Far back, fifteen or twenty “see-catchie” stations deep from the water-line, and sometimes more, but generally not over an average of ten or fifteen, the cows crowd in at the close of the season for arriving, which is by July 10th or 14th; then they are able to go about very much as they please, for the bulls have become so greatly enfeebled by this constant fasting, fighting, and excitement during the past two months, that they are quite content now with only one or two partners, even if they should have no more.

The cows seem to haul up in compact bodies from the water, covering in the whole ground to the rear of the rookeries, never scattering about over the surface of this area; they have mapped out, from the first, their chosen resting-places, and they will not lie quietly in any position outside of the great mass of their kind. This is due to their intensely gregarious nature, and is especially adapted for their protection. And here I should call attention to the fact that they select this rookery ground with all the skill of civil engineers. It is preferred with special reference to drainage, for it must slope so that the produce of constantly dissolving fogs and rain-clouds shall not lie upon it, since they have a great aversion to, and a firm determination not to rest on water-puddled ground. This is admirably exhibited, and will be understood by a study of my sketch-maps which follow, illustrative of these rookeries and the area and position of the seals upon them. Every one of those breeding grounds rises up gently from the sea, and on no one of them is there anything like a muddy flat.

I found it an exceedingly difficult matter to satisfy myself as to a fair general average number of cows to each bull on the rookery, but, after protracted study, I think it will be nearly correct when I assign to each male a specific ratio of from fifteen to twenty females at the stations nearest the water, and for those back, in order, from that line to the rear, from five to twelve; but there are many exceptional cases, and many instances where forty-five and fifty females are all under the charge of one male: and then, again, where there are only two or three females: hence this question was and is not entirely satisfactory in its settlement to my mind.

Near Ketavie Point, and just above it to the north, is an odd wash-out of basalt by the surf, which has chiselled, as it were, from the foundation of the island, a lava table, with a single roadway or land passage to it. Upon the summit of this footstool I counted forty-five cows, all under the charge of one old veteran. He had them penned on this table-rock by taking his stand at the gate, as it were, through which they passed up and passed down—a Turkish brute typified.

At the rear of all these rookeries there is invariably a large number of able-bodied males which have come late, and wait patiently, yet in vain, for families; most of them having had to fight as desperately for the privilege of being there as any of their more fortunately located neighbors, who are nearer the water, and in succession from there to where they are themselves; but the cows do not like to be in any outside position. They cannot be coaxed out where they are not in close company with their female mates and masses. They lie most quietly and contentedly in the largest harems, and cover the surface of the ground so thickly that there is hardly moving or turning room when they cease to come from the sea. The inaction on the part of those males in the rear during the breeding season only serves to well qualify them for moving into the places which are necessarily vacated by disabled males that are, in the meantime, obliged to leave from virile exhaustion, or incipient wounds. All the surplus able-bodied bulls, which have not been successful in effecting a landing on the rookeries cannot be seen at any one time, however, in the season, on this rear line. Only a portion of their number are in sight; the others are either loafing at sea, adjacent, or are hauled out in morose squads between the rookeries on the beaches. The cows, during the whole season, do great credit to their amiable expression by their manner and behavior on the rookery. They never fight or quarrel one with another, and never or seldom utter a cry of pain or rage when they are roughly handled by the bulls, which frequently get a cow between them and actually tear the skin from her back with their teeth, cutting deep gashes in it as they snatch her from mouth to mouth. If sand does not get into these wounds it is surprising how rapidly they heal; and, from the fact that I never could see scars on them anywhere except the fresh ones of this year, they must heal effectually and exhibit no trace the next season.

The cows, like the bulls, vary much in weight, but the extraordinary disparity in the adult size of the sexes is exceedingly striking. Two females taken from the rookery nearest to St. Paul village, right under the bluffs (and almost beneath the eaves of the natives’ houses) called “Nah Speel,” after they had brought forth their young, were weighed by myself, and their respective returns on the scales were fifty-six and one hundred pounds each; the former being about three or four years old, and the latter over six—perhaps ten. Both were fat, or rather, in good condition—as good as they ever are. Thus the female is just about one-sixth the size of the male. Among the sea-lions the proportion is just one-half the bulk of the male, while the hair-seals, as I have before stated, are not distinguishable in this respect, as far as I could observe, but my notice was limited to a few specimens only.

