors of Pribylov, on

St. George, while climbing the bluffs and straining their eyes for

a relief-ship, descried the low coast and scattered cones of St.

Paul, thirty-six miles to the northwest of them. When they landed at

St. George, not a sign or a vestige of human habitation was found

thereon; but during the succeeding year, when they crossed over to

St. Paul and took possession of it, in turn, they were surprised at

finding on the south coast of that island, at a point now known as

English Bay, the remains of a recent fire. There were charred embers

of drift-wood and places where grass had been scorched; there was

a pipe and a brass knife-handle, which, I regret to say, have long

passed beyond the cognizance of any ethnologist. This much appears in

the Russian records.

But, if we can believe the Aleutes in what they relate, the islands

were known to them long before they were visited by the Russians.

They knew and called them “Ateek,” after having heard about them. The

legend of these people was as follows:

Eegad-dah-geek, a son of an Oonimak chief of the name of

Ah-kak-nee-kak, was taken out to sea in a bidarka by a storm, the

wind blowing strong from the south. He could not get back to the

beach, nor could he make any other landing, and was obliged to run

before the wind three or four days, when he brought up on St. Paul

Island, north from the land which he had been compelled to leave.

Here he remained until autumn, and became acquainted with the hunting

of different animals. Elegant weather one day setting in, he saw

the peaks of Oonimak. He then resolved to put to sea, and return

to receive the thanks of his people there, and after three or four

days of travelling he arrived at Oonimak with “many otter tails and

snouts.”[87]

The Pribylov Islands lie in the heart of Bering Sea, and are among

the most insignificant landmarks known to that ocean. They are

situated one hundred and ninety-two miles north of Oonalashka, two

hundred miles south of St. Matthews, and about the same distance

westward of Cape Newenham on the mainland.

The islands of St. George and St. Paul are from twenty-seven to

thirty miles apart, St. George lying southeastward of St. Paul. They

are far enough south to be beyond the reach of permanent ice-floes,

upon which polar bears would have made their way to the islands,

though a few of these animals were doubtless always present. They

were also distant enough from the inhabited Aleutian districts and

the coast of the mainland to have remained unknown to savage men.

Hence they afforded the fur-seal the happiest shelter and isolation,

for their position seems to be such as to surround and envelop them

with fog-banks that fairly shut out the sun nine days in every ten

during the summer and breeding-season.

In this location ocean-currents from the great Pacific, warmer than

the normal temperature of this latitude, trending up from southward,

ebb and flow around the islands as they pass, giving rise during the

summer and early autumn to constant, dense, humid fog and drizzling

mists, which hang in heavy banks over the ground and the sea-line,

seldom dissolving away to indicate a pleasant day. By the middle

or end of October strong, cold winds, refrigerated on the Siberian

steppes, sweep down over the islands, carrying off the moisture and

clearing up the air. By the end of January, or early in February,

they usually bring, by their steady pressure, from the north and

northwest, great fields of broken ice, sludgy floes, with nothing

in them approximating or approaching glacial ice. They are not very

heavy or thick, but as the wind blows they compactly cover the whole

surface of the sea, completely shutting in the land, and for months

at a time hush the wonted roar of the surf. In the exceptionally

cold seasons that succeed each other up there every four or five

years, for periods of three and even four months—from December to

May, and sometimes into June—the islands will be completely environed

and ice-bound. On the other hand, in about the same rotation, occur

exceptionally mild winters. Not even the sight of an ice-blink is

recorded then during the whole winter, and there is very little

skating on the shallow lakes and lagoons peculiar to St. Paul and St.

George. This, however, is not often the case.

The breaking up of winter-weather and the precipitation of summer

(for there is no real spring or autumn in these latitudes), usually

commences about the first week in April. The ice begins to leave or

dissolve at that time, or a little later, so that by the 1st or 5th

of May, the beaches and rocky sea-margin beneath the mural precipices

are generally clear and free from ice and snow, although the latter

occasionally lies, until the end of July or the middle of August, in

gullies and on leeward hill-slopes, where it has drifted during the

winter. Fog, thick and heavy, rolls up from the sea, and closes over

the land about the end of May. This, the habitual sign of summer,

holds on steadily to the middle or end of October again.

The periods of change in climate are exceedingly irregular during

the autumn and spring, so-called, but in summer a cool, moist, shady

gray fog is constantly present. To this certainty of favored climate,

coupled with the perfect isolation and an exceeding fitness of the

ground, is due, without doubt, that preference manifested by the

warm-blooded animals which come here every year, in thousands and

hundreds of thousands to breed, to the practical exclusion of all

other ground.[88]

I simply remark here, that the winter which I passed upon St. Paul

Island (1872-73) was one of great severity, and, according to the

natives, such as is very seldom experienced. Cold as it was, however,

the lowest marking of the thermometer was only 12° Fahr. below zero,

and that lasted but a few hours during a single day in February,

while the mean of that month was 18° above. I found that March was

the coldest month. Then the mean was 12° above, and I have since

learned that March continues to be the meanest month of the year.

The lowest average of a usual winter ranges from 22° to 26° above

zero; but these quiet figures are simply inadequate to impress the

reader with this exceeding discomfort of a winter in that locality.

It is the wind that tortures and cripples out-door exercise there,

as it does on all the sea-coasts and islands of Alaska. It is

blowing, blowing, from every point of the compass at all times; it

is an everlasting succession of furious gales, laden with snow and

sleety spiculæ, whirling in great drifts to-day, while to-morrow the

wind will blow from a quarter directly opposite, and reverse its

drift-building action of the day preceding.

Without being cold enough to suffer, one is literally confined

and chained to his room from December until April by this Æolian

tension. I remember very well that, during the winter of 1872-73,

I was watching, with all the impatience which a man in full health

and tired of confinement can possess, every opportunity to seize

upon quiet intervals between the storms, in which I could make

short trips along those tracks over which I was habituated to walk

during the summer; but in all that hyemal season I got out but three

times, and then only by the exertion of great physical energy. On

a day in March, for example, the velocity of the wind at St. Paul,

recorded by one of the signal-service anemometers, was at the rate of

eighty-eight miles per hour, with as low a temperature as -4°! This

particular wind-storm, with snow, blew at such a velocity for six

days without an hour’s cessation, while the natives passed from house

to house crawling on all fours. No man could stand up against it,

and no man wanted to. At a much higher temperature—say at 15° or 16°

above zero—with the wind blowing only twenty or twenty-five miles an

hour, it is necessary, when journeying, to be most thoroughly wrapped

up so as to guard against freezing.

As I have said, there are here virtually but two seasons—winter and

summer. To the former belongs November and the following months up

to the end of April, with a mean temperature of 20° to 28°; while

the transition of summer is but a very slight elevation of that

temperature, not more than 15° or 20°. Of the summer months, July,

perhaps, is the warmest, with an average temperature between 46° and

50° in ordinary seasons. When the sun breaks out through the fog,

and bathes the dripping, water-soaked hills and flats of the island

in its hot flood of light, I have known the thermometer to rise to

60° and 64° in the shade, while the natives crawled out of that

fervent and unwonted heat, anathematizing its brilliancy and potency.

Sunshine does them no good; for, like the seals, they seem under its

influence to swell up at the neck. A little of it suffices handsomely

for both Aleutes and pinnipedia, to whom the ordinary atmosphere is

much more agreeable.

