464 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



July 10, 1890. — Made a careful survey of tlie area and position of the 

 breeding seals on Tolstoi this day in company with Mr. Charles J. (loff. 



* * * Iji July (14), 1872, this Tolstoi rookery held 225,000 bulls, 

 cows, and pups. A startling decrease of nearly three-fourths or 72 per 

 cent loss here since 1872, or of 162,000 seals ! 



ZAPADNIE. 



Jime 13, 1890. — I think the bulls on Lower Zapadnie show the thin- 

 nest in distribution. Certainly this great rookery, which swarmed with 

 rousing, lighting bulls, closely massed over all the breeding space 

 mapped out on this ground at this time in 1872, is in a great decline. 

 The few bulls that are here, are hauled out so widely and so far from 

 the water — in places they are 1,000 feet. I think they act as though 

 they were anticipatiug nothing. A few cows, perhaps four or five, are 

 all that I saw this day here, and three on Upper Zapadnie. 



I have fairly got this rough-surfaced rookery chartered to-da/. It is 

 a queer place to view the seals. They lay in curious little valleys and 

 canyons which have been created by hot lava bubbles in prebio- 

 logical days. But that scant distribution of the bulls in these places 

 to day, puts me continually in mind of 



" Some banquet hall deserted, 

 Whose garlands dead, 

 And guests have fled, etc." 



Upper Zapadnie is equally thin on its hill slopes, and what is more, 

 the water's edge line is vacant at frequent intervals. There is an occa- 

 sional roar and some characteristic " spitting," hut none of that desper- 

 ate, incessant fighting that prevailed among the closely thronged hulls 

 on all these places in 1872. The rookeries to-day, on this occasion of 

 the first arrival of the females, are positively quiet. The nnbroken 

 uproar that boomed night and day from them then in 1872, is not more 

 than faintly suggested by what 1 hear now. 



June 26, 1890. — I have not seen much of Lower Zapadnie today — 

 only a running survey from the sand beach — while I had a fine view of 

 Upper Zapadnie and its beach extension. Upper Zapadnie shows the 

 same decadence, but not so painfully marked, as Lower Zapadnie. The 

 beach extension, however, is remarkably vacant, in so far as cows are 

 concerned. 



'inly 3, 1890. — The hauling of the cows on Zapadnie to-day is extra- 

 ordinary in contrast with its appearance here in 1872 at this time, and 

 only a week from the hour of its utmost limit of expansion. Really I 

 can not see much increase since mj^ notes last week. But, such rusty 

 cows, such somnolent stupid bulls; such an abnormal average as GO to 

 75 cows in the harems: while lots of sleeping bulls are all around, 

 though only some 40 to 50 feet away from these harems, where the bulls 

 in charge, are so feeble that they refused the advances of eager cows 

 rei)eatedly under my eyes within less than twenty minutes after I had 

 set a fixed watch on half a dozen right within my view and near by. 



Driving as it has been done has the deplorable effect of widen- 

 ing and scattering the already too wide and scattered distribution of 

 these breeding animals. I saw this result on the reef after it had been 

 swept on the 1st instant. The same extending vacancies on the water 

 line of this once great compact breeding ground is plainly visible to-day. 

 Every little pod of holluschickie that creeps in now behind a harem, laying 

 close up to it instinctively for shelter, is at once marked and swept out, 

 up and into the drives. This huddles the cows into larger and larger 

 masses, sweeps off and away the few surplus old males, and leaves the 



