Our Arctic province

[107] The seal-life on the Pribylov Islands may be classified under the following heads, namely: (1) The fur-seal, Cattorhinus ursinus, the “kautickie” of the Russians; (2) the sea-lion, Eumetopias stelleri, the “seevitchie” of the Russians; (3) the hair-seal, Phoca vitulina, the “nearhpahsky” of the Russians; (4) the walrus, Odobænus obesus, the “morsjee” of the Russians.

[108] The inconsequential numbers of the hair-seal around and on the Pribylov Islands seem to be characteristic of all Alaskan waters and the northwest coast; also, the phocidæ are equally scant on the Asiatic littoral margins. Only the following four species are known to exist throughout the entire extent of that vast marine area, viz.:

Phoca vitulina—Everywhere between Bering Straits and California.

Phoca fœtida—Plover Bay, Norton’s Sound, Kuskokvim mouth, and Bristol Bay, of Bering Sea; Cape Seartze Kammin, Arctic Ocean, to Point Barrow.

Erignathus barbatus—Kamchatkan coast, Norton’s Sound, Kuskokvim mouth and Bristol Bay, of Bering Sea.

Histriophoca equestris—Yukon mouth and coast south to Bristol Bay, of Bering Sea.

[109] Those extremely heavy adult males which arrive first in the season and take their stations on the rookeries, are so fat that they do not exhibit a wrinkle or a fold of the skins enveloping their blubber-lined bodies. Most of this fatty deposit is found around the shoulders and the neck, though a warm coat of blubber covers all the other portions of the body save the flippers. This blubber-thickening of the neck and chest is characteristic of the adult males only, which are, by its provisions, enabled to sustain the extraordinary protracted fasting periods incident to their habit of life and reproduction.

When those superlatively fleshy bulls first arrive, a curious body-tremor seems to attend every movement which the animals make on land; their fat appears to ripple backward and forward under their hides, like waves. As they alternate with their flippers in walking, the whole form of the “see-catchie” fairly shakes as a bowl full of jelly does when agitated on the table before us.

[110] The distances at sea, away from the Pribylov Islands, in which fur-seals are found during the breeding season, are very considerable. Scattered records have been made of seeing large bands of them during August as far down the northwest coast as they probably range at any season of the year, viz., well out at sea in the latitude of Cape Flattery, 47° to 49° south latitude. In the winter and spring, up to middle of June, all classes are found here spread out over wide areas of ocean. Then by June 15th they will have all departed, the first and the latest, en route for the Pribylov Islands. Then, when seen again in this extreme southern range, I presume the unusually early examples of return toward the end of August are squads of the yearlings of both sexes, for this division is always the last to land on and the first to leave the Seal Islands annually.

[111] “See-catch,” is the native name for a bull on the rookeries, especially one which is able to maintain its position.

[112] “Hauling up,” is a technical term applied to the action of seals when they land from the surf and haul up or drag themselves over the beach. It is expressive and appropriate, as are most of the sealing phrases.

[113] There is also perfect uniformity in the coloration of the breeding coats of fur-seals, which is strikingly manifest while inspecting the rookeries late in July, when they are solidly massed thereon. At a quarter-mile distance the whole immense aggregate of animal life seems to be fused into a huge homogeneous body that is alternately roused up in sections and then composed, just as a quantity of iron-filings covering the bottom of a saucer will rise and fall when a magnet is passed over and around the dish.

[114] Without explanation I may be considered as making use of paradoxical language by using these terms of description, since the inconsistency of talking of “pups,” with “cows,” and “bulls,” and “rookeries,” on the breeding grounds of the same, cannot fail to be noticed; but this nomenclature has been given and used by the American and English whaling and sealing parties for many years, and the characteristic features of the seals themselves so suit the naming that I have felt satisfied to retain the style throughout as rendering my description more intelligible, especially so to those who are engaged in the business or may be hereafter. The Russians are more consistent, but not so “pat.” They call the bull “see-catch,” a term implying strength, vigor, etc.; the cow, “matkah,” or mother; the pups, “kotickie,” or little seals; the non-breeding males under six and seven years, “holluschickie,” or bachelors. The name applied collectively to the fur-seal by them is “morskie-kot,” or sea-cat.