It is astonishing how rapidly snow melts here. This is due, probably,

to the saline character of the air, for when the temperature is only

a single degree above freezing, and after several successive days

in April or May, at 34° and 36°, grass begins to grow, even if it

be under melting drifts, and the frost has penetrated the ground

many feet below. I have said that this humidity and fog, so strongly

and peculiarly characteristic of the Pribylov group, was due to the

warmer ocean-currents setting up from the coast of Japan, trending to

the Arctic through Bering’s Straits, and deflected to the southward

into the North Pacific, laving, as it flows, the numerous passes and

channels of the great Aleutian chain; but I do not think, nor do I

wish to be understood as saying, that my observation in this respect

warrants any conclusion as to so large a Gulf Stream flowing to the

north, such as mariners and hydrographers recognize upon the Atlantic

coast. I do not believe that there is anything of the kind equal to

it in Bering Sea. I believe, however, that there is a steady set up

to the northward from southward around the Seal Islands, which is

continued through Bering’s Straits, and drifts steadily off up to the

northeast, until it is lost beyond Point Barrow. That this pelagic

circulation exists, is clearly proven by the logs of the whalers,

who, from 1845 to 1856, literally filled the air over those waters

with the smoke of their “try-fires,” and ploughed every square rod of

that superficial marine area with their adventurous keels. While no

two, perhaps, of those old whaling captains living to-day will agree

as to the exact course of tides,[89] for Alaskan tides do not seem

to obey any law, they all affirm the existence of a steady current,

passing up from the south to the northeast, through Bering’s Straits.

The flow is not rapid, and is doubtless checked at times, for short

intervals, by other causes, which need not be discussed here. It is

certain, however, that there is warm water enough, abnormal to the

latitude, for the evolution of those characteristic fog-banks, which

almost discomfited Pribylov, at the time of his discovery of the

islands, nearly one hundred years ago, and which have remained ever

since.

Without this fog the fur-seal would never have rested there as he has

done; but when he came on his voyage of discovery, ages ago, up from

the rocky coasts of Patagonia mayhap, had he not found this cool,

moist temperature of St. Paul and St. George, he would have kept on,

completed the circuit, and returned to those congenial antipodes of

his birth.

Speaking of the stormy weather brings to my mind the beautiful,

varied, and impressive nephelogical display in the heavens overhead

here during October and November. I may say, without exaggeration,

that the cloud-effects which I have witnessed from the bluffs of

this little island, at this season of the year, surpass anything

that I had ever seen before. Perhaps the mighty masses of cumuli,

deriving their origin from warm exhalations out of the sea, and

swelled and whirled with such rapidity, in spite of their appearance

of solidity, across the horizon, owe their striking brilliancy of

color and prismatic tones to that low declination of the sun due to

the latitude. Whatever the cause may be, and this is not the place

to discuss it, certainly no other spot on earth can boast of a more

striking and brilliant cloud-display. In the season of 1865-66, when

I was encamped on this same parallel of latitude in the mountains

eastward of Sitka and the interior, I was particularly attracted by

an exceeding brilliancy, persistency, and activity of the aurora;

but here on St. Paul, though I eagerly looked for its dancing light,

it seldom appeared; and when it did it was a sad disappointment, the

exhibition always being insignificant as compared in my mind with its

flashing of my previous experience. A quaint old writer, a hundred

years ago, was describing Norway and its people: he advanced what he

considered a very plausible theory for the cause of the aurora; he

cited an ancient sage, who believed that the change of winds threw

the saline particles of the sea high into the air, and then by aërial

friction, “fermentation” took place, and the light was evolved! I

am sure that the saline particles of Bering Sea were whirled into

the air during the whole of that winter of my residence there, but

no “fermentation” occurred, evidently, since rarely indeed did the

aurora greet my eyes. In the summer season there is considerable

lightning; you will see it streak its zigzag path mornings, evenings,

and even noondays, but from the dark clouds and their swelling masses

upon which it is portrayed no sound returns—a _fulmen brutum_, in

fact. I remember hearing but one clap of thunder while in that

country. If I recollect aright, and my Russian served me well, one

of the old natives told me that it was no mystery, this light of the

aurora, for, said he, “we all believe that there are fire-mountains

away up toward the north, and what we see comes from their burning

throats, mirrored back on the heavens.”

The formation of these islands, St. Paul and St. George, was recent,

geologically speaking, and directly due to volcanic agency, which

lifted them abruptly, though gradually, from the sea-bed. Little

spouting craters then actively poured out cinders and other volcanic

breccia upon the table-bed of basalt, depositing below as well as

above the water’s level as they rose; and subsequently finishing

their work of construction through the agency of these spout-holes

or craters, from which water-puddled ashes and tufa were thrown.

Soon after the elevation and deposit of the igneous matter, all

active volcanic action must have ceased, though a few half-smothered

outbursts seem to have occurred very recently indeed, for on Bobrovia

or Otter Island, six miles southward of St. Paul, is the fresh,

clearly blown-out throat, with the fire-scorched and smoked, smooth,

sharp-cut, funnel-like walls of a crater. This is the only place on

the Seal Islands where there are any evidences of recent discharges

from the crater of a volcano.

Since the period of the upheaval of the group under discussion, the

sea has done much to modify and even enlarge the most important

one, St. Paul, while the others, St. George and Otter, being lifted

abruptly above the power of water and ice to carry and deposit sand,

soil, and boulders, are but little changed from the condition of

their first appearance.

The Russians tell a somewhat strange story in connection with

Pribylov’s landing. They say that both the islands were at first

without vegetation, save St. Paul, where there was a small “talneek,”

or willow, creeping along on the ground; and that on St. George

nothing grew, not even grass, except on the place where the carcasses

of dead animals rotted. Then, in the course of time, both islands

became covered with grass, a great part of it being of the sedge

kind, _Elymus_. This record of Veniaminov, however, is scarcely

credible; there are few, surely, who will not question the opinion

that the seals antedated the vegetation, for, according to his own

statements, these creatures were there then in the same immense

numbers that we find them to-day. The vegetation on these islands,

such as it is, is fresh and luxuriant during the growing season of

June and July and early August, but the beauty and economic value

of trees and shrubbery, of cereals and vegetables, are denied to

them by climatic conditions. Still I am strongly inclined to believe

that, should some of those hardy shrubs and spruce trees indigenous

at Sitka or Kadiak, be transplanted properly to any of the southern

hill-slopes of St. Paul most favored by soil, drainage, and bluffs,

for shelter from saline gales, they might grow, though I know that,

owing to the lack of sunlight, they would never mature their seed.

There is, however, during the summer, a beautiful spread of grasses,

of flowering annuals, biennials, and perennials, of gayly-colored

lichens and crinkled mosses,[90] which have always afforded me great

delight whenever I have pressed my way over the moors and up the

hillsides of the rookeries.

[Illustration: THE NORTH SHORE OF SAINT GEORGE

View of the Coast looking East from the North Rookery over to the

Village and the Landing]

There are ten or twelve species of grasses of every variety, from

close, curly, compact mats to tall stalks—tussocks of the wild wheat,

_Elymus arenaria_, standing in favorable seasons waist high—the

“wheat of the north”—together with over one hundred varieties

of annuals, perennials, sphagnum, cryptogamic plants, etc., all

flourishing in their respective positions, and covering nearly

every point of rock, tufa, cement, and sand that a plant can grow

upon, with a living coat of the greenest of all greens—for there

is not sunlight enough there to ripen any perceptible tinge of

ochre-yellow into it—so green that it gives a deep blue tint to gray

noonday shadows, contrasting pleasantly with the varying russets,

reds, lemon-yellows, and grays of the lichen-covered rocks, and

the brownish-purple of the wild wheat on the sand-dune tracts in

autumn, together, also, with innumerable blue, yellow, pink, and

white phænogamous blossoms, everywhere interspersed over the grassy

uplands and sandy flats. Occasionally, on looking into the thickest

masses of verdure, our common wild violet will be found, while the

phloxes are especially bright and brilliant here. The flowers of

one species of gentian, _Gentiana verna_ are very marked in their

beauty; also those of a nasturtium, and a creeping pea-vine on the

sand-dunes. The blossom of a species of the pulse family is the only

one here that emits a positive, rich perfume; the others are more

suggestive of that quality than expressive. The most striking plant

in all of a long list is the _Archangelica officinalis_, with its

tall seed-stalks and broad leaves, which grows first in spring and

keeps green latest in the fall. The luxuriant rhubarb-like stems of

this umbellifer, after they have made their rapid growth in June,

are eagerly sought for by the natives, who pull them and crunch them

between their teeth with all the relish that we experience in eating

celery. The exhibition of ferns at Kamminista, St. Paul, during the

summer of 1872, surpassed anything that I ever saw: I recall with

vivid detail the exceedingly fine display made by these luxuriant and

waving fronds, as they reared themselves above the rough interstices

of that rocky ridge. From the fern roots, and those of the gentian,

the natives here draw their entire stock of vegetable medicines.

