CHAPTER X.

AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS.

Difference between a Hair-seal and a Fur-seal.—The Fur-seal

the most Intelligent of all Amphibians.—Its singularly Free

Progression on Land.—Its Power in the Water.—The Old Males

the First Arrivals in the Spring.—Their Desperate Battles one

with Another for Position on the Breeding Grounds.—Subsequent

Arrival of the Females.—Followed by the “Bachelors.”—Wonderful

Strength and Desperate Courage of the Old Males.—Indifference

of the Females.—Noise of the Rookeries Sounds like the Roar of

Niagara.—Old Males fast from May to August, inclusive; neither Eat

nor Drink, nor Leave their Stations in all that Time.—Graceful

Females.—Frolicsome “Pups.”—They have to Learn to Swim!—How they

Learn.—Astonishing Vitality of the Fur-seal.—“Podding” of the

Pups.—Beautiful Eyes of the Fur-seal.—How the “Holluschickie,” or

Bachelor Seals, Pass the Time.—They are the only ones Killed for

Fur.—They Herd alone by Themselves in spite of their Inclination;

Obliged to. —They are the Champion Swimmers of the Sea.—A Review

of the Vast Breeding Rookeries.—Natives Gathering a Drove.—Driving

the Seals to the Slaughtering Fields.—No Chasing—no Hunting of

Seals.—The Killing Gang at Work: Skinning, Salting, and Shipping

the Pelts.—All Sent Direct to London.—Reasons Why.—How the Skins

are Prepared for Sacks, Muffs, etc.

“The web-footed seals forsake the stormy swell,

And, sleeping in herds, exhale nauseous smell.”—HOMER.

A vivid realism of the fact that often truth is far stranger

than fiction is strikingly illustrated in the life-history of

the fur-seal: as it is the one overshadowing and superlatively

interesting subject of this discussion, I shall present all its

multitudinous details, even at the risk of being thought tedious.

That aggregate of animal life shadowed every summer out upon the

breeding grounds of the Seal Islands is so vast, so anomalous, so

interesting, and so valuable, that it deserves the fullest mention;

and even when I shall have done, it will be but feebly expressed.

[Illustration: THE HARBOR SEAL

Adult Male and Female Young, 2 months

[_Phoca vitulina_: a Life Study made at Zapadnie, St. Paul’s Island.

July 10, 1872]]

Great as it is, yet a short schedule[107] embraces the titles of

all the pinnipeds found in, on, and around the island-group. Of

this list the hair-seal[108] is the animal which has done so much

to found that erroneous popular and scientific opinion as to what a

fur-seal appears like. _Phoca vitulina_ has, in this manner, given

to the people of the world a false idea of its relatives. It is so

commonly distributed all over the littoral salt waters of the earth,

seen in the harbors of nearly every marine port, or basking along the

loneliest and least inhabited of desolate coasts far to the north,

that everybody has noticed it, if not in life, then in its stuffed

skins at the museums, sometimes very grotesquely mounted. This copy,

set everywhere before the eye of the naturalist, has rendered it so

difficult for him to correctly discriminate between the _Phocidæ_

and the _Otariidæ_, that the synonymy of the _Pinnipedia_ has been

expanded until it is replete with meaningless description and surmise.

Although the hair-seal belongs to the great group of pinnipeds, yet

it does not have even a generic affinity with those seals with which

it has been so persistently grouped, namely, the fur-seal and the

sea-lion. It no more resembles them, than does the raccoon a black or

grizzly bear.

I shall not enter into a detailed description of this seal; it is

wholly superfluous, for excellent, and, I believe, trustworthy

accounts have been repeatedly published by writers who have treated

of the subject as it was spread before their eyes on the coasts

of Labrador, Newfoundland, and Greenland; to say nothing of the

researches and notes made by European scientists. It differs

completely in shape and habit from its congeners on these islands.

Here, where I have studied its biology, it seldom comes up from the

water more than a few rods at the farthest; generally hauling and

resting at the margin of the surf-wash. It takes up no position on

land to hold and protect a family or harem, preferring the detached

water-worn rocks, especially those on the lonely north shore of

St. Paul, although I have seen it resting at “Gorbatch,” near the

sea-margin of the great seal-rookery of that name, on the Reef Point

of St. Paul; its cylindrical, supine, gray and white body marked in

strong contrast with the erect, black, and ochre-colored forms of the

_Callorhinus_, which swarmed round about it. On such small spots of

rock, wet and isolated from the mainland, and in secluded places of

the north shore, the “nearhpah” brings forth its young, a single pup,

perfectly white, covered with long woolly hair, and weighing from

three to seven pounds. This pup grows rapidly, and after the lapse of

four or five months it tips the scales at fifty pounds; by that time

it has shed its infant coat and donned the adult soft steel-gray hair

over the head, limbs, and abdomen, with its back most richly mottled

and barred lengthwise, by dark brown and brown-black streaks and

blotches, suffused at their edges into the light steel-gray ground of

the body. When they appear in the spring following, this bright gray

tone to their color has ripened into a dingy ochre, and the mottling

spread well over the head and down on the upper side or back of the

flippers, but fades out as it progresses. It has no appreciable

fur or under-wool. There is no noteworthy difference as to color

or size between the sexes. So far as I have observed, they are not

polygamous. They are exceedingly timid and wary at all times, and in

this manner and method they are diametrically opposed, not by shape

alone, but by habit and disposition, to the fashion of the fur-seal

in especial, and the sea-lion. Their skin is of little value,

comparatively, but their chief merit, according to the natives, is

the relative greater juiciness and sweetness of their flesh, over

even the best steaks of sea-lion or fur-seal pup meat.

One common point of agreement among all authors was, by my

observations of fact, so strikingly refuted, that I will here correct

a prevalent error made by naturalists who, comparing the hair-seal

with the fur-seal, state that in consequence of the peculiar

structure of their limbs, their progression on land is “mainly

accomplished by a wriggling, serpentine motion of the body, slightly

assisted by the extremities.” This is not so in any respect; for,

whenever I have purposely surprised these animals, a few rods from

the beach-margin, they would awake and excitedly scramble, or rather

spasmodically exert themselves, to reach the water instantly, by

striking out quickly with both fore-feet simultaneously, lifting in

this way alone, and dragging the whole body forward, without any

“wriggling motion” whatever to their back or posterior parts, moving

from six inches to a foot in advance every time their fore-feet were

projected forward, and the body drawn along according to the violence

of the effort and the character of the ground; the body of the seal

then falls flat upon its stomach, and the fore-feet or flippers

are free again for another similar motion. This action of _Phoca_

is effected so continuously and so rapidly, that in attempting to

head off a young “nearhpah” from the water, at English Bay, I was

obliged to leave a brisk walk and take to a dog trot to do it. The

hind-feet are not used when exerted in this rapid movement at all;

they are dragged along in the wake of the body, perfectly limp and

motionless. But they do use those posterior parts, however, when

leisurely climbing up and over rocks undisturbed, or playing one with

another; still it is always a weak, trembling terrestrial effort,

and particularly impotent and clumsy. In their swift swimming the

hind-feet of _Phocidæ_ evidently do all the work; the reverse is a

remarkable characteristic of the _Otariidæ_.

These remarks of mine, it should be borne in mind, apply directly to

the _Phoca vitulina_, and I presume indirectly with equal force to

all the rest of its more important generic kindred, be they as large

as the big maklok, _Erignathus barbata_, or less.

This hair-seal is found around these islands at all seasons of

the year, but in very small numbers. I have never seen more than

twenty-five or thirty at any one time, and I am told that its

occidental distribution, although everywhere found, above and below,

from the arctic to the tropics, and especially general over the North

Pacific coast, nowhere exhibits any great number at any one place;

but we know that it and its immediate kindred form a vast majority of

the multitudinous seal-life peculiar to our North Atlantic shores,

ice-floes, and contiguous waters. The scarcity of this species, and

of all its generic allies, in the waters of the Pacific, is notable

as compared with those of the circumpolar Atlantic, where these

hair-seals are the seals of commerce: they are found in such immense

numbers between Greenland and Labrador, and thence to the eastward at

certain seasons of every year, that employment is given to a fleet

of about sixty sailing and steam vessels, which annually goes forth

from St. John, Newfoundland, and elsewhere, fitted for seal-fishing:

taking in all this cruising over three hundred thousand of these

animals each season. The principal object of value, however, is

the oil rendered from them: the skins have a very small commercial

importance.