The courage with which the fur-seal holds his position as the head and guardian of a family is of the highest order. I have repeatedly tried to drive them from their harem-posts, when they were fairly established on their stations, and have, with very few exceptions, failed. I might use every stone at my command, making all the noise I could. Finally, to put this courage to its fullest test, I have walked up to within twenty feet of an old veteran, toward the extreme end of Tolstoi, who had only four cows in charge, and commenced with my double-barrelled fowling-piece to pepper him all over with fine mustard-seed shot, being kind enough, in spite of my zeal, not to put out his eyes. His bearing, in spite of the noise, smell of powder, and painful irritation which the fine shot must have produced, did not change in the least from the usual attitude of determined, plucky defence (which nearly all of the bulls assume) when he was attacked with showers of stones and noise. He would dart out right and left with his long neck and catch the timid cows that furtively attempted to run after each report of my gun, fling and drag them back to their places under his head; and then, stretching up to his full height, look me directly and defiantly in the face, roaring and chuckling most vehemently. The cows, however, soon got away from him: they could not endure my racket, in spite of their dread of him. But he still stood his ground, making little charges on me of ten or fifteen feet in a succession of gallops or lunges, spitting furiously, and then comically retreating, with an indescribable leer and swagger, to the old position, back of which he would not go, fully resolved to hold his own or die in the attempt.

This courage is all the more noteworthy from the fact that, in regard to man, it is invariably of a defensive character. The seal is always on the defensive; he never retreats, and he will not assail. If he makes you return when you attack him he never follows you much farther than the boundary of his station, and then no aggravation will compel him to take the offensive, so far as I have been able to observe. I was very much impressed by this trait.

It is quite beyond my power—indeed, entirely out of the question—to give a fair idea of the thousand and one positions in which seals compose themselves and rest when on land. They may be said to assume every possible attitude which a flexible body can be put into, no matter how characteristic or seemingly forced or constrained. Their joints seem to be double-hinged—in fact, fitted with ball and socket union of the bones. One favorite position, especially with the females, is to perch upon a point or edge-top of some rock, and throw their heads back upon their shoulders, with the nose held directly up and aloft; and then, closing their eyes, take short naps without changing their attitude, now and then softly lifting one or the other of their long, slender hind flippers, which they slowly wave with that peculiar fanning motion to which I have alluded heretofore. Another attitude, and one of the most common, is to curl themselves up just as a dog does on a hearth-rug, bringing the tail and nose close together. They also stretch out, laying the head close to the body, and sleep an hour or two without rising, holding one of the hind flippers up all the time, now and then gently moving it, the eyes being tightly closed.

I ought, perhaps, to define the anomalous tail of the fur-seal here. It is just about as important as the caudal appendage to a bear; even less significant. It is the very emphasis of abbreviation. In the old males it is positively only four or five inches in length, while among the females only two and a half to three inches, wholly inconspicuous, and not even recognized by the casual observer: they never wag or move it at all.

I come now to speak of another feature which interested me nearly, if not quite, as much as any other characteristic of this creature, and that is their fashion of slumber. The sleep of the fur-seal, seen on land, from the old male down to the youngest, is always accompanied by an involuntary, nervous, muscular twitching and slight shifting of the flippers, together with ever and anon quivering and uneasy rollings of the body, accompanied by a quick folding anew of the fore flippers; all of which may be signs, as it were, in fact, of their simply having nightmares, or of sporting, in a visionary way, far off in some dreamland sea. But, it may be that as an old nurse said in reference to the smiles on a sleeping child’s face, they are disturbed by their intestinal parasites. I have studied hundreds of such somnolent examples. Stealing softly up so closely that I could lay my hand upon them from the point where I was sitting, did I wish to, and watching the sleeping seals, I have always found their sleep to be of this nervous description. The respiration is short and rapid, but with no breathing (unless the ear is brought very close). The quivering, heaving of the flanks only indicates the action of the lungs. I have frequently thought that I had succeeded in finding a snoring seal, especially among the pups; but a close examination always gave some abnormal reason for it—generally a slight distemper; never anything more severe, however, than some trifle by which the nostrils were stopped to a greater or less degree.

The cows on the rookeries sleep a great deal, but the bulls have the veriest cat-naps that can be imagined. I never could time the slumber of any old male on the breeding grounds which lasted, without interruption, longer than five minutes, day or night. While away from these places, however, I have known them to lie sleeping in the manner I have described, broken by such fitful, nervous, dreamy starts, yet without opening the eyes, for an hour or so at a time.

