144 ' ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



objective point, and it is marvelons to see witli what remarkable agiitty 

 tlioy will worm themselves up steep, rocky landings, having an incli- 

 nation greater than 45 degrees, to those bluff tops above, which have 

 an almost per[)endiculai' drop to water. 



The value of the sea lion, commercially: Shedding. — As the 

 sea lion is without fur, its skin has little or no commercial value.' 

 The hair is short, an inch to an inch and a half in length, being long- 

 est over the nape of the neck, straight and somewhat coarse, varying 

 in color as the season comes and goes. For instance, when the Eume- 

 iopias makes its first appearance in the spring, and dries out after 

 landing, it has then a light-brownish rufous tint, with darker shades 

 back and under the fore flippers and on the abdomen. By the expi- 

 ration of a month or six weeks — about the 15tli of June generally — 

 this coat will be weathered into a glossy rufous, or oclier, and this is 

 soon before shedding, which sets in by the middle of August, or a 

 little earlier. After the new coat has fairl}' grown, and just before 

 the animal leaves the island for the sea in November, it is a light 

 sepia or vandyke brown, witli deeper shades, almost black, upon the 

 abdomen. The cows after shedding never color up so darldy as the 

 bulls, but wlien they come back to the land next year they return 

 identically the same in tinting, so that the eye, in glancing over a sea- 

 lion rookery during June and July, can not discern any dissimilarity 

 in color at all noteworthy existing between the coats of the bulls and 

 the cows; and also tiie 3'oung males and yearlings appear in the same 

 golden brown and ocher, with here and there an animal which is noted 

 as being spotted somewhat like a leopard, the yellow rufous ground 

 predominating, witli i)atclies of dark brown, blotched and mottled, 

 irregularly interspersed over the anterior regions doAvn to those pos- 

 terior. I have never seen any of the old bulls or cows thus mottled, 

 and this is likely due to some irregularity of shedding in the younger 

 animals, for I have not noticed it early in the season, and it seems to 

 faii-ly fade away so as not to be discerned on the same animal at the 

 close of its summer solstice. Many of the old bulls have a grizzled 

 or "salt and pepper" look during the shedding period, which is from 

 the 10th of August up to the lOth or 20th of November. The pups 

 when born are a rich, dark, chestnut-brown. This coat they shed in 

 October and take one much lighter in its stead, still darker, however, 

 than their i)arents. 



Arrival at and departure from the Pribilof Islands. — The 

 time of arrival at, stay on, and departure from the islands is about 

 the same as that which I have recorded as characteristic of the fur 

 seal; but if the winter is an open, mild one, some of the sea lions will 

 frequently be seen about the shores during the whole year; and then 



' The pea lion and liair seals of Bering Sea. having no commercial value in the 

 eyes of civilized men, have not been. subjects of interest enough to the pioneers of 

 those waters for mention in])articular— such record, for instance, as that given of 

 the walrus, the sea otter, and the fur seal. Steller was the first to draw the line 

 clearly between them and seals in general, especially defining their separation 

 from the fur seal; still, his description is far from being definite or satisfactory in 

 the light of our present knowledge of the animal. In the South Pacific and Atlan- 

 tic the sea lion has been curiously confounded by many of the earliest writers 

 with the sea elephant — Macrorhinus leoiiiiuis — and its reference is inextricably 

 entangled with the fur seal at the Falklands. Kerguelens Land, and the Crozettes. 

 The proboscidean seal, however, seems to be the only pinniped which visits the 

 Antarctic continent: but that is a mere inference of mine, because so little is known 

 of those ice-bound coasts, and Wilkes, who gives the only record made of tke sub- 

 ject, saw no other animal there save this one. 