[115] Dr. Otto Cramer: The suddenness with which fog and wind shut down and sweep over the sea here, even when the day opens most auspiciously for a short boat-voyage, has so alarmed the natives in times past that a visit is now never made by them from island to island, unless on one of the company’s vessels Several bidarrahs have never been heard from, which, in earlier times, attempted to sail, with picked crews of the natives, from one island to the other.

[116] “Do these seals drink?” is a question doubtless often uppermost and suggested to the observer’s eye, as he watches those animals going to the water from the hauling-grounds and the rookeries; at least it was in mine. I never could detect a callorhinus or a eumetopias lapping, either in the fresh-water pools and lakes, or in the brackish lagoon, or the sea; but it plunges at times into the rollers with its jaws wide open as it dives, reappearing quickly in the same manner to dip and rise again, many times in rapid succession, as it swims along, the water running in little streams from the corners of the open mouth whenever its head pops above the surface. Whether this action was simply to cool itself, or that of drinking, I am not prepared to assert positively. I think it was to meet both purposes.

[117] The old males, when grouped together by themselves, indulge in no humor or frolicsome festivities whatsoever. On the contrary, they treat each other with surly indifference. The mature females, however, do not appear to lose their good nature to anything like so marked a degree as do their lords and masters, for they will at all seasons of their presence on the islands be observed, now and then, to suddenly unbend from severe matronly gravity by coyly and amiably tickling and gently teasing one another, as they rest in the harems, or later, when strolling in September. There is no sign given, however, by these seal-mothers of a desire or attempt to fondle or caress their pups; nor do the young appear to sport with any others than the pups themselves, when together. Sometimes a yearling and a five or six months old pup will have a long-continued game between themselves. They are decidedly clannish in this respect—creatures of caste, like Hindoos.

[118] When the females first come ashore there is no sign whatever of affection manifested between the sexes. The males are surly and morose, and the females entirely indifferent to such reception. They are, however, subjected to very harsh treatment sometimes in progress of battles between the males for their possession, and a few of them are badly bitten and lacerated every season.

One of the cows that arrived at Nahspeel, St. Paul’s Island, early in June, 1872, was treated to a mutilation in this manner, under my eyes. When she had finally landed on the barren rocks of one of the numerous “see-catchie” at the water-front of this small rookery, and while I was carefully making a sketch of her graceful outlines, a rival bull, adjacent, reached out from his station and seized her with his mouth at the nape of the neck, just as a cat lifts a kitten. At the same instant, almost simultaneously, the old male that was rightfully entitled to her charms, turned, and caught her in his teeth by the skin of her posterior dorsal region. There she was, lifted and suspended in mid-air, between the jaws of the furious rivals, until, in obedience to their powerful struggles, the hide of her back gave way, and, as a ragged flap of the raw skin more than six inches broad and a foot in length was torn up and from her spine, she passed, with a rush, into the possession of the bull which had covetously seized her. She uttered no cry during this barbarous treatment, nor did she, when settled again, turn to her torn and bleeding wound to notice it in any way whatsoever that I could observe.

I may add here that I never saw the seals under such, or any circumstances, lick or nurse their wounds as dogs or cats do; but, when severe inflammation takes place, they seek the water, disappearing promptly from scrutiny.

[119] This old Aleut, Philip Vollkov, passed to his final rest—“un konchielsah”—in the winter of 1878-79. He was one of the real characters of St. Paul. He was esteemed by the whites on account of his relative intelligence, and beloved by the natives, who called him their “wise man,” and who exulted in his piety. Philip, like the other people there of his kind, was not much comfort to me when I asked questions as to the seals. He usually answered important inquiries by crossing himself and replying, “God knows.” There was no appeal from this.