With an exception of the pups, the fur-seal seems to have very little rest, awake or sleeping. Perpetual motion is well-nigh incarnate with its being. I naturally enough, when beginning my investigation of these seal-rookeries, expected to find the animals subdued at night, or early morning, on those breeding grounds; but a few consecutive nocturnal watches satisfied me that the family organization and noise was as active at one time as at another, throughout the whole twenty-four hours. If, however, the day preceding had chanced to be abnormally warm, I never failed then to find the rookeries much more noisy and active during the night than they were by daylight. The seals, as a rule, come and go to and from the sea, fight, roar, and vocalize as much during midnight moments as they do at noonday times. An aged native endeavored to satisfy me that the “seecatchie” could see much better by twilight and night than by daylight. I am not prepared to prove to the contrary, but I think that the fact of his not being able to see so well himself at that hour of darkness was a true cause of most of his belief in the improved nocturnal vision of the seals.[119]

As I have said before, the females, soon after landing, are delivered of their young. Immediately after the birth of the pup (twins are rare, if ever) the little creature finds its voice—a weak, husky blaat—and begins to paddle about with its eyes wide open from the start, in a confused sort of way for a few minutes, until the mother turns round to notice her offspring and give it attention, and still later, to suckle it; and for this purpose she is supplied with four small, brown nipples, almost wholly concealed in the fur, and which are placed about eight inches apart, lengthwise with the body, on the abdomen, between the fore and hind flippers, with about four inches of space between them transversely. These nipples are seldom visible, and then faintly seen through the hair and fur. The milk is abundant, rich, and creamy. The pups nurse very heartily, almost gorging themselves; so much so, that they often have to yield up the excess of what they have taken down, mewling and puking in a most orthodox manner.

The pup at birth, and for the next three months, is of a jet-black color, hair and flippers, save a tiny white patch just back of each forearm. It weighs from three to four pounds, and is twelve to fourteen inches long. It does not seem to nurse more than once every two or three days; but in this I am very likely mistaken, for it may have received attention from its mother in the night, or other times in the day when I was unable to keep up my watch over the individual which I had marked for this supervision.

The apathy with which the young are treated by the old on the breeding grounds, especially by the mothers, was very strange to me, and I was considerably surprised at it. I have never seen a seal-mother caress or fondle her offspring; and should it stray to a short distance from the harem, I could step to and pick it up, and even kill it before the mother’s eye, without causing her the slightest concern, as far as all outward signs and manifestations should indicate. The same indifference is also exhibited by the male to all that may take place of this character outside of the boundary of his seraglio; but the moment the pups are inside the limits of his harem-ground he is a jealous and a fearless protector, vigilant and determined. But if the little animals are careless enough to pass beyond this boundary, then I can go up to them and carry them off before the eye of the old Turk without receiving from him the slightest attention in their behalf—a curious guardian, forsooth!

It is surprising to me how few of these young pups get crushed to death while the ponderous bulls are floundering over them, engaged in fighting and quarrelling among themselves. I have seen two bulls dash at each other with all the energy of furious rage, meeting right in the midst of a small “pod” of forty or fifty pups, tramp over them with all their crushing weight, and bowling them out right and left in every direction by the impetus of their movements, without injuring a single one, as far as I could see. Still, when we come to consider the fact that, despite the great weight of the old males, their broad, flat flippers and yielding bodies may press down heavily on these little fellows without actually breaking bones or mashing them out of shape, it does seem questionable whether more than one per cent. of all the pups born each season on these great rookeries of the Pribylov Islands are destroyed in this manner on the breeding grounds.[120]

The vitality of a fur-seal is simply astonishing. Its physical organization passes beyond the fabled nine lives of the cat. As a slight illustration of its tenure of life, I will mention the fact that one morning Philip came to me with a pup in his arms, which had just been born and was still womb-moist, saying that the mother had been killed at Tolstoi by accident, and he supposed that I would like to have a “choochil.” I took it up into my laboratory, and, finding that it could walk about and make a great noise, I attempted to feed it, with the idea of having a comfortable subject to my pencil for life-study of the young in varied attitudes of sleep and motion. It refused everything that I could summon to its attention as food, and, alternately sleeping and walking in its clumsy fashion about the floor; it actually lived nine days, spending the half of every one in floundering over the floor, accompanying all movements with a persistent, hoarse, blasting cry, and I do not believe it ever had a single drop of its mother’s milk.

In a pup the head is the only disproportionate feature at birth when it is compared with an adult form, the neck being also relatively shorter and thicker. The eye is large, round, and full; but, almost a “navy blue” at times, it soon changes into the blue-black of adolescence.

