80 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



females, require about 4 feet square for tlieir use of this same rook- 

 ery ground, but as they are less than one-fifteenth the number of 

 the females — much less, in fact — they therefore occupy only one- 

 eighth of the space over the breeding ground where we have located 

 the sui^posed 100,000. This surplus area of the males is also more 

 than balanced and equalized by the 15,000 or 20,000 virgin females 

 which come on to this rookery for the first time to meet the males. 

 They come, rest a few days or a week, and retire, leaving no young to 

 show their presence on the ground. 



Taking all these points into consideration, and they are features of 

 fact, I quite safely calculate upon an average of 2 square feet to every 

 animal, big and little, on the breeding grounds, as the initial point 

 upon which to base an intelligent computation of the entire number 

 of seals before us. Without following this system of enumeration, a 

 person may look over these swarming myriads between Southwest 

 Point and Novastoshnali, guessing vaguely and wildly, at any figure 

 from 1,000,000 up to ten or twelve millions, as has been done rejjeat- 

 edly. How" few people know what a million really is. It is very easy 

 to talk of a million, but it is a tedious task to count it off, and makes 

 one's statements as to "millions" decidedly more conservative after 

 the labor has been accomplished. 



Review of the rookeries of St. Paul. — Before summing up 

 the grand total, I shall now, in sequence, review each one of the sev- 

 eral rookeries of St. Paul, taking them in their order as they occur, 

 going north from the Reef Point. The accompanying maps show the 

 exact area occupied by the breeding seals and their young in the season 

 of 1874, which is the date of my latest fieldwork on the Pribilof 

 Islands. 



The Reef rookery. — By reference first to the general map, it will 

 be observed that this large breeding ground, on that grotesquely 

 shaped neck Avhich ends in the Reef Point, is directly contiguous to 

 the village — indeed, it may be fairly said to be right under the lee of 

 the houses on the hill. Ife is one of the most striking of all the rook- 

 eries, owing i)robably to the fact that on every side it is sharply and 

 clearly exposed to the vision, as the circuit is made in boats. A reach 

 of very beautiful drifting sand, a quarter of a mile from the village 

 hill to the Reef Bluffs, separates the breeding grounds proper from the 

 habitations of the people. These Zoltoi sands are, however, a famous 

 rendezvous for the "hoUuschickie," and from them, during the sea- 

 son, the natives make regular drives, having only to step out from 

 their houses in the morning and walk but a few rods to find their fur- 

 bearing quarry. 



Passing over the sands on our way down to the point, we quickly come 

 to a basaltic ridge or backbone, over which the sand has been rifted 

 by the Avinds, and which supports a rank and luxuriant growth of the 

 elymus and other grasses, with beautiful flowers. A few hundred 

 feet farther along our course brings us in full view, as we look to the 

 south, of one of the most entrancing spectacles which seals afford to 

 man. We look down upon and along a grand promenade ground, 

 which slopes gently to the eastward and trends southward down to 

 the water from the abrupt walls bordering on the sea on the west, over 

 a parade plateau as smooth as the floor of a ball-room, 2,000 feet in 

 length, from 500 to 1,000 feet in width, over which multitudes of 

 "hoUuschickie "are filing in long strings or deploying in vast platoons, 

 hundreds abreast, in an unceasing march and countermarch. The 

 breath which rises into the cold air from a hundred thousand hot 



