THE ALASKAN SEA-LION.
A Pelagic Monarch.—Marked Difference between the Sea-lion and
the Fur-seal.—The Imposing Presence and Sonorous Voice of the
“Sea-king.”—Terrible Combats between old Sea-lion Bulls.—Cowardly
in the Presence of Man, however.—Sea-lions Sporting in the Fury
of Ocean Surf.—It has no Fur on its Huge Hide.—Valuable only to
the Natives, who Cover their “Bidarrah” with its Skin.—Its Sweet
Flesh and Inodorous Fat.—Not such Extensive Travellers as the
Fur-seals.—The Difficulty of Capturing Sea-lions.—How the Natives
Corral them.—The Sea-lion “Pen” at Northeast Point.—The Drive of
Sea-lions.—Curious Behavior of the Animals.—Arrival of the Drove at
the Village.—A Thirteen-mile Jaunt with the Clumsy Drove.—Shooting
the old Males.—The Bloody “Death-whirl.”—The Extensive Economic Use
made of the Carcass by the Natives.—Chinese Opium Pipes Picked with
Sea-lion Mustache bristles.
The sea-lion is also a characteristic pinniped of the Pribylov
Islands, but ranks much below the fur-seal in perfected physical
organization and intelligence. It can, as well as its more sagacious
and valuable relative, the _Callorhinus_, be seen, perhaps, to better
advantage on these islands than elsewhere in the whole world that I
know of. The marked difference between a sea-lion and the fur-seal up
here is striking, the former being twice the size of its cousin.
The size and strength of a northern sea-lion, _Eumetopias stelleri_,
its perfect adaptation to its physical surroundings, unite with
a singular climatic elasticity of organization. It seems to be
equally well satisfied with the ice-floes of the Kamchatka Sea to
the northward, or with the polished boulders and the hot sands of
the coast of California. It is an animal as it appears upon its
accustomed breeding grounds at Northeast Point, where I first saw it,
that commanded my involuntary admiration by its imposing presence and
sonorous voice, as it reared itself before me, with head, neck, and
chest upon its powerful forearms, over six feet in height, while its
heavy bass voice drowned the booming of the surf that thundered on
the rocks beneath its flanks.
[Illustration: A GROUP OF SEA-LIONS
Young Adult Male and Female Old Bull Roaring
[_Eumetopias stelleri_: a Life Study made at St. Paul’s Island. July
16, 1872]]
The bulk and power of the adult sea-lion male will be better
appreciated when I say that it has an average length of ten and
eleven feet osteologically, with an enormous girth of eight to nine
feet around the chest and shoulders; but while the anterior parts
of its frame are as perfect and powerful on land as in sea, those
posterior are ridiculously impotent when the huge beast leaves
its favorite element. Still, when hauled up beyond the reach of
the brawling surf, as it rears itself, shaking the spray from its
tawny chest and short grizzly mane, it has a leonine appearance
and bearing, greatly enhanced as the season advances by a rich
golden-rufous color of its coat; the savage gleam of its expression
is due probably, to the sinister muzzle, and cast of its eye. This
optical organ is not round and full, soft and limpid, like the
fur-seal’s, but it is an eye like that of a bull-dog: it is small
and clearly shows under its heavy lids the white or sclerotic coat,
with a light-brown iris. Its teeth gleam and glisten in pearly
whiteness against a dark tongue and the shadowy recesses of its wide,
deep mouth. The long, sharp, broad-based canines, when bared by the
wrathful snarling of its gristled lips, glittered more wickedly, to
my eye, than the keenest sword ever did in the hand of man.
With these teeth alone, backed by the enormous muscular power of a
mighty neck and broad shoulders, the sea-lion confines its battles
to its kind, spurred by terrible energy and heedless and persistent
brute courage. No animals that I have ever seen in combat presented a
more savage or more cruelly fascinating sight than did a brace of old
sea-lion bulls which met under my eyes near the Garden Cove at St.
George.
Here was a sea-lion rookery the outskirts of which I had trodden
upon for the first time. Two aged males, surrounded by their meek,
polygamous families, were impelled towards each other by those latent
fires of hate and jealousy which seemed to burst forth and fairly
consume the angry rivals. Opening with a long, round, vocal prelude,
they gradually came together, as the fur-seal bulls do, with averted
heads, as though the sight of each other was sickening—but fight
they must. One would play against the other for an unguarded moment
in which to assume the initiative, until it had struck its fangs
into the thick skin of its opponent’s jowl; then, clinching its
jaws, was not shaken off until the struggles of its tortured victim
literally tore them out, leaving an ugly, gaping wound—for the sharp
eye-teeth cut a deeper gutter in the skin and flesh than would have
held my hand; fired into almost supernatural rage, the injured lion
retaliated, quick as a flash, in kind; the hair flew from both of
them into the air, the blood streamed down in frothy torrents, while
high above the boom of the breaking waves, and shrill deafening
screams of water-fowl over head, rose the ferocious, hoarse, and
desperate roar of these combatants.
Though provided with flippers, to all external view, as the fur-seal
is, the sea-lion cannot, however, make use of them at all in the
same free manner. The fur-seal may be driven five or six miles in
twenty-four hours under the most favorable conditions of cool, moist
weather; the “seevitchie,” however, can only go two miles, the
weather and roadway being the same. When driven, a sea-lion balances
and swings its long and heavy neck, as a lever, to and fro, with
every hitching up behind of its posterior limbs, which it seldom
raises from the ground, drawing them up after the fore-feet with a
sliding drag over the grass or sand and rocks, as the case may be,
ever and anon pausing to take a sullen and savage survey of the field
and the natives who are urging it.