The fur-seal, _Callorhinus ursinus_, which repairs to these islands

to breed and to shed its hair and fur, in numbers that seem almost

fabulous, is the highest organized of all the _Pinnipedia_, and,

indeed, for that matter, when land and water are weighed in the

account together, there is no other animal known to man which may be

truly classed as its superior, from a purely physical point of view.

Certainly there are few, if any, creatures in the animal kingdom that

can be said to exhibit a higher order of instinct, approaching even

our intelligence.

[Illustration: GROUP OF FUR SEALS

Young Females

2 years

Old Male

18 years

Young Male

6 years

Mother Seal

and Pup nursing

Old Male “Roaring”

Young Males

2 years

I wish to draw attention to a specimen of the finest of this race—a

male in the flush and prime of his first maturity, six or seven

years old, and full grown. When it comes up from the sea early in

the spring, out to its station for the breeding season, we have an

animal before us that will measure six and a half to seven and a

quarter feet in length from tip of nose to the end of its abbreviated

abortive tail. It will weigh at least four hundred pounds, and I have

seen older specimens much more corpulent, which, in my best judgment,

could not be less than six hundred pounds in weight.[109] The

head of this animal now before us appears to be disproportionately

small in comparison with an immensely thick neck and shoulders; but,

as we come to examine it, we will find it is mostly all occupied by

the brain. The light frame-work of its 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. It has a muzzle and jaws of about the same size

and form observed in any full-blooded Newfoundland dog, with this

difference, that the lips are not flabby and overhanging; they are as

firmly lined and pressed against one another as our own. The upper

lips support a yellowish-white and gray mustache, composed of long,

stiff bristles, which, when not torn out and broken off in combat,

sweeps down and over the shoulders as a luxuriant plume. Look at it

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 from the ground. The fore-feet, or flippers, are a pair

of dark bluish-black hands, about eight or ten inches broad at their

junction with the body, and the metacarpal joint, running out to an

ovate point at their extremity, some fifteen to eighteen inches from

this union—all the rest of the forearm, the ulna, radius, and humerus

being concealed under the skin and thick blubber-folds of the main

body and neck, hidden entirely at this season, when it is so fat.

But six weeks to three months after this time of landing, when that

superfluous fat and flesh is consumed by self-absorption, then those

bones will show plainly under its shrunken skin. On the upper side of

these flippers the hair of the body straggles down finer and fainter

as it comes below to a point close by, and slightly beyond that spot

of junction where the phalanges and the metacarpal bones unite,

similar to that point on our own hand where our knuckles are placed;

and here the hair ends, leaving the rest of the skin to the end of

the flipper bare and wrinkled in places at the margin of the inner

side; showing, also, five small pits, containing abortive nails,

which are situated immediately over the union of the phalanges with

their cartilaginous continuations to the end of the flipper.

On the under side of the flipper the skin is entirely bare from its

outer extremity up to the body-connection. It is sensibly tougher

and thicker than elsewhere on the body; it is deeply and regularly

wrinkled with seams and furrows, which cross one another so as to

leave a kind of sharp diamond-cut pattern. When they are placed by

the animal upon the smoothest rocks, shining and slippery from algoid

growths and the sea-polish of restless waters, they seldom fail to

adhere.

When we observe this seal moving out on the land, we notice that,

though it handles its fore-feet in a most creditable manner, it

brings up its rear in quite a different style: for, after every

second step ahead with the anterior limbs it will arch its spine,

and in arching, it drags and lifts up, and together forward, the

hind-feet, to a fit position under its body, giving it in this manner

fresh leverage for another movement forward by the fore-feet, in

which the spine is again straightened out, and then a fresh hitch

is taken up on the posteriors once more, and so on as the seal

progresses. This is the leisurely and natural movement on land, when

not disturbed, the body all the time being carried clear of and never

touching the ground; but if the creature is frightened, this method

of progression is radically changed. It launches into a lope and

actually gallops so fast that the best powers of a man in running are

taxed to head it off. Still, it must be remembered that it cannot run

far before it sinks, trembling, gasping, breathless, to the earth.

Thirty or forty yards of such speed marks the utmost limit of its

endurance.

The radical difference in the form and action of the hind-feet cannot

fail to strike the eye at once. They are one-seventh longer than the

fore-hands and very much lighter and more slender; they resemble,

in broad terms, a pair of black-kid gloves, flattened out and

shrivelled, as they lie in their box.

There is no suggestion of fingers on the fore-hands; but the

hind-feet seem to be toes run into ribbons, for they literally flap

about involuntarily from that point where the cartilaginous processes

unite with the phalangeal bones. The hind-feet are also merged in the

body at their junction with it, like those anterior. Nothing can be

seen of the leg above the tarsal joint.

The shape of the hind flipper is strikingly like that of a human

foot, provided the latter were drawn out to a length of twenty or

twenty-two inches, the instep flattened down and the toes run out

into thin, membranous, oval-tipped points, only skin-thick, leaving

three strong cylindrical, grayish, horn-colored nails, half an inch

long each, back six inches from these skinny toe-ends, without any

sign of nails to mention on the outer big and little toes.

On the upper side of this hind-foot the body-hair comes down to

that point where the metatarsus and phalangeal bones join and fade

out. From that junction the phalanges, about six inches down to the

nails above mentioned, are entirely bare and stand ribbed up in bold

relief on the membrane which unites them, as the web to a duck’s

foot. The nails just referred to mark the ends of the phalangeal

bones and their union in turn with the cartilaginous processes, which

run rapidly tapering and flattening out to the ends of the thin

toe-points. Now, as we are looking at this fur-seal’s motion and

progression, that which seems most odd is the gingerly manner (if I

may be allowed to use the expression) in which it carries these hind

flippers. They are held out at right angles from the body directly

opposite the pelvis, the toe-ends or flaps slightly waving, curled,

and drooping over, supported daintily, as it were, above the earth,

the animal only suffering its weight behind to fall upon its heels,

which are themselves opposed to each other, scarcely five inches

apart.

We shall, as we see this seal again later in the season, have to

notice a different mode of progression and bearing, both when it is

lording over its harem or when it grows shy and restless at the end

of the breeding season, then faint, emaciated, and dejected. But

we will now proceed to observe him in the order of his arrival and

that of his family. His behavior during the long period of fasting

and unceasing activity and vigilance, and other cares which devolve

upon him as the most eminent of all polygamists in the brute world,

I shall carefully relate, and to fully comprehend the method of this

exceedingly interesting animal it will be frequently necessary for

the reader to refer to my sketch-maps of its breeding grounds or

rookeries, and the islands.

The adult males are the first examples of the _Callorhinus_ to arrive

in the spring on the seal-ground, which has been deserted by all of

them since the close of the preceding year.[110]

Between May 1st and 5th, usually, a few males will be found scattered

over the rookeries pretty close to the water. They are at this time

quite shy and sensitive, seeming not yet satisfied with the land,

and a great many spend day after day idly swimming out among the

breakers a little distance from the shore before they come to it,

perhaps somewhat reluctant at first to enter upon the assiduous

duties and the grave responsibilities before them of fighting for and

maintaining their positions in the rookeries.

The first arrivals are not always the oldest bulls, but may be

said to be the finest and most ambitious of their class. They are

full grown and able to hold their places on the rookeries or the

breeding flats, which they immediately take up after coming ashore.

Their method of landing is to come collectively to those breeding

grounds where they passed the prior season; but I am not able to say

authoritatively, nor do I believe it, strongly as it has been urged

by many careful men who were with me on the islands, that these

animals come back to and take up the same position on their breeding

grounds that they individually occupied when there last year. From

my knowledge of their action and habit, and from what I have learned

of the natives, I should say that very few, if any, of them make

such a selection and keep these places year after year. Even did the

seal itself intend to come directly from the sea to that spot on the

rookery which it left last summer, what could it do if it came to

that rookery margin a little later and found that another “see-catch”

had occupied its ground? The bull could do nothing. It would either

have to die in its tracks, if it persisted in attaining this supposed

objective point, or do what undoubtedly it does do—seek the next best

locality which it can secure adjacent.

