The Fur-seal Millions of the Pribylov Islands.—Marvellous Exhibition of Massed Animal-life in a State of Nature.—Story of the Discovery of these Remarkable Rookeries, July, 1786.—Previous Knowledge of them Unknown to Man.—Sketch of the Pribylov Islands.—Their Character, Climate, and Human Inhabitants.—A Realm of Summer-fog.—The Seal-life here Overshadows Everything, though the Bird Rookeries of Saint George are Wonderful.—No Harbors.—The Roadsteads.—The Attractive Flora.—Only Islands in Alaska where the Curse of Mosquitoes is Removed.—Natives Gathering Eggs on Walrus Islet.—A Scene of Confusion and Uproar.—Contrast very Great between Saint Paul and Saint George.—Good Reason of the Seals in Resorting to these Islands to the Exclusion of all other Land in Alaska.—Old-time Manners and Methods of the Russians Contrasted with Our Present Control.—Vast Gain and Improvement for Seals and Natives.—The Character of the Present Residents.—Their Attachment to the Islands.—The History of the Alaska Commercial Company.—The Wise Action of Congress.—The Perfect Supervision of the Agents of the Government.—Seals are more Numerous now than at First.—The Methods of the Company, the Government, and the Natives in Taking the Seals.

The story of the gloomy grandeur of Alaskan scenery and the wild existence of its inhabitants is not half told until that picture of what we observe on the Pribylov Islands of Bering Sea is graphically drawn. Here is annually presented one of the most marvellous exhibitions of massed animal-life that is known to man, civilized or savage; here is exhibited the perfect working of an anomalous industry, conducted without a parallel in the history of human enterprise, and of immense pecuniary and biological value.

In treating this subject the writer has trusted to nothing save what he himself has seen, for, until these life-studies were made by him, no succinct and consecutive history of the lives and movements of these animals had been published by any man. Fanciful yarns, woven by the ingenuity of whaling captains, in which the truth was easily blended with that which was not true, and short paragraphs penned hastily by naturalists of more or less repute, formed the knowledge that we had. Best of all was the old diary of Steller, who, while suffering bodily tortures, the legacy of gangrene and scurvy, when wrecked with Bering on the Commander Islands, showed the nerve, the interest, and the energy of a true naturalist. He daily crept, with aching bones and watery eyes, over the boulders and mossy flats of Bering Island to catch glimpses of those strange animals which abode there then as they abide to-day. Considering the physical difficulties that environed Steller, the notes made by him on the sea-bears of the North Pacific are remarkably good; but, as I have said, they fall so far from giving a fair and adequate idea of what these immense herds are and do as to be absolutely valueless for the present hour. Shortly after Steller’s time great activity sprang up in the South Atlantic and Pacific over the capture and sale of fur-seal skins taken in those localities It is extraordinary that, though whole fleets of American, English, French, Dutch, and Portuguese vessels engaged during a period of protracted enterprise of over eighty years in length in the business of repairing to the numerous rookeries of the Antarctic, returning annually laden with enormous cargoes of fur-seal skins, yet, as above mentioned, hardly a definite line of record has been made in regard to the whole transaction, involving, as it did, so much labor and so much capital.

The fact is, that the acquisition of these pelagic peltries had engaged thousands of men, and that millions of dollars had been employed in capturing, dressing, and selling fur-seal skins during the hundred years just passed by; nevertheless, from the time of Steller, away back as far as 1751, up to the beginning of the last decade, the scientific world actually knew nothing definite in regard to the life history of this valuable animal. The truth connected with the life of the fur-seal, as it herds in countless myriads on the Pribylov Islands of Alaska, is far stranger than fiction. Perhaps the existing ignorance has been caused by confounding the hair-seal, Phoca vitulina, and its kind, with the creature now under discussion. Two animals, more dissimilar in their individuality and method of living, can, however, hardly be imagined, although they belong to the same group, and live apparently upon the same food.

The following notes, surveys, and hypotheses herewith presented are founded upon the writer’s personal observations in the seal-rookeries of St. Paul and St. George, during the seasons of 1872 to 1874 inclusive, supplemented by his confirmatory inspection made in 1876. They were obtained during long days and nights of consecutive observation, from the beginning to the close of each seal-season, and cover, by actual surveys, the entire ground occupied by these animals.