This floral display on St. Paul is very much more extensive and

conspicuous than that on St. George, owing to the absence of any

noteworthy extent of warm sand-dune country on the latter island.

When an unusually warm summer passes over the Pribylov group,

followed by an open fall and a mild winter, the elymus ripens its

seed, and stands like fields of uncut grain in many places along

the north shore of St. Paul and around the village, the snow not

falling enough to entirely obliterate it; but it is seldom allowed

to flourish to that extent. By the end of August and the first

week of September of normal seasons, the small edible berries of

_Empetrum nigrum_ and _Rubus chamæmorus_ are ripe. They are found in

considerable quantities, especially at “Zapadnie,” on both islands,

and, as everywhere else throughout circumpolar latitudes, the

former is small, watery, and dark, about the size of an English or

black currant; the other resembles an unripe and partially decayed

raspberry. They are, however, keenly relished by the natives, and

even by American residents, being the only fruit growing upon the

islands. Perhaps no one plant that flowers on the Seal Islands is

more conspicuous and abundant than is the _Saxifraga oppositofolia_;

it grows over all localities, rank and tall in rich locations,

to stems scarcely one inch high on the thin, poor soil of hill

summits and sides, densely cespitose, with leaves all imbricated

in four rows; and flowers almost sessile. I think that at least

ten well-defined species of the order _Saxifragaceæ_ exist on

the Pribylov group. The _Ranunculaceæ_ are not so numerous; but,

still, a buttercup growing in every low slope where you may chance

to wander is always a pleasant reminder of pastures at home; and,

also, a suggestion of the farm is constantly made by the luxuriant

inflorescence of the wild mustard (_Cruciferæ_). The chickweeds

(_Caryophyllaceæ_) are well represented, and also the familiar

yellow dandelion, Taraxacum palustre. Many lichens (_Lichenes_) and

soft mosses (_Musci_) are in their greatest exuberance, variety,

and beauty here; and myriads of golden poppies (_Papaveraceæ_) are

nodding their graceful heads in the sweeping of the winds—the first

flowers to bloom, and the last to fade.

The chief economic value rendered by the botany of the Pribylov

Islands to the natives is an abundance of the basket-making rushes

(_Juncaceæ_), which the old “barbies” gather in the margins of many

of the lakes and pools.

The only suggestion of a tree[91] found growing on the Pribylov

group is the hardy “talneek” or creeping willow; there are three

species of the genus _Salix_ found here, viz., _reticulata_,

_polaris_, and _arctica_; the first named is the most common and of

largest growth; it progresses exactly as a cucumber-vine does in our

gardens; as soon as it has made from the seed a growth of six inches

or a foot upright from the soil, then it droops over and crawls along

prostrate upon the earth, rocks, and sphagnum; some of the largest

talneek trunks will measure eight or ten feet in decumbent length

along the ground, and are as large around the stump as an average

wrist of man. The usual size, however, is very, very much less; while

the stems of _polaris_ and _arctica_ scarcely ever reach the diameter

of a pencil case, or the procumbent length of two feet.

Although _Rubus chamæmorus_ is a tree-shrub, and is found here very

commonly distributed, yet it grows such a slender diminutive bush,

that it gives no thought whatever of its being anything of the sort.

Herbs, grasses, and ferns tower above it on all sides.

The fungoid growths on the Pribylov Islands are abundant and varied,

especially in and around the vicinity of the rookeries and the

killing-grounds. On the west slope of the Black bluffs at St. Paul

the mushroom, _Agaricus campestris_, was gathered in the season of

1872 by the natives, and eaten by one or two families in the village,

who had learned to cook them nicely from the Russians. These Seal

Island mushrooms have deeper tones of pink and purple-red in their

gills than do those of my gathering in the States. I kicked over

many large spherical “puff-balls” (_Lycoperdæ_) in my tundra walks;

myriads of smaller ones (_Lycoperdon cinereum?_) cover patches near

the spots where carcasses have long since rotted, together with

a pale gray fungus (_Agaricus fimiputris_), exceedingly delicate

and frosted exquisitely. Some ligneous fungi (_Clavaria_), will be

found attached to the decaying stems of _Salix reticulata_ (creeping

willows). The irregularity of the annual growing of the agarics, and

their rapid growth when they do appear, makes their determination

excessively difficult; they are as unstable in their visits as are

several of the _Lepidoptera_. The cool humidity of climate during

the summer season on the Pribylov Islands is especially adapted to

that mysterious, but beautiful growth of these plants—the apotheosis

of decay. The coloring of several varieties is very bright and

attractive, shading from a purplish-scarlet to a pallid white.

A great many attempts have been made, both here and at St. George, to

raise a few of the hardy vegetables. With the exception of growing

lettuce, turnips, and radishes on the Island of St. Paul, nothing

has been or can be done. On the south shore of St. George, and at

the foot of a mural bluff, is a little patch of ground less in area

than one-sixteenth of an acre, which appears to be so drained and

so warmed by the rarely-reflected sunlight from this cliff, every

ray of which seems to be gathered and radiated from the rocks, as to

allow the production of fair turnips; and at one season there were

actually raised potatoes as large as walnuts. Gardening, however, on

either island involves so much labor and so much care, with so poor a

return, that it has been discontinued. It is a great deal better, and

a great deal easier, to have the “truck” come up once a year from San

Francisco on the steamer.

There is one comfort which nature has vouchsafed to civilized man

on these islands. There are very few indigenous insects. A large

flesh-fly, _Bombylius major_, appears during the summer and settles

in a striking manner on the backs of quiet, loafing natives, or

strings itself in rows of millions upon the long grass-blades which

flourish about the killing-grounds, especially on the leaf-stalks of

an elymus, causing this vegetation, over the whole slaughtering-field

and vicinity, to fairly droop to earth as if beaten down by a

tornado of wind and rain. It makes the landscape look as though it

had moulded over night, and the fungoid spores were blue and gray.

Our common house-fly is not present; I never saw one while I was up

there. The flesh-flies which I have just mentioned never came into

the dwellings unless by accident: the natives say they do not annoy

them, and I did not notice any disturbance among the few animals

which the resident company had imported for beef and for service.

Then, again, this is perhaps the only place in all Alaska where man,

primitive and civilized, is not cursed by mosquitoes. There are none

here. A gnat, that is disagreeably suggestive of the real enemy just

referred to, flits about in large swarms, but it is inoffensive,

and seeks shelter in the grass. Several species of beetles are also

numerous here. One of them, the famous green and gold “carabus,” is

exceedingly common, crawling everywhere, and is just as bright in

the rich bronzing of its wing-shields as are its famous prototypes

of Brazil. One or two species of _Itemosa_, a _Cymindis_, several

representatives of the _Aphidiphaga_, one or two of _Dytiscidæ_,

three or four _Cicindelidæ_—these are nearly all that I found. A

single dragon-fly, _Perla bicaudata_, flitted over the lakes and

ponds of St Paul. The familiar form to our eyes, of the bumble-bee,

_Bombus borealis_, passing from flower to flower, was rarely seen;

but a few are here resident. The _Hydrocorisæ_ occur in great

abundance, skipping over the water in the lakes and pools everywhere,

and a very few species of butterflies, principally the yellow

_Nymphalidæ_, are represented by numerous individuals.