[Illustration: “OLD JOHN”

A Life Study of an aged Fur Seal-Bull or “See-catch.”—Gorbatch

Rookery, July 2, 1872]

One aged “see-catch” was pointed out to me at the “Gorbatch” section

of the Reef rookery, as an animal that was long known to the natives

as a regular visitor, close by or on the same rock, every season

during the past three years. They called him “Old John,” and they

said they knew him because he had one of his posterior digits

missing, bitten off, perhaps, in a combat. I saw him in 1872, and

made careful drawings of him in order that I might recognize his

individuality, should he appear again in the following year, and when

that time rolled by, I found him not; he failed to reappear, and the

natives acquiesced in his absence. Of course it was impossible to

say that he was dead when there were ten thousand rousing, fighting

bulls to the right, left, and below us, under our eyes, for we could

not approach for inspection. Still, if these animals came each to a

certain place in any general fashion, or as a rule, I think there

would be no difficulty in recognizing the fact; the natives certainly

would do so; as it is, they do not I think it very likely, however,

that the older bulls come back to the same common rookery ground

where they spent the previous season; but they are obliged to take

up their position on it just as the circumstances attending their

arrival will permit, such as finding other seals which have arrived

before them, or of being whipped out by stronger rivals from their

old stands.

It is entertaining to note, in this connection, that the Russians

themselves, with the object of testing that mooted query, during the

later years of their possession of the islands, drove up a number of

young males from Lukannon, cut off their ears, and turned them out

to sea again. The following season, when the droves came in from the

“hauling-grounds” to the slaughtering-fields, quite a number of those

cropped seals were in the drives, but instead of being found all at

one place—the place from whence they were driven the year before—they

were scattered examples of croppies from every point on the island.

The same experiment was again made by our people in 1870 (the natives

having told them of such prior undertaking), and they went also

to Lukannon, drove up one hundred young males, cut off their left

ears, and set them free in turn. Of this number, during the summer

of 1872, when I was there, the natives found in their driving of

seventy-five thousand seals from the different hauling-grounds of St.

Paul up to the village killing-grounds, two on Novastoshnah rookery,

ten miles north of Lukannon, and two or three from English Bay and

Tolstoi rookeries, six miles west by water; one or two were taken on

St. George Island, thirty-six miles to the southeast, and not one

from Lukannon was found among those that were driven from there;

probably, had all the young males on the two islands this season been

examined, the rest of the croppies that had returned from the perils

of the deep, whence they sojourned during the winter, would have

been distributed quite equally about the Pribylov hauling-grounds.

Although the natives say that they think the cutting off of the

animal’s ear gives the water such access to its head as to cause its

death, yet I noticed that those examples which we had recognized by

this auricular mutilation, were normally fat and well developed.

Their theory does not appeal to my belief, and it certainly requires

confirmation.

These experiments would tend to prove very cogently and conclusively

that when the seals approach the islands in the spring they have

nothing in their minds but a general instinctive appreciation of

the fitness of the land as a whole, and no special fondness or

determination to select any one particular spot, not even the

place of their birth. A study of my map of the distribution of the

seal-life on St. Paul, clearly indicates that the landing of the

seals on the respective rookeries is influenced greatly by the

direction of the wind at the time of their approach to the islands

in the spring and early summer. The prevailing airs, blowing, as

they do at that season, from the north and northwest, carry far out

to sea the odor of the old rookery flats, together with a fresh

scent of the pioneer bulls which have located themselves on these

breeding grounds three or four weeks in advance of their kind. The

seals come up from the great North Pacific, and hence it will be

seen that the rookeries of the south and southeastern shores of St.

Paul Island receive nearly all the seal-life, although there are

miles of perfectly eligible ground at Nahsayvernia or north shore.

To settle this matter beyond all argument, however, I know is an

exceedingly difficult task, since the identification of individuals,

from one season to another, among the hundreds of thousands, and even

millions, that come under your eye on one of these great rookeries,

is well-nigh impossible. From the time of the first arrival in May up

to the beginning of June, or as late as the middle of that month, if

the weather be clear, is an interval in which everything seems quiet.

Very few seals are added to the pioneers that have landed, as we

have described. About June 1st, however, sometimes a little before,

and never much later, the seal-weather—the foggy, humid, oozy damp

of summer—sets in; and with it, as the gray banks roll up and shroud

the islands, old bull-seals swarm from the depths by hundreds and

thousands, and locate themselves in advantageous positions for the

reception of the females, which are generally three weeks or a month

later than this date in arrival.

It appears from my surrey of these breeding grounds that a

well-understood principle exists among the able-bodied males, to-wit:

that each one shall remain undisturbed on his own ground, which is

usually about six to eight feet square: provided, that at the start,

and from that time until the arrival of the females, he is strong

enough to hold this ground against all comers; inasmuch as the

crowding in of fresh arrivals often causes a removal of those which,

though equally able-bodied at first, have exhausted themselves by

fighting earlier and constantly, they are finally driven by these

fresher animals back farther and higher up on the rookery, and

sometimes off altogether.

The labor of locating and maintaining a position on the rookery

is real, terrible and serious business for these bulls which come

in last, and it is so all the time to those males that occupy the

water-line of the breeding grounds. A constantly sustained fight

between the new-comers and the occupants goes on morning, noon, and

night, without cessation, frequently resulting in death to one, or

even both, of the combatants. The “seecatchie” under six years of

age, although hovering about the sea-margins of the breeding grounds,

do not engage in much fighting there; it is the six and seven

year old males, ambitious and flushed with a full sense of their

reproductive ability, that swarm out and do battle with the older

males of these places. A young male of this latter class is, however,

no match for any fifteen or twenty year old bull, provided that an

old “seecatchie” retains his teeth; for, with these weapons, his

relatively harder thews and sinews give him the advantage in almost

every instance among the hundreds of combats that I have witnessed.

These trials of strength between the old and the young are incessant

until the rookeries are mapped out; since, by common consent, the

males of all classes recognize the coming of the females. After their

arrival and settlement over the whole extent of the breeding grounds,

about July 15th at the latest, very little fighting takes place.

Many of those bulls exhibit wonderful strength and desperate courage.

I marked one veteran at Gorbatch, who was the first to take up his

position early in May, and that position, as usual, directly on

the water-line. This male seal had fought at least forty or fifty

desperate battles, and beaten off his assailants every time—perhaps

nearly as many different seals each of which had coveted his

position—when the fighting season was over (after the cows are

mostly all hauled up), 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, which

were all huddled together around him on the same spot of his first

location.

This fighting between the old and adult males (for none others fight)

is mostly, or rather entirely, done with the mouth. The opponents

seize one another with their teeth, and thus clinching their jaws,

nothing but the sheer strength of the one and the other tugging to

escape can shake them loose; then, that effort invariably leaves an

ugly wound, for the sharp canines tear out deep gutters in the skin

and furrows in the blubber, or shred the flippers into ribbon-strips.

They usually approach each other with comically averted heads, just

as though they were ashamed of the rumpus which they are determined

to precipitate. 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 extraordinary

brutal contests which a man 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, sinks into comparative quiet,

only uttering a peculiar chuckle of satisfaction or contempt, with a

sharp eye open for another covetous bull or “see-catch.”[111]

[Illustration: OLD BULLS FIGHTING

Fur Seals in Deadly Combat: a Thousand such Conflicts are in

simultaneous Action during every Minute of the Breeding Season on the

Pribylov Islands]

That period occupied by the males in taking and holding their

positions on a rookery offers a very favorable opportunity to study

them in the thousand and one different attitudes and postures

assumed between the two extremes of desperate conflict and deep

sleep—sleep so profound that one can, if he keeps to the leeward,

approach close enough, stepping softly, to pull the whiskers of any

old male taking a nap on a clear place. But after the first touch to

these mustaches the trifler must jump back with electrical celerity,

if he has any regard for the sharp teeth and tremendous shaking which

will surely overtake him if he does not. The younger seals sleep far

more soundly than the old ones, and it is a favorite pastime for

the natives to surprise them in this manner—favorite, because it is

attended with no personal risk. The little beasts, those amphibious

sleepers, rise suddenly, and fairly shrink to the earth, spitting and

coughing out in their terror and confusion.

The neck, chest, and shoulders of a fur-seal bull comprise more than

two-thirds of his whole weight; and in this long, thick neck and the

powerful muscles of the fore-limbs and shoulders is embodied the

larger portion of his strength. When on land, with the fore-hands he

does all climbing over rocks and grassy hummocks back of the rookery,

or shuffles his halting way over smooth parades—the hind-feet are

gathered up as useless trappings after every second step forward,

which we have described at the outset of this chapter. These anterior

flippers are also the propelling power when in water, and exclusive

machinery with which they drive their rapid passage—the hinder ones

float behind like the steering sweep to a whale-boat, and are used

evidently as rudders, or as the tail of a bird is, while its wings

sustain and force its rapid flight.