During the progress of heated controversies that took place pending the negotiation which ended in the acquisition of Alaska by our Government, frequent references were made to the fur-seal. Strange to say, this animal was so vaguely known at that time, even to scientific men, that it was almost without representation in any of the best zoölogical collections of the world; even the Smithsonian Institution did not possess a perfect skin and skeleton. The writer, then as now, an associate and collaborator of that establishment, had his curiosity very much excited by these stories; and in March, 1872, he was, by the joint action of Professor Baird and the Secretary of the Treasury, enabled to visit the Pribylov Islands for the purpose of studying the life and habits of these animals.[85]

All writers on the subject of Alaskan exploration and enterprise agree as to the cause of the discovery of the Pribylov Islands in the last century. It was due to the feverish anxiety of a handful of Russian fur-gatherers, who desired to find new fields of gain when they had exhausted those last uncovered. Altasov and his band of Russians, Tartars, and Cossacks arrived at Kamtchatka toward the end of the seventeenth century, and they were the first discoverers of the beautiful, costly fur of the sea-otter. The animal bearing this pelage abounded then on that coast, but by the middle of the eighteenth century they and those who came after them had entirely extirpated it from that country. Then the survivors of Bering’s second voyage of observation, in 1741-42, and Tschericov brought back an enormous number of skins from Bering Island; then Michael Novodiskov discovered Attoo and the contiguous islands in 1745; Paicov came after him, and opened out the Fox Islands, in the same chain, during 1759; then succeeded Stepan Glottov, of infamous memory, who determined Kadiak in 1763; the peninsula of Alaska was discovered by Krenitzin in 1768. During these long years, from the discovery of Attoo until the last date mentioned above, a great many Russian companies fitted out at the mouth of the Amoor River and in the Okotsk Sea; they prospected therefrom this whole Aleutian archipelago in search of the sea-otter. There were, perhaps, twenty-five or thirty different companies, with quite a fleet of small vessels; and so energetic and thorough were they in their search and capture of the sea-otter that as early as 1772 and 1774 the catch in that group had dwindled from thousands and tens of thousands at first to hundreds and tens of hundreds at last. As all men do when they find that that which they are engaged in is failing them, a change of search and inquiry was in order; and, then the fur-seal, which had been noted, but not valued much, every year as it went north in the spring through the passes and channels of the Aleutian chain, then going back south again in the fall, became the source of much speculation as to where it spent its time on land and how it bred. No one had ever known of its stopping one solitary hour on a single rock or beach throughout all Alaska or the northwest coast. The natives, when questioned, expressed themselves as entirely ignorant, though they believed, as they believe in many things of which they have no knowledge, that these seals repaired to some unknown land in the north every summer and left it every winter. They also reasoned then, that when they left the unknown land to the north in the fall, and went south into the North Pacific, they travelled to some other strange island or continent there, upon which in turn to spend the winter. Naturally the Russians preferred to look for the supposed winter resting-places of the fur-seal, and forthwith a hundred schooners and shallops sailed into storm and fog, to the northward occasionally, and always to the southward, in search of this rumored breeding-ground. Indeed, if the record can be credited, the whole bent of this Russian attention and search for the fur-seal islands was devoted to that region south of the Aleutian Islands, between Japan and Oregon.

Hence it was not until 1786, after more than eighteen years of unremitting search by hardy navigators, that the Pribylov Islands were discovered. It seems that a rugged Muscovitic “stoorman,” or ship’s “mate,” Gerassim Pribylov by name, serving under the direction and in the pay of one of the many companies engaged in the fur-business at that time, was much moved and exercised in his mind by the revelations of an old Aleutian shaman at Oonalashka, who pretended to recite a legend of the natives, wherein he declared that certain islands in Bering Sea had long been known to the Aleutes.

Pribylov[86] commanded a small sloop, the St. George, which he employed for three successive years in constant, though fruitless, explorations to the northward of Oonalashka and Oonimak, ranging over the whole of Bering Sea from the straits above. His ill-success does not now seem strange as we understand the currents, the winds, and fogs of those waters. Why, only recently the writer himself has been on one of the best-manned vessels that ever sailed from any port, provided with good charts and equipped with all the marine machinery known to navigation, and that vessel has hovered for nine successive days off the north point and around St. Paul Island, sometimes almost on the reef, and never more than ten miles away, without actually knowing where the island was! So Pribylov did well, considering, when at the beginning of the third summer’s tedious search, in July, 1786, his old sloop ran up against the walls of Tolstoi Mees, at St. George, and, though the fog was so thick that he could see scarce the length of his vessel, his ears were regaled by the sweet music of seal-rookeries wafted out to him on the heavy air. He knew then that he had found the object of his search, and he at once took possession of the island in the Russian name and that of his craft.