The females appear to go to and come from the water feeding and bathing quite frequently after bearing their young and an immediate subsequent coitus with the male: they usually return to the spot or its immediate neighborhood, where they leave their pups, crying out for them and recognizing the individual replies; though ten thousand around, all together, should blaat at once, they quickly single out their own and nurse them. It would certainly be a very unfortunate matter if the mothers could not identify their young by sound, since these pups get together like a great swarm of bees, and spread out upon the ground in what the sealers call “pods,” or clustered groups, while they are young and not very large; thus, from the middle or end of September until they leave the islands for the dangers of the great Pacific in the winter, along by the first of November, they gather in this manner, sleeping and frolicking by tens of thousands, bunched together at various places all over the islands contiguous to the breeding grounds, and right on them. A mother comes up from the sea, whither she has been to wash, and perhaps to feed, for the last day or two, feeling her way along to about where she thinks her pup should be—at least, where she left it last; but perhaps she misses it, and finds instead a swarm of pups in which it has been incorporated, owing to its great fondness for society. The mother, without first entering into a crowd of thousands, calls just as a sheep does for a lamb, and out of all the din she—if not at first, at the end of a few trials—recognizes the voice of her offspring, and then advances, striking out right and left toward the position from which it replies; but if the pup happens at this time to be asleep, it gives, of course, no response, even though it were close by. In the event of such silence the cow, after calling for a time without being answered, curls herself up and takes a nap or lazily basks, to be usually more successful, or wholly so, when she calls again.

The pups themselves do not know their own mothers, a fact which I ascertained by careful observation; but they are so constituted that they incessantly cry out at short intervals during the whole time they are awake, and in this way the mother can pick out from the monotonous blaating of thousands of pups her own, and she will not permit any other one to suckle her. But the “kotickie” themselves attempt to nose around every seal-mother that comes in contact with them. I have repeatedly watched young pups as they made advances to nurse from another pup’s mother, the result invariably being that, while the “matkah” would permit her own offspring to suckle freely, yet when these little strangers touched her nipples she would either move abruptly away or else turn quickly down upon her stomach, so that the maternal fountains were inaccessible to alien and hungry “kotickie.” I have witnessed so many examples of the females turning pups away to suckle only some particular other one, that I feel sure I am entirely right in saying that the seal-mothers know their own young, and that they will not permit any others except them to nurse. I believe that this maternal recognition is due chiefly to the mother’s scent and hearing.

Between the end of July and August 5th or 8th of every year the rookeries are completely changed in appearance. The systematic and regular disposition of the families or harems over the whole extent of breeding-ground has disappeared. All that clock-work order which has heretofore existed seems to be broken up. The breeding season closed, those bulls which have held their positions since May 1st leave, most of them thin in flesh and weak, and of their number a very large proportion do not come out again on land during the season; but such as are seen at the end of October and November are in good shape. They have a new coat of rich, dark, gray-brown hair and fur, with gray or grayish-ochre “wigs” of longer hair over the shoulders, forming a fresh, strong contrast to the dull, rusty, brown and umber dress in which they appeared to us during the summer, and which they had begun to shed about August 1st, in common with the females and the “holluschickie.” After these males leave at the end of their season’s work, and of the rutting for the year, those of them that happen to return to land in any event do not come back until the end of September and do not haul up on the rookery grounds again. As a rule, they prefer to herd altogether, like younger males, upon the sand-beaches and rocky points close to the water.

The cows and pups, together with those bulls which we have noticed in waiting at the rear of the rookeries, and which have been in retirement throughout the whole of the breeding season, now take possession, in a very disorderly manner, of these rookeries; also, a large number of young, three, four, and five year old males come, which have been prevented by the menacing threats of stronger bulls from an earlier landing among the females during the breeding season.

Before the middle of August three-fourths, at least, of the cows at this date are off in the water, only coming ashore at irregular intervals to nurse and look after their pups a short time. They presented to my eye, from the summits of the bluffs round about, a picture more suggestive of entire comfort and enjoyment than anything I have ever seen presented by animal life. Here, just out and beyond the breaking of the rollers, they idly lie on the rocks or sand-beaches, ever and anon turning over and over, scratching their backs and sides with their fore and hind flippers. The seals on the breeding ground appear to get very lousy.[121]

Frequent winds and showers will drive and spatter sand into their fur and eyes, often making the latter quite sore. This occurs when they are obliged to leave the rocky rookeries and follow their pups out over the sand-ridges and flats, to which they always have a natural aversion. On the hauling-grounds they pack the soil under their feet so hard and tightly in many places that it holds water in shallow surface-depressions, just like so many rock-basins. Out of and into these puddles the pups and the females flounder and patter incessantly, until evaporation slowly abates the nuisance for a time only, inasmuch as the next day, perhaps, brings more rain and the dirty pools are replenished.