The sea-lion is polygamous, but it does not maintain any regular
system and method in preparing for and attending to its harem, like
that so finely illustrated on the breeding-grounds of the fur-seal;
and it is not so numerous, comparatively speaking. There are not,
according to my best judgment, over ten or twelve thousand of
these animals altogether on the breeding-grounds of the Pribylov
Islands. It does not haul more than a few rods anywhere or under any
circumstances back from the sea. It cannot be visited and inspected
by men as the fur-seals are, for it is so shy and suspicious that on
the slightest warning of such an approach, a stampede into the water
is sure to result.
That noteworthy, intelligent courage of a fur-seal, though it does
not possess half the size nor one-quarter of the muscular strength
of a sea-lion, is entirely wanting in the huge bulk and brain of the
_Eumetopias_. A boy with a rattle or a pop-gun could stampede ten
thousand sea-lion bulls in the height of a breeding-season to the
water, and keep them there for the rest of the time.[137]
Old males come out and locate themselves over the narrow belts
of rookery-grounds (sometimes, as at St. Paul, on the immediate
sea-margin of fur-seal breeding-places), two or three weeks in
advance of the females, which arrive later, _i.e._, between the 1st
to the 6th of June; and these females are never subjected to that
intense, jealous supervision so characteristic of the fur-seal harem.
Big sea-lion bulls, however, fight savagely[138] among themselves,
and turn off from the breeding-ground all younger and weaker males.
A cow sea-lion is not quite half the size of an adult male; she will
measure from eight to nine feet in length osteologically, with a
weight of four or five hundred pounds; she has the same general cast
of countenance and build of the bull; but, as she does not sustain
any fasting period of over a week or ten days consecutively, she
never comes out so grossly fat as he does. With reference to the
weight of the latter, I was particularly unfortunate in not being
able to get one of those big bulls on the scales before it had
been bled, and in bleeding I know that a flood of blood poured out
which should have been recorded in the weight. Therefore I can only
estimate this aggregate avoirdupois of one of the finest-conditioned
adult male sea-lions at fourteen to fifteen hundred pounds; an
average weight, however, might safely be recorded as touching twelve
hundred pounds.[139]
You will notice that if you disturb and drive off any portion of the
rookery, by walking up in plain sight, those nearest to you will take
to the water instantly, swim out to a distance of fifty yards or
so, leaving their pups behind, helplessly sprawled around and about
the rocks at your feet. Huddled up all together in the surf in two
or three packs or squads, the startled parents hold their heads and
necks high out of the sea, and peer keenly at you: then, all roaring
in an incessant concert, they make an orchestra to which those deep
sonorous tones of the organ in that great Mormon tabernacle, at Salt
Lake City, constitute the fittest and most adequate resemblance.
You will witness an endless tide of these animals travelling to the
water, and a steady stream of their kind coming out, if you but keep
in retirement and do not disturb them. When they first issue from the
surf they are a dark chocolate brown-and-black, and glisten; but, as
their coats dry off, the color becomes an iron-gray, passing into
a bright golden rufous, which covers the entire body alike—shades
of darker brown on the pectoral patches and sterno-pectoral region.
After getting entirely dry, they seem to grow exceedingly uneasy,
and act as though oppressed by heat, until they plunge back into the
sea, never staying out, as the fur-seal does, day after day, and week
after week. The females and the young males frolic in and out of
the water, over rocks awash, incessantly, one with another, just as
puppies play upon a green sward; and, when weary, stretch themselves
out in any attitude that will fit the character of that rock, or the
lava-shingle upon which they may happen to be resting. The movements
of their supple spines, and ball-and-socket joint attachments, permit
of the most extraordinary contortions of a trunk and limbs, all of
which, no matter how distressing to your eyes, they seem actually to
relish. But the old battle-scarred bulls of the harem stand or lie at
their positions day and night without leaving them, except to take a
short bath when the coast is clear, until the end of the season.
[Illustration: SEA-LION ROOKERY, AT TOLSTOI
A view of the great Sea-lion breeding ground under the high bluffs of
St. George’s Island, between Garden Cove and Tolstoi Mees. June, 1873]
When swimming, the sea-lion lifts its head only above the surface
long enough to take a deep breath, then drops down a few feet
below, and propels itself, for about ten or fifteen minutes, like a
cigar-steamer, at the rate of six or seven knots, if undisturbed;
but, if chased or alarmed, it seems fairly to fly under water, and
can easily maintain for a long time a speed of fourteen or fifteen
miles per hour. Like the fur-seal, its propulsion through water
is the work entirely of its powerful fore-flippers, which are
simultaneously struck out, both together, and back against the water,
feathering forward again to repeat, while the hind flippers are
simply used as a rudder oar in deflecting an ever-varying swift and
abrupt course of the animal. On land its hind flippers are employed
just as a dog uses its feet in scratching fleas—the long peculiar
toe-nails thereof seeming to reach and comb those spots affected by
vermin, which annoys it, as the fur-seal is, to a great extent, and
causes them both to enjoy a protracted scratching.
Again, both genera, _Callorhinus_ and _Eumetopias_, are happiest when
the surf is strongest and wildest. Just in proportion to the fury of
a gale, so much the greater joy and animation of these animals. They
delight in riding on the crests of each dissolving breaker up to a
moment when it fairly foams over iron-bound rocks. At that instant
they disappear like phantoms beneath the creamy surge, to reappear on
the crown of the next mighty billow.
When landing, they always ride on the surf, so to speak, to an
objective point: and, it is marvellous to see with what remarkable
agility they will worm themselves up steep, rocky landings, having
an inclination greater than forty-five degrees, to flat bluff-tops
above, which have an almost perpendicular drop to water.