His secret could not long be kept. He had left some of his men behind him to hold the island, and when he returned to Oonalashka they were gone; and ere the next season fairly opened, a dozen vessels were watching him and trimming in his wake. Of course, they all found the island, and in that year, July, 1787, the sailors of Pribylov, on St. George, while climbing the bluffs and straining their eyes for a relief-ship, descried the low coast and scattered cones of St. Paul, thirty-six miles to the northwest of them. When they landed at St. George, not a sign or a vestige of human habitation was found thereon; but during the succeeding year, when they crossed over to St. Paul and took possession of it, in turn, they were surprised at finding on the south coast of that island, at a point now known as English Bay, the remains of a recent fire. There were charred embers of drift-wood and places where grass had been scorched; there was a pipe and a brass knife-handle, which, I regret to say, have long passed beyond the cognizance of any ethnologist. This much appears in the Russian records.

But, if we can believe the Aleutes in what they relate, the islands were known to them long before they were visited by the Russians. They knew and called them “Ateek,” after having heard about them. The legend of these people was as follows:

Eegad-dah-geek, a son of an Oonimak chief of the name of Ah-kak-nee-kak, was taken out to sea in a bidarka by a storm, the wind blowing strong from the south. He could not get back to the beach, nor could he make any other landing, and was obliged to run before the wind three or four days, when he brought up on St. Paul Island, north from the land which he had been compelled to leave. Here he remained until autumn, and became acquainted with the hunting of different animals. Elegant weather one day setting in, he saw the peaks of Oonimak. He then resolved to put to sea, and return to receive the thanks of his people there, and after three or four days of travelling he arrived at Oonimak with “many otter tails and snouts.”[87]

The Pribylov Islands lie in the heart of Bering Sea, and are among the most insignificant landmarks known to that ocean. They are situated one hundred and ninety-two miles north of Oonalashka, two hundred miles south of St. Matthews, and about the same distance westward of Cape Newenham on the mainland.

The islands of St. George and St. Paul are from twenty-seven to thirty miles apart, St. George lying southeastward of St. Paul. They are far enough south to be beyond the reach of permanent ice-floes, upon which polar bears would have made their way to the islands, though a few of these animals were doubtless always present. They were also distant enough from the inhabited Aleutian districts and the coast of the mainland to have remained unknown to savage men. Hence they afforded the fur-seal the happiest shelter and isolation, for their position seems to be such as to surround and envelop them with fog-banks that fairly shut out the sun nine days in every ten during the summer and breeding-season.

In this location ocean-currents from the great Pacific, warmer than the normal temperature of this latitude, trending up from southward, ebb and flow around the islands as they pass, giving rise during the summer and early autumn to constant, dense, humid fog and drizzling mists, which hang in heavy banks over the ground and the sea-line, seldom dissolving away to indicate a pleasant day. By the middle or end of October strong, cold winds, refrigerated on the Siberian steppes, sweep down over the islands, carrying off the moisture and clearing up the air. By the end of January, or early in February, they usually bring, by their steady pressure, from the north and northwest, great fields of broken ice, sludgy floes, with nothing in them approximating or approaching glacial ice. They are not very heavy or thick, but as the wind blows they compactly cover the whole surface of the sea, completely shutting in the land, and for months at a time hush the wonted roar of the surf. In the exceptionally cold seasons that succeed each other up there every four or five years, for periods of three and even four months—from December to May, and sometimes into June—the islands will be completely environed and ice-bound. On the other hand, in about the same rotation, occur exceptionally mild winters. Not even the sight of an ice-blink is recorded then during the whole winter, and there is very little skating on the shallow lakes and lagoons peculiar to St. Paul and St. George. This, however, is not often the case.

The breaking up of winter-weather and the precipitation of summer (for there is no real spring or autumn in these latitudes), usually commences about the first week in April. The ice begins to leave or dissolve at that time, or a little later, so that by the 1st or 5th of May, the beaches and rocky sea-margin beneath the mural precipices are generally clear and free from ice and snow, although the latter occasionally lies, until the end of July or the middle of August, in gullies and on leeward hill-slopes, where it has drifted during the winter. Fog, thick and heavy, rolls up from the sea, and closes over the land about the end of May. This, the habitual sign of summer, holds on steadily to the middle or end of October again.