The covering to its body is composed of two coats, one being a short,

crisp, glistening over-hair, and the other a close, soft, elastic

pelage or fur, which gives a distinctive value to the pelt. I can

call it readily to the mind of my readers when I say to them that the

down and feathers on the breast of a duck lie relatively as the fur

and hair do upon the skin of the seal.

At this season of first “hauling up”[112] in the spring the

prevailing color of the bulls, after they dry off and have been

exposed to the weather, is a dark, dull brown, with a sprinkling

in it of lighter brown-black, and a number of hoary or grizzled

gray coats peculiar to the very old males. On the shoulders of

all of them—that is, the adults—the over-hair is either a gray or

rufous-ochre or a very emphatic “pepper and salt.” This is called the

“wig.” The body-colors[113] are most intense and pronounced upon the

back of the head, neck, and spine, fading down on the flanks lighter,

to much lighter ground on the abdomen; still never white or even a

clean gray, so beautiful and peculiar to them when young, and to the

females. The skin of the muzzle and flippers is a dark bluish-black,

fading in the older examples to a reddish and purplish tint. The

color of the ears and tail is similar to that of the body, perhaps

a trifle lighter. The ears on a bull fur-seal are from one inch to

an inch and a half in length. The pavilions or auricles are tightly

rolled up on themselves, so that they are similar in shape to and

exactly the size of the little finger on the human hand, cut off at

the second phalangeal joint—a trifle more cone-shaped, however—as

they are greater at the base than they are at the tip. They are

haired and furred as the body is.

I think it probable that this animal is able to and does exert the

power of compressing or dilating this scroll-like pavilion to its

ear, just according as it dives deeper or rises in the water, and

also I am quite sure that the hair-seal has this control over its

_meatus externus_, from what I have seen of it. I have not been

able to verify it in either case by actual observation; yet such

opportunity as I have had gives me undoubted proof of the fact that

the hearing of a fur-seal is wonderfully keen and surpassingly acute.

If you make any noise, no matter how slight, an alarm will be given

instantly by these insignificant-looking auditors, and the animal,

awaking from profound sleep, assumes, with a single motion, an erect

posture, gives a stare of stupid astonishment, at the same time

breaking out into incessant, surly roaring, growling, and “spitting,”

if it be an old male.

This spitting, as I call it, is by no means a fair or full expression

of a most characteristic sound or action, so far as I have observed,

peculiar to fur-seals alone, the bulls in particular. It is the usual

prelude to all their combats, and it is their signal of astonishment.

It follows somewhat in this way: when the two disputants are nearly

within reaching or striking distance, they make a number of feints

or false passes, as fencing-masters do, at one another, with the

mouth wide open, lifting the lips or snarling so as to exhibit

their glistening teeth; with each pass of the head and neck they

expel the air so violently through the larynx as to cause a rapid

_choo-choo-choo_ sound, like steam-puffs as they escape from the

smoke-stack of a locomotive when it starts a heavy train, especially

while the driving-wheels slip on the rail.

All of the bulls have the power and frequent inclination to utter

four distinct calls or notes. This is not the case with the sea-lion,

whose voice is confined to a single bass roar, or that of the walrus,

which is limited to a dull grunt, or that of the hair-seal, which

is almost inaudible. This volubility of the adult male is decidedly

characteristic and prominent. He utters a hoarse, resonant roar,

loud and long; he gives vent to a low, entirely different gurgling

growl; he emits a chuckling, sibilant, piping whistle, of which it

is impossible to convey an adequate idea, for it must be heard to

be understood, and this spitting or _choo_ sound just mentioned.

The cow[114] has but one note—a hollow, prolonged, bla-a-ting call,

addressed only to her pup: on all other occasions she is usually

silent; it is something strangely like the cry of a calf or an

old sheep. She also makes a spitting sound or snort when suddenly

disturbed—a kind of cough, as it were. The pups “blaat” also, with

little or no variation, their sound being somewhat weaker and

hoarser after birth than their mother’s. They, too, comically spit

or cough when aroused suddenly from a nap or driven into a corner,

opening their little mouths (like young birds in a nest) when at bay,

backed up in some crevice or against grassy tussocks.

Indeed, so similar is that call of the female to the bleating of

sheep that a number of the latter, which the Alaska Commercial

Company had brought up from San Francisco to St. George Island during

the summer of 1873, were constantly attracted to the rookeries, and

were running in among the “holluschickie” so much that they neglected

better pasturage on the uplands beyond, and a small boy had to be

regularly employed to herd them where they would feed to advantage.

These transported _Ovidæ_, though they could not possibly find

anything in their eyes suggestive of companionship among the seals,

had their ears so charmed by those sheep-like accents of the female

pinnipeds as to persuade them in spite of their senses of vision and

smell.

The sound which arises from these great breeding grounds of the

fur-seal, where thousands upon tens of thousands of angry, vigilant

bulls are roaring, chuckling, and piping, and multitudes of

seal-mothers are calling in hollow, bleating tones to their young,

that in turn respond incessantly, is simple 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;

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 distance away.

It is a monitor which the sea-captains anxiously strain their ears

for, when they run their dead reckoning up, and are lying to for

the fog to rise, in order that they may get their bearings of the

land. Once heard, they hold on to the sound, and feel their way in

to anchor. The seal-roar at “Novastoshnah” during the summer of 1872

saved the life of a surgeon,[115] and six natives belonging to the

village, who had pushed out on an egging trip from Northeast Point

to Walrus Island. I have sometimes thought, as I have listened all

night long to this volume of extraordinary sound, which never ceases

with the rising or the setting of the sun throughout the entire

period of breeding, that it was fully equal to the churning boom

of the waves of Niagara. Night and day, belonging to that season,

vibrates with this steady and constant din upon the rookeries.

[Illustration: Fur-seals Scratching Themselves.

[_Off the Black Bluffs, St. Paul’s Island._]]

The most casual observer will notice that these seals seem to suffer

great inconvenience and positive misery from a comparatively low

degree of heat I have often been surprised to observe that, when

the temperature was 46° and 48° Fahr. on land during the summer,

they would show everywhere signs of distress, whenever they made

any exertion in moving or fighting, evidenced by panting and the

elevation of their hind flippers, which they used incessantly

as so many fans. With the thermometer again higher, as it is at

rare intervals, standing at 55° and 60°, they are then oppressed

even when at rest; and at such times the eye is struck by the

kaleidoscopic appearance of a rookery—in any of these rookeries

where the seals are spread out in every imaginable position their

lithesome bodies can assume, all industriously fan themselves:

they use sometimes the fore flippers as ventilators, as it were,

by holding them aloft motionless, at the same time fanning briskly

with the hinder ones, according as they sit or lie. This wavy motion

of fanning or flapping gives a hazy indistinctness to the whole

scene, which is difficult to express in language; but one of the

most prominent characteristics of the fur-seal, and perhaps the most

unique feature, is this very fanning manner in which they use their

flippers, when seen on the breeding grounds at this season. They

also, when idle, as it were, off-shore at sea, lie on their sides

in the water with only a partial exposure of the body, the head

submerged, and then hoist up a fore or hind flipper clear out of the

water, at the same time scratching themselves or enjoying a momentary

nap; but in this position there is no fanning. I say “scratching,”

because the seal, in common with all animals, is preyed upon by

vermin, and it has a peculiar species of louse, or parasitic tick,

which annoys it.

Speaking of seals as they rest in the water leads me to remark

that they seem to sleep as sound and as comfortably, bedded on the

waves or rolled by the swell, as they do on the land. They lie on

their backs, fold the fore flippers down across the chest, and turn

the hind ones up and over, so that the tips rest on their necks

and chins, thus exposing simply the nose and the heels of the hind

flippers above water, nothing else being seen. In this position,

unless it is very rough, the seal sleeps as serenely as did the

prototype of that memorable song, who was “rocked in the cradle of

the deep.”

All the bulls, from the very first, that have been able to hold their

positions, have not left them from the moment of their landing for

a single instant, night or day; nor will they do so until the end

of the rutting season, which subsides entirely between August 1st

and 10th—it begins shortly after the coming of the cows in June. Of

necessity, therefore, this causes them to fast, to abstain entirely

from food of any kind, or water, for three months at least; and a few

of them actually stay out four months, in total abstinence, before

going back into the ocean for the first time after “hauling up” in

May. They then return as so many bony shadows of what they were only

a few months previously; covered with wounds, abject and spiritless,

they laboriously crawl back to the sea to renew a fresh lease of life.

