[_In this Department of_ THE ARENA _no book will be reviewed which
is not regarded as a real addition to literature._]
President Jordan's Saga of the Seal.
David Starr Jordan, President of Leland Stanford Junior University, has
many times deserved well of his country. As a scientific man he has, we
believe, given to the American public and the world a greater number of
original monographs on important branches of current investigation than
has any of his distinguished contemporaries. From his special department
of ichthyology, in which he became an expert fully a score of years ago,
he has branched into nearly all fields of scientific exploration,
finding ever new paths, leading to new regions and new empires of
knowledge.
Upon this basis is builded Dr. Jordan's fame as an educator. In two
great States of the Union he has presided over the affairs of high-grade
institutions of learning. After a successful career as President of the
Indiana University, he was selected from the great array of American
scholars to preside over the destinies of Leland Stanford Junior
University, at Palo Alto, California. But the onerous duties and
responsibilities of these positions have hardly distracted Dr. Jordan's
mind from his central motive and aim of scientific investigation.
Through all the years of his busy career he has prosecuted his
researches with the most conspicuous success.
Meanwhile, he has endeared himself to the American people as an able
publicist, whose writings and leadership have become potent in many
lines of our public policy. President Cleveland had the good judgment to
select Dr. Jordan to preside over the inquiry into the condition of
affairs in Bering Sea. The fur-seal imbroglio had already become an
international menace; the peace of great nations was threatened by it.
It has thus fallen to Dr. Jordan's lot in his official position to
conduct an inquiry of the highest importance. He is the United States
Commissioner in charge of the fur-seal investigation, and it is this
fact and the results of this fact that now bring him to the fore in a
literary production, the only adverse criticism on which is its brevity.
Would it were longer.
In 1896 Dr. Jordan published his "Observations on the Fur Seals of the
Pribilof Islands." This was a _preliminary_ report. But it is
nevertheless replete with statements of the bottom facts and of
generalized information from which a clear notion of the condition of
affairs in the fur-seal regions must be derived. It is not of this work,
however, that we shall at the present speak, but rather of Dr. Jordan's
later production, "Matka and Kotik; a Tale of the Mist-Islands."[18]
[18] "Matka and Kotik; a Tale of the Mist-Islands." By David
Starr Jordan, President of the Leland Stanford Junior
University and of the California Academy of Sciences; United
States Commissioner in charge of Fur-Seal Investigations. One
volume, square duodecimo, illustrated, pp. 68. San Francisco:
The Whitaker & Ray Company, 1897.
It appears that during his investigations from a scientific and official
point of view the author's mind has been profoundly impressed on the
sentimental and poetic side by the conditions in which he found himself
in the Pribilof Islands. The result of this profound impression is the
little work before us. Though it is done in prose it is none the less a
poem; it is the Saga of the Seals. It is a poetic appeal to all
Christendom in the simple and dramatic way of Frithiof and his
contemporaries.
"Matka and Kotik" will be a revelation to those of Dr. Jordan's friends
and admirers who were not already acquainted with the deep, clear vein
of poetry in his composition. I have noted that several of our
nineteenth-century scientists have this vein. Huxley was of this number;
the spirits at the seances used to designate him as the "Poet of
Science." Dr. Jordan in "Matka and Kotik" vindicates his right to be
known as the _American_ Poet of Science.
It is evident that while the President of the Fur-Seal Commission was
performing his duty in the Pribilofs, in the summer of 1896, his mind
became profoundly impressed with the sorrows of the seal. Not only have
commerce and the equity of nations been outraged in this matter, but the
cry of humanity is heard. Aye, more; the cry of the seals themselves is
heard; and it is this cry that Dr. Jordan has interpreted and sent to
the world. Not satisfied with the preparation of his preliminary report,
he has found opportunity to appease his sense of indignation, by writing
this book, every line of which tells a story of avarice and crime and
butchery which, if we mistake not, the roused-up spirit of mankind will
soon abate.
Dr. Jordan's book is a sort of dramatical story, the _personae_ of which
are all Seals except one man, Apollon the Destroyer, and a few of the
creatures such as Chignotto, the sea-otter; Bobrik, her son; Epatka, the
sea parrot; Eichkao, the blue fox; Isogh, the hair-seal; Amogada, the
walrus; Sivutch, the sea lion; and Kagua, his wife, etc. The principal
actors are Atagh, an old "beach-master" living on the Tolstoi Mys;
Matka, his wife; Kotik, their child; Unga, Atagh's brother; Polsi,
Matka's brother; Minda and Lakutha, Kotik's sisters; Ennatha, Matka's
sister, and Annak, Ennatha's child. It is the manner of life and fate
of these personages that Dr. Jordan has delineated in the "Tale of the
Mist-Islands." He tells us that it is a true story--that the author
personally knew Matka before Kotik was born, and that he witnessed the
events which he describes.