Aside from the seal-life on the Pribylov Islands, there is no

indigenous mammalian creature, with the exception of the blue and

white foxes, _Vulpes lagopus_,[92] and a lemming, _Myodes obensis_.

The latter is restricted, for some reason or other, to the Island of

St. George, where it is, or at least was, in 1874, very abundant.

Its burrows and paths, under and among the grassy hummocks and

mossy flats, checkered every square rod of land there covered with

this vegetation. Although the Island of St. Paul is but twenty-nine

or thirty miles to the northwest, not a single one of these active,

curious little animals is found there, nor could I learn from

the natives that it had ever been seen there. The foxes are also

restricted to these islands; that is, their kind, which are not found

elsewhere, except the stray examples on St. Matthew seen by myself,

and those which are carefully domesticated and preserved at Attoo,

the extreme westernmost land of the Aleutian chain. These animals

find comfortable holes for their accommodation and retreat on the

Seal Islands, among the countless chinks and crevices of the basaltic

formation. They feed and grow fat upon sick and weakly seals, also

devouring many of the pups, and they vary this diet by water-fowl and

eggs[93] during the summer, returning for their subsistence during

the long winter to the bodies of seals upon the breeding-grounds and

the skinned carcasses left upon the killing-fields. Were they not

regularly hunted from December until April, when their fur is in its

prime beauty and condition, they would swarm like the lemming on St.

George, and perhaps would soon be obliged to eat one another. The

natives, however, thin them out by incessant trapping and shooting

during the period when the seals are away from the islands.

The Pribylov group is as yet free from rats; at least none have got

off from the ships. There is no harbor on either of these islands,

and vessels lie out in the roadstead, so far from land that those

pests do not venture to swim to the shore. Mice were long ago brought

to shore in ships’ cargoes, and they are a great nuisance to the

white people as well as the natives throughout the islands. Hence

cats also are abundant. Nowhere, perhaps, in the wide world are such

cats to be seen as these. The tabby of our acquaintance, when she

goes up there and lives upon the seal-meat spread everywhere under

her nose, is metamorphosed, by time of the second generation, into

a stubby feline ball. In other words, she becomes thickened, short,

and loses part of the normal length of her tail; also her voice is

prolonged and resonant far beyond the misery which she inflicts upon

our ears here. These cats actually swarm about the natives’ houses,

never in them much, for only a tithe of their whole number can be

made pets of; but they do make night hideous beyond all description.

They repair for shelter often to the chinks of precipices and bluffs;

but although not exactly wild, yet they cannot be approached or

cajoled. The natives, when their sluggish wits are periodically

aroused and thoroughly disturbed by the volume of cat-calls in their

village, sally out and by a vigorous effort abate the nuisance for

the time being. Only the most fiendish caterwauling will or can

arouse this Aleutian ire.

On account of the severe climatic conditions it is, of course,

impracticable to keep stock here with any profit or pleasure. The

experiment has been tried faithfully. It is found best to bring

beef-cattle up in the spring on the steamer, turn them out to

pasture until the close of the season in October and November,

and then, if the snow comes, to kill them and keep the carcasses

refrigerated until consumed. Stock cannot be profitably raised here;

the proportion of severe weather annually is too great. From three to

perhaps six months of every year they require feeding and watering,

with good shelter. To furnish an animal with hay and grain up there

is a costly matter, and the dampness of the growing summer season on

both islands renders hay-making impracticable. Perhaps a few head of

hardy Siberian cattle might pick up a living on the north shore of

St Paul, among the grasses and sand-dunes there, with nothing more

than shelter and water given them; but they would need both of these

attentions. Then the care of them would hardly return expenses, as

the entire grazing-ground could not support any number of animals.

It is less than two square miles in extent, and half of this area

is unproductive. Then, too, a struggle for existence would reduce

the flesh and vitality of these cattle to so low an ebb that it is

doubtful whether they could be put through another winter alive,

especially if severe. I was then and am now strongly inclined to

think that if a few of those Siberian reindeer could be brought over

to St. Paul and to St. George they would make a very successful

struggle for existence, and be a source of a good supply, summer

and winter, of fresh meat for the agents of the Government and the

company who may be living upon the islands. I do not think that they

would be inclined to molest or visit the seal-grounds; at least, I

noticed that the cattle and mules of the company running loose on St.

Paul were careful never to poke around on the outskirts of a rookery,

and deer would be more timid and less obtrusive than our domesticated

animals. But I did notice on St. George that a little squad of sheep,

brought up and turned out there for a summer’s feeding, seemed to be

so attracted by the quiet calls of the pups on the rookeries that

they were drawn to and remained by the seals without disturbing

them at all, to their own physical detriment, for they lost better

pasturage by so doing. The natives of St. Paul have a strange passion

for seal-fed pork, and there are quite a large number of pigs on the

Island of St. Paul and a few on St. George. Such hogs soon become

entirely carnivorous, living, to the practical exclusion of all other

diet, on the carcasses of seals.

Chickens are kept with great difficulty. In fact, it is only possible

to save their lives when the natives take them into their own rooms

or keep them over their heads, in their dwellings, during winter.

[Illustration: NETTING CHOOCHKIES

A Native catching little Auks (_Simorhyncus Pusillus_), St. Paul’s

Island]

While the great exhibition of pinnipedia preponderates over every

other feature of animal life at the Seal Islands, still there is

a wonderful aggregate of ornithological representation thereon.

The spectacle of birds nesting and breeding, as they do on St.

George Island, to the number of millions, flecking those high

basaltic bluffs of its shore-line, twenty-nine miles in length,

with color-patches of black, brown, and white, as they perch or

cling to the mural cliffs in the labor of incubation, is a sight of

exceeding attraction and constant novelty. It affords a naturalist

an opportunity of a lifetime for minute investigation into all the

details of the reproduction of these vast flocks of circumboreal

water-fowl. The Island of St. Paul, owing to the low character of its

shore-line, a large proportion of which is but slightly elevated

above the sea and is sandy, is not visited and cannot be visited by

such myriads of birds as are seen at St. George; but the small rocky

Walrus Islet is fairly covered with sea-fowls, and the Otter Island

bluffs are crowded by them to their utmost capacity of reception. The

birds string themselves anew around the bluffs with every succeeding

season, like endless ribbons stretched across their rugged faces,

while their numbers are simply countless. The variety is not great,

however, in these millions of breeding-birds. It consists of only

ten or twelve names, and the whole list of birds belonging to the

Pribylov Islands, stragglers and migratory, contains but forty

species. Conspicuous among the last-named class is the robin, a

straggler which was brought from the mainland, evidently against its

own effort, by a storm or a gale of wind, which also brings against

their will the solitary hawks, owls, and waders occasionally noticed

here.

After the dead silence of a long ice-bound winter, the arrival of

large flocks of those sparrows of the north, the “choochkies,”

_Phaleris microceros_, is most cheerful and interesting. These

plump little auks are bright, fearless, vivacious birds, with

bodies round and fat. They come usually in chattering flocks on

or immediately after May 1st, and are caught by the people with

hand-scoops or dip-nets to any number that may be required for the

day’s consumption, their tiny, rotund forms making pies of rare

savory virtue, and being also baked and roasted and stewed in every

conceivable shape by skilful cooks. Indeed, they are equal to the

reed-birds of the South. These welcome visitors are succeeded along

about July 20th by large flocks of fat, red-legged turn-stones,

_Strepsilas interpres_, which come in suddenly from the west or

north, where they have been breeding, and stop on the islands for

a month or six weeks, as the case may be, to feed luxuriantly upon

the flesh-flies, which we have just noticed, and their eggs. These

handsome birds go in among the seals, familiarly chasing the flies,

gnats, etc. They are followed as they leave in September by several

species of jack-snipe and a plover, _Tringa_ and _Charadrius_.