Such physical endurance is remarkable enough alone; but it is simply

wonderful when we come to associate this fasting with the unceasing

activity, restlessness, and duty devolved upon the bulls as the heads

of large families. They do not stagnate like hibernating bears in

caves; there is not one torpid breath drawn by them in the whole

period of their fast. It is evidently sustained and accomplished

by the self-absorption of their own fat, with which they are so

liberally supplied when they first come out from the sea and take

up their positions on the breeding grounds, and which gradually

disappears, until nothing but the staring hide, protruding tendons

and bones mark the limit of their abstinence. There must be some

remarkable provision made by nature for the entire torpidity of the

seals’ stomachs and bowels, in consequence of their being empty and

unsupplied during this long period, coupled with the intense activity

and physical energy of the animals throughout that time, which,

however, in spite of the violation of a supposed physiological law,

does not seem to affect them, for they come back just as sleek, fat,

and ambitious as ever, in the following season. That the seals drink

or need fresh water, I doubt; but they cool their mouths incessantly

by swimming with them wide open through the waves, laving as it were

their hot throats and lips in the flood.[116]

Between June 12th and 14th, the first of the cow-seals, as a rule,

come up from the sea; then that long agony of the waiting bulls is

over, and they signalize it by a period of universal, spasmodic,

desperate fighting among themselves. Though they have quarrelled all

the time from the moment they first landed, and continue to do so

until the end of the season, in August, yet that fighting which takes

place at this date is the bloodiest and most vindictive known to the

seal. I presume that the heaviest percentage of mutilation and death

among the old males from these brawls, occur in this week of the

earliest appearance of the females.

A strong contrast now between the males and females looms up, both

in size and shape, which is heightened by an air of exceeding

peace and dove-like amiability which the latter class exhibit, in

contradistinction to the ferocity and saturnine behavior of the

former.[117] The cows are from four to four and a half feet in length

from head to tail, and much more shapely in their proportions than

the bulls; there is no wrapping around their necks and shoulders

of unsightly masses of blubber; their lithe, elastic forms, from

the first to the last of the season, are never altered; they are,

however, enabled to keep such shape, because, in the provision of

seal economy, they sustain no protracted fasting period; for, soon

after the birth of their young they leave it on the ground and go

to the sea for food, returning perhaps to-morrow, may be later, or

even not for several days in fact, to again suckle and nourish it;

having in the meantime sped far off to distant fishing banks, and

satiated a hunger which so active and highly organized an animal must

experience, when deprived of sustenance for any length of time.

As the females come up wet and dripping from the water, they are at

first a dull, dirty-gray color, dark on the back and upper parts, but

in a few hours the transformation in their appearance made by drying

is wonderful. You would hardly believe that they could be the same

animals, for they now fairly glisten with a rich steel and maltese

gray lustre on the back of the head, the neck, and along down the

spine, which blends into an almost snow-white over the chest and on

the abdomen. But, this beautiful coloring in turn is again altered by

exposure to the same weather; for, after a few days it will gradually

change, so that by the lapse of two or three weeks it is a dull,

rufous-ochre below, and a cinereous brown and gray mixed above. This

color they retain throughout the breeding season, up to the time of

shedding their coats in August.

The head and eye of the female are exceedingly beautiful; the

expression 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 imagined; she is the very picture of

benignity and satisfaction, when she is perched up on some convenient

rock, and has an opportunity to quietly fan herself, the eyes

half-closed and the head thrown back on her gently-swelling shoulders.

The females land on these islands, not from the slightest desire

to see their uncouth lords and masters, but from an accurate and

instinctive appreciation of the time in which their period of

gestation ends. They are in fact driven up to the rookeries by

this cause alone; the young cannot be brought forth in the water,

and, in all cases marked by myself, the pups were born soon after

landing, some in a few hours, but, most usually, a day or so elapses

before delivery. They are noticed and received by the males at the

water-line stations with attention; they are alternately coaxed

and urged up on to the rocks, as far as these beach-masters can

do so, by chuckling, whistling, and roaring, and then they are

immediately under the most jealous supervision; but, owing to the

covetous and ambitious nature of those bulls which occupy these

stations to the rear of the water-line and away back, the little

cows have a rough-and-tumble time of it, when they begin to arrive

in small numbers at first; for no sooner is the pretty animal fairly

established on the station of male number one, who has welcomed

her there, than he, perhaps, sees another one of her style in the

water from whence she has come, and, in obedience to his polygamous

feeling, devotes himself anew to coaxing the later arrival, by that

same winning manner so successful in the first case; then when bull

number two, just back, observes bull number one off guard, he reaches

out with his long strong neck and picks up the unhappy but passive

cow by the scruff of hers, just as a cat does a kitten, and deposits

her upon his seraglio ground; then bulls number three and four,

and so on, in the vicinity, seeing this high-handed operation, all

assail one another, especially number two, and for a moment have a

tremendous fight, perhaps lasting half a minute or so, and during

this commotion the little cow is generally moved, or moves, farther

back from the water, two or three stations more, where, when all

gets quiet again, she usually remains in peace. Her last lord and

master, not having that exposure to such diverting temptation as her

first, gives her such care that she not only is unable to leave, did

she wish, but no other bull can seize upon her: this is only a faint

and (I fully appreciate it) wholly inadequate description of the

hurly-burly and that method by which the rookeries are filled up,

from first to last, when the females arrive—it is only one instance

of the many trials and tribulations which both parties on the rookery

subject themselves to, before the harems are filled.[118]

[Illustration: SUNDRY SEAL SKETCHES FROM THE AUTHOR’S PORTFOLIO

On St. Paul’s Island, 1872-’76]

Far back, fifteen or twenty “see-catchie” stations deep from the

water-line, and sometimes more, but generally not over an average of

ten or fifteen, the cows crowd in at the close of the season for

arriving, which is by July 10th or 14th; then they are able to go

about very much as they please, for the bulls have become so greatly

enfeebled by this constant fasting, fighting, and excitement during

the past two months, that they are quite content now with only one or

two partners, even if they should have no more.

The cows seem to haul up in compact bodies from the water, covering

in the whole ground to the rear of the rookeries, never scattering

about over the surface of this area; they have mapped out, from the

first, their chosen resting-places, and they will not lie quietly

in any position outside of the great mass of their kind. This is

due to their intensely gregarious nature, and is especially adapted

for their protection. And here I should call attention to the fact

that they select this rookery ground with all the skill of civil

engineers. It is preferred with special reference to drainage, for

it must slope so that the produce of constantly dissolving fogs and

rain-clouds shall not lie upon it, since they have a great aversion

to, and a firm determination not to rest on water-puddled ground.

This is admirably exhibited, and will be understood by a study of my

sketch-maps which follow, illustrative of these rookeries and the

area and position of the seals upon them. Every one of those breeding

grounds rises up gently from the sea, and on no one of them is there

anything like a muddy flat.

I found it an exceedingly difficult matter to satisfy myself as to

a fair general average number of cows to each bull on the rookery,

but, after protracted study, I think it will be nearly correct when

I assign to each male a specific ratio of from fifteen to twenty

females at the stations nearest the water, and for those back, in

order, from that line to the rear, from five to twelve; but there are

many exceptional cases, and many instances where forty-five and fifty

females are all under the charge of one male: and then, again, where

there are only two or three females: hence this question was and is

not entirely satisfactory in its settlement to my mind.

Near Ketavie Point, and just above it to the north, is an odd

wash-out of basalt by the surf, which has chiselled, as it were, from

the foundation of the island, a lava table, with a single roadway

or land passage to it. Upon the summit of this footstool I counted

forty-five cows, all under the charge of one old veteran. He had them

penned on this table-rock by taking his stand at the gate, as it

were, through which they passed up and passed down—a Turkish brute

typified.

At the rear of all these rookeries there is invariably a large number

of able-bodied males which have come late, and wait patiently, yet in

vain, for families; most of them having had to fight as desperately

for the privilege of being there as any of their more fortunately

located neighbors, who are nearer the water, and in succession from

there to where they are themselves; but the cows do not like to be in

any outside position. They cannot be coaxed out where they are not

in close company with their female mates and masses. They lie most

quietly and contentedly in the largest harems, and cover the surface

of the ground so thickly that there is hardly moving or turning room

when they cease to come from the sea. The inaction on the part of

those males in the rear during the breeding season only serves to

well qualify them for moving into the places which are necessarily

vacated by disabled males that are, in the meantime, obliged to

leave from virile exhaustion, or incipient wounds. All the surplus

able-bodied bulls, which have not been successful in effecting a

landing on the rookeries cannot be seen at any one time, however, in

the season, on this rear line. Only a portion of their number are in

sight; the others are either loafing at sea, adjacent, or are hauled

out in morose squads between the rookeries on the beaches. 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 another, and never or seldom utter a cry of pain or

rage when they are roughly handled by the bulls, which frequently

get a cow between them and actually tear the skin from her back with

their teeth, cutting deep gashes in it as they snatch her from mouth

to mouth. If sand does not get into these wounds it is surprising how

rapidly they heal; and, from the fact that I never could see scars

on them anywhere except the fresh ones of this year, they must heal

effectually and exhibit no trace the next season.