The periods of change in climate are exceedingly irregular during the autumn and spring, so-called, but in summer a cool, moist, shady gray fog is constantly present. To this certainty of favored climate, coupled with the perfect isolation and an exceeding fitness of the ground, is due, without doubt, that preference manifested by the warm-blooded animals which come here every year, in thousands and hundreds of thousands to breed, to the practical exclusion of all other ground.[88]

I simply remark here, that the winter which I passed upon St. Paul Island (1872-73) was one of great severity, and, according to the natives, such as is very seldom experienced. Cold as it was, however, the lowest marking of the thermometer was only 12° Fahr. below zero, and that lasted but a few hours during a single day in February, while the mean of that month was 18° above. I found that March was the coldest month. Then the mean was 12° above, and I have since learned that March continues to be the meanest month of the year. The lowest average of a usual winter ranges from 22° to 26° above zero; but these quiet figures are simply inadequate to impress the reader with this exceeding discomfort of a winter in that locality. It is the wind that tortures and cripples out-door exercise there, as it does on all the sea-coasts and islands of Alaska. It is blowing, blowing, from every point of the compass at all times; it is an everlasting succession of furious gales, laden with snow and sleety spiculæ, whirling in great drifts to-day, while to-morrow the wind will blow from a quarter directly opposite, and reverse its drift-building action of the day preceding.

Without being cold enough to suffer, one is literally confined and chained to his room from December until April by this Æolian tension. I remember very well that, during the winter of 1872-73, I was watching, with all the impatience which a man in full health and tired of confinement can possess, every opportunity to seize upon quiet intervals between the storms, in which I could make short trips along those tracks over which I was habituated to walk during the summer; but in all that hyemal season I got out but three times, and then only by the exertion of great physical energy. On a day in March, for example, the velocity of the wind at St. Paul, recorded by one of the signal-service anemometers, was at the rate of eighty-eight miles per hour, with as low a temperature as -4°! This particular wind-storm, with snow, blew at such a velocity for six days without an hour’s cessation, while the natives passed from house to house crawling on all fours. No man could stand up against it, and no man wanted to. At a much higher temperature—say at 15° or 16° above zero—with the wind blowing only twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, it is necessary, when journeying, to be most thoroughly wrapped up so as to guard against freezing.

As I have said, there are here virtually but two seasons—winter and summer. To the former belongs November and the following months up to the end of April, with a mean temperature of 20° to 28°; while the transition of summer is but a very slight elevation of that temperature, not more than 15° or 20°. Of the summer months, July, perhaps, is the warmest, with an average temperature between 46° and 50° in ordinary seasons. When the sun breaks out through the fog, and bathes the dripping, water-soaked hills and flats of the island in its hot flood of light, I have known the thermometer to rise to 60° and 64° in the shade, while the natives crawled out of that fervent and unwonted heat, anathematizing its brilliancy and potency. Sunshine does them no good; for, like the seals, they seem under its influence to swell up at the neck. A little of it suffices handsomely for both Aleutes and pinnipedia, to whom the ordinary atmosphere is much more agreeable.

It is astonishing how rapidly snow melts here. This is due, probably, to the saline character of the air, for when the temperature is only a single degree above freezing, and after several successive days in April or May, at 34° and 36°, grass begins to grow, even if it be under melting drifts, and the frost has penetrated the ground many feet below. I have said that this humidity and fog, so strongly and peculiarly characteristic of the Pribylov group, was due to the warmer ocean-currents setting up from the coast of Japan, trending to the Arctic through Bering’s Straits, and deflected to the southward into the North Pacific, laving, as it flows, the numerous passes and channels of the great Aleutian chain; but I do not think, nor do I wish to be understood as saying, that my observation in this respect warrants any conclusion as to so large a Gulf Stream flowing to the north, such as mariners and hydrographers recognize upon the Atlantic coast. I do not believe that there is anything of the kind equal to it in Bering Sea. I believe, however, that there is a steady set up to the northward from southward around the Seal Islands, which is continued through Bering’s Straits, and drifts steadily off up to the northeast, until it is lost beyond Point Barrow. That this pelagic circulation exists, is clearly proven by the logs of the whalers, who, from 1845 to 1856, literally filled the air over those waters with the smoke of their “try-fires,” and ploughed every square rod of that superficial marine area with their adventurous keels. While no two, perhaps, of those old whaling captains living to-day will agree as to the exact course of tides,[89] for Alaskan tides do not seem to obey any law, they all affirm the existence of a steady current, passing up from the south to the northeast, through Bering’s Straits. The flow is not rapid, and is doubtless checked at times, for short intervals, by other causes, which need not be discussed here. It is certain, however, that there is warm water enough, abnormal to the latitude, for the evolution of those characteristic fog-banks, which almost discomfited Pribylov, at the time of his discovery of the islands, nearly one hundred years ago, and which have remained ever since.

Without this fog the fur-seal would never have rested there as he has done; but when he came on his voyage of discovery, ages ago, up from the rocky coasts of Patagonia mayhap, had he not found this cool, moist temperature of St. Paul and St. George, he would have kept on, completed the circuit, and returned to those congenial antipodes of his birth.