I shall not attempt to give an extended review of the story of "Matka
and Kotik." I must satisfy myself and, I trust, incite the interest of
the readers of THE ARENA, by sketching only an outline of the Saga of
the Seal. The scene of the story is the Mist-Island, or, more properly,
certain parts of the shore and headlands of that island whereon the
seals pass an important part of their migratory life. From these coast
lines they take to sea at certain seasons and swim away, generally to
the south. Tolstoi Head is the point of observation from which Dr.
Jordan begins his charming delineations of seal-life, and there he
concludes the story; which, in the meantime, transforms itself into the
pathos of sad separations and finally into the dumb tragedy of slaughter
and death.
The author gives character--human character--to his personages,
discriminating them according to their natures into beings whose very
names, notwithstanding the limited range of their faculties, bring us
into intimate and profound sympathy with them. Old Atagh, the lordly
sea-bull of the Tolstoi Mys, looms up grandly above the rest--
In shape and gesture proudly eminent.
Matka, the wife, is an embodiment of her sex. Kotik is the child of her
choice. All her offspring are veritable children: the uncles are uncles,
the aunts are aunts, the cousins are cousins, and the rest are the rest.
Even the "supers" appear in the nebulous names of the drama.
The point of the "Tale of the Mist-Islands," the great lesson of it, is
the horrid abuses and cruelties to which the seals have been subjected
by the brutal fur-pirates who have thronged the Alaskan waters in the
past two decades, and whose intolerable lust of slaughter and
devastation has threatened the extinction of the fur-seal race. If the
story of "Matka and Kotik" could be perused, as it should be, by the
American people, the very mothers of the country would rise up against
the piratical butchers of the Pribilofs, who would quail under their
frown. Meanwhile, diplomacy drags its length, and official reports carry
to Congressional Committees a vague statistical account of what has been
done and is still doing in the Alaskan waters.
I most heartily commend to all who are interested--and who is not?--in
the fur-seal question and in the manner of its solution, Dr. Jordan's
interesting little book. I have hardly ever seen a better piece of
English than this. The author's style is admirable. I scarcely recall
another book so monosyllabic and terse. Whoever commences to read "Matka
and Kotik" will continue to the end. The story fascinates while it
instructs. I dare say that Dr. Jordan, in the scientific sketches which
are cunningly scattered in these paragraphs, is always correct.
If our space permitted, we should be glad to make extended quotations in
illustration of the sterling merits of this tale of our far Northwest. I
shall be obliged to conclude the review with only a single extract, but
must first remark that "Matka and Kotik" is illustrated with forty-two
striking photographic reproductions, the beauty and excellency of which
can hardly be too highly praised. To these are added thirty-four pen
sketches by Miss Chloe Frances Lesley, a student in zooelogy in Leland
Stanford Junior University. The illustrations which appear are adapted
to the text with perfect good taste. We also note "The Calendar of the
Mist-Islands." This is appended to the story proper, as is also the map
of the Mist-Island. In the calendar Dr. Jordan gives a diary of the
movements of the seals beginning January 1st and ending November 15th.
These notes convey a great amount of scientific information in the most
condensed and interesting form. It is evident that Dr. Jordan has
written under a strong sense of the significance of the scenes which he
wishes to portray. At the close, he says:
And when Kotik came back in the spring and climbed over the broken
ice-floes to take his place at Tolstoi, Atagh was sleeping yet. [It
was the sleep of death!]
And now the dreary days have come to the twin Mist-Islands. The
ships of the Pirate Kings swarm in the Icy Sea. To the Islands of
the Four Mountains they have found the way. The great Smoke-Island
has ceased to roar, because it cannot keep them back. The blood of
the silken-haired ones, thousand by thousand, stains the waves as
they rise and fall. The decks of the schooners are smeared with
their milk and their blood, while their little ones are left on the
rocks to wail and starve. The cries of the little ones go up day
and night from all the deserted homes, from Tolstoi and Zoltoi,
from Lukanin and Vostochni, and from the sister island of Staraya
Artil.
Meanwhile, Kotik and Unga, Polsi and Holostiak, stand in their
places, roaring and groaning, waiting for the silken-haired ones
that never come.
Their call comes across the green waves as I write. I turn my eyes
away from Tolstoi Head and put aside my pen. It is growing very
chill. The mist is rising from the Salt Lagoon, and there is no
brightness on the Zoltoi sands.