The cows, like the bulls, vary much in weight, but the extraordinary

disparity in the adult size of the sexes is exceedingly striking.

Two females taken from the rookery nearest to St. Paul village,

right under the bluffs (and almost beneath the eaves of the natives’

houses) called “Nah Speel,” after they had brought forth their

young, were weighed by myself, and their respective returns on the

scales were fifty-six and one hundred pounds each; the former being

about three or four years old, and the latter over six—perhaps ten.

Both were fat, or rather, in good condition—as good as they ever

are. Thus the female is just about one-sixth the size of the male.

Among the sea-lions the proportion is just one-half the bulk of

the male, while the hair-seals, as I have before stated, are not

distinguishable in this respect, as far as I could observe, but my

notice was limited to a few specimens only.

The courage with which the fur-seal holds his position as the head

and guardian of a family is of the highest order. I have repeatedly

tried to drive them from their harem-posts, when they were fairly

established on their stations, and have, with very few exceptions,

failed. I might use every stone at my command, making all the noise

I could. Finally, to put this courage to its fullest test, I have

walked up to within twenty feet of an old veteran, toward the extreme

end of Tolstoi, who had only four cows in charge, and commenced with

my double-barrelled fowling-piece to pepper him all over with fine

mustard-seed shot, being kind enough, in spite of my zeal, not to put

out his eyes. His bearing, in spite of the noise, smell of powder,

and painful irritation which the fine shot must have produced, did

not change in the least from the usual attitude of determined, plucky

defence (which nearly all of the bulls assume) when he was attacked

with showers of stones and noise. He would dart out right and left

with his long neck and catch the timid cows that furtively attempted

to run after each report of my gun, fling and drag them back to their

places under his head; and then, stretching up to his full height,

look me directly and defiantly in the face, roaring and chuckling

most vehemently. The cows, however, soon got away from him: they

could not endure my racket, in spite of their dread of him. But he

still stood his ground, making little charges on me of ten or fifteen

feet in a succession of gallops or lunges, spitting furiously, and

then comically retreating, with an indescribable leer and swagger, to

the old position, back of which he would not go, fully resolved to

hold his own or die in the attempt.

This courage is all the more noteworthy from the fact that, in regard

to man, it is invariably of a defensive character. The seal is always

on the defensive; he never retreats, and he will not assail. If

he makes you return when you attack him he never follows you much

farther than the boundary of his station, and then no aggravation

will compel him to take the offensive, so far as I have been able to

observe. I was very much impressed by this trait.

It is quite beyond my power—indeed, entirely out of the question—to

give a fair idea of the thousand and one positions in which seals

compose themselves and rest when on land. They may be said to assume

every possible attitude which a flexible body can be put into, no

matter how characteristic or seemingly forced or constrained. Their

joints seem to be double-hinged—in fact, fitted with ball and socket

union of the bones. One favorite position, especially with the

females, is to perch upon a point or edge-top of some rock, and throw

their heads back upon their shoulders, with the nose held directly

up and aloft; and then, closing their eyes, take short naps without

changing their attitude, now and then softly lifting one or the other

of their long, slender hind flippers, which they slowly wave with

that peculiar fanning motion to which I have alluded heretofore.

Another attitude, and one of the most common, is to curl themselves

up just as a dog does on a hearth-rug, bringing the tail and nose

close together. They also stretch out, laying the head close to the

body, and sleep an hour or two without rising, holding one of the

hind flippers up all the time, now and then gently moving it, the

eyes being tightly closed.

I ought, perhaps, to define the anomalous tail of the fur-seal here.

It is just about as important as the caudal appendage to a bear;

even less significant. It is the very emphasis of abbreviation. In

the old males it is positively only four or five inches in length,

while among the females only two and a half to three inches, wholly

inconspicuous, and not even recognized by the casual observer: they

never wag or move it at all.

I come now to speak of another feature which interested me nearly, if

not quite, as much as any other characteristic of this creature, and

that is their fashion of slumber. The sleep of the fur-seal, seen on

land, from the old male down to the youngest, is always accompanied

by an involuntary, nervous, muscular twitching and slight shifting

of the flippers, together with ever and anon quivering and uneasy

rollings of the body, accompanied by a quick folding anew of the

fore flippers; all of which may be signs, as it were, in fact, of

their simply having nightmares, or of sporting, in a visionary way,

far off in some dreamland sea. But, it may be that as an old nurse

said in reference to the smiles on a sleeping child’s face, they are

disturbed by their intestinal parasites. I have studied hundreds of

such somnolent examples. Stealing softly up so closely that I could

lay my hand upon them from the point where I was sitting, did I wish

to, and watching the sleeping seals, I have always found their sleep

to be of this nervous description. The respiration is short and

rapid, but with no breathing (unless the ear is brought very close).

The quivering, heaving of the flanks only indicates the action of

the lungs. I have frequently thought that I had succeeded in finding

a snoring seal, especially among the pups; but a close examination

always gave some abnormal reason for it—generally a slight distemper;

never anything more severe, however, than some trifle by which the

nostrils were stopped to a greater or less degree.

The cows on the rookeries sleep a great deal, but the bulls have

the veriest cat-naps that can be imagined. I never could time the

slumber of any old male on the breeding grounds which lasted, without

interruption, longer than five minutes, day or night. While away

from these places, however, I have known them to lie sleeping in

the manner I have described, broken by such fitful, nervous, dreamy

starts, yet without opening the eyes, for an hour or so at a time.

With an exception of the pups, the fur-seal seems to have very little

rest, awake or sleeping. Perpetual motion is well-nigh incarnate with

its being. I naturally enough, when beginning my investigation of

these seal-rookeries, expected to find the animals subdued at night,

or early morning, on those breeding grounds; but a few consecutive

nocturnal watches satisfied me that the family organization and

noise was as active at one time as at another, throughout the whole

twenty-four hours. If, however, the day preceding had chanced to be

abnormally warm, I never failed then to find the rookeries much more

noisy and active during the night than they were by daylight. The

seals, as a rule, come and go to and from the sea, fight, roar, and

vocalize as much during midnight moments as they do at noonday times.

An aged native endeavored to satisfy me that the “seecatchie” could

see much better by twilight and night than by daylight. I am not

prepared to prove to the contrary, but I think that the fact of his

not being able to see so well himself at that hour of darkness was a

true cause of most of his belief in the improved nocturnal vision of

the seals.[119]

As I have said before, the females, soon after landing, are delivered

of their young. Immediately after the birth of the pup (twins are

rare, if ever) the little creature finds its voice—a weak, husky

blaat—and begins to paddle about with its eyes wide open from the

start, in a confused sort of way for a few minutes, until the mother

turns round to notice her offspring and give it attention, and still

later, to suckle it; and for this purpose she is supplied with four

small, brown nipples, almost wholly concealed in the fur, and which

are placed about eight inches apart, lengthwise with the body, on the

abdomen, between the fore and hind flippers, with about four inches

of space between them transversely. These nipples are seldom visible,

and then faintly seen through the hair and fur. The milk is abundant,

rich, and creamy. The pups nurse very heartily, almost gorging

themselves; so much so, that they often have to yield up the excess

of what they have taken down, mewling and puking in a most orthodox

manner.

The pup at birth, and for the next three months, is of a jet-black

color, hair and flippers, save a tiny white patch just back of each

forearm. It weighs from three to four pounds, and is twelve to

fourteen inches long. It does not seem to nurse more than once every

two or three days; but in this I am very likely mistaken, for it may

have received attention from its mother in the night, or other times

in the day when I was unable to keep up my watch over the individual

which I had marked for this supervision.