Speaking of the stormy weather brings to my mind the beautiful, varied, and impressive nephelogical display in the heavens overhead here during October and November. I may say, without exaggeration, that the cloud-effects which I have witnessed from the bluffs of this little island, at this season of the year, surpass anything that I had ever seen before. Perhaps the mighty masses of cumuli, deriving their origin from warm exhalations out of the sea, and swelled and whirled with such rapidity, in spite of their appearance of solidity, across the horizon, owe their striking brilliancy of color and prismatic tones to that low declination of the sun due to the latitude. Whatever the cause may be, and this is not the place to discuss it, certainly no other spot on earth can boast of a more striking and brilliant cloud-display. In the season of 1865-66, when I was encamped on this same parallel of latitude in the mountains eastward of Sitka and the interior, I was particularly attracted by an exceeding brilliancy, persistency, and activity of the aurora; but here on St. Paul, though I eagerly looked for its dancing light, it seldom appeared; and when it did it was a sad disappointment, the exhibition always being insignificant as compared in my mind with its flashing of my previous experience. A quaint old writer, a hundred years ago, was describing Norway and its people: he advanced what he considered a very plausible theory for the cause of the aurora; he cited an ancient sage, who believed that the change of winds threw the saline particles of the sea high into the air, and then by aërial friction, “fermentation” took place, and the light was evolved! I am sure that the saline particles of Bering Sea were whirled into the air during the whole of that winter of my residence there, but no “fermentation” occurred, evidently, since rarely indeed did the aurora greet my eyes. In the summer season there is considerable lightning; you will see it streak its zigzag path mornings, evenings, and even noondays, but from the dark clouds and their swelling masses upon which it is portrayed no sound returns—a fulmen brutum, in fact. I remember hearing but one clap of thunder while in that country. If I recollect aright, and my Russian served me well, one of the old natives told me that it was no mystery, this light of the aurora, for, said he, “we all believe that there are fire-mountains away up toward the north, and what we see comes from their burning throats, mirrored back on the heavens.”

The formation of these islands, St. Paul and St. George, was recent, geologically speaking, and directly due to volcanic agency, which lifted them abruptly, though gradually, from the sea-bed. Little spouting craters then actively poured out cinders and other volcanic breccia upon the table-bed of basalt, depositing below as well as above the water’s level as they rose; and subsequently finishing their work of construction through the agency of these spout-holes or craters, from which water-puddled ashes and tufa were thrown. Soon after the elevation and deposit of the igneous matter, all active volcanic action must have ceased, though a few half-smothered outbursts seem to have occurred very recently indeed, for on Bobrovia or Otter Island, six miles southward of St. Paul, is the fresh, clearly blown-out throat, with the fire-scorched and smoked, smooth, sharp-cut, funnel-like walls of a crater. This is the only place on the Seal Islands where there are any evidences of recent discharges from the crater of a volcano.

Since the period of the upheaval of the group under discussion, the sea has done much to modify and even enlarge the most important one, St. Paul, while the others, St. George and Otter, being lifted abruptly above the power of water and ice to carry and deposit sand, soil, and boulders, are but little changed from the condition of their first appearance.

The Russians tell a somewhat strange story in connection with Pribylov’s landing. They say that both the islands were at first without vegetation, save St. Paul, where there was a small “talneek,” or willow, creeping along on the ground; and that on St. George nothing grew, not even grass, except on the place where the carcasses of dead animals rotted. Then, in the course of time, both islands became covered with grass, a great part of it being of the sedge kind, Elymus. This record of Veniaminov, however, is scarcely credible; there are few, surely, who will not question the opinion that the seals antedated the vegetation, for, according to his own statements, these creatures were there then in the same immense numbers that we find them to-day. The vegetation on these islands, such as it is, is fresh and luxuriant during the growing season of June and July and early August, but the beauty and economic value of trees and shrubbery, of cereals and vegetables, are denied to them by climatic conditions. Still I am strongly inclined to believe that, should some of those hardy shrubs and spruce trees indigenous at Sitka or Kadiak, be transplanted properly to any of the southern hill-slopes of St. Paul most favored by soil, drainage, and bluffs, for shelter from saline gales, they might grow, though I know that, owing to the lack of sunlight, they would never mature their seed. There is, however, during the summer, a beautiful spread of grasses, of flowering annuals, biennials, and perennials, of gayly-colored lichens and crinkled mosses,[90] which have always afforded me great delight whenever I have pressed my way over the moors and up the hillsides of the rookeries.

