610 THR VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



Even it had already diminished so that the year's catch was 

 inconsiderable, Avhen in 1871 a single company obtained for 

 a payment to the Eussian crown, if I recollect right, of two 

 roubles for every animal killed, and exclusive right to the 

 hunting, which was accordingly arranged in a more purposelike 

 way. At certain times of the year the killing of the sea-bear 

 is wholly prohibited. The number of the animals to be killed 

 is settled beforehand, quite in the same way as the farmer at 

 the time of killing in autumn is wont to do with his herd of 

 cattle. Females and young are only killed exceptionally. Even 

 the married males, or more correctly the males that can get 

 themselves a harem and can defend it, commonly escape being 

 killed, if not for any other reason, because the skin is too often 

 torn and tattered and the hair pulled out. It is thus the 

 bachelors that have to yield up their skins. 



That a wild animal may be slaughtered in so orderly a 

 way, depends on its j)eculiar mode of life.^ For the sea-bears 

 are found year after year during summer at certain points 

 projecting into the sea (rookeries), where, collected in hundreds 

 of thousands, they pass several months without the least food. 

 The males (oxen) come first to the place, most of them in the 

 month of May or at the beginning of June. Combats of 

 excessive violence, often with a deadly issue for one of the 

 parties, now arise regarding the space of about a hundred square 

 feet, which each seal-ox considers necessary for its home. The 

 strongest and most successful in fight retain the best places 

 near the shore ; the weaker have to crawl farther up on land, 

 where the expectation of getting a sufficient number of spouses 

 is not particularly great. The fighting goes on with many 

 feigned attacks and parades. At first the contest concerns the 

 proprietorship of the soil. The attacked therefore never follows 

 its opponent beyond the area it has once taken up, but haughtily 

 lays itself down, when the enemy has retired, in order in the 

 arms of sleep to collect forces for a new combat. The animal 

 in such a case grants with satisfaction, throws itself on its back, 

 scratches itself with its fore-feet, looks after its toilet, or cools 

 itself by slowly fanning vv'ith one of its hind-feet, but it is always 

 on the alert and ready for a new fight until it is tired out and 

 meets its match, and is driven by it farther up from the beach, 



lias been still larger. These islands were discovered in 1786, but the 

 number of animals killed there is not IcD.own for the first ten years ; it is 

 only known that it was enormously large. In the years 1797-18''^0 — that is 

 in eighty-four years — over three-and-a-half niillions of skins have been 

 exported from these islands. In recent years the catch has increased so 

 that in each of the years from 1872 to 1880, 99,000 animals might have 

 been killed without inconvenience. 



^ The traits here given of the sea-bear's mode of life are mainly taken 

 from Henry W. Elliot's work quoted above. 