As the sea-lion is without fur, its skin has little or no commercial
value.[140] The hair is short, an inch to an inch and a half in
length, being longest over the nape of the neck; straight, and
somewhat coarse, varying in color as the season comes and goes. For
instance, when the _Eumetopias_ makes its first appearance in the
spring and dries out after landing, it has then a light-brownish
rufous tint, with darker shades back and under the fore flippers and
on the abdomen. By the expiration of a month or six weeks, about
June 15th, generally, this coat will then be weathered into a glossy
rufous, or ochre yellow; this tinting remains until shed along by
the middle of August, or a little earlier. After a new coat has
fairly grown, and just before an animal leaves the island rookery in
November, it is a light sepia or Vandyke brown, with deeper shades,
almost black, upon its abdomen. The cows after shedding never color
up so darkly as the bulls; but when they come back to the land next
year they return identically the same in tinting; so that the eye,
in glancing over a sea-lion rookery during June and July, cannot
discern any dissimilarity in color, at all noteworthy, existing
between the coats of the bulls and the cows; also, the young males
and yearlings appear in that same golden-brown and ochre, with here
and there an animal which is noted as being spotted somewhat like
a leopard—a yellow rufous ground predominating, with patches of
dark-brown, blotched and mottled, irregularly interspersed over the
anterior regions down to those posterior. I have never seen any of
the old bulls or cows thus mottled, and this is likely due to some
irregularity of shedding in the younger animals; for I have not
noticed it early in the season, and it seems to fairly fade away so
as not to be discerned on the same animal at the close of its summer
solstice. Many of the old bulls have a grizzled or “salt and pepper”
look during the shedding period, which is from August 10th up to
November 10th or 20th. The pups, when born, are a rich dark-chestnut
brown. This coat they shed in October, and take one much lighter in
its stead, still darker, however, than their parents.
The time of arrival at, stay on, and departure from the islands, is
about the same as that which I have recorded as characteristic of
the fur-seal; but, if a winter is an open, mild one, some of the
sea-lions will frequently be seen about the shores during the whole
year; and then the natives occasionally shoot them, long after the
fur-seals have entirely disappeared. Again, it does not confine its
landing to the Pribylov Islands alone, as the fur-seal unquestionably
does, with reference to such terrestrial location in our own country.
On the contrary, it is a frequent visitor to almost all of the
Aleutian Islands: it ranges, as I have said before, over the mainland
coast of Alaska, south of Bristol Bay, and about the Siberian shores
to the westward, throughout the Kuriles and the Japanese northern
waters.[141]
When I first returned, in 1873, from the Seal Islands, those authors,
whose conclusions were accepted prior to my studies there, had
agreed in declaring that the sea-lion, so common off the port of
San Francisco, was the same animal also common in Alaska, and the
Pribylov Islands in especial; but my drawings from life, and studies,
quickly pointed out the error, for it was seen that the creature most
familiar to the Californians was an entirely different animal from my
subject of study on the Seal Islands. In other words, while scattered
examples of the _Eumetopias_ were, and are, unquestionably about and
off the harbor of San Francisco, yet nine tenths of the sea-lions
there observed were a different animal—they were the _Zalophus
californianus_. This _Zalophus_ is not much more than half the size
of _Eumetopias_, relatively; it has the large, round, soft eye of
the fur-seal, and the more attenuated Newfoundland-dog-like muzzle;
and it never roars, but breaks out incessantly with a _honk, honk,
honking_ bark, or howl.
No example of _Zalophus_ has ever been observed in the waters of
Bering Sea, nor do I believe that it goes northward of Cape Flattery,
or really much above Mendocino, Cal.
According to the natives of St. George, some sixty or seventy years
ago the _Eumetopias_ held almost exclusive possession of that
island being there in great numbers, some two or three hundred
thousand strong; and they aver, also, that the fur-seals then were
barely permitted to land by these animals, and in no great number;
therefore, they assert they were directed by the Russians (_i.e._,
their own ancestry) to hunt and worry the sea-lions off from the
island: the result was that, as the sea-lions left, the fur-seals
came, so to-day _Callorhinus_ occupies nearly the same ground which
_Eumetopias_ alone covered sixty years ago. I call attention to this
statement of the people because it is, or seems to be, corroborated
in the notes of a French naturalist and traveller, who, in his
description of the Island of St. George, which he visited sixty years
ago, makes substantially the same representation.[142]
That great intrinsic value to the domestic service of the Aleutes
rendered by the flesh, fat, and sinews of this animal, together
with its skin, arouses the natives of St. Paul and St. George, who
annually make drives of “seevitchie,” by which they capture two
or three hundred, as the case may be. On St. George driving is
positively difficult, owing to the character of the land itself:
hence, a few only are secured there; but at St Paul unexceptional
advantages are found on Northeast Point for the capture of these shy
and timid brutes. The natives of St. Paul, therefore, are depended
upon to secure the necessary number of skins required by both islands
for their boats and other purposes. This capture of the sea-lion
is the only serious business which the people have on St. Paul. It
is a labor of great care, industry, and some physical risk for the
Aleutian hunters.[143]
By reference to my sketch-map of Northeast Point rookery the reader
will notice a peculiar neck or boot-shaped point, which I have
designated as Sea-lion Neck. That area is a spot upon which a large
number of sea-lions are always to be found during the season. As they
are so shy and sure to take to water upon the appearance or presence
of man near by, the natives adopt this plan: Along by the middle
or end of September, as late sometimes as November, and after the
fur-seal rookeries have broken up for the year, fifteen or twenty of
the very best men in the village are selected by one of their chiefs
for a sea-lion rendezvous at Northeast Point. They go up there with
their provisions, tea, and sugar, and blankets, and make themselves
at home in the _barrabora_ and house which I have located on the
sketch-map of Novastoshnah, prepared to stay, if necessary, a month,
or until they shall get the whole drove together of two or three
hundred sea-lions.