These, however, soon depart, as early as the end of October and the

beginning of November, and then winter fairly closes in upon the

islands. The loud, roaring, incessant seal-din, together with the

screams and darkening flight of innumerable water-fowl, are replaced

in turn again by absolute silence, marking out, as it were, in lines

of sharp and vivid contrast, summer’s life and winter’s death.

The author of that quaint old saying, “Birds of a feather flock

together,” might well have gained his inspiration had he stood under

the high bluffs of St. George at any season, prehistoric or present,

during the breeding of the water-birds there, where myriads of

croaking murres and flocks of screaming gulls darken the light of day

with their fluttering forms, and deafen the ear with their shrill,

harsh cries as they do now, for music is denied to all those birds

of the sea. Still, in spite of the apparent confusion, he would have

taken cognizance of the fact that each species had its particular

location and kept to its own boundary, according to the precision of

natural law. The dreary expanse and lonely solitudes of the North

owe their chief enlivenment, and their principal attractiveness for

man, to the presence of those vast flocks of circumboreal water-fowl,

which repair thither annually.

Over fifteen miles of the bold, basaltic, bluff line of St. George

Island is fairly covered with nesting gulls (_Rissa_) and “arries”

(_Uria_), while down in the countless chinks and holes over the

entire surface of the north side of this island millions of

“choochkies” (_Simorhyncus microceros_) breed, filling the air and

darkening the light of day with their cries and fluttering forms.

On Walrus Islet the nests of the great white gull of the north

(_Larus glaucus_) can be visited and inspected, as well as those

of the sea-parrot or puffin (_Fratercula_), shags or cormorants

(_Graculus_), and the red-legged kittiwake (_Larus brevirostris_).

These birds are accessible on every side, can be reached, and afford

the observer an unequalled opportunity of taking due notice of them

through the breeding-season of their own, as it begins in May and

continues until the end of September.

Not one of the water-birds found on and around the islands is

exempted from a place in the native’s larder; even the delectable

“oreelie” are unhesitatingly eaten by the people, and indeed these

birds furnish, during the winter season in especial, an almost

certain source of supply for fresh meat. But the heart of the Aleut

swells to its greatest gastronomic happiness when he can repair, in

the months of June and July, to the basaltic cliffs of St. George, or

the lava table-bed of Walrus Islet, and lay his grimy hands on the

gayly-colored eggs of the “arrie” (_Lomvia arra_); and if he were not

the most improvident of men, instead of taking only enough for the

day, he would lay up a great store for the morrow, but he never does.

On the occasion of one visit, and my first one there, July 5, 1872,

six men loaded a bidarrah at Walrus Islet, capable of carrying four

tons, exclusive of our crew, down to the water’s edge with eggs, in

less than three working hours.[94]

During winter months these birds are almost wholly absent, especially

so if ice-floes shall have closed in around the islands; then

there is nothing of the feathered kind save a stupid shag (_P.

bicristatus_) as it clings to the leeward cliffs, or the great

burgomaster gull, which sweeps in circling flight high overhead; but,

early in May they begin to make their first appearance, and they come

up from the sea overnight, as it were, their chattering and their

harsh carolling waking the natives from slothful sleeping, which,

however, they gladly break, to seize their nets and live life anew,

as far as eating is concerned. The stress of severe weather in the

winter months, the driving of the snow “boorgas,” and the floating

ice-fields closing in to shut out the open water, are cause enough

for a disappearance of all water-fowl, _pro tem_.

Again, the timid traveller here is delighted; he has been relieved

of the great Alaskan curse of mosquitoes: he also walks the moors and

hillsides secure in never finding a reptile of any sort whatever—no

snakes, no lizards, no toads or frogs—nothing of the sort to be found

on the Seal Islands.

Fish are scarce in the vicinity of these islands. Only a few

representatives of those families which can secrete themselves with

rare cunning are safe in visiting the Pribylovs in summer. Naturally

enough, the finny tribes avoid the seal-churned waters for at least

one hundred miles around. Among a few specimens, however, which I

collected, three or four species new to natural science were found,

and have since been named by experts in the Smithsonian Institution.

[Illustration: Aleutes catching Halibut, Akootan Pass, Bering Sea.]

The presence of such great numbers of amphibian mammalia about the

waters during five or six months of every year renders all fishing

abortive, and unless expeditions are made seven or eight miles at

least from the land, unless you desire to catch large halibut, it is

a waste of time to cast your line over the gunwale of the boat. The

natives capture “poltoos” or halibut, _Hippoglossus vulgaris_, within

two or three miles of the reef-point on St. Paul and the south shore

during July and August. After this season the weather is usually so

stormy and cold that fishermen venture no more until the ensuing

summer.[95]

With regard to the _Mollusca_ of the Pribylov waters, the

characteristic forms of _Toxoglossata_ and _Rhachiglossata_ peculiar

to this north latitude are most abundant; of the _Cephalopoda_ I have

seen only a species of squid, _sepia_, or _loligo_. The clustering

whelks (_Buccinum_) literally conceal large areas of the boulders

on the beaches here and there. They are in immense numbers, and are

crushed under your foot at almost every step when you pass over

long reaches of rocky shingle at low tide. A few of the _Neptunea_

are found, and the live and dead shells of _Limacina_ are in great

abundance wherever the floating kelp-beds afford them shelter.

On land a very large number of shells of the genera _Succinea_ and

_Pupa_ abound all over the islands. On the bluffs of St. George, just

over Garden Cove, I gathered a beautiful _Helix_.

The little fresh-water lakes and ponds contain a great quantity of

representatives of the characteristic genera _Planorbis_, _Melania_,

_Limnea_, and that pretty little bivalve, the _Cyclas_.

Of the _Crustacea_, the _Annelidæ_, and _Echinodermata_, there is

abundant representation here. The sea-urchins, “repkie” of the

natives, are eagerly sought for at low tide and eaten raw by them.

The arctic sea-clam, _Mya truncata_, is once in a long time found

here (it is the chief food of the walrus of Alaska), and the species

of _Mytilus_, the mussels, so abundant in the Aleutian archipelago,

are almost absent here at St. Paul and only sparingly found at St.

George. Frequently the natives have brought a dish of sea-urchins’

viscera for our table, offering it as a great delicacy. I do not

think any of us did more than to taste it. The native women are the

chief hunters for echinoidæ, and during the whole spring and summer

seasons they will be seen at both islands, wading in the pools at low

water, with their scanty skirts high up, eagerly laying possessive

hands upon every “bristling egg” that shows itself. They vary this

search by poking, with a short-handled hook, into holes and rocky

crevices for a small cottoid fish, which is also found here at low

water in this manner. Specimens of this cottoid which I brought down

declared themselves as representatives of a new departure from all

other recognized forms in which the sculpin is known to sport; hence

the name, generic and specific. The “sandcake,” _echinarachinus_, is

also very common here.

By May 28th to the middle of June a fine table-crab, large, fat, and

sweet, with a light, brittle shell, is taken while it is skurrying

in and out of the lagoon as the tide ebbs and flows. It is the

best-flavored crustacean known to Alaskan waters. They are taken

nowhere else at St. Paul, and when on St. George I failed to see one.

I am not certain as to the accuracy of the season of running, viz.:

May 28th to June 15th, inasmuch as one of my little note-books on

which this date is recorded turns out to be missing at the present

writing, and I am obliged to give it from memory. The only economic

shell-fish which the islands afford is embodied in this _Chionoecetes

opilio (?)_. The natives affirm an existence of mussels here in

abundance when the Pribylov group was first discovered; but now only

a small supply of inferior size and quality is to be found.

With reference to the jelly-fishes, _Medusæ_, which are so abundant

in the waters around these islands, their exceeding number

and variety and beauty startled and enchanted me. An enormous

aggregate of these creatures, some of them exquisitely delicate and

translucent, ride in and out of the lagoon at St. Paul when the

spring-tides flow and ebb. Myriads of them are annually stranded, to

decay on the sandy flats of this estuary.