The pups sometimes get so thoroughly plastered in these muddy, slimy puddles, that the hair falls off in patches, giving them, at first sight, the appearance of being troubled with scrofula or some other plague: from my investigations directed to this point, I became satisfied that they were not permanently injured, though evidently very much annoyed. With reference to this suggestion as to sickness or distemper among these seals, I gave the subject direct and continued attention, and in no one of the rookeries could I discover a single seal, no matter how old or young, which appeared to be suffering in the least from any physical disorder other than that which they themselves had inflicted, one upon the other, by fighting. The third season, passing directly under my observation, failed to reward my search with any manifestation of disease among the seals which congregate in such mighty numbers on those rookeries of St. Paul and St. George. That remarkable freedom from all such complaints enjoyed by these animals is noteworthy, and a most trenchant and penetrating cross-questioning of the natives also failed to give me any history or evidence of an epidemic in the past.

The observer will, however, notice every summer, gathered in melancholy squads of a dozen to one hundred or so (scattered along the coast where the healthy seals never go), those sick and disabled bulls which have, in the earlier part of the season, been either internally injured or dreadfully scarred by the teeth of their opponents in fighting. Sand is blown by strong wind into their fresh wounds, causing inflammation and sloughing which very often finishes the life of a victim. The sailors term these invalid gatherings “hospitals,” a phrase which, like the most of their homely expressions, is quite appropriate.

Early in August, usually by the 8th or 10th, I noticed one of the remarkable movements of the season. I refer to the pup’s first essay in swimming. Is it not odd—paradoxical—that the young seal, from the moment of his birth until he is a month or six weeks old, is utterly unable to swim? If he is seized by the nape of the neck and pitched out a rod into the water from shore, his bullet-like head will drop instantly below the surface, and his attenuated posterior extremities flap impotently on it. Suffocation is the question of only a few minutes, the stupid little creature not knowing how to raise his immersed head and gain the air again. After they have attained the age indicated above, their instinct drives them down to the margin of the surf, where an alternate ebbing and flowing of its wash, covers and uncovers the rocky or sandy beaches. They first smell and then touch the moist pools, and flounder in the upper wash of the surf, which leaves them as suddenly high and dry as it immersed them at first. After this beginning they make slow and clumsy progress in learning the knack of swimming. For a week or two, when overhead in depth, they continue to flounder about in the most awkward manner, thrashing the water as little dogs do with their fore feet, making no attempt whatever to use the hinder ones. Look at that pup now, launched out for the first time beyond his depth; see how he struggles—his mouth wide open, and his eyes fairly popping. He turns instantly to the beach, ere he has fairly struck out from the point whence he launched in, and, as the receding swell which at first carried him off his feet and out, now returning, leaves him high and dry, for a few minutes he seems so weary that he weakly crawls up, out beyond its swift returning wash, and coils himself immediately to take a recuperative nap. He sleeps a few minutes, perhaps half an hour, then awakes as bright as a dollar, apparently rested, and at his swimming lesson he goes again. By repeated and persistent attempts, this young seal gradually becomes familiar with the water and acquainted with his own power over that element, which is to be his real home and his whole support. Once boldly swimming, the pup fairly revels in a new happiness. He and his brethren have now begun to haul and swarm along the entire length of St. Paul coast, from Northeast Point down and around to Zapadnie, lining the alternating sand-beaches and rocky shingle with their chunky, black forms. How they do delight in it! They play with a zest, and chatter like our own children in the kindergartens—swimming in endless evolutions, twisting, turning, or diving—and when exhausted, drawing their plump, round bodies up again on the beach. Shaking themselves dry as young dogs would do, they now either go to sleep on the spot or have a lazy terrestrial frolic among themselves.

Why an erroneous impression ever got into the mind of any man as to this matter of a pup’s learning to swim, I confess that I am wholly unable to imagine. I have not seen any “driving” of the young pups into the water by the old ones, in order to teach them this process, as certain authors have positively affirmed. There is not the slightest supervision by the mother or father of the pup, from the first moment of his birth, in this respect, until he leaves for the North Pacific, full-fledged with amphibious power. At the close of the breeding season, every year, the pups are restlessly and constantly shifting back and forth over the rookery ground of their birth, in large squads, sometimes numbering thousands upon thousands. In the course of this change of position they all sooner or later come in contact with the sea; they then blunder into the water for the first time, in a most awkward, ungainly manner, and get out as quick as they can; but so far from showing any fear or dislike of this, their most natural element, as soon as they rest from their exertion they are immediately ready for a new trial, and keep at it, provided the sea is not too stormy or rough. During all this period of self-tuition they seem thoroughly to enjoy the exercise, in spite of their repeated and inevitable discomfitures at the beginning.