There are ten or twelve species of grasses of every variety, from close, curly, compact mats to tall stalks—tussocks of the wild wheat, Elymus arenaria, standing in favorable seasons waist high—the “wheat of the north”—together with over one hundred varieties of annuals, perennials, sphagnum, cryptogamic plants, etc., all flourishing in their respective positions, and covering nearly every point of rock, tufa, cement, and sand that a plant can grow upon, with a living coat of the greenest of all greens—for there is not sunlight enough there to ripen any perceptible tinge of ochre-yellow into it—so green that it gives a deep blue tint to gray noonday shadows, contrasting pleasantly with the varying russets, reds, lemon-yellows, and grays of the lichen-covered rocks, and the brownish-purple of the wild wheat on the sand-dune tracts in autumn, together, also, with innumerable blue, yellow, pink, and white phænogamous blossoms, everywhere interspersed over the grassy uplands and sandy flats. Occasionally, on looking into the thickest masses of verdure, our common wild violet will be found, while the phloxes are especially bright and brilliant here. The flowers of one species of gentian, Gentiana verna are very marked in their beauty; also those of a nasturtium, and a creeping pea-vine on the sand-dunes. The blossom of a species of the pulse family is the only one here that emits a positive, rich perfume; the others are more suggestive of that quality than expressive. The most striking plant in all of a long list is the Archangelica officinalis, with its tall seed-stalks and broad leaves, which grows first in spring and keeps green latest in the fall. The luxuriant rhubarb-like stems of this umbellifer, after they have made their rapid growth in June, are eagerly sought for by the natives, who pull them and crunch them between their teeth with all the relish that we experience in eating celery. The exhibition of ferns at Kamminista, St. Paul, during the summer of 1872, surpassed anything that I ever saw: I recall with vivid detail the exceedingly fine display made by these luxuriant and waving fronds, as they reared themselves above the rough interstices of that rocky ridge. From the fern roots, and those of the gentian, the natives here draw their entire stock of vegetable medicines. This floral display on St. Paul is very much more extensive and conspicuous than that on St. George, owing to the absence of any noteworthy extent of warm sand-dune country on the latter island.

When an unusually warm summer passes over the Pribylov group, followed by an open fall and a mild winter, the elymus ripens its seed, and stands like fields of uncut grain in many places along the north shore of St. Paul and around the village, the snow not falling enough to entirely obliterate it; but it is seldom allowed to flourish to that extent. By the end of August and the first week of September of normal seasons, the small edible berries of Empetrum nigrum and Rubus chamæmorus are ripe. They are found in considerable quantities, especially at “Zapadnie,” on both islands, and, as everywhere else throughout circumpolar latitudes, the former is small, watery, and dark, about the size of an English or black currant; the other resembles an unripe and partially decayed raspberry. They are, however, keenly relished by the natives, and even by American residents, being the only fruit growing upon the islands. Perhaps no one plant that flowers on the Seal Islands is more conspicuous and abundant than is the Saxifraga oppositofolia; it grows over all localities, rank and tall in rich locations, to stems scarcely one inch high on the thin, poor soil of hill summits and sides, densely cespitose, with leaves all imbricated in four rows; and flowers almost sessile. I think that at least ten well-defined species of the order Saxifragaceæ exist on the Pribylov group. The Ranunculaceæ are not so numerous; but, still, a buttercup growing in every low slope where you may chance to wander is always a pleasant reminder of pastures at home; and, also, a suggestion of the farm is constantly made by the luxuriant inflorescence of the wild mustard (Cruciferæ). The chickweeds (Caryophyllaceæ) are well represented, and also the familiar yellow dandelion, Taraxacum palustre. Many lichens (Lichenes) and soft mosses (Musci) are in their greatest exuberance, variety, and beauty here; and myriads of golden poppies (Papaveraceæ) are nodding their graceful heads in the sweeping of the winds—the first flowers to bloom, and the last to fade.

The chief economic value rendered by the botany of the Pribylov Islands to the natives is an abundance of the basket-making rushes (Juncaceæ), which the old “barbies” gather in the margins of many of the lakes and pools.

The only suggestion of a tree[91] found growing on the Pribylov group is the hardy “talneek” or creeping willow; there are three species of the genus Salix found here, viz., reticulata, polaris, and arctica; the first named is the most common and of largest growth; it progresses exactly as a cucumber-vine does in our gardens; as soon as it has made from the seed a growth of six inches or a foot upright from the soil, then it droops over and crawls along prostrate upon the earth, rocks, and sphagnum; some of the largest talneek trunks will measure eight or ten feet in decumbent length along the ground, and are as large around the stump as an average wrist of man. The usual size, however, is very, very much less; while the stems of polaris and arctica scarcely ever reach the diameter of a pencil case, or the procumbent length of two feet.