The “seevitchie,” as the natives call those animals, cannot be
approached successfully by daylight, so these hunters lie by in
this house of Webster’s until a favorable night comes along, one
in which the moon is partially obscured by drifting clouds and the
wind blows over them from the rookery where the sea-lions lie. Such
an opportunity being afforded, they step down to the beach at low
water and proceed to creep on all fours across surf-beaten sand and
boulders up between the dozing herd, and the high-water mark where
it rests. In this way a small body of natives, crawling along in
Indian file, may pass unnoticed by sea-lion sentries, which doubtless
in that uncertain light see, but confound the forms of their human
enemies with those of seals. When the creeping Aleutes have all
reached the strip of beach that is left bare by ebb-tide, and is
between the surf and those unsuspecting animals, at a given signal
from their crawling leader they at once leap to their feet, shout,
yell, brandishing their arms and firing off pistols, while the
astonished and terrified lions roar, and flounder in every direction.
[Illustration: ALEUTES CAPTURING SEA-LIONS
Natives creeping up between a herd of dozing Sea-lions and the water,
at low tide during a moonlight night, at Garden Cove, St. George’s
Island; getting into position for “springing the alarm”]
[Illustration: THE SEA-LION PEN
Method of corralling Sea-lions at Novastoshnah, St. Paul’s Island,
while the Natives are getting a Drove together for driving to the
Village]
If at the moment of surprise seevitchie are sleeping with their heads
pointed toward the water, as they rise up in fright they charge
straight on in that direction, right over the men themselves; but
those which have been resting at this instant, when startled, pointed
landward, up they rise and follow that course just as desperately,
and nothing will turn them either one way or the other. These
sea-lions which charged for the water are lost, of course;[144]
but the natives promptly follow up the land-turned animal with a rare
combination of horrible noises and demoniacal gesticulations until
the first frenzied spurt and exertions of the terrified creatures so
completely exhaust them that they fall panting, gasping, prone upon
the earth, extended in spite of their bulk and powerful muscles,
helpless, and at the mercy of their cunning captors, who, however,
instead of slaying them as they lie, rudely rouse them up again and
urge the herd along to the house in which they have been keeping
watch during the several days past.
Here at this point is a curious stage in such proceeding. The
natives drive up to that “Webster’s” house those twenty-five or
thirty or forty sea-lions, as the case may be, which they have just
captured—they seldom get more at any one time—and keep them in a
corral or pen close by the barrabora, on the flattened surface of a
sand-ridge, in the following comical manner: When they have huddled
up the “pod,” they thrust stakes down around it at intervals of ten
to twenty feet, to which strips of cotton cloth are fluttering as
flags, and a line or two of sinew-rope or thong of hide is strung
from pole to pole around the group, making a circular cage, as it
were. Within this flimsy circuit the stupid sea-lions are securely
imprisoned, and, though they are incessantly watched by two or
three men, the whole period of caging and penning which I observed,
extending over nine or ten days and nights, passed without a single
effort being made by the “seevitchie” to break out of their flimsy
bonds, and it was passed by these animals, not in stupid quiescence,
but in alert watchfulness, roaring, writhing, twisting, turning one
upon and over the other.
By this method of procedure, after the lapse usually of two or three
weeks, a succession of favorable nights will have occurred: then the
natives secure their full quota, which, as I have said before, is
expressed by a herd of two or three hundred of these animals.
[Illustration: The Sea-lion Caravan.
[_Natives driving a drove over the plain of Polavina, en route from
Northeast Point to St. Paul._]]
When that complement is filled, the natives prepare to drive their
herd back to the village over the grassy and mossy uplands and
intervening stretches of sand-dune tracts, fully eleven miles:
preferring thus to take the trouble of prodding such clumsy brutes,
wayward and obstinate as they are, rather than to pack their heavy
hides in and out of boats, making in this way each sea-lion carry
its own skin and blubber down to the doors of their houses in the
village. If the weather is normally wet and cold, this drive or
caravan of sea-lions can be driven to its point of destination in
five or six days; but should it be dry and warmer than usual, three
weeks, and even longer, will elapse before the circuit is traversed.
[Illustration: SPRINGING THE ALARM
Natives surprising a Herd of Sea-lions at Tolstoi, St. George’s
Island. August 3, 1673]
When the drive is started, the natives gather around the herd on all
sides, save an opening which they leave pointing to that direction
they desire the animals to travel; in this manner they escort and
urge the “seevitchie” along to their final resting and slaughter near
the village. The young lions and the females, being much lighter than
old males, less laden with fat or blubber, take the lead, for they
travel twice and thrice as easy and as fast as the latter; these, by
reason of their immense avoirdupois, are incapable of moving ahead
more than a few rods at a time, then they are completely checked by
sheer loss of breath, though the vanguard of the females allures them
on; but when an old sea-lion feels his wind coming short, he is sure
to stop, sullenly and surlily turning upon the drivers, not to move
again until his lungs are clear.
In this method and manner of direction the natives stretch a herd out
in extended file, or as a caravan, over the line of march, and as the
old bulls pause to savagely survey the field and catch their breath,
showing their wicked teeth, the drivers have to exercise every art
and all their ingenuity in arousing them to fresh efforts. This
they do by clapping boards and bones together, firing fusees, and
waving flags; and of late, and best of all, the blue gingham umbrella
repeatedly opened and closed in the face of an old bull has been a
more effective starter than all the other known artifices or savage
expedients of the natives.[145]
The procession of sea-lions, managed in this strange manner day and
night—for the natives never let up—is finally brought to rest within
a stone’s throw of the village, which has pleasurably anticipated for
days and for weeks its arrival, and rejoices in its appearance. The
men get out their old rifles and large sea-lion lances, and sharpen
their knives, while the women look well to their oil-pouches, and
repair to the field of slaughter with meat-baskets on their heads.