That “podding” of these young pups in the rear of the great rookeries of St. Paul, is one of the most striking and interesting phases of this remarkable exhibition of highly-organized life. When they first bunch together they are all black, for they have not begun to shed the natal coat; they shine with an unctuous, greasy reflection, and grouped in small armies or great regiments on the sand-dune tracts at Northeast Point, they present a most extraordinary and fascinating sight. Although the appearance of the “holluschickie” at English Bay fairly overwhelms the observer with an impression of its countless multitudes, yet I am free to declare that at no one point in this evolution of the seal-life, during its reproductive season, have I been so deeply impressed by a sense of overwhelming enumeration, as I have when, standing on the summit of Cross Hill, I looked down to the southward and westward over a reach of six miles of alternate grass and sand-dune stretches, mirrored upon which were hundreds of thousands of these little black pups, spread in sleep and sport within this restricted field of vision. They appeared as countless as the grains of that sand upon which they rested!

By September 15th, all the pups born during the year have become familiar with the water; they have all learned to swim, and are now nearly all down by the water’s edge, skirting in large masses the rocks and beaches hitherto unoccupied by seals of any class this year. Now they are about five or six times their original weight, or, in other words, they are thirty to forty pounds avoirdupois, as plump and fat as butter-balls, and they begin to take on their second coat, shedding their black pup-hair completely. This second coat does not vary in color, at this age, between the sexes. They effect such transformation in dress very slowly, and cannot, as a rule, be said to have ceased their moulting until the middle or 20th of October.

That second coat, or sea-going jacket, of the pup, is a uniform, dense, light gray over-hair, with an under-fur which is slightly grayish in some, but is, in most cases, of a soft light brown hue. The over-hair is fine, close and elastic, from two-thirds of an inch to an inch in length, while the fur is not quite half an inch long. Thus the coarser hair shingles over and conceals the soft under-wool completely, giving the color by which, after the second year, the sex of the animal is recognized. A pronounced difference between the sexes is not effected, however, by color alone until the third year of the animal’s life. This over-hair of the pup’s new jacket on its back, neck, and head, is a dark chinchilla-gray, blending into stone-white, just tinged with a grayish tint on the abdomen and chest. The upper lip, upon which the whiskers or mustaches take root, is covered with hair of a lighter gray than that of the body. This mustache consists of fifteen or twenty longer or shorter bristles, from half an inch to three inches in length, some brownish, horn-colored, and others whitish-gray and translucent, on each side and back and below the nostrils, leaving the muzzle quite prominent and hairless. The nasal openings and their surroundings are, as I have before said when speaking of this feature, hairless and similar to those of a dog.[122]

The most attractive feature about the fur-seal pup, and that which holds this place as it grows on and older, is the eye. That organ is exceedingly clear, dark, and liquid, with which, for beauty and amiability, together with real intelligence of expression, those of no other animal that I have ever seen, or have ever read of, can be compared; indeed, there are few eyes in the orbits of men and women which suggest more pleasantly the ancient thought of their being “windows to the soul.” The lids to that eye are fringed with long, perfect lashes, and the slightest irritation in the way of dust or sand, or other foreign substances, seems to cause them exquisite annoyance, accompanied by immoderate weeping. This involuntary tearfulness so moved Steller that he ascribed it to the processes of a mind, and declared that seal-mothers actually “shed tears”!

I do not think a seal’s range of vision on land, or out of the water, is very great. I have frequently experimented with adult fur-seals, by allowing them to catch sight of my person, so as to distinguish it as of foreign character, three and four hundred paces off, taking the precaution of standing quietly to the leeward when the wind was blowing strong, and then walking unconcernedly up to them. I have invariably noticed that they would allow me to approach quite close before recognizing my strangeness; then, as it occurred to them, they at once made a lively noise, a medley of coughing, spitting, snorting, and blaating, and plunged in spasmodic lopes and shambled to get away from my immediate neighborhood. As to the pups, they all stupidly stare at the form of a human being until it is fairly on them, when they also repeat in miniature these vocal gymnastics and physical efforts of the older ones, to retreat or withdraw a few rods, sometimes only a few feet, from the spot upon which you have cornered them, after which they instantly resume their previous occupation of either sleeping or playing, as though nothing had happened. Perhaps it is safe to say that the greatest activity displayed by any one of the five senses of the seal is evidenced in its power of scent. This faculty is all that can be desired in the line of alertness. I never failed to awaken an adult seal from the soundest sleep, when from a half to a quarter of a mile distant, no matter how softly I proceeded, if I got to the windward, though they sometimes took alarm when I was a mile off.

