ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 27 



light-gray calcareous conglomerate, or cement, in wliich are imbedded 

 sundiy fossils characteristic of and belonging to the Tertiary age, 

 such as Cardium grcenlandicum, C. decoratum and Astarte pechincii- 

 kda, etc. This is the only locality within the purview of the Pribilof 

 Islands where any paleontological evidence of their age can be found. 

 These specimens, as indicated, are exceedingly abundant; I brought 

 down a whole series, gathered tliere at the east landing, or Navastock, 

 in a short half-hour's search and labor. 



Why these islands are frequented by fur seals. — The fact 

 that the fur seals frequent these islands and those of Bering and Cop- 

 per, on the Russian side, to the exclusion of other land, seems at first 

 a little siftgular, to say the least; but when we come to examine the 

 subject, we find that these animals, when they repair hither to rest for 

 two or three months on the land, as they must do by their habit dur- 

 ing the breeding season, they require a cool, moist atmosphere, imper- 

 atively coupled with firm, well-drained land, or dry, broken rocks, or 

 shingle rather, upon which to take their positions and remain undis- 

 turbed by the weather and the sea for the lengthy period of reproduc- 

 tion. If the rookery ground is hard and flat, with an admixture of 

 loam or soil, puddles are siDeedily formed in this climate, where it rains 

 almost every day, and when not raining, rain fogs take quick succes- 

 sion and continue the saturation, making thus a muddy slime, which 

 very quickly takes the hair off the animals whenever it plasters or 

 wherever it fastens on them ; hence, they carefully avoid any such 

 landing. If they occupy a sandy shore, the rain beats that material 

 into their large, sensitive eyes, and into their fur, so they are obliged, 

 from simple irritation, to leave and hunt the sea for relief. 



The seal islands now under discussion offer to the pinnipedia very 

 remarkable advantages for landing, especially St. Paul, where the 

 ground of basaltic rock and of volcanic tufa or cement slopes up from 

 so many points gradually above the sea, making thereby a perfectly 

 adapted resting place for an}^ number, from a thousand to millions, of 

 those intelligent animals, which can lie out here from May until Octo- 

 ber every year in perfect physical peace and security. There is not a 

 rod of ground of this character offered to these animals elsewhere in 

 all Alaska — not on the Aleutian chain, not on the mainland, not on St. 

 Matthew or St. Lawrence. Both of the latter islands were surveyed by 

 mj^self , with special reference to this query, in 1874. Every foot of St. 

 Matthew shore line was examined, and I know that the fur seal could 

 not rest on the low clayey lava flats there in contentment a single day; 

 hence he never has rested there, nor will he in the future. As to St. 

 Lawrence, it is so ice bound and snow covered in spring and early 

 summer, to say nothing of numerous other physical disadvantages, 

 that it never becomes of the slightest interest to the seals. 



the natives of the islands. 



Colonization by Russians and Aleuts: Early history.— When 

 Pribilof, in taking possession, landed on St. George a part of his little 

 ship's crew, July, 1786, he knew that, as it was uninhabited, it would 

 be necessary to create a colony there, from which to draft laborers to 

 do the killing, skinning, and curing of the peltries; therefore he and 

 his associates, and his rivals after him, imported natives of Unalaska 

 and Atkha— passive, docile Aleuts. They founded their first village 

 a quarter of a mile to the eastward of one of the principal rookeries 

 on St. George, now called Starry Ateel, or Old Settlement; a village 