No attempt is made, even by the boldest Aleut, to destroy an adult
bull sea-lion by spearing the enraged, powerful beast, which, now
familiar with man and conscious, as it were, of his puny strength,
would seize the lance between its jaws and shake it from the hands of
the stoutest one in a moment. Recourse is had to a rifle. The herd
is started up those sloping flanks of the Black Bluff hillside; the
females speedily take the front, while the old males hang behind.
Then the marksmen, walking up to within a few paces of each animal,
deliberately draw gun-sight upon their heads and shoot them just
between the eye and the ear. The old males thus destroyed, the cows
and females are in turn surrounded by the natives, who, dropping
their rifles, thrust big heavy iron lances into their trembling
bodies at a point behind the fore flippers, touching the heart with
a single lunge. It is an unparalleled spectacle, dreadfully cruel and
bloody.[146]
This surrounding of the cows is, perhaps, the strangest procedure on
the islands. To fully appreciate this subject the reader must first
call to his mind’s eye the fact that these female sea-lions, though
small beside the males, are yet large animals; seven and eight feet
long and weighing each as much as any four or five average men. But,
in spite of their strength and agility, fifteen or twenty Aleutes,
with rough, iron-tipped lances in their hands, will surround a
drove of fifty or one hundred and fifty of them by forming a noisy,
gesticulating circle, gradually closing up, man to man, until the
sea-lions are literally piled in a writhing, squirming, struggling
mass, one above the other, three or four deep, heads, flippers,
bellies, backs, all so woven and interwoven in this panic-stricken
heap of terrified creatures that it defies adequate description. The
natives spear those cows on top, which, as they sink in death, are
mounted in turn by the live animals underneath; these meet the deadly
lance, in order, and so on until the whole herd is quiet and stilled
in the fatal ebbing of their hearts’ blood.
Although the sea-lion has little or no commercial value for us,
yet to the service of the natives themselves, who live all along
the Bering Sea coast of Alaska, Kamchatka, and the Kuriles, it is
invaluable; they set great store by it. It supplies them with its
hide, mustaches, flesh, fat, sinews, and intestines, which they make
up into as many necessary garments, food-dishes, etc. They have
abundant reason to treasure its skin highly, since it is the covering
to their neat _bidarkas_ and _bidarrahs_, the former being the small
_kayak_ of Bering Sea, while the latter is a boat of all work,
exploration and transportation. These skins are unhaired by sweating
in a pile, then they are deftly sewed and carefully stretched over
a light keel and frame of wood, making a perfectly water-tight boat
that will stand, uninjured, the softening influence of water for a
day or two at a time, if properly air-dried and oiled. After being
used during the day these skin boats are always drawn out on the
beach, turned bottom-side up and air-dried during the night—in this
way made ready for employment again on the morrow.
A peculiar value is attached to the intestines of the sea-lion,
which, after skinning, are distended with air and allowed to dry
in that shape; then they are cut into ribbons and sewed strongly
together into that most characteristic rain-proof garment of
the world, known as the “kamlayka,” which, while being fully as
water-repellant as india-rubber, has far greater strength, and is
never affected by grease and oil. It is also transparent in its
fitting over dark clothes. The sea-lions’ throats are treated in a
similar manner, and when cured, are made into boot tops, which are
in turn soled by very tough skin that composes the palms of this
animal’s fore flippers.
[Illustration: The “Bidarrah.”
[_Characteristic Alaskan boat, made by fitting sea-lion skins over a
wooden frame and keel._]]
The Aleutian name for this garment is unpronounceable in our
language, and equally so in the more flexible Russian; hence the
Alaskan “kamlayka,” derived from the Siberian “kamläia.” That is made
of tanned reindeer skin, unhaired, and smoked by larch bark until
it is colored a saffron yellow; and is worn over a reindeer-skin
undershirt, which has the hair next to its owner’s skin, and the
obverse side stained red by a decoction of alder-bark. The kamläia
is closed behind and before, and a hood, fastened to the back of
the neck, is drawn over the head, when leaving shelter; so is the
Aleutian kamlayka; only the one of Kolyma is used to keep out
piercing dry cold, while the garment of the Bering Sea is a perfect
water-tight affair.
Around the natives’ houses, on St. Paul and St. George, constantly
appear curious objects which, to an unaccustomed eye, resemble
overgrown gourds or enormous calabashes with attenuated necks;
examination proves them to be the dried, distended stomach-walls of a
sea-lion, filled with its oil—which (unlike the offensive blubber of
the fur-seal) boils out clear and inodorous from its fat. The flesh
of an old sea-lion, while not very palatable, is tasteless and dry;
but the meat of a yearling is very much like veal, and when properly
cooked I think it is just as good; but the superiority of sea-lion
meat over that of the fur-seal is decidedly marked. It requires some
skill in the _cuisine_ ere sausage and steaks of the _Callorhinus_
are accepted on the table; while it does not, however, require much
art, experience, or patience for good cooks to serve up the juicy
ribs of a young sea-lion so that the most fastidious palate will not
fail to relish it.
The carcass of a sea-lion, after it is stripped of its hide, and
disembowelled, is hung up in cool weather by its hind flippers,
over a rude wooden frame or “laabaas,” as the natives call such a
structure, where, together with many more bodies of fur-seals treated
in the same manner, it serves from November until the following
season of May, as the meat-house for an Aleut on St. Paul and St.
George. Exposed in this manner to open weather, the natives keep
their seal-meat almost any length of time, in winter, for use; and,
like our old duck and bird-hunters, they say they prefer to have this
flesh tainted rather than fresh, declaring that it is most tender and
toothsome when decidedly “loud.”
