THE FUR-SEAL ISLANDS OF ALASKA. 31 



spend day after day idly swimming out among the breakers, a little distance from the shore, before they come to 

 it, perhaps somewhat reluctant at first to enter upon the assiduous duties and the grave responsibilities before 

 them in fighting for and maintaining their positions iu the rookeries. 



The first arrivals are not always the oldest bulls, but may be said to be the finest and most ambitious of their 

 class. They are full grown and able to hold their places on the rookeries or the breeding-flats, which they 

 immediately take up after coming ashore. Their method of landing is to come collectively to those breeding- 

 grounds where they passed the prior season; but I am not able to say authoritatively, nor do I believe it, strongly 

 as it has been urged by many careful men who were with me on the islands, that these animals come, back to 

 and take up the same position on their breeding-grounds that they individually occupied when there last year. 

 From my knowledge of their action and habit, and from what I have learned of the natives, I should say that 

 very few, if any, of them make such a selection and keep these places year after year. Even did the seal 

 itself intend to come directly from the sea to that spot on the rookery which it left last summer, what could it do 

 if it came to that rookery-margin a little late, and found that another " see-catch " had occupied its ground "? The 

 bull could do nothing. It would either have to die in its tracks, if if persisted in attaining this supposed objective 

 point, or do what undoubtedly it does do— seek the next best locality which it can attain adjacent. 



One old "see-catch" was pointed out to me at the "Gorbateh" section of the Eeef rookery, as an animal that 

 was long known to the natives as a regular visitor, close by or on the same rock, every season during the past three 

 years. They called him "Old John", and they said they knew him because he had one of his posterior digits 

 missing, bitten off, perhaps, in a combat. I saw him in 187-', and made careful drawings of him iu order that I 

 might recognize his individuality, should he appear again iu the following year, and when that time rolled by I 

 found him not; he failed to reappear, and the natives acquiesced in his absence. Of course it was impossible to 

 say that he was dead, when there were 10,000 rousing, lighting bulls to the right, left, and below us, under our 

 eyes, for we could not approach for inspection. Still, if these animals came each to a certain place in any 

 general fashion, or as a rule, I thiuk there would be no difficulty iu recognizing the fact; the natives certainly 

 would do so; as it is, they do not. I think it very likely, however, that the older bulls come back to the same 

 common rookery-ground where they spent the previous season ; but they are obliged to take up their position on it 

 just as the circumstances attending their arrival will permit, such as finding other seals which have arrived 

 before them, or of being whipped out by stronger rivals from their old stands. 



It is entertaining to note, in this connection, that the Eussians themselves, with the object of testing this mooted 

 query, during the later years of their possession of the islands, drove up a number of young males from Lukannon, 

 cut oil' their ears, and turned them out to sea again. The following season, when the droves came in from the 

 "hauling grounds" to the slaughtering-fields, quite a number of those cropped seals were in the drives, but instead 

 of being found all at one place— the place from whence they were driven the year before— they were scattered 

 examples of croppies from every point on the island. The same experiment was again made by our people in 

 1S70 (the natives having told them of this prior undertaking), and they went also to Lukannon, drove up 100 

 young males, cut off their left ears, and set them free in turn. Of this number, during the summer of 1S72, when I 

 was there, the natives found in their driving of 75,000 seals from the different hauling-grouuds of St. Paul up to the 

 village killing-grounds, two on iSTovastoshuah rookery, 10 miles north of Lukannon, and two or three from English 

 bay and Tolstoi rookeries, G miles west by water; one or two were taken on St. George island, 36 miles to the 

 southeast, and not one from Lukannon was found among those that were driven from there; probably, had all 

 the young males on the two islands this season been examined, the rest of the croppies that had returned 

 from the perils of the deep, whence they sojourned during the winter, would, have been distributed quite equally 

 about the Pribylov hauling-grounds. Although the natives say that they thiuk the cutting off of the animal's ear 

 gives the water such access to its head as to cause its death, yet I noticed that those examples which we had 

 recognized by this auricular mutilation, were normally fat and well developed. Their theory does not appeal to my 

 belief, and it certainly requires confirmation. 



These experiments would tend to prove very cogently and conclusively, that when the seals approach the islands 

 in the spring, they have nothing in their minds but a general instinctive appreciation of the fitness of the land, as 

 a whole ; and no special fondness or determination to select any one particular spot, not even the place of their birth. 

 A study of my map of the distribution of the .seal-life on St. Paul, clearly indicates that the landing of the seals 

 on the respective rookeries is influenced greatly by the direction of the wind at the time of their approach to the 

 islands iu the spring and early summer. The prevailing airs, blowing, as they do at that season, from the north 

 and northwest, carry far out to sea the odor of the old rookery-flats, together with the fresh scent of the pioneer 

 bulls which have located themselves on these breeding-grounds, three or four weeks in advance of their kind. The 

 seals come up from the great North Pacific, and hence it will be seen that the rookeries of the south and 

 southeastern shores of St. Paul island receive nearly all the seal-life, although there are miles of perfectly eligible 

 ground at Xah.sayvernia, or north shore. To settle this matter beyond all argument, however, I know is an 

 exceedingly difficult task, for the identification of individuals, from one season to another, among the hundreds of 

 thousands, and even millions, that come under the eye on one of these great rookeries, is well nigh impossible. 