[120] The only danger which these little fellows are subject to up here is being caught by an October gale down at the surf-margin, when they have not fairly learned to swim. Large numbers have been destroyed by sudden “nips” of this character.

[121] The fur-seal spends a great deal of time, both at sea and on land, in scratching its hide; for it is annoyed by a species of louse, a pediculus, to just about the same degree and in the same manner that our dogs are by fleas. To scratch, it sits upon its haunches, and scrapes away with the toe-nails of first one and then the other of its hind flippers, by which action it reaches readily all portions of its head, neck, chest and shoulders, and with either one or the other of its fore flippers it rubs down its spinal region back of the shoulders to the tail. By that division of labor with its feet it can promptly reduce, with every sign of comfort, any lousy irritation wheresoever on its body. This pediculus peculiar to the fur-seal attaches itself almost exclusively to the pectoral regions; a few also are generally found at the bases of the auricular pavilions.

When the fur-seal is engaged in this exercise it cocks its head and wears exactly the same expression that our common house-dog does while subjugating and eradicating fleas; the eyes are partly or wholly closed; the tongue lolls out; and the whole demeanor is one of quiet but intense satisfaction.

The fur-seal appears also to scratch itself in the water with the same facility and unction so marked on land, only it varies the action by using its fore-hands principally in its pelagic exercise, while its hind-feet do most of the terrestrial scraping.

[122] It has been suggested to me that the exquisite power of scent possessed by these animals enables them to reach the breeding grounds at about the place where they left them the season previously: surely the nose of the fur-seal is endowed to a superlative degree with those organs of smell, and its range of appreciation in this respect must be very great.

I noticed in all sleeping and waking seals that the nasal apertures were never widely expanded; and that they were at intervals rapidly opened and closed with inhalation and exhalation of each breath; the nostrils of the fur-seal are, as a rule, well opened when the animal is out of water, and remain so while it is on land.

[123] The Russian term “holluschickie” or “bachelors” is very appropriate, and is usually employed.

[124] If there is any one faculty better developed than the others in the brain of the intelligent Callorhinus, it must be its “bump” of locality. The unerring directness with which it pilots its annual course back through thousands of miles of watery waste to these spots of its birth—small fly-dots of land in the map of Bering Sea and the North Pacific—is a very remarkable exhibition of its skill in navigation. While the Russians were established at Bodega and Ross, Cal., seventy years ago, they frequently shot fur-seals at sea when hunting the sea-otter off the coast between Fuca Straits and the Farallones. Many of these animals, late in May and early in June, were so far advanced in pregnancy that it was deemed certain by their captors that some shore must be close at hand upon which the near-impending birth of the pup took place. Thereupon the Russians searched over every rod of the coast-line of the mainland and the archipelago between California and the peninsula of Alaska, vainly seeking everywhere there for a fur-seal rookery. They were slow to understand how animals so close to the throes of parturition could strike out into the broad ocean to swim fifteen hundred or two thousand miles within a week or ten days ere they landed on the Pribylov group, and, almost immediately after, give birth to their offspring.

[125] I did not permit myself to fall into error by estimating this matter of weight, because I early found that the apparent huge bulk of a sea-lion bull or fur-seal male, when placed upon the scales, shrank far below my notions: I took a great deal of pains, on several occasions, during the killing-season, to have a platform scale carted out into the field, and as the seals were knocked down, and before they were bled, I had them carefully weighed, constructing the following table from my observations:

[126] Veniaminov: Zapieskie ob Oonalashkenskaho Otdayla, 2 vols., St. Petersburg, 1842. This work of Bishop Innocent Veniaminov is the only one which the Russians can lay claim to as exhibiting anything like a history of Western Alaska, or of giving a sketch of its inhabitants and resources, that has the least merit of truth or the faintest stamp of reliability. Without it we should be simply in the dark as to much of what the Russians were about during the whole period of their occupation and possession of that country. He served, chiefly as a priest and missionary, for nineteen years, from 1823 to 1842, mainly at Oonalashka, having the Seal Islands in his parish, and was made Bishop of all Alaska. He was soon after recalled to Russia, where he became the primate of the national church, ranking second to no man in the Empire save the Czar. He was advanced in life, being more than ninety years of age when he died at Moscow, April 22, 1879. He must have been a man of fine personal presence, judging from the following description of him, noted by Sir George Simpson, who met him at Sitka in 1842, just as he was about to embark for Russia: “His appearance, to which I have already alluded, impresses a stranger with something of awe, while in further intercourse the gentleness which characterizes his every word and deed insensibly moulds reverence into love, and at the same time his talents and attainments are such as to be worthy of his exalted station. With all this, the bishop is sufficiently a man of the world to disdain anything like cant. His conversation, on the contrary, teems with amusement and instruction, and his company is much prized by all who have the honor of his acquaintance.” Sir Edward Belcher, who saw him at Kadiak in 1837, said: “He is a formidable-looking man, over six feet three inches in his boots, and athletic. He impresses one profoundly.”

[127] Definitions for Russian Names of the Rookeries, etc.—The several titles on my map that indicate the several breeding-grounds, owe their origin and have their meaning as follows:

Zapadnie signifies “westward,” and is so used by the people who live in the village.

Zoltoi signifies “golden,” so used to express a metallic shimmering of the sand there.

Ketavie signifies “of a whale” so used to designate that point where a large right whale was stranded in 1849 (?); from Russian “keet,” or “whale.”

Lukannon—so named after one Lukannon, a pioneer Russian, that distinguished himself, with one Kaiecov, a countryman, who captured a large number of sea-otters at that point, and on Otter Island, in 1787-88.

Tonkie Mees signifies “small (or “slender”) cape” [tonkie, “thin”; mees, “cape”].

Polavina literally signifies “half way” so used by the natives because it is practically half way between the salt-houses at Northeast Point and the village. Polavina Sopka, or “half-way mountain,” gets its name in the same manner.

Novastoshnah, from the Russian “novaite,” or “of recent growth,” so used because this locality in pioneer days was an island to itself; and it has been annexed recently to the mainland of St. Paul.

Vesolia Mista, or “jolly place,” the site of one of the first settlements, and where much carousing was indulged in.

Maroonitch, the site of a pioneer village, established by one Maroon.

Nahsayvernia, or “on the north shore” from Russian, “sayvernie.”

Bogaslov, or “word of God,” indefinite in its application to the place, but is, perhaps, due to the fact that the pious Russians, immediately after landing at Zapadnie, in 1787, ascended the hill and erected a huge cross thereon. Einahnuhto, an Aleutian word, signifying the “three mammæ.”

Tolstoi, a Russian name, signifying “thick”; it is given to at least a hundred different capes and headlands throughout Alaska, being applied as indiscriminately as we do the term “Bear Creek” to little streams in our Western States and Territories.

[128] One of the natives, “stareek,” Zachar Oostigov, told me that the “Russians, when they first landed, came ashore in a thick fog” at Tolstoi Mees, near the present sea-lion rookery site. As the water is deep and “bold” there, Pribylov’s sloop, the St. George, must have jammed her bowsprit against those lofty cliffs ere the patient crew had intimation of their position. The old Aleut then showed me that steep gully there, up which the ardent discoverers climbed to a plateau above: and, to demonstrate that he was not chilled or weakened by age, he nimbly scrambled down to the surf below, some three hundred and fifty vertical feet, and I followed, half stepping and half sliding over Pribylov’s path of glad discovery and proud possession, trodden one June day by him nearly a hundred years ago.