The apathy with which the young are treated by the old on the

breeding grounds, especially by the mothers, was very strange to

me, and I was considerably surprised at it. I have never seen a

seal-mother caress or fondle her offspring; and should it stray to

a short distance from the harem, I could step to and pick it up,

and even kill it before the mother’s eye, without causing her the

slightest concern, as far as all outward signs and manifestations

should indicate. The same indifference is also exhibited by the male

to all that may take place of this character outside of the boundary

of his seraglio; but the moment the pups are inside the limits of

his harem-ground he is a jealous and a fearless protector, vigilant

and determined. But if the little animals are careless enough to

pass beyond this boundary, then I can go up to them and carry them

off before the eye of the old Turk without receiving from him the

slightest attention in their behalf—a curious guardian, forsooth!

It is surprising to me how few of these young pups get crushed to

death while the ponderous bulls are floundering over them, engaged

in fighting and quarrelling among themselves. I have seen two bulls

dash at each other with all the energy of furious rage, meeting right

in the midst of a small “pod” of forty or fifty pups, tramp over

them with all their crushing weight, and bowling them out right and

left in every direction by the impetus of their movements, without

injuring a single one, as far as I could see. Still, when we come to

consider the fact that, despite the great weight of the old males,

their broad, flat flippers and yielding bodies may press down heavily

on these little fellows without actually breaking bones or mashing

them out of shape, it does seem questionable whether more than one

per cent. of all the pups born each season on these great rookeries

of the Pribylov Islands are destroyed in this manner on the breeding

grounds.[120]

The vitality of a fur-seal is simply astonishing. Its physical

organization passes beyond the fabled nine lives of the cat. As a

slight illustration of its tenure of life, I will mention the fact

that one morning Philip came to me with a pup in his arms, which had

just been born and was still womb-moist, saying that the mother had

been killed at Tolstoi by accident, and he supposed that I would like

to have a “choochil.” I took it up into my laboratory, and, finding

that it could walk about and make a great noise, I attempted to feed

it, with the idea of having a comfortable subject to my pencil for

life-study of the young in varied attitudes of sleep and motion. It

refused everything that I could summon to its attention as food,

and, alternately sleeping and walking in its clumsy fashion about

the floor; it actually lived nine days, spending the half of every

one in floundering over the floor, accompanying all movements with a

persistent, hoarse, blasting cry, and I do not believe it ever had a

single drop of its mother’s milk.

In a pup the head is the only disproportionate feature at birth when

it is compared with an adult form, the neck being also relatively

shorter and thicker. The eye is large, round, and full; but, almost

a “navy blue” at times, it soon changes into the blue-black of

adolescence.

The females appear to go to and come from the water feeding and

bathing quite frequently after bearing their young and an immediate

subsequent coitus with the male: they usually return to the spot or

its immediate neighborhood, where they leave their pups, crying out

for them and recognizing the individual replies; though ten thousand

around, all together, should blaat at once, they quickly single out

their own and nurse them. It would certainly be a very unfortunate

matter if the mothers could not identify their young by sound, since

these pups get together like a great swarm of bees, and spread out

upon the ground in what the sealers call “pods,” or clustered groups,

while they are young and not very large; thus, from the middle or

end of September until they leave the islands for the dangers of the

great Pacific in the winter, along by the first of November, they

gather in this manner, sleeping and frolicking by tens of thousands,

bunched together at various places all over the islands contiguous

to the breeding grounds, and right on them. A mother comes up from

the sea, whither she has been to wash, and perhaps to feed, for the

last day or two, feeling her way along to about where she thinks

her pup should be—at least, where she left it last; but perhaps she

misses it, and finds instead a swarm of pups in which it has been

incorporated, owing to its great fondness for society. The mother,

without first entering into a crowd of thousands, calls just as a

sheep does for a lamb, and out of all the din she—if not at first, at

the end of a few trials—recognizes the voice of her offspring, and

then advances, striking out right and left toward the position from

which it replies; but if the pup happens at this time to be asleep,

it gives, of course, no response, even though it were close by. In

the event of such silence the cow, after calling for a time without

being answered, curls herself up and takes a nap or lazily basks, to

be usually more successful, or wholly so, when she calls again.

The pups themselves do not know their own mothers, a fact which I

ascertained by careful observation; but they are so constituted that

they incessantly cry out at short intervals during the whole time

they are awake, and in this way the mother can pick out from the

monotonous blaating of thousands of pups her own, and she will not

permit any other one to suckle her. But the “kotickie” themselves

attempt to nose around every seal-mother that comes in contact with

them. I have repeatedly watched young pups as they made advances to

nurse from another pup’s mother, the result invariably being that,

while the “matkah” would permit her own offspring to suckle freely,

yet when these little strangers touched her nipples she would either

move abruptly away or else turn quickly down upon her stomach, so

that the maternal fountains were inaccessible to alien and hungry

“kotickie.” I have witnessed so many examples of the females turning

pups away to suckle only some particular other one, that I feel

sure I am entirely right in saying that the seal-mothers know their

own young, and that they will not permit any others except them to

nurse. I believe that this maternal recognition is due chiefly to the

mother’s scent and hearing.

Between the end of July and August 5th or 8th of every year the

rookeries are completely changed in appearance. The systematic and

regular disposition of the families or harems over the whole extent

of breeding-ground has disappeared. All that clock-work order which

has heretofore existed seems to be broken up. The breeding season

closed, those bulls which have held their positions since May 1st

leave, most of them thin in flesh and weak, and of their number

a very large proportion do not come out again on land during the

season; but such as are seen at the end of October and November are

in good shape. They have a new coat of rich, dark, gray-brown hair

and fur, with gray or grayish-ochre “wigs” of longer hair over the

shoulders, forming a fresh, strong contrast to the dull, rusty, brown

and umber dress in which they appeared to us during the summer, and

which they had begun to shed about August 1st, in common with the

females and the “holluschickie.” After these males leave at the end

of their season’s work, and of the rutting for the year, those of

them that happen to return to land in any event do not come back

until the end of September and do not haul up on the rookery grounds

again. As a rule, they prefer to herd altogether, like younger males,

upon the sand-beaches and rocky points close to the water.

The cows and pups, together with those bulls which we have noticed

in waiting at the rear of the rookeries, and which have been in

retirement throughout the whole of the breeding season, now take

possession, in a very disorderly manner, of these rookeries; also,

a large number of young, three, four, and five year old males come,

which have been prevented by the menacing threats of stronger bulls

from an earlier landing among the females during the breeding season.

Before the middle of August three-fourths, at least, of the cows

at this date are off in the water, only coming ashore at irregular

intervals to nurse and look after their pups a short time. They

presented to my eye, from the summits of the bluffs round about,

a picture more suggestive of entire comfort and enjoyment than

anything I have ever seen presented by animal life. Here, just out

and beyond the breaking of the rollers, they idly lie on the rocks or

sand-beaches, ever and anon turning over and over, scratching their

backs and sides with their fore and hind flippers. The seals on the

breeding ground appear to get very lousy.[121]

Frequent winds and showers will drive and spatter sand into their

fur and eyes, often making the latter quite sore. This occurs when

they are obliged to leave the rocky rookeries and follow their pups

out over the sand-ridges and flats, to which they always have a

natural aversion. On the hauling-grounds they pack the soil under

their feet so hard and tightly in many places that it holds water in

shallow surface-depressions, just like so many rock-basins. Out of

and into these puddles the pups and the females flounder and patter

incessantly, until evaporation slowly abates the nuisance for a time

only, inasmuch as the next day, perhaps, brings more rain and the

dirty pools are replenished.

The pups sometimes get so thoroughly plastered in these muddy, slimy

puddles, that the hair falls off in patches, giving them, at first

sight, the appearance of being troubled with scrofula or some other

plague: from my investigations directed to this point, I became

satisfied that they were not permanently injured, though evidently

very much annoyed. With reference to this suggestion as to sickness

or distemper among these seals, I gave the subject direct and

continued attention, and in no one of the rookeries could I discover

a single seal, no matter how old or young, which appeared to be

suffering in the least from any physical disorder other than that

which they themselves had inflicted, one upon the other, by fighting.

The third season, passing directly under my observation, failed to

reward my search with any manifestation of disease among the seals

which congregate in such mighty numbers on those rookeries of St.

Paul and St. George. That remarkable freedom from all such complaints

enjoyed by these animals is noteworthy, and a most trenchant and

penetrating cross-questioning of the natives also failed to give me

any history or evidence of an epidemic in the past.