The tough, elastic mustache-bristles of a sea-lion are objects of
great commercial activity by the Chinese, who prize them highly as
pickers for their opium pipes, and several ceremonies peculiar to
their joss-houses. Such lip-bristles of the fur-seal are usually too
small and too elastic for this service. The natives, however, always
carefully pluck them out of the _Eumetopias_, and get their full
value in exchange.
The sea-lion also, as in the case of the fur-seal, is a fish-eater,
pure and simple, though he, like the latter, occasionally varies his
diet by consuming a limited amount of juicy sea-weed fronds, and
tender marine crustaceans; but he hunts no animal whatever for food,
nor does he ever molest, up here, the sea-fowl that incessantly hover
over his head, or sit in flocks without any fear on the surface of
the waters around him. He, like _Callorhinus_, is, without question,
a mighty fisherman, familiar with every submarine haunt of his
piscatorial prey; and, like his cousin, rejects the heads of all
those fish which have hard horny mouths or are filled with teeth or
bony plates.
Many authorities who are quoted in regard to the habits of hair-seals
and southern sea-lions speak with much fine detail of having
witnessed the capture of water-birds by _Phocidæ_ and _Otariidæ_. To
this point of inquiry on the Pribylov Islands I gave continued close
attention; because, off and around all of the rookeries, large flocks
of auks, arries, gulls, shags, and choochkies were swimming upon the
water, and shifting thereupon incessantly, day and night, throughout
the late spring, summer, and early fall. During the four seasons of
my observation I never saw the slightest motion made by a fur-seal or
sea-lion, a hair-seal or a walrus, toward intentionally disturbing a
single bird, much less of capturing and eating it. Had these seals
any appetite for sea-fowl, this craving could have been abundantly
satisfied at the expense of absolutely no effort on their part. That
none of these animals have any taste for water-birds I am thoroughly
assured.
In concluding this recitation of that wonderful seal life belonging
to those islets of Pribylov, it is well to emphasize the fact
that, with an exception of the Russian and American seal islands
of Bering Sea, there are none elsewhere in the world of the
slightest importance to-day; the vast breeding-grounds of fur-seals
bordering on the Antarctic have been, by the united efforts of all
nationalities—misguided, short-sighted, and greedy of gain—entirely
depopulated; only a few thousand unhappy stragglers are now to be
seen throughout all that southern area, where millions once were
found, and a small rookery, protected and fostered by the government
of a South American State, north and south of the mouth of the Rio
de la Plata. When, therefore, we note the eagerness with which our
civilization calls for seal-skin fur, the fact that in spite of
fashion and its caprices this fur is and always will be an article of
intrinsic value and in demand, the thought at once occurs that the
Government is exceedingly fortunate in having this great amphibious
stock-yard, far up and away in the quiet seclusion of Bering Sea,
from which it shall draw an everlasting revenue, and on which its
wise regulation and its firm hand can continue the seals forever.
FOOTNOTES:
[137] That the sea-lion bull should be so cowardly in the presence
of man, yet so ferocious and brave toward one another and other
amphibious animals, struck me as a line of singular contrast with
the undaunted bearing of a fur-seal “seecatch,” which, though being
not half the size or possessing muscular power to anything like its
development in the “seevitchie,” nevertheless will unflinchingly face
on its station at the rookery any man to the death. The sea-lion
bulls certainly fight as savagely and as desperately one with
another, as the fur-seal males do. There is no question about that,
and their superior strength and size only makes the result more
effective in the exhibition of gaping wounds and attendant bloodshed.
I have repeatedly seen examples of these old warriors of the sea
which were literally scarred from their muzzles to their posteriors
so badly and so uniformly as to have fairly lost all the color or
general appearance even of hair anywhere on their bodies.
[138] I recall in this connection the sight of an aged male sea-lion
which had been defeated by a younger and more lusty rival, perhaps.
It was hauled upon a lava shelf at Southwest Point, solitary and
alone; the rock around it being literally covered with pools of pus,
that was oozing out and trickling down from a score of festering
wounds; the victim stood planted squarely on its torn fore flippers,
with head erect and thrown back upon its shoulders; its eyes were
closed, and it gently swayed its sore neck and shoulders in a sort
of troubled, painful day-dreaming or dozing. Like the fur-seal, the
sea-lion never notices its wounds to nurse and lick them, as dogs do,
or other carnivora; it never pays the slightest attention to them, no
matter how grievously it may be injured.
[139] Often when the fur-seal and sea-lion bulls haul up in the
beginning of the season examples among them which are inordinately
fat will be seen; their extra avoirdupois renders them very
conspicuous, even among large gatherings of their kind; they seem to
exhibit a sense of self-oppression then, quite as marked as is that
subsequent air of depression worn when, later, they have starved out
this load of surplus blubber, and are shambling back to the sea, for
recuperation and rest.
[140] The sea-lion and hair-seals of Bering Sea, having no commercial
value in the eyes of civilized men, have not been subjects of
interest enough to the pioneers of those waters for mention in
particular; such record, for instance, as that given of the walrus,
the sea-otter, and the fur-seal. Steller was the first to draw the
line clearly between them and seals in general, especially defining
their separation from the fur-seal; still his description is far from
being definite or satisfactory in the light of our present knowledge
of the animal.
In the South Pacific and Atlantic the sea-lion has been curiously
confounded by many of our earliest writers with the sea-elephant,
_Macrorhinus leoninus_, and its reference is inextricably entangled
with the fur-seal at the Falklands, Kerguelen’s Land, and the
Crozettes. The proboscidean seal, however, seems to be the only
pinniped which visits the Antarctic continent; but that is a mere
inference of mine, because so little is known of those ice-bound
coasts, and Wilkes, who gives the only record made of the subject,
saw no other animal there save that one.