[129] The thought of what a deadly epidemic would effect among these vast congregations of Pinnipedia was one that was constant in my mind when on the ground and among them. I have found in the “British Annals” (Fleming’s), on page 17, an extract from the notes of Dr. Trail: “In 1833 I inquired for my old acquaintances, the seals of the Hole of Papa Westray, and was informed that about four years before they had totally deserted the island, and had only within the last few months begun to reappear.... About fifty years ago multitudes of their carcasses were cast ashore in every bay in the north of Scotland, Orkney, and Shetland, and numbers were found at sea in a sickly state.” This note of Trail is the only record which I can find of a fatal epidemic among seals. It is not reasonable to suppose that the Pribylov rookeries have never suffered from distempers in the past, or are not to in the future, simply because no occasion seems to have arisen during the comparatively brief period of their human domination.

[130] Somniosus microcephalus. Some of these sharks are of very large size, and when caught by the Indians of the northwest coast, basking or asleep on the surface of the sea, they will, if transfixed by the natives’ harpoons, take a whole fleet of canoes in tow and run swiftly with them several hours before exhaustion enables the savages to finally despatch them. A Hudson Bay trader, William Manson (at Fort Alexander in 1865), told me that his father had killed one in the smooth waters of Millbank Sound which measured twenty-four feet in length, and its liver alone yielded thirty-six gallons of oil. The Somniosus lies motionless for long intervals in calm waters of the North Pacific, just under and at the surface, with its dorsal fin clearly exposed above. What havoc such a carnivorous fish would be likely to effect in a “pod” of young fur-seals can be better imagined than described.

[131] Orca gladiator. While revolving this particular line of inquiry in my mind when on the ground and among the seals, I involuntarily looked constantly for some sign of disturbance in the sea which would indicate the presence of an enemy, and, save seeing a few examples of the Orca, I never detected anything. If the killer-whale was common here, it would be patent to the most casual eye, because it is the habit of this ferocious cetacean to swim so closely at the surface as to show its peculiar sharp dorsal fin high above the water. Possibly a very superficial observer could and would confound that long trenchant fluke of the Orca with the stubby node upon the spine of a humpback whale, which that animal exhibits only when it is about to dive. Humpbacks feed around the islands, but not commonly; they are the exception. They do not, however, molest the seals in any manner whatever, and little squads of these pinnipeds seem to delight themselves by swimming in endless circles around and under the huge bodies of those whales, frequently leaping out and entirely over the cetacean’s back, as witnessed on one occasion by myself and the crew of the Reliance off the coast of Kadiak, June, 1874.

[132] I feel confident that I have placed this average of fish eaten per diem by each seal at a starvation allowance, or, in other words, it is a certain minimum of the whole consumption. If the seals can get double the quantity which I credit them with above, startling as it seems, still I firmly believe that they eat it every year. An adequate realization by icthyologists and fishermen as to what havoc the fur-seal hosts are annually making among the cod, herring, and salmon of the northwest coast and Alaska, would disconcert and astonish them. Happily for the peace of political economists who may turn their attention to the settlement and growth of the Pacific coast of America, it bids fair to never be known with anything like precision. The fishing of man, both aboriginal and civilized, in the past, present, and prospective, has never been, is not, nor will it be, more than a drop in the bucket contrasted with those piscatorial labors of these icthyophagi in the waters adjacent to their birth. What catholic knowledge of fish and fishing-banks any one of those old “seecatchie” must possess, which we observe hauled out on the Pribylov rookeries each summer! It has, undoubtedly, during the eighteen or twenty years of its life, explored every fish-eddy, bank, or shoal throughout the whole of that vast immensity of the North Pacific and Bering Sea. It has had more piscine sport in a single twelvemonth than Izaak Walton had in his whole life.