[Illustration: MAP OF ST. PAUL ISLAND—PRIBYLOV GROUP.

Showing the Area and Position of the Fur Seal Rookeries and Hauling

Grounds. Surveyed and drawn (1873-74) by HENRY W. ELLIOTT.]

As to sea-weeds, or mosses,—the extent, luxuriance, variety, and

beauty of the algæ forests of those waters of Bering Sea which

lave the coasts of the Pribylov Islands, call for more detail of

description than space in this volume will allow, since anything like

a fair presentation of the subject would require the reproduction

of my water-colored drawings. After all heavier gales, especially

the southeasters in October, if a naturalist will take the trouble

to walk the sand-beach between Lukannon and northeast point of St.

Paul Island, he will be rewarded by the memorable sight. He will

find thrown up by the surf a vast windrow of kelp along the whole

eight or ten miles of this walk—heaped, at some spots, nearly as high

as his head; the large trunks of _Melanospermæ_, the small, but

brilliant red and crimson fronds of _Rhodospermæ_ interwoven with the

emerald-green leaves of the _Chlorospermæ_. The first-named group is

by far the most abundant, and upon its decaying, fermenting brown

and ochre heaps, he will see countless numbers of a buccinoid whelk,

and a limnaca, feeding as they bore or suck out myriads of tiny

holes in the leaf-fronds of the strong growing species. _Actinia_ or

sea-anemones, together with asteroids or starfishes, _Discophoræ_ or

jelly-fishes, are also interwoven and heaped up with the “kapoosta”

or sea-cabbages just referred to; also, many rosy “sea-squirts,”

yellow “cucumbers,” and other forms of _Holothuridæ_.

On the old killing-fields, on those spots where the sloughing

carcasses of repeated seasons have so enriched the soil as to render

it like fire to most vegetation, a silken green _Confervæ_ grows

luxuriantly. This terrestrial algoid covering appears here and there,

on these grounds, like so many door-mats of pea-green wool. That

confervoid flourishes only on those spots where nothing but pure

decaying animal matter is found. An admixture of sand or earth will

always supplant it by raising up instead those strong growing grasses

which I have alluded to elsewhere, and which constitute the chief

botanical life of the killing-grounds.

In order that the reader can follow easily the narrative of that

remarkable life-system which is conducted by the fur-seal as it

annually rests and breeds upon the Pribylov group, I present a

careful chart of each island and the contiguous islets, which are

the only surveys ever made upon the ground. The reader will observe,

as he turns to these maps, the striking dissimilarity which exists

between them, not only in contour but in physical structure, the

Island of St. Paul being the largest in superficial area, and

receiving a vast majority of the _Pinnipedia_ that belong to both. As

it lies in Bering Sea to-day, this island is, in its greatest length,

between northeast and southwest points, thirteen miles, air-line;

and a little less than six at points of greatest width. It has a

superficial area of about thirty-three square miles, or twenty-one

thousand one hundred and twenty acres, of diversified, rough and

rocky uplands, rugged hills, and smooth, volcanic cones, which either

set down boldly to the sea or fade out into extensive wet and mossy

flats, passing at the sea-margins into dry, drifting, sand-dune

tracts. It has forty-two miles of shore-line, and of this coast

sixteen and a half miles are hauled over by fur-seals _en masse_.

At the time of its first upheaval above the sea, it doubtless

presented the appearance of ten or twelve small rocky, bluffy islets

and points, upon some of which were craters that vomited breccia and

cinders, with little or no lava overflowing. Active plutonic agency

must have soon ceased after this elevation, and then the sea round

about commenced a work which it is now engaged in—of building on to

the skeleton thus created; and it has progressed to-day so thoroughly

and successfully in its labor of sand-shifting, together with the aid

of ice-floes, in their action of grinding, lifting, and shoving, that

nearly all of these scattered islets within the present area of the

island, and marked by its bluffs and higher uplands, are completely

bound together by ropes of sand, changed into enduring bars and

ridges of water-worn boulders. These are raised above the highest

tides by winds that whirl the sand up, over and on them, as it dries

out from the wash of the surf and from the interstices of rocks,

which are lifted up and pushed by ice-fields.

The sand that plays so important a part in the formation of the

Island of St. Paul, and which is almost entirely wanting in and

around the others of this Pribylov group, is principally composed of

_Foraminifera_, together with _Diatomacea_, mixed in with a volcanic

base of fine comminuted black and reddish lavas and old friable gray

slates. It constitutes the chief beauty of the sea-shore here, for it

changes color like a chameleon, as it passes from wet to dry, being

a rich steely-black at the surf-margin and then drying out to a soft

purplish-brown and gray, succeeding to tints most delicate of reddish

and pale neutral, when warmed by the sun and drifting up on to the

higher ground with the wind. The sand-dune tracts on this island are

really attractive in the summer, especially so during those rare days

when the sun comes out, and the unwonted light shimmers over them and

the most luxuriant grass and variety of beautiful flowers which exist

in profusion thereon. In past time, as these sand and boulder bars

were forming on St. Paul Island, they, in making across from islet to

islet, enclosed small bodies of sea-water. These have, by evaporation

and time, by the flooding of rains and annual melting of snow,

become, nearly every one of them, fresh; they are all, great and

small, well shown on my map, which locates quite a large area of pure

water. In them, as I have hinted, are no reptiles; but an exquisite

species of a tiny fish[96] exists in the lagoon-estuary near the

village, and the small pure-water lakes of the natives just under

the flanks of Telegraph Hill. The Aleutes assured me that they had

caught fish in the big lake toward Northeast Point, when they lived

in their old village out there; but, I never succeeded in getting

a single specimen. The waters of these pools and ponds are fairly

alive with vast numbers of minute _Rotifera_, which sport about in

all of them wherever they are examined. Many species of water-plants,

pond-lilies, algæ, etc., are found in those inland waters, especially

in that large lake “Mee-sulk-mah-nee,” which is very shallow.

The backbone of St. Paul, running directly east and west, from shore

to shore, between Polavina Point and Einahnuhto Hills, constitutes

the high land of that island: Polavina Sopka, an old extinct

cinder-crater, five hundred and fifty feet; Bogaslov, an upheaved

mass of splinted lava, six hundred feet; and the hills frowning over

the bluffs there, on the west shore, are also six hundred feet in

elevation above the sea. But the average height of the upland between

is not much over one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet above

water-level, rising here and there into little hills and broad, rocky

ridges, which are minutely sketched upon the map. From the northern

base of Polavina Sopka a long stretch of low sand-flats extends,

enclosing the great lake, and ending in a narrow neck where it unites

with Novastoshnah, or Northeast Point. Here that volcanic nodule

known as Hutchinson’s Hill, with its low, gradual slopes, trending to

the east and southward, makes a rocky foundation secure and broad,

upon which the great single rookery of the island, the greatest in

the world, undoubtedly, is located. The natives say that when they

first came to these islands Novastoshna was an island by itself, to

which they went in boats from Vesolia Mista; and the lagoon now so

tightly enclosed was then an open harbor in which the ships of the

old Russian Company rode safely at anchor. To-day, no vessel drawing

ten feet of water can safely get nearer than half a mile of the

village, or a mile from this lagoon at low tide.

The total absence of a harbor at the Pribylov Islands is much to be

regretted. The village of St. Paul, as will be seen by reference to

the map, is so located as to command the best landings for vessels

that can be made during the prevalence of any and all winds, except

those from the south. From these there is no shelter for ships,

unless they run around to the north side, where they are unable to

hold practicable communication with the people or to discharge. At

St. George matters are still worse, for the prevailing northerly,

westerly, and easterly winds drive the boats away from the village

roadstead, and weeks often pass at either island, but more frequently

at the latter, ere a cargo is landed at its destination. Under the

very best circumstances, it is both hazardous and trying to unload a

ship at any of these places. The approach to St. Paul by water during

thick weather is doubtful and dangerous, for the land is mostly low

at the coast, and the fogs hang so dense and heavy over and around

the hills as to completely obliterate their presence from vision.