Although Rubus chamæmorus is a tree-shrub, and is found here very commonly distributed, yet it grows such a slender diminutive bush, that it gives no thought whatever of its being anything of the sort. Herbs, grasses, and ferns tower above it on all sides.

The fungoid growths on the Pribylov Islands are abundant and varied, especially in and around the vicinity of the rookeries and the killing-grounds. On the west slope of the Black bluffs at St. Paul the mushroom, Agaricus campestris, was gathered in the season of 1872 by the natives, and eaten by one or two families in the village, who had learned to cook them nicely from the Russians. These Seal Island mushrooms have deeper tones of pink and purple-red in their gills than do those of my gathering in the States. I kicked over many large spherical “puff-balls” (Lycoperdæ) in my tundra walks; myriads of smaller ones (Lycoperdon cinereum?) cover patches near the spots where carcasses have long since rotted, together with a pale gray fungus (Agaricus fimiputris), exceedingly delicate and frosted exquisitely. Some ligneous fungi (Clavaria), will be found attached to the decaying stems of Salix reticulata (creeping willows). The irregularity of the annual growing of the agarics, and their rapid growth when they do appear, makes their determination excessively difficult; they are as unstable in their visits as are several of the Lepidoptera. The cool humidity of climate during the summer season on the Pribylov Islands is especially adapted to that mysterious, but beautiful growth of these plants—the apotheosis of decay. The coloring of several varieties is very bright and attractive, shading from a purplish-scarlet to a pallid white.

A great many attempts have been made, both here and at St. George, to raise a few of the hardy vegetables. With the exception of growing lettuce, turnips, and radishes on the Island of St. Paul, nothing has been or can be done. On the south shore of St. George, and at the foot of a mural bluff, is a little patch of ground less in area than one-sixteenth of an acre, which appears to be so drained and so warmed by the rarely-reflected sunlight from this cliff, every ray of which seems to be gathered and radiated from the rocks, as to allow the production of fair turnips; and at one season there were actually raised potatoes as large as walnuts. Gardening, however, on either island involves so much labor and so much care, with so poor a return, that it has been discontinued. It is a great deal better, and a great deal easier, to have the “truck” come up once a year from San Francisco on the steamer.

There is one comfort which nature has vouchsafed to civilized man on these islands. There are very few indigenous insects. A large flesh-fly, Bombylius major, appears during the summer and settles in a striking manner on the backs of quiet, loafing natives, or strings itself in rows of millions upon the long grass-blades which flourish about the killing-grounds, especially on the leaf-stalks of an elymus, causing this vegetation, over the whole slaughtering-field and vicinity, to fairly droop to earth as if beaten down by a tornado of wind and rain. It makes the landscape look as though it had moulded over night, and the fungoid spores were blue and gray. Our common house-fly is not present; I never saw one while I was up there. The flesh-flies which I have just mentioned never came into the dwellings unless by accident: the natives say they do not annoy them, and I did not notice any disturbance among the few animals which the resident company had imported for beef and for service.

Then, again, this is perhaps the only place in all Alaska where man, primitive and civilized, is not cursed by mosquitoes. There are none here. A gnat, that is disagreeably suggestive of the real enemy just referred to, flits about in large swarms, but it is inoffensive, and seeks shelter in the grass. Several species of beetles are also numerous here. One of them, the famous green and gold “carabus,” is exceedingly common, crawling everywhere, and is just as bright in the rich bronzing of its wing-shields as are its famous prototypes of Brazil. One or two species of Itemosa, a Cymindis, several representatives of the Aphidiphaga, one or two of Dytiscidæ, three or four Cicindelidæ—these are nearly all that I found. A single dragon-fly, Perla bicaudata, flitted over the lakes and ponds of St Paul. The familiar form to our eyes, of the bumble-bee, Bombus borealis, passing from flower to flower, was rarely seen; but a few are here resident. The Hydrocorisæ occur in great abundance, skipping over the water in the lakes and pools everywhere, and a very few species of butterflies, principally the yellow Nymphalidæ, are represented by numerous individuals.