An old sea-captain, Dampier, cruising around the world just about two hundred years ago, wrote diligently thereof (or, rather, one Funnel is said to have written for him), and wrote well. He had frequent reference to meeting hair-seals and sea-lions, fur-seals, etc., and fell into repeating this maxim, evidently of his own making: “For wherever there be plenty of fysh, there be seals.” I am sure that, unless a vast abundance of good fishing-ground was near by, no such congregation of seal-life as is that under discussion on the Seal Islands could exist. The whole eastern half of Bering Sea, in its entirety, is a single fish-spawning bank, nowhere deeper than fifty to seventy-five fathoms, averaging, perhaps, forty; also, there are great reaches of fishing-shoals up and down the northwest coast, from and above the Straits of Fuca, bordering the entire southern, or Pacific coast, of the Aleutian Islands. The aggregate of cod, herring, and salmon which the seals find upon these vast icthyological areas of reproduction, must be simply enormous, and fully equal to a most extravagant demand of the voracious appetites of Callorhini.

When, however, the fish retire from spawning here, there, and everywhere over these shallows of Alaska and the northwest coast, along by the end of September to the 1st of November, every year, I believe that the young fur-seal, in following them into the depths of the great Pacific, must have a really arduous struggle for existence—unless it knows of fishing-banks unknown to us. The yearlings, however, and all above that age, are endowed with sufficient muscular energy to dive rapidly in deep soundings, and to fish with undoubted success. The pup, however, when it goes to sea, five or six months old, is not lithe and sinewy like the yearling; it is podgy and fat, a comparatively clumsy swimmer, and does not develop, I believe, into a good fisherman until it has become pretty well starved after leaving the Pribylovs.

[133] I heard a great deal of talk among the white residents of St. Paul, when I first landed and the sealing-season opened, about the necessity of “resting” the hauling-grounds; in other words, they said if the seals were driven in repeated daily rotation from any one of the hauling-grounds, that this would so disturb these animals as to prevent their coming to any extent again thereon, during the rest of the season. This theory seemed rational enough to me at the beginning of my investigations, and I was not disposed to question its accuracy; but subsequent observation directed to this point particularly satisfied me, and the sealers themselves with whom I was associated, that the driving of the seals had no effect whatever upon the hauling which took place soon or immediately after the field, for the hour, had been swept clean of seals by the drivers. If the weather was favorable for landing, i. e., cool, moist, and foggy, the fresh hauling of the “holluschickie” would cover the bare grounds again in a very short space of time: sometimes in a few hours after the driving of every seal from Zoltoi sands over to the killing-fields adjacent, those dunes and the beach in question would be swarming anew with fresh arrivals. If, however, the weather is abnormally warm and sunny, during its prevalence, even if for several consecutive days, no seals to speak of will haul out on the emptied space; indeed, if these “holluschickie” had not been taken away by man from Zoltoi or any other hauling-ground on the islands when “tayopli” weather prevailed, most of those seals would have vacated their terrestrial loafing-places for the cooler embraces of the sea.

The importance of clearly understanding this fact as to the readiness of the “holluschickie” to haul promptly out on steadily “swept” ground, provided the weather is inviting, is very great; because, when not understood, it was deemed necessary, even as late as the season of 1872, to “rest” the hauling-grounds near the village (from which all the driving has been made since), and make trips to far-away Polavina and distant Zapadnie—an unnecessary expenditure of human time, and a causeless infliction of physical misery upon phocine backs and flippers.

[134] The fur-seal, like all of the pinnipeds, has no sweat-glands; hence, when it is heated, it cools off by the same process of panting which is so characteristic of the dog, accompanied by the fanning that I have hitherto fully described; the heavy breathing and low grunting of a tired drove of seals, on a warmer day than usual, can be heard several hundred yards away. It is surprising how quickly the hair and fur will come out of the skin of a blood-heated seal—literally rubs bodily off at a touch of the finger. A fine specimen of a three-year-old “holluschak” fell in its tracks at the head of the lagoon while being driven to the village killing-grounds. I asked that it be skinned with special reference to mounting; accordingly a native was sent for, who was on the spot, knife in hand, within less than thirty minutes from the moment that this seal fell in the road, yet soon after he had got fairly to work patches of the fur and hair came off here and there wherever he chanced to clutch the skin.

