320 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



ordeal of clubbing. Then, when driven up into the last surround or 

 "pod," the seals which are spared by cause of being" unflt to take — as 

 too big or too little, bitteu, etc. — are x)ermitted to go oft' from the kill- 

 ing ground back to the sea, outwardly unhurt, most of them; but I am 

 now satisfied that they sustain, in a vast majority of cases, internal 

 injuries of greater or less degree,^ that remain to work physical disa- 

 bility or death thereafter to nearly every seal thus released, and certain 

 injury to its virility and courage so necessary for its station ou the 

 rookery, even if it does live to successfully run this gauntlet of driving 

 throughout every sealing season for five or six consecutive years, driven 

 over and over again, as it is, during e;ich one of these sealing seasons. 



Therefore it now appears plain to me that those young male fur seals 

 which may happen to survive tliis terrible strain of four or five suc- 

 cessive years of driving overland, are rendered by this act of driving, 

 wholly worthless for breeding purposes ; tliat they never go to the breed- 

 ing grounds and take up stations there, being utterly demoralized in 

 spirit if not in body. 



With this knowledge, then the full effect of "driving" becomes 

 apparent j and that result of slowly but surely robbing the rookeries of 

 a full and sustained supply of fresh nervy joung male blood, demanded 

 by nature imperatively for their support up to the standard of full 

 expansion (such as I recorded in 1872-1874) — that result began, it 

 now seems clear, to set in from the very beginning, twenty years ago, 

 under the present system. 



Had, however, a check been as slowly and steadily applied to that 

 "driving" as it progressed in 1879-1882 upon those great reserves of 

 Zapadnie, Southwest Point, and Polavina, then the i^reseut condition of 

 exhaustion, complete exhaustion, of the surplus supply of young male 

 seals as compared with the number of females to-day, would not be 

 observed — it would not have happened. 



But, however, no attention was given whatever to the fact that in 

 1882 the reserves were suddenly, very suddenly, drawn upon, steadily 

 and heavily for the first time, in order that a i^rompt filling of the reg- 

 ular annual quota should be made before or by the usual time of clos- 

 ing the sealing season for the year, viz, July 20; and, until the rex^ort 



' I have been repeatedly astouished at the amazing power possessed by the fur seal of 

 resistance to shocks which would certainly kill any other animal. To explain clearly, 

 you will observe, by reference to my maps, that there are a great many cliffy places 

 between the rookeries on the shore lines of the islands. Some of these cliffs are more 

 than 100 feet in abrupt elevation above the surf androcks awash below. Frequently 

 "holluschickie,"' in ones or twos or threes, will stray far away back from the great 

 masses of their kind, and fall asleep in the thick grass and herbage which covers 

 these mural reaches. Sometimes they will lie down and rest A'ery close to the edge, 

 and then as you come tramping along you discover and startle them and yourself 

 alike. They, blinded by their tirst transport of alarm, leap promptly over the brink, 

 snorting, coughing, iiiid spitting as they go. Curiously peering after them and look 

 ing down ujion the rocks, ^^0 to 100 feet below, instead of seeing their stunned and 

 motionless bodies, you will invariably catch sight of them rapidly scrambling into 

 the water : and, when in it, swimming off" lilce arrows from the bow. Three ' ' hollus- 

 chickie" were thus inadvertently surprised by me on the edge of the west face to 

 Otter Island. They plunged over from an elevation there not less than 200 feet in 

 sheer height, and I distinctly saw them fall, in scrambling, whirling evolutions, 

 down, thumping upon the rocky shingle beneath, from Avhich they bounded as they 

 struck like so many ruboer balls. Two of them never moved after the rebound 

 ceased, but the third one reached the water and swam away like a bird on the wing. 



While they seem to cscaj^e without bodily injury incident to such hard falls as 

 ensue from dropping 50 or 60 feet upon pebbly beaches and rough bowlders below, 

 and even greater elevations, yet I am inclined to think that some internal injuries 

 are necessarily sustained in most every case, which soon develop and cause death 

 The excitement and the vitality of the seal at the moment of the terriftic shock ia 

 able to sustain and conceal the real injury for the time being. 



