ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 143 



turb aud drive off any portion of the rookery, by walkinjj^ up in plain 

 sight, those nearest to you will take to the water, instantly swim out 

 to a distance of 50 yards or so, leaving their jiups behind, lielplessly 

 sprawled around and about the rocks at your feet. Huddled up all 

 together in the water, in two or three packs or squads, the startled 

 parents hold their heads and necks high out of the sea, peering keenly 

 at you, and all roaring in an incessant concert, making an orchestra 

 to which those deep, sonorous tones of the organ in that great Mormon 

 tabernacle at Salt Lake City constitute the fittest and most adequate 

 resemblance. 



Movements when undisturbed on rookery. — You will witness 

 an endless tide of these animals traveling to the water and a steady 

 stream of their kind coming out if you but keep in retirement and do 

 not disturb them. When they first issue from the surf they are a dark, 

 chocolate brown and black, and glisten; but as their coats dry off the 

 color becomes an iron gray, passing into a bright, golden rufous, 

 which covers the entire body alike— shades of darker brown on the 

 pectoral patches and stern o-pectoral region. After getting entirely 

 dry they seem to grow exceedingly uneasy, and act as though oppressed 

 by heat until they plunge back into the sea, never staying out, as the 

 fur seal does, day after day and week after week. The females and 

 the young males frolic in and out of the water, over rocks awash, inces- 

 santly one with another, just as puppies play upon the greensward, 

 and when weary stretch themselves out in any attitude that will fit the 

 character of the rock or the lava shingle ujdou which they may happen 

 to be resting. The movements of their supple spines and ball-and- 

 socket joint attachments i^ermit of the most extraordinary^ contortions 

 of the trunk and limbs, all of which, no matter how distressing to your 

 eyes, they seem actually to relish. But the old battle-scarred bulls of 

 the harem stand or lie at their positions day and night without leaving 

 them, except to take a short bath when the coast is clear, until the end 

 of the season. 



Method of swimming. — When swimming, the sea lion only lifts its 

 head above the surface long enough to take a deep breath, and then 

 drops down a few feet below and i^ropels itself for about ten or fifteen 

 minutes like a cigar steamer at the rate of or 7 knots, if undisturbed, 

 but if chased or alarmed, it seems fairly to fly under water, and can 

 easily maintain for a long time a speed of 14 or 15 miles per hour. 

 Like the fur seal, its propulsion through the water is the work entirely 

 of the powerful fore flipi)ers, which are simultaneouslj^ struck out, 

 t^oth together, and back against the water, feathering forward again 

 to repeat, while the hind flippers are simply used as a rudder oar iji 

 deflecting the ever-varjang swift and al)rupt course of the animal. On 

 land the hind flippers are em^jloyed just as a dog does his feet in 

 scratching fleas, the long peculiar toe nails thereof seeming to reach 

 and comb the spots affected by vermin, which annoys them, as it does 

 the fur seal, to a great extent, and causes them both to enjoy a pro- 

 tracted scratching. 



Again, both genera — Callorhinus and Eumetopias — are happiest 

 when the surf is strongest and wildest. Just in j^roportion to the fury 

 of a gale, so much the greater joy and animation of these animals. 

 The}^ delight in riding on the crests of each dissolving breaker up to 

 the moment when it fairly foams over the iron-bound rocks. At that 

 instant they disappear like phantoms beneath the creamy surge, to 

 reappear on the crown of the next mighty billow. 



When landing, they always ride on the surf, so to speak, to the 