[135] When turning the stunned and senseless carcasses, the only physical danger of which the sealers run the slightest risk, during the whole circuit of their work, occurs thus: at this moment the prone and quivering body of the “holluschak” is not wholly inert, perhaps, though it is nine times out of ten; and as the native takes hold of a fore flipper to jerk the carcass over on to its back, the half-brained seal rouses, snaps suddenly and viciously, often biting the hands or legs of unwary skinners: they then come leisurely and unconcernedly up into the surgeon’s office at the village, for bandages, etc. A few men are bitten every day or two daring the season on the islands, in this manner, but I have never learned of any serious result following any case.

The sealers, as might be expected, become exceedingly expert in keeping their knives sharp, putting edges on them as keen as razors, and in an instant detect any dulness by passing the balls of their thumbs over the suspected edges to such blades.

The white sealers of the Antarctic always used an orthodox butcher’s “steel” in sharpening their knives, but these natives never have, and probably never will abandon those little whetstones above referred to.

During the Russian management, and throughout the strife in killing by our own people in 1868, a very large number of the skins were cut through, here and there, by the slipping of the natives’ knives, when they were taking them from the carcasses, and “flensing” them from the superabundance, in spots, of blubber. These knife-cuts through the skin, no matter how slight, give great annoyance to the dresser, hence they are always marked down in price. The prompt scrutiny of each skin on the islands by an agent of the Alaska Commercial Company, who rejects every one of them thus injured, has caused the natives to exercise greater care, and the number now so damaged, every season, is absolutely trifling.

Another source of small loss is due to a habit which the “holluschickie” have of occasionally biting each other when they are being urged along in the drives, and thus crowded once in a while one upon the other. Usually these examples of “zoobäden” are detected by the natives prior to the “knocking down,” and spared; yet those which have been nipped on the chest or abdomen cannot be thus noticed, and, until the skin is lifted, the damage is not apprehended.

The aim and force with which the native directs his blow determines the death of a fur-seal. If struck direct and violently, a single stroke is enough. The seals’ heads are stricken so hard sometimes that those crystalline lenses to their eyes fly out from the orbital sockets like hail-stones, or little pebbles, and frequently struck me sharply in the face, or elsewhere, while I stood near by watching a killing-gang at work.

A singular lurid green light suddenly suffuses the eye of a fur-seal at intervals when it is very much excited; as the “podding” for the clubbers is in progress and at the moment when last raising its head it sees the uplifted bludgeons on every hand above, fear seems then for the first time to possess it and to instantly gild its eye in this strange manner. When the seal is brained in this state of optical coloration I have noticed that the opalescent tinting remained well defined for many hours or a whole day after death. These remarkable flashes are very characteristic to the eyes of the old males during their hurly-burly on the rookeries, but never appear in the younger classes unless as just described, as far as I could observe.

[136] The shallow depths of Bering Sea give rise to a very bad surf, and though none of the natives can swim, as far as I could learn, yet they are quite creditable surfmen, and work the heavy “baidar” in and out from the landing adroitly and circumspectly. They put a sentinel upon the bluffs over Nah Speel, and go and come between the rollers as he signals. They are not graceful oarsmen under any circumstances, but can pull heartily and coolly together when in a pinch. The apparent ease and unconcern with which they handled their bidarrah here in the “baroon” during the fall of 1869 so emboldened three or four sailors of the United States Revenue Marine cutter Lincoln that they lost their lives in such surf through sheer carelessness. The “gig” in which they were coming ashore “broached to” in the breakers just outside the cove, and their lifeless forms were soon after thrown up by merciless waves on the Lagoon rookery. Three graves of these men are plainly marked on a western slope of the Black Bluffs.

There is a false air of listlessness and gentleness about an open sea, or roadstead roller, that is very apt to deceive even watermen of good understanding. The crushing, overwhelming power with which an ordinary breaker will hurl a large ship’s boat on rocks awash, must be personally experienced ere it is half appreciated.