They leave evidences of their being on these great reproductive fields, chiefly at the rookeries, in the hundreds of dead carcasses which mark the last of those animals that had been rendered infirm, sick, and killed by fighting among themselves in the early part of the season, or of those which have crawled far away from the scene of battle to die from death-wounds received in bitter struggles for a harem. On the rookeries, wherever these lifeless bodies rest, the living, old and young, clamber and patter backward and forward over and on the putrid remains: thus such constant stirring up of decayed matter, gives rise to an exceedingly disagreeable and far-reaching “funk.” This has been, by all writers who have dwelt on the subject, referred to as the smell which those animals emit for another reason—erroneously called the “rutting odor.” If these creatures have any odor peculiar to them when in this condition, I will frankly confess that I am unable to distinguish it from the fumes which are constantly being stirred up and arising out of those putrescent carcasses so disturbed, as well as from the bodies of the few pups which have been killed accidentally by heavy bulls fighting over them, charging back and forth against one another, so much of the time.

They have, however, a very characteristic and peculiar smell when they are driven and get heated; their breath-exhalations possess a disagreeable, faint, sickly odor, and when I have walked within its influence at the rear of a seal-drive, I could almost fancy, as it entered my nostrils, that I stood beneath an ailantus-tree in full bloom; but this odor can by no means be confounded with what is universally ascribed to another cause. It is also noteworthy that if your finger is touched ever so lightly to a little fur-seal blubber, it will smell very much like that which I have appreciated and described as peculiar to their breath, which arises from them when they are driven, only it is a little stronger. Both the young and old fur-seals have this same breath-taint at all seasons of the year.

With the precision of clock-work and the regularity of the precession of the seasons, fur-seals have adopted and enforced the following method of life on these islands of Pribylov. In this system millions of those highly organized animals sustain themselves.

First.—The earliest bulls land in a negligent, indolent way, at the opening of the season, soon after the rocks at the water’s edge are free from ice, frozen snow, etc. This is, as a rule, about the 1st to the 5th of every May. They land from the beginning to the end of the season in perfect confidence and without fear; they are very fat, and will weigh on an average five hundred pounds each; some stay at the water’s edge, some go to the tier back of them again, and so forth, until the whole rookery is mapped out by them, weeks in advance of the arrival of the first female.

Second.—That by the 10th or 12th of June, all the male stations on the rookeries have been mapped out and fought for, and held in waiting by the “see-catchie.” These males are, as a rule, bulls rarely ever under six years of age; most of them are over that age, being sometimes three, and occasionally doubtless four or five times as old.

Third.—That the cows make their first appearance, as a class, on or after the 12th or 15th of June, in very small numbers, but rapidly after the 23d and 25th of this month, every year, they begin to flock up in such numbers as to fill the harems very perceptibly, and by the 8th or 10th of July they have all come, as a rule—a few stragglers excepted. The average weight of the females now will not be much more than eighty to ninety pounds each.

Fourth.—That the breeding season is at its height from the 10th to the 15th of July every year, and that it subsides entirely at the end of this month and early in August; also, that its method and system are confined entirely to the land, never effected in the sea.

Fifth.—That the females bear their first young when they are three years old, and that the period of gestation is nearly twelve months, lacking a few days only of that lapse of time.

Sixth.—That the females bear a single pup each, and that this is born soon after landing. No exception to this rule as ever been witnessed or recorded.

Seventh.—That the “see-catchie” which have held the harems from the beginning to the end of the season, leave for the water in a desultory and straggling manner at its close, greatly emaciated, and do not return, if they do at all, until six or seven weeks have elapsed, when the regular systematic distribution of the families over the rookeries is at an end for this season. A general medley of young males now are free: they come out of the water, and wander over all these rookeries, together with many old males, which have not been on seraglio duty, and great numbers of the females. An immense majority over all others present are pups, since only about twenty-five per cent. of the mother-seals are out of the water now at any one time.

Eighth.—That the rookeries lose their compactness and definite boundaries of true breeding limit and expansion by the 25th to the 28th of July every year; then, after this date, the pups begin to haul back, and to the right and left, in small squads at first, but as the season goes on, by the 18th of August, they depart without reference to their mothers; and when thus scattered, the males, females and young swarm over more than three and four times the area occupied by them when breeding and born on the rookeries. The system of family arrangement and uniform compactness of the breeding classes breaks up at this date.

Ninth.—That by the 8th or 10th of August the pups born nearest the water first begin to learn to swim; and that by the 15th or 20th of September they are all familiar, more or less, with the exercise.

Tenth.—That by the middle of September the rookeries are entirely broken up; confused, straggling bands of females are seen among bachelors, pups, and small squads of old males, crossing and recrossing the ground in an aimless, listless manner. The season is now over.