The captain fairly feels his way in by throwing his lead-line and

straining his ear to catch the muffled roar of the seal-rookeries,

which are easily detected when once understood, high above the

booming of the surf. At St. George, however, the bold, abrupt, bluffy

coast everywhere all around, with its circling girdle of flying

water-birds far out to sea, looms up quite prominently, even in the

fog; or, in other words, the navigator can notice it before he is

hard aground or struggling to haul to windward from the breakers

under his lee. There are no reefs making out from St. George worthy

of notice, but there are several very dangerous and extended ones

peculiar to St. Paul, which Captain John G. Baker, in command of the

vessel[97] under my direction, carefully sounded out, and which I

have placed upon my chart for the guidance of those who may sail in

my wake hereafter.

When the wind blows from the north, northwest, and west to southwest,

the company’s steamer drops her anchor in eight fathoms of water

abreast of the black bluffs opposite the village, from which

anchorage her stores are lightered ashore; but in the northeasterly,

easterly, and southeasterly winds, she hauls around to the lagoon bay

west of the village, and there, little less than half a mile from the

landing, she drops her anchor in nine fathoms of water, and makes

considerable headway at discharging her cargo. Sailing-craft come to

both anchorages, but, however, keep still farther out, though they

choose relatively the same positions, yet seek deeper water to swing

to their cables in: the holding-ground is excellent. At St. George

the steamer comes, wind permitting, directly to the village on the

north shore, close up, and finds her anchorage in ten fathoms of

water, over poor holding-ground; still it is only when three or four

days have passed, free from northerly, westerly, or easterly winds

that she can make the first attempt to safely unload. The landing

here is a very bad one, surf breaking most violently upon the rocks

from one end of the year to the other.

[Illustration: “Bobrovia,” or Otter Island six miles south of St.

Paul Island.

[_The North Store and landing, viewed from St. Paul._]]

The observer will notice that six miles southward and westward

of the reef of St. Paul Island is a bluffy islet, called by the

Russians Bobrovia, because in olden time the promishlyniks are said

to have captured many thousands of sea-otters on its rocky coast. It

rises from the ocean, sheer and bold, an unbroken mural precipice

extending nearly all around, of sea-front, but dropping on its

northern margin, at the water, low, and slightly elevated above the

surf-wash, with a broken, rocky beach and no sand. The height of the

bluffs at their greatest elevation over the west end is three hundred

feet, while the eastern extremity is quite low, and terminated

by a queer, funnel-shaped crater-hill, which is as distinctly

defined, and as plainly scorched and devoid of the slightest sign of

vegetation within as though it had burned up and out yesterday. That

crater-point on Otter Island is the only unique feature of the place,

for with the exception of this low north shore, before mentioned,

where a few thousand of “bachelor seals” haul out during the season

every year, there is nothing else worthy of notice concerning it.

A bad reef makes out to the westward, which I have indicated from

my observation of the rocks awash, looking down upon them from the

bluffs. Great numbers of water-fowl roost upon the cliffs, and there

are here about as many blue foxes to the acre as the law of life

allows. A small, shallow pool of impure water lies close down to

the north shore, right under a low hill upon which the Russians in

olden times posted a huge Greek cross, that is still standing; indeed

it was the habit of those early days of occupation in Alaska to

erect such monuments everywhere on conspicuous elevations adjacent

to the posts or settlements. One of these is still standing at

Northeast Point, on the large sand-dune there which overlooks the

killing-grounds, and another sound stalwart cross yet faces the gales

and driving “boorgas” on the summit of Bogaslov Mountain, as it has

withstood them during the last sixty years.

To the eastward, six miles from Northeast Point, will be noticed

a small rock named Walrus Island. It is a mere ledge of lava,

flat-capped, lifted just above the wash of angry waves; indeed, in

storms of great power, the observer, standing on either Cross or

Hutchinson’s Hills, with a field-glass, can see the water breaking

clear over it: these storms, however, occur late in the season,

usually in October or November. This island has little or no

commercial importance, being scarcely more than a quarter of a mile

in length and one hundred yards in point of greatest width, with bold

water all around, entirely free from reefs or sunken rocks. As might

be expected, there is no fresh water on it. In a fog it makes an ugly

neighbor for the sea-captains when they are searching for St. Paul;

they all know it, and they all dread it. It is not resorted to by

the fur-seals or by sea-lions in particular; but, singularly enough,

it is frequented by several hundred male walrus, to the exclusion of

females, every summer. A few sea-lions, but only a very few, however,

breed here. On account of the rough weather, fogs, etc., this little

islet is seldom visited by the natives of St. Paul, and then only in

the egging season of late June and early July when that surf-beaten

breakwater literally swarms with breeding sea-fowl.

This low, tiny, island is, perhaps, the most interesting single

spot now known to the naturalist who may land in northern seas,

to study the habits of bird-life; for here, without exertion or

risk, he can observe and walk among tens upon tens of thousands of

screaming water-fowl; and, as he sits down upon the polished lava

rock, he becomes literally ignored and environed by these feathered

friends, as they reassume their varied positions of incubation, from

which he disturbs them by his arrival. Generation after generation

of their kind have resorted to this rock unmolested, and to-day,

when you get among them, all doubt and distrust seem to have been

eliminated from their natures. The island itself is rather unusual

in those formations which we find peculiar to Alaskan waters. It is

almost flat, with slight, irregular undulations on top, spreading

over an area of five acres perhaps. It rises abruptly, though low,

from the sea, and it has no safe beach upon which a person can land

from a boat; not a stick of timber or twig of shrubbery ever grew

upon it, though the scant presence of low, crawling grasses in

the central portions prevents the statement that _all_ vegetation

is absent. Were it not for the frequent rains and dissolving fog

characteristic of summer weather here, the accumulation of guano

would be something wonderful to contemplate—Peru would have a rival.

As it is, however, the birds, when they return, year after year, find

their nesting-floor swept as clean as though they had never sojourned

there before. The scene of confusion and uproar that presented itself

to my astonished senses when I approached this place in search of

eggs, one threatening, foggy July morning, may be better imagined

than described, for, as the clumsy bidarrah came under the lee of

the low cliffs, swarm upon swarm of thousands of murres or “arries”

dropped in fright from their nesting-shelves, and, before they had

control of their flight, they struck to the right and left of me,

like so many cannon-balls. I was forced, in self-protection, to

instantly crouch for a few moments under the gunwale 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 stood among myriads of breeding-birds; they fairly

covered the entire surface of the island with their shrinking 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 whir of

hundreds of thousands of strong, beating wings, the shrill screams

of the gulls, and a muffled croaking of the “arries,” coupled with

an indescribable, disagreeable smell which arose from broken eggs

and other decaying substances—then a faint idea may be evoked of the

strange reality spread before me. Were it not for this island and

the ease with which the natives can gather, in a few hours, tons

upon tons of sea-fowl eggs, the people of St. Paul would be obliged

to go the westward, and suspend themselves from the lofty cliffs of

Einahnuhto, dangling over the sea by ropes, as their less favored

neighbors are only too glad and willing to do at St. George.

I am much divided in my admiration of the two great bird-rookeries of

this Pribylov group, the one on the face of the high bluffs at St.