[141] The winter of 1872-73, which I passed on the Pribylov Islands,
was so rigorous that those shores were ice-bound, and the sea
covered with floes from January until May 28th; hence I did not
have an opportunity of seeing, for myself, whether the sea-lion
remains about its breeding-grounds there throughout that period. The
natives say that a few of them, when the sea is open, are always to
be found, at any day during the winter and early spring, hauled out
at Northeast Point, on Otter Island, and around St. George. They
are, in my opinion, correct; and, being in such small numbers, the
“seevitchie” undoubtedly find enough subsistence in local crustacea,
pisces, and other food. The natives, also, further stated that
none of the sea-lions which we observe on the islands during the
breeding-season leave the waters of Bering Sea from the date of their
birth to the time of their death. I am also inclined to agree with
this proposition, as a general rule, though it would be strange if
Pribylov sea-lions did not occasionally slip into the North Pacific,
through and below the Aleutian chain, a short distance, even to
travelling as far to the eastward as Cook’s Inlet. _Eumetopias
stelleri_ is well known to breed at many places between Attoo and
Kadiak Islands. I did not see it at St. Matthew, however, and I do
not think it has ever bred there, although this island is only two
hundred miles away to the northward of the Seal Islands—too many
polar bears. Whalers speak of having shot it in the ice-packs in a
much higher latitude, nevertheless, than that of St. Matthew. I can
find no record of its breeding anywhere on the islands or mainland
coast of Alaska north of the fifty-seventh parallel or south of the
fifty-third parallel of north latitude. It is common on the coast of
Kamchatka, the Kurile Islands, and the Commander group, in Russian
waters.
There are vague and ill-digested rumors of finding _Eumetopias_ on
the shores of Prince of Wales and Queen Charlotte Islands in breeding
rookeries; I doubt it. If it were so, it would be authoritatively
known by this time. We do find it in small numbers on the Farallones
Rocks, off the entrance to the harbor of San Francisco, where it
breeds in company with, though sexually apart from, an overwhelming
majority of _Zalophus_; and it is credibly reported as breeding
again to the southward, on the Santa Barbara, Guadaloupe, and other
islands of Southern and Lower California, consorting there, as on the
Farallones, with an infinitely larger number of the lesser-bodied
_Zalophus_.
There is no record made which shows that the fur-seals, even, have
any regular or direct course of travel up or down the northwest
coast. They are principally seen in the open sea, eight or ten miles
from land, outside the heads of the Straits of Fuca, and from there
as far north as Dixon Sound. During May and June they are aggregated
in greatest numbers here, though examples are reported the whole year
around. The only fur-seal which I saw, or was noted by the crew of
the _Reliance_, in her cruise, June 1st to 9th, from Port Townsend
to Sitka, was a solitary “holluschak” that we disturbed at sea well
out from the lower end of Queen Charlotte’s Islands; then, from
Sitka to Kadiak, we saw nothing of the fur-seal until we hauled off
from Point Greville, and coming down to Ookamok Islet, a squad of
agile “holluschickie” suddenly appeared among a school of humpback
whales, sporting in the most extravagant manner around, under, and
even leaping over the wholly indifferent cetacea. From this eastern
extremity of Kadiak Island clear up to the Pribylov group we daily
saw them here and there in small bands, or also as lonely voyageurs,
all headed for one goal. We were badly outsailed by them; indeed, the
chorus of a favorite “South Sea pirate’s” song, as incessantly sung
on the cutter’s “‘tween decks,” seemed to have special adaptation to
them:
“For they bore down from the wind’wiard,
A sailin’ seven knots to our four’n.”
[142] Choris: Voyage Pittoresque autour du Monde.
[143] A curious, though doubtless authentic, story was told me in
this connection illustrative of the strength and energy of the
sea-lion bull when at bay. Many years ago (1847), on St. Paul Island,
a drive of September sea-lions was brought down to the village in
the usual style; but when the natives assembled to kill them, on
account of a great scarcity at that time of powder on the island, it
was voted best to lance the old males also, as well as the females,
rather than shoot them in the customary style. The people had hardly
set to work at the task when one of their number, a small, elderly,
though tough, able-bodied Aleut, while thrusting his lance into
the “life” of a large bull, was suddenly seen to fall on his back
directly under that huge brute’s head. Instantly the powerful jaws
of the “seevitchie” closed upon the waistband, apparently, of the
native, and, lifting the yelling man aloft as a cat would a kitten,
the sea-lion shook and threw him high into the air, away over the
heads of his associates, who rushed up to the rescue and quickly
destroyed the animal by a dozen furious spear-thrusts; yet death did
not loosen its clinched jaws, in which were the tattered fragments of
Ivan’s clothing.
[144] The natives appreciate this peculiarity of the sea-lion very
keenly, for good and sufficient cause, though none of them have ever
been badly injured in driving or “springing the alarm.” I camped
with them for six successive nights of September, 1872, in order to
witness the whole procedure. During the several drives made while I
was with them I saw but one exciting incident. Everything went off in
an orthodox manner, as described in the text above. The exceptional
incident occurred during the first drive of the first night and
rendered those natives so cautious that it was not repeated. When
the alarm was sprung, old Luka Mandrigan was leading the van, and at
that moment down upon him, despite his wildly gesticulating arms and
vociferous yelling, came a squad of bull “seevitchie.” The native saw
instantly that they were pointed for the water, and, in his sound
sense, turned to run from under. His tarbosars slipped upon a slimy
rock awash; he fell flat as a flounder just as a dozen or more big
sea-lions plunged over and on to his prostrate form in the shallow
water. In less time than this can be written the heavy pinnipeds
had disappeared, while the bullet-like head of old Luka was quickly
raised, and he trotted back to us with an alternation of mirth and
chagrin in his voice. He was not hurt in the least.
