102 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



and in 1891 tbe rookeries were covered with dead pups. In my sixty- 

 seven years' residence on the islands I never before saw anything like 

 it. None of our people have ever known of any sickness among the 

 pups or seals, and have never seen any dead pups on the rookeries, 

 except a few killed by the old bulls when fighting, or by drowning 

 when the surf washed them off. If they had not killed the seals in the 

 sea there would be as many on the rookeries as there was ten years ago. 

 There was not one-fourth as many seals in 1891 as there was in 1880. 



The fur seal goes away from the island in the fall or winter and he 

 returns in May or June; and I believe he will haul up in the same place 

 each year, for I particularly noticed some that I could tell that hauled 

 up in the same place for a number of years; and when we make drives, 

 those we do not kill, but let go into the water, are all back where we 

 took them from in a few hours. The pups are born between the middle 

 of June and the middle of July, and can not swim until they are 6 or 

 7 weeks old; ami if born in the water they would die. I have seen the 

 surf wash some of the young pups into the sea, and they drowned in a 

 very short time. In four or five days after it is born the mother seal 

 leaves her pup and goes away in the water to feed, and when the pup 

 is 2 or 3 weeks old the mother often stays away for five or six days at a 

 time. The mother seals know their own pups by smelling them, and no 

 seal will allow any but her own pup to suck her. When the pups grow 

 to be 6 or 8 weeks old they form in " pods " and work down to the 

 shore, and they try the water at the edge until they learn to swim. 

 They will remain on the island until November, and, if not too cold, 

 will stay till December. I have seen them swimming around the island 

 late in January. All the seals when they leave the islands go off south, 

 but I think they would stay around here all winter if the weather was 

 not so cold. 



When they come back to the islands they come from the south, and 

 I think they come from the North Pacific Ocean over the same track 

 that they went. The females go upon the rookeries as soon as they arrive 

 here, but the yearlings, males and females, herd together. I think they 

 stay in the water most of the time the first year, but after that they 

 come regularly to the hauling grounds and rookeries, but do not come 

 as early in the season as they do after they are 2 years old. Male seals 

 from 2 to 6 years old do not go on the breeding rookeries, but haul out 

 by themselves. The female seal gives birth to but one pup every year, 

 and she has her first pup when she is 3 years old. The male seal estab- 

 lishes himself on the breeding rookery in May or June, when he is 7 or 8 

 years old, and he fights for his cows and does not leave the place he has 

 selected until August or September. Our people like the meat of the 

 seal, and we eat no other meat so long as we can get it. 



The pup seals are our chicken meat, and we used to be allowed to kill 

 3,000 or 4,000 male pups every year in November; but the Government 

 agent forbade us to kill any in 1891, and said we should not be allowed 

 to kill any more, and he gave us other meat in place of pup meat, but 

 we do not like any other meat as well as the pui)-seal meat. We under- 

 stand the danger there is in the seals being all killed off, and that we 

 will have no way of earning our living. There is not one of us but what 

 believes if they had not killed them off" by shooting them in the water 

 there would be as many seals on the island now as there was in 1880, 

 and we could go on forever taking 100,000 seals on the two islands. 

 But if they get less as fast as they have in the last five or six years, 

 there will be none left in a little while. 



KJEERICK AETOMANOFF. 



