290 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. '^ 



The shores are bold and rocky, with strijis of sand beach and slopes 

 covered with broken rocks at intervals between the cliffs, and the interior 

 of both is broken and hilly; neither tree nor shrub grows upon them, 

 but they are covered with grass, moss, and wild flowers. For nearly 

 one hundred years fur seals have been known to visit them annually in 

 great numbers for the purpose of bringing forth and rearing their 

 young, which circumstance gives them no inconsiderable commercial 

 importance. The seals occupy the island from the breaking away of 

 the ice in the spring until it surrounds them again in early winter; 

 that is, from about the middle of May until December. In mild winters, 

 when there is little or no ice about the islands, a few seals have been 

 seen swimming about in the water through the entire season, but it has 

 rarely occurred. They are not known to haul up on the land elsewhere 

 within the limits of the ]^orth Pacific Ocean except upon Bering and 

 Copper Islands, lying in Bering Sea, near the Asiatic Coast and Kobin 

 Eeef, a small rock in the Okhotsk Sea. They certainly go to the south- 

 ward in the fall, for they are frequently seen at sea, either singly or in 

 schools of several thousands, and are killed in the water all the way 

 from Sitka to the Straits of Fuca. In 1825, 54 were taken by the 

 Russians on the Farallones Islands, off the entrance to the Bay of San 

 Francisco, but none before or since have been seen there. There seems 

 to be no reason why they can not remain in the water during the entire 

 time they are absent from the islands, for they eat their food there at 

 all times, and are able to sleep upon its surface. 



They may be divided into two classes, the breeding and the nonbreed- 

 ing seals. The former comprise the full-grown males or bulls, the adult 

 females or cows, and the young, or i^ups ; the latter, the young or bache- 

 lor males, and the yearlings of both sexes. Both classes leave the 

 water and haul up along the shores of the islands near, but entirely sep- 

 arate from each other. They choose certain portions of the shore, to 

 the exclusion of the rest, not all of either class being together, but each 

 into separate communities, which are often several miles apart. The 

 breeding seals occupy the sloping ground between the cliff's, which is 

 covered with bowlders and broken rocks, beginning a few feet above 

 high- water mark and extending back to the depth of from 50 to 200 

 feet in a compact, uniform manner. Such spaces are called breeding 

 rookeries. The nonbreeding seals, on the contrary, are scattered over 

 the sand beaches and the higher ground in rear of the rookeries, with- 

 out any regular order of distribution. The parts of the shore so used 

 are called "hauling grounds." Pathways are left open in the rook- 

 eries at convenient points to allow the passage of the nonbreeding seals 

 to and from their hauling grounds in the rear. 



There are 11 rookeries on St. Paul Island, extending, with the adja- 

 cent hauling grounds, over more than one-third of its shore line, and 

 on St. George Island 5, taking uj) less than one-tenth of it. They are 

 reoccupied each year with but little change. 



About the middle of May the bulls, which are the first of the breed- 

 ing seals to arrive, haul from the water and establish the rookeries in 

 readiness for the cows, who begin to come a little later. It seems prob- 

 able that the rookeries are occupied by the same bulls and cows from 

 year to year, as they change but little either in size or form; but it has 

 been proved that the bachelors do not return to the same hauling ground, 

 or even to the same island. The time of arrival of the cows is governed 

 by their period of gestation, as they do not appear on the rookeries until 

 within a short time of giving birth to their pups; hence all do not come 

 at the same time, but continuously from the latter part of May until the 