[145] The curious behavior of sea-lions in the Big Lake when they
are _en route_ and driven from Novastoshnah to the village deserves
mention. After the drove gets over the sand-dunes and beach between
Webster’s house and the extreme northeastern head of the lake, a halt
is called and the drove “penned” on the bank there. Then, when the
sea-lions are well rested, they are started up and pell-mell into
the water. Two natives in a bidarka keep them from turning out from
shore into the broad bosom of Meesulkmahnee, while another bidarka
paddles in their rear and follows their swift passage right down the
eastern shore. In this method of procedure the drive carries itself
nearly two miles by water in less than twenty minutes from the time
the sea-lions are first turned in at the north end to that moment
when they are driven out at the southeastern elbow of the Big Pond.
The shallowness of the water here accounts probably for the strange
failure of these sea-lions to regain their liberty, and it so retards
their swimming as to enable the bidarka, with two men, to keep
abreast of their leaders easily, as they plunge ahead; and, “as one
goes, so all go sheep,” it is not necessary to pay attention to those
which straggle behind in the wake. They are stirred up by a second
bidarka, and none make the least attempt to diverge from that track
which the swifter mark out in advance. If they did, they could escape
“scot-free” in any one of the twenty minutes of this aquatic passage.
By consulting the map of St. Paul it will be observed that in a
direct line between the village and Northeast Point there are quite
a number of small lakes, including this large one of Meesulkmahnee.
Into all of these ponds the sea-lion drove is successively driven.
This interposition of fresh water at such frequent intervals serves
to shorten the time of that journey fully ten days in warmish
weather, and at least four or five under the best of climatic
conditions.
This track between Webster’s house and the village killing-grounds is
strewn with the bones of _Eumetopias_. They will drop in their tracks
now and then, even when carefully driven, from cerebral or spinal
congestion principally, and when they are hurried the mortality _en
route_ is very great. The natives when driving them keep them going
day and night alike, but give them frequent resting-spells after
every spurt ahead. The old bulls flounder along for a hundred yards
or so, then sullenly halt to regain breath, five or ten minutes being
allowed them; then they are stirred up again, and so on, hour after
hour, until the tedious transit is completed.
The younger sea-lions and the cows which are in the drove carry
themselves easily far ahead of the bulls, and, being thus always in
the van, serve unconsciously to stimulate and coax the heavy males
to travel. Otherwise I do not believe that a band of old bulls
exclusively could be driven down over this long road successfully.
[146] When slowly sketching, by measurements, the outlines of a fine
adult bull sea-lion which the ball from Booterin’s rifle had just
destroyed, an old “starooka” came up abruptly; not seeming to see
me, she deliberately threw down a large, greasy, skin meat-bag, and
whipping out a knife, went to work on my specimen. Curiosity prompted
me to keep still, in spite of the first sensations of annoyance, so
that I might watch her choice and use of the animal’s carcass. She
first removed the skin, being actively aided in this operation by an
uncouth boy; she then cut off the palms to both fore flippers; the
boy at the same time pulled out its mustache-bristles; she then cut
out its gullet, from the glottis to its junction with the stomach,
carefully divested it of all fleshy attachments and fat; she then
cut out the stomach itself, and turned it inside out, carelessly
scraping its gastric walls free of copious biliary secretions, the
inevitable bunch of _ascaris_; she then told the boy to take hold of
the duodenum end of the small intestine, and, as he walked away with
it, she rapidly cleared it of its attachments, so that it was thus
uncoiled to its full length of at least sixty feet; then she severed
it and then it was recoiled by the “melchiska,” and laid up with the
other members just removed, except the skin, which she had nothing
more to do with. She then cut out the liver and ate several large
pieces of that workhouse of the blood before dropping it into her
meat-pouch. She then raked up several handfuls of the “leaf-lard,” or
hard, white fat that is found in moderate quantity around the viscera
of all these pinnipeds, which she also dumped into the flesh-bag;
she then drew her knife through the large heart, but did not touch
it otherwise, looking at it intently, however, as it still quivered
in unison with the warm flesh of the whole carcass. She and the boy
then poked their fingers into the tumid lobes of the immense lungs,
cutting out portions of them only, which were also put into the grimy
pouch aforesaid; then she secured the gall-bladder and slipped it
into a small yeast-powder tin, which was produced by the urchin; then
she finished her economical dissection by cutting the sinews out of
its back in unbroken bulk from the cervical vertebra to the sacrum;
all these were stuffed into that skin bag, which she threw on her
back and supported it by a band over her head; she then trudged back
to the barrabkie from whence she sallied a short hour ago, like an
old vulture to the slaughter. She made the following disposition
of its contents: The palms were used to sole a pair of tarbosars,
or native boots, of which the uppers and knee-tops were made of
the gullets—one sea-lion gullet to each boot-top; the stomach was
carefully blown up and left to dry on the barrabkie roof, eventually
to be filled with oil rendered from sea-lion or fur-seal blubber.
The small intestine was carefully injected with water and cleansed,
then distended with air, and pegged out between two stakes, sixty
feet apart, with little cross-slats here and there between to keep
it clear of the ground. When it is thoroughly dry it is ripped up in
a straight line with its length and pressed out into a broad band of
parchment gut, which she cuts up and uses in making a water-proof
“kamlayka,” sewing it with those sinews taken from the back. The
liver, leaf-lard, and lobes of the lungs were eaten without further
cooking, and the little gall-bag was for some use in poulticing a
scrofulous sore. The mustache-bristles were a venture of the boy,
who gathers all that he can, then sends them to San Francisco, where
they find a ready sale to the Chinese, who pay about one cent apiece
for them. When the natives cut up a sea-lion carcass or one of a
fur-seal, on the killing-grounds for meat, they take only the hams
and the loins. Later in the season they eat the entire carcass, which
they hang up by its hind flippers on a “laabas” by their houses.