18 ' ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



physical detriment, for they lost better pasturage by so doing. The 

 natives of St. Paul have a strange passion for seal-fed f>ork, and there 

 are quite a large number of hogs on tlie island of St. Paul and a few 

 on St. George. The pigs soon become entirely carnivorous, living, to 

 the practical exclusion of all other diet, on the carcasses of seals. 



Chickens are kept with mucli difficulty; in fact it is only j)ossible to 

 save their lives when the natives take tliem into their own rooms, or 

 keep them above their heads, in their dwellings, during winter. 



Bird life.^ — While the great exhibition of pinnipedia preponder- 

 ates over every other feature of animal life on the seal islands, still 

 we find a wonderful aggregate of ornithological representation thereon. 

 The spectacle of birds nesting and breeding, as they do at St. George 

 Island, to the number of millions, flecking those higli basaltic bluffs of 

 its shore line, 29 miles in length, with color patches of black, brown, 

 and white, as thej^ perch or cling to the mural cliffs in the labor of 

 incubation, is a sight of exceeding attraction and constant novelty. 

 It affords the naturalist an oijportunity of a lifetime for minute inves- 

 tigation into all the details of the reproduction of these vast flocks of 

 circumboreal waterfowl. The island of St. Paul, owing to the low 

 character of its shore line — a large proi)ortion of wliich is but slightly 

 elevated above the sea and is sandy — is not visited, and can not be vis- 

 ited, by such myriads of birds as are seen at St. George; but the small, 

 rocky Walrus Islet is fairlj^ covered with seafowls, and the Otter 

 Island bluffs are crowded hj them to their utmost capacity of recep- 

 tion. The birds string themselves anew around the cliffs with every 

 succeeding season, like endless ribbons stretched across their rugged 

 faces, while their numbers are simijly countless. The varietj' is not 

 great, however, in these millions of breeding birds. It consists of only 

 ten or twelve names; the whole list of avafauna belonging to the Pribi- 

 lof Islands, stragglers and migatory, contains but 40 species. Con- 

 spicuous among the last-named class is the robin, a straggler which 

 was brought from the mainland, evidently against its own effort, by 

 a storm or a gale of wind, which also brings against their Mill the soli- 

 tary hawks, owls, and waders occasionally noticed here. 



After the dead silence of a long, ice-bound winter, the arrival of 

 large flocks of those sparrows of tlie nortli, the "choochkies," PhaJeris 

 microceros, is most cheerful and interesting. Tliose plump little auks 

 are briglit, fearless, vivacious birds, witli bodies round and fat. They 

 come usually in chattering flocks on or immediately after the 1st of 

 Ma}^, and are caught by the people with hand scoops or dip nets to any 

 number that may be required for the day's consumption; their tiny, 

 rotund forms malting pies of rare, savoiy virtue, and being also baked 

 and roasted and stewed in every conceivable shape by the Russian 

 cooks; indeed they are equal to the reedbirds of the South. These 

 welcome visitors are succeeded along about the 20th of July by large 

 flocks of fat, red-legged turnstones, Strepsilas interpres, which come 

 in suddenly from the west or north, where they have been breeding, 

 and stop on the islands for a month or six weeks, as the case may be, 

 to feed luxuriantly upon the flesh flies, which we have just noticed, 

 and their eggs. Tliose handsome birds go in among the seals, famil- 

 iarly chasing the flies, gnats, etc. They are followed, as they leave in 

 September, by several species of jacksnipe and a plover, Tringa and 

 Charadrius; tliese, however, soon depart — as early as the end of Octo- 

 ber and the beginning of November — and then winter fairly closes in 

 upon tlie islands; the loud, I'oaring, incessant seal din, together with 

 the screams and darkening flight of innumerable waterfowl, are 