Aside from the seal-life on the Pribylov Islands, there is no indigenous mammalian creature, with the exception of the blue and white foxes, Vulpes lagopus,[92] and a lemming, Myodes obensis. The latter is restricted, for some reason or other, to the Island of St. George, where it is, or at least was, in 1874, very abundant. Its burrows and paths, under and among the grassy hummocks and mossy flats, checkered every square rod of land there covered with this vegetation. Although the Island of St. Paul is but twenty-nine or thirty miles to the northwest, not a single one of these active, curious little animals is found there, nor could I learn from the natives that it had ever been seen there. The foxes are also restricted to these islands; that is, their kind, which are not found elsewhere, except the stray examples on St. Matthew seen by myself, and those which are carefully domesticated and preserved at Attoo, the extreme westernmost land of the Aleutian chain. These animals find comfortable holes for their accommodation and retreat on the Seal Islands, among the countless chinks and crevices of the basaltic formation. They feed and grow fat upon sick and weakly seals, also devouring many of the pups, and they vary this diet by water-fowl and eggs[93] during the summer, returning for their subsistence during the long winter to the bodies of seals upon the breeding-grounds and the skinned carcasses left upon the killing-fields. Were they not regularly hunted from December until April, when their fur is in its prime beauty and condition, they would swarm like the lemming on St. George, and perhaps would soon be obliged to eat one another. The natives, however, thin them out by incessant trapping and shooting during the period when the seals are away from the islands.

The Pribylov group is as yet free from rats; at least none have got off from the ships. There is no harbor on either of these islands, and vessels lie out in the roadstead, so far from land that those pests do not venture to swim to the shore. Mice were long ago brought to shore in ships’ cargoes, and they are a great nuisance to the white people as well as the natives throughout the islands. Hence cats also are abundant. Nowhere, perhaps, in the wide world are such cats to be seen as these. The tabby of our acquaintance, when she goes up there and lives upon the seal-meat spread everywhere under her nose, is metamorphosed, by time of the second generation, into a stubby feline ball. In other words, she becomes thickened, short, and loses part of the normal length of her tail; also her voice is prolonged and resonant far beyond the misery which she inflicts upon our ears here. These cats actually swarm about the natives’ houses, never in them much, for only a tithe of their whole number can be made pets of; but they do make night hideous beyond all description. They repair for shelter often to the chinks of precipices and bluffs; but although not exactly wild, yet they cannot be approached or cajoled. The natives, when their sluggish wits are periodically aroused and thoroughly disturbed by the volume of cat-calls in their village, sally out and by a vigorous effort abate the nuisance for the time being. Only the most fiendish caterwauling will or can arouse this Aleutian ire.

On account of the severe climatic conditions it is, of course, impracticable to keep stock here with any profit or pleasure. The experiment has been tried faithfully. It is found best to bring beef-cattle up in the spring on the steamer, turn them out to pasture until the close of the season in October and November, and then, if the snow comes, to kill them and keep the carcasses refrigerated until consumed. Stock cannot be profitably raised here; the proportion of severe weather annually is too great. From three to perhaps six months of every year they require feeding and watering, with good shelter. To furnish an animal with hay and grain up there is a costly matter, and the dampness of the growing summer season on both islands renders hay-making impracticable. Perhaps a few head of hardy Siberian cattle might pick up a living on the north shore of St Paul, among the grasses and sand-dunes there, with nothing more than shelter and water given them; but they would need both of these attentions. Then the care of them would hardly return expenses, as the entire grazing-ground could not support any number of animals. It is less than two square miles in extent, and half of this area is unproductive. Then, too, a struggle for existence would reduce the flesh and vitality of these cattle to so low an ebb that it is doubtful whether they could be put through another winter alive, especially if severe. I was then and am now strongly inclined to think that if a few of those Siberian reindeer could be brought over to St. Paul and to St. George they would make a very successful struggle for existence, and be a source of a good supply, summer and winter, of fresh meat for the agents of the Government and the company who may be living upon the islands. I do not think that they would be inclined to molest or visit the seal-grounds; at least, I noticed that the cattle and mules of the company running loose on St. Paul were careful never to poke around on the outskirts of a rookery, and deer would be more timid and less obtrusive than our domesticated animals. But I did notice on St. George that a little squad of sheep, brought up and turned out there for a summer’s feeding, seemed to be so attracted by the quiet calls of the pups on the rookeries that they were drawn to and remained by the seals without disturbing them at all, to their own physical detriment, for they lost better pasturage by so doing. The natives of St. Paul have a strange passion for seal-fed pork, and there are quite a large number of pigs on the Island of St. Paul and a few on St. George. Such hogs soon become entirely carnivorous, living, to the practical exclusion of all other diet, on the carcasses of seals.

Chickens are kept with great difficulty. In fact, it is only possible to save their lives when the natives take them into their own rooms or keep them over their heads, in their dwellings, during winter.