Eleventh.—That many of the seals do not leave these grounds of St. Paul and St. George before the end of December, and some remain even as late as the 12th of January; but that by the end of October and the beginning of November every year, all the fur-seals of mature age—five and six years, and upward—have left the islands. The younger males go with the others; many of the pups still range about the islands, but are not hauled to any great extent on the beaches or the flats. They seem to prefer the rocky shore-margin, and to lie as high up as they can get on such bluffy rookeries as Tolstoi and the Reef. By the end of this month, November, they are, as a rule, all gone.

I now call the attention of the reader to another very remarkable feature in the economy of the seal-life on these islands. The great herds of “holluschickie,”[123] numbering from one-third to one-half, perhaps, of the whole aggregate of near five million seals known to the Pribylov group, are never allowed by the old “seecatchie” (which threaten frightful mutilation or death) to put their flippers on or near the rookeries.

By reference to my map, it will be observed that I have located a large extent of ground—markedly so on St Paul—as that occupied by the seals’ “hauling-ground”; this area, in fact, represents those portions of the island upon which the “holluschickie” roam in heavy squadrons, wearing away and polishing the surface of the soil, stripping every foot, which is indicated on the chart as such, of its vegetation and mosses, leaving a margin as sharply defined on those bluffy uplands and sandy flats as it is on the map itself.

The reason that so much more land is covered by the “holluschickie” than by the breeding seals—ten times as much at least—is due to the fact that, though not as numerous, perhaps, as the breeding seals, yet they are tied down to nothing, so to speak—are wholly irresponsible, and roam hither and thither as caprice and the weather may dictate. Thus they wear off and rub down a much larger area than the rookery seals occupy; wandering aimlessly, and going back, in some instances, notably at English Bay, from one-half to a whole mile inland, not travelling in desultory files along winding, straggling paths, but sweeping in solid platoons, they obliterate every spear of grass and rub down nearly every hummock in their restless marching.

All the male seals, under six years of age, are compelled to herd apart by themselves and away from the breeding grounds, in many cases far away; the large hauling-grounds at Southwest Point being about two miles from the nearest rookery. This class of seals is termed “holluschickie” or the “bachelors” by the people: a most fitting and expressive appellation.

The seals of this great subdivision are those with which the natives on the Pribylov group are the most familiar: naturally and especially so, since they are the only ones, with the exception of a few thousand pups, and occasionally an old bull or two, taken late in the fall for food and skins, which are driven up to the killing-grounds at the village for slaughter. The reasons for this exclusive attention to the “bachelors” are most cogent, and will be given hereafter when the “business” is discussed.

Since the “holluschickie” are not permitted by their own kind to land on the rookeries and stop there, they have the choice of two methods of locating, one of which allows them to rest in the rear of the rookeries, and the other on the free beaches. The most notable illustration of the former can be witnessed on Reef Point, where a pathway is left for their ingress and egress through a rookery—a path left by common consent, as it were, between the harems. On these trails of passage they come and go in steady files all day and all night during the season, unmolested by the jealous bulls which guard the seraglios on either side as they travel—all peace and comfort to the young seal if he minds his business and keeps straight on up or down, without stopping to nose about right or left; all woe and destruction to him, however, if he does not, for in that event he will be literally torn in bloody gripping, from limb to limb, by vigilant “see-catchie.”

Since the two and three year old “holluschickie” come up in small squads with the first bulls in the spring, or a few days later, such common highways as those between the rookery ground and the sea are travelled over before the arrival of the cows, and get well defined. A passage for the “bachelors,” which I took much pleasure in observing day after day at Polavina, another at Tolstoi, and two on the Reef, in 1872, were entirely closed up by the “sea-catchie” and obliterated when I again searched for them in 1874. Similar passages existed, however, on several of the large rookeries of St. Paul. One of those at Tolstoi exhibits this feature very finely, for here the hauling-ground extends around from English Bay, and lies up back of the Tolstoi rookery, over a flat and rolling summit, from one hundred to one hundred and twenty feet above the sea-level. The young males and yearlings of both sexes come through and between the harems at the height of the breeding season on two of these narrow pathways, and before reaching the ground above, are obliged to climb up an almost abrupt bluff, which they do by following and struggling in the water-runs and washes that are worn into its face. As this is a large hauling-ground, on which, every favorable day during the season, fifteen or twenty thousand commonly rest, a view of skilful seal-climbing can be witnessed here at any time during that period; and the sight of such climbing as this of Tolstoi is exceedingly novel and interesting. Why, verily, they ascend over and upon places where a lively man might, at first thought, say with great positiveness that it was utterly impossible for him to climb!