The observer will, however, notice every summer, gathered in

melancholy squads of a dozen to one hundred or so (scattered

along the coast where the healthy seals never go), those sick and

disabled bulls which have, in the earlier part of the season, been

either internally injured or dreadfully scarred by the teeth of

their opponents in fighting. Sand is blown by strong wind into

their fresh wounds, causing inflammation and sloughing which very

often finishes the life of a victim. The sailors term these invalid

gatherings “hospitals,” a phrase which, like the most of their homely

expressions, is quite appropriate.

Early in August, usually by the 8th or 10th, I noticed one of the

remarkable movements of the season. I refer to the pup’s first essay

in swimming. Is it not odd—paradoxical—that the young seal, from the

moment of his birth until he is a month or six weeks old, is utterly

unable to swim? If he is seized by the nape of the neck and pitched

out a rod into the water from shore, his bullet-like head will drop

instantly below the surface, and his attenuated posterior extremities

flap impotently on it. Suffocation is the question of only a few

minutes, the stupid little creature not knowing how to raise his

immersed head and gain the air again. After they have attained the

age indicated above, their instinct drives them down to the margin of

the surf, where an alternate ebbing and flowing of its wash, covers

and uncovers the rocky or sandy beaches. They first smell and then

touch the moist pools, and flounder in the upper wash of the surf,

which leaves them as suddenly high and dry as it immersed them at

first. After this beginning they make slow and clumsy progress in

learning the knack of swimming. For a week or two, when overhead

in depth, they continue to flounder about in the most awkward

manner, thrashing the water as little dogs do with their fore feet,

making no attempt whatever to use the hinder ones. Look at that pup

now, launched out for the first time beyond his depth; see how he

struggles—his mouth wide open, and his eyes fairly popping. He turns

instantly to the beach, ere he has fairly struck out from the point

whence he launched in, and, as the receding swell which at first

carried him off his feet and out, now returning, leaves him high and

dry, for a few minutes he seems so weary that he weakly crawls up,

out beyond its swift returning wash, and coils himself immediately

to take a recuperative nap. He sleeps a few minutes, perhaps half

an hour, then awakes as bright as a dollar, apparently rested, and

at his swimming lesson he goes again. By repeated and persistent

attempts, this young seal gradually becomes familiar with the water

and acquainted with his own power over that element, which is to be

his real home and his whole support. Once boldly swimming, the pup

fairly revels in a new happiness. He and his brethren have now begun

to haul and swarm along the entire length of St. Paul coast, from

Northeast Point down and around to Zapadnie, lining the alternating

sand-beaches and rocky shingle with their chunky, black forms. How

they do delight in it! They play with a zest, and chatter like our

own children in the kindergartens—swimming in endless evolutions,

twisting, turning, or diving—and when exhausted, drawing their plump,

round bodies up again on the beach. Shaking themselves dry as young

dogs would do, they now either go to sleep on the spot or have a lazy

terrestrial frolic among themselves.

Why an erroneous impression ever got into the mind of any man as to

this matter of a pup’s learning to swim, I confess that I am wholly

unable to imagine. I have not seen any “driving” of the young

pups into the water by the old ones, in order to teach them this

process, as certain authors have positively affirmed. There is not

the slightest supervision by the mother or father of the pup, from

the first moment of his birth, in this respect, until he leaves for

the North Pacific, full-fledged with amphibious power. At the close

of the breeding season, every year, the pups are restlessly and

constantly shifting back and forth over the rookery ground of their

birth, in large squads, sometimes numbering thousands upon thousands.

In the course of this change of position they all sooner or later

come in contact with the sea; they then blunder into the water for

the first time, in a most awkward, ungainly manner, and get out as

quick as they can; but so far from showing any fear or dislike of

this, their most natural element, as soon as they rest from their

exertion they are immediately ready for a new trial, and keep at it,

provided the sea is not too stormy or rough. During all this period

of self-tuition they seem thoroughly to enjoy the exercise, in spite

of their repeated and inevitable discomfitures at the beginning.

That “podding” of these young pups in the rear of the great rookeries

of St. Paul, is one of the most striking and interesting phases of

this remarkable exhibition of highly-organized life. When they first

bunch together they are all black, for they have not begun to shed

the natal coat; they shine with an unctuous, greasy reflection, and

grouped in small armies or great regiments on the sand-dune tracts at

Northeast Point, they present a most extraordinary and fascinating

sight. Although the appearance of the “holluschickie” at English Bay

fairly overwhelms the observer with an impression of its countless

multitudes, yet I am free to declare that at no one point in this

evolution of the seal-life, during its reproductive season, have I

been so deeply impressed by a sense of overwhelming enumeration, as

I have when, standing on the summit of Cross Hill, I looked down to

the southward and westward over a reach of six miles of alternate

grass and sand-dune stretches, mirrored upon which were hundreds

of thousands of these little black pups, spread in sleep and sport

within this restricted field of vision. They appeared as countless as

the grains of that sand upon which they rested!

By September 15th, all the pups born during the year have become

familiar with the water; they have all learned to swim, and are now

nearly all down by the water’s edge, skirting in large masses the

rocks and beaches hitherto unoccupied by seals of any class this

year. Now they are about five or six times their original weight,

or, in other words, they are thirty to forty pounds avoirdupois, as

plump and fat as butter-balls, and they begin to take on their second

coat, shedding their black pup-hair completely. This second coat does

not vary in color, at this age, between the sexes. They effect such

transformation in dress very slowly, and cannot, as a rule, be said

to have ceased their moulting until the middle or 20th of October.

That second coat, or sea-going jacket, of the pup, is a uniform,

dense, light gray over-hair, with an under-fur which is slightly

grayish in some, but is, in most cases, of a soft light brown hue.

The over-hair is fine, close and elastic, from two-thirds of an inch

to an inch in length, while the fur is not quite half an inch long.

Thus the coarser hair shingles over and conceals the soft under-wool

completely, giving the color by which, after the second year, the

sex of the animal is recognized. A pronounced difference between

the sexes is not effected, however, by color alone until the third

year of the animal’s life. This over-hair of the pup’s new jacket

on its back, neck, and head, is a dark chinchilla-gray, blending

into stone-white, just tinged with a grayish tint on the abdomen

and chest. The upper lip, upon which the whiskers or mustaches

take root, is covered with hair of a lighter gray than that of the

body. This mustache consists of fifteen or twenty longer or shorter

bristles, from half an inch to three inches in length, some brownish,

horn-colored, and others whitish-gray and translucent, on each side

and back and below the nostrils, leaving the muzzle quite prominent

and hairless. The nasal openings and their surroundings are, as I

have before said when speaking of this feature, hairless and similar

to those of a dog.[122]

The most attractive feature about the fur-seal pup, and that which

holds this place as it grows on and older, is the eye. That organ

is exceedingly clear, dark, and liquid, with which, for beauty and

amiability, together with real intelligence of expression, those of

no other animal that I have ever seen, or have ever read of, can be

compared; indeed, there are few eyes in the orbits of men and women

which suggest more pleasantly the ancient thought of their being

“windows to the soul.” The lids to that eye are fringed with long,

perfect lashes, and the slightest irritation in the way of dust or

sand, or other foreign substances, seems to cause them exquisite

annoyance, accompanied by immoderate weeping. This involuntary

tearfulness so moved Steller that he ascribed it to the processes of

a mind, and declared that seal-mothers actually “shed tears”!

I do not think a seal’s range of vision on land, or out of the water,

is very great. I have frequently experimented with adult fur-seals,

by allowing them to catch sight of my person, so as to distinguish

it as of foreign character, three and four hundred paces off, taking

the precaution of standing quietly to the leeward when the wind was

blowing strong, and then walking unconcernedly up to them. I have

invariably noticed that they would allow me to approach quite close

before recognizing my strangeness; then, as it occurred to them,

they at once made a lively noise, a medley of coughing, spitting,

snorting, and blaating, and plunged in spasmodic lopes and shambled

to get away from my immediate neighborhood. As to the pups, they

all stupidly stare at the form of a human being until it is fairly

on them, when they also repeat in miniature these vocal gymnastics

and physical efforts of the older ones, to retreat or withdraw a

few rods, sometimes only a few feet, from the spot upon which you

have cornered them, after which they instantly resume their previous

occupation of either sleeping or playing, as though nothing had

happened. Perhaps it is safe to say that the greatest activity

displayed by any one of the five senses of the seal is evidenced in

its power of scent. This faculty is all that can be desired in the

line of alertness. I never failed to awaken an adult seal from the

soundest sleep, when from a half to a quarter of a mile distant, no

matter how softly I proceeded, if I got to the windward, though they

sometimes took alarm when I was a mile off.