George, and the other on the table-top of Walrus Islet; but perhaps

the latter place gives, within the smallest area, the greatest

variety of nesting and breeding birds, for here the “arrie” and many

gulls, cormorants, sea-parrots, and auks come to lay their eggs in

countless numbers. The face and brow of the low, cliff-like sea-front

to this island are occupied almost exclusively by the “arries,”

_Lomvia arra_, which lay a single egg each on the surface of the bare

rock, and stand, just like so many champagne bottles, straddling over

them while hatching, only leaving at irregular intervals to feed, and

then not until their mates relieve them. Hundreds of thousands of

these birds alone are thus engaged about the 29th of every June on

this little rocky island, roosting stacked up together as tight as so

many sardines in a box, as compactly as they can be stowed, each and

all of them uttering an incessant, muffled, hoarse, grunting noise.

How fiercely they quarrel among themselves—everlastingly! and in this

way thousands of eggs are rolled off into the sea, or into crevices,

or into fissures, where they are lost and broken.

The “arrie” lays but one egg. If it is removed or broken, she will

soon lay another; but if undisturbed after depositing the first, she

undertakes its hatching at once. The size, shape, and coloration

of this egg, among the thousands which came under my observation,

are exceedingly variable. A large proportion of the eggs become so

dirty by rolling here and there in the guano while the birds tread

and fight over them as to be almost unrecognizable. I was struck by

a happy adaptation of nature to their rough nesting. It is found in

the toughness of this shell of the egg, so tough that the natives,

when gathering them, throw them as farmers do apples into their

tubs, baskets, etc., on the cliff, and then carry them down to a

general heap of collection near the boats’ landing, where they are

poured out upon the rocks with a single flip of the hand, just as a

sack of potatoes would be emptied; and then again, after this, they

are quite as carelessly handled when loaded into the “bidarrah,”

sustaining through it all a very trifling loss from crushed or broken

specimens.[98]

These “arries” seem to occupy a ribbon strip in width: it is drawn

around the outward edges of the flat table-top to Walrus Island as

a regular belt, reserved all to themselves: while the small grassy

interior from which they are thus self-excluded is the only place,

I believe, in Bering Sea where the big white gull, _Larus glaucus_,

breeds. Here I found among grassy tussocks the white burgomaster

building a nest of dry grass, sea-ferns, _Sertularidæ_, etc., very

nicely laid up and rounded, and in which it laid usually three eggs,

sometimes only a couple; occasionally I would look into a nest with

four. These heavy gulls could not breed on either of the other

islands in this manner, for the glaucous gull is too large to settle

on the narrow shelf-ledges of the cliffs, as the smaller gulls do,

and lesser water-fowls, and those places which could receive it would

also be a happy hunting-ground and footing to the foxes.

The red-legged kittiwake, _Rissa brevirostris_, and its cousin,

_Rissa tridactyla_, build in the most amicable manner together on the

faces of those cliffs, for they are little gulls, and they associate

with cormorants, sea-parrots, and tiny auks, all together, and, with

the exception of the last, their nests are very easy of access. All

birds, especially the “arries,” have an exceedingly happy time of it

on this Walrus Islet—nothing to disturb them, in my opinion, free

from the ravenous maw of blue foxes over on St. Paul, and from the

piratical and death-dealing sweep of owls and hawks, which infest the

Aleutian chain and the mainland.

The position of the islands is such as to be somewhat outside of

that migratory path pursued by the birds on the mainland, and owing

to this reason they are only visited by a few stragglers from that

quarter, a few from the Asiatic side, and by the millions of their

own home-bred and indigenous stock. One of these migratory species, a

turnstone, however, comes here every summer, for three or four weeks’

stay, in great numbers, and actually gets so fat in feeding upon the

larvæ which abound in the decaying carcasses over the killing-grounds

that it usually bursts open when it falls, shot on the wing. A heavy

easterly gale once brought a strange bird to the islands from the

mainland—a grebe, _P. griseigena_. It was stranded on St. George in

1873, whereupon the natives declared the like of which they had never

seen before; again, I found a robin one cool morning in October,

the 15th: the natives told me that it was an accident—brought over

by some storm or gale of wind that took it up and off from its

path across the tundra of Bristol Bay. The next fair wind sweeping

from the north or the west could be so improved by this robin, _M.

migratoria_, that it would spread its wings and as abruptly return.

Thus hawks, owls, and a number of strange water-fowls visit the

islands, but never remain there long.

The Russians tried the experiment of bringing up from Sitka and

Oonalashka a flock of ravens, as scavengers, a number of years ago,

and when they were very uncleanly in the village, in contrast with

the practice of the present hour. They reasoned that they would—these

ill-omened birds—be invaluable as health officers; but the _Corvidæ_

invariably, sooner or later, and within a very short time, took the

first wind-train or lightning-express back to the mainland or the

Aleutian islands. Yet the natives say that if the birds had been

young ones instead of old fellows they would have remained. I saw a

great many, however, at St. Matthew Island in August, 1874.

A glance at the map of St. Paul shows that nearly half of its

superficial area is low and quite flat, not much elevated above the

sea. Wherever the sand-dune tracts are located, and that is right

along the coast, will be found an irregular succession of hummocks

and hillocks, drifted by the wind, which are very characteristic. On

the summits of these hillocks an _Elymus_ has taken root in times

past, and, as the sand drifts up, it keeps growing on and up too, so

that a quaint spectacle is presented of large stretches to the view

wherein sand-dunes, entirely bare of all vegetation at their base

and on their sides, are crowned with a living cap of the brightest

green—a tuft of long, waving grass blades which will not down.

None of this peculiar landscaping, however, is seen on St. George,

not even in the faintest degree. Travel about St. Paul, with the

exception of that trail to Northeast Point, where the natives take

advantage of low water to run on the hard, wet sand, is exceedingly

difficult, and there are examples of only a few white men who have

ever taken the trouble and expended the physical energy necessary

to accomplish a comparatively short walk from the village to

Nahsayvernia, or the north shore. Walking upon the moss-hidden and

slippery rocks, or tumbling over slightly uncertain tussocks, is

a task and not a pleasure. On St. George, with the exception of a

half-mile path to the village cemetery and back, nobody pretends to

walk, except the natives who go to and from the rookeries in their

regular seal-drives. Indeed, I am told that I am the only white man

who has ever traversed the entire coast-line of both islands.[99]

Turning to St. George and its profile, presented by the accompanying

map, the observer will be struck at once by the solidity of that

little island and its great boldness, rising, as it does, sheer

and precipitous from the sea all around, except at the three short

reaches of the coast indicated on my chart, and where the only chance

to come ashore exists.

The seals naturally have no such opportunity to gain a footing here

as they have on St. Paul, hence their comparative insignificance as

to number. The island itself is a trifle over ten miles in extreme

length, east and west, and about four and a quarter miles in greatest

width, north and south. It looks, when plotted, somewhat like an old

stone axe; and, indeed, when I had finished my initial contours from

my field-notes, the ancient stone-axe outline so disturbed me that I

felt obliged to resurvey the southern shore, in order that I might

satisfy my own mind as to the accuracy of my first work. It consists

of two great plateaus, with a high upland valley between, the western

table-land dropping abruptly to the sea at Dalnoi Mees, while the

eastern falls as precipitately at Waterfall Head and Tolstoi Mees.

There are several little reservoirs of fresh water—I can scarcely

call them lakes—on this island; pools, rather, that the wet sphagnum

seems to always keep full, and from which drinking-water in abundance

is everywhere found. At Garden Cove is a small, living stream: it is

the only one on the Pribylov group.

[Illustration: NATIVES DRIVING "HOLLUSCHICKIE"

The Drove passing over the Lagoon Flats to the Killing Grounds under the Village of St. Paul.

Looking S. W. over the Village Cove and the Lagoon Rookery]

[Illustration: MAP OF ST. GEORGE ISLAND—PRIBYLOV GROUP.

Showing the Area and Position of the Fur Seal Rookeries and Hauling

Grounds. Surveyed and drawn (1873-74) by HENRY W. ELLIOTT.]

[Illustration: ST. GEORGE’S ISLAND, PRIBYLOV GROUP