IX.] THE FUR SEAL. 191 



that time is seldom or never seen. Impelled by unerring instinct, 

 it steers northward in the spring, and reaches, by a power that 

 seems little short of miraculous, one of the five islands I have just 

 mentioned. It seems that the seal almost always returns to the 

 island upon which it has been born, although not necessarily to the 

 same rookery, and the date of its appearance is one of considerable 

 regularity. In Bering Island the 12th May was, we were informed, 

 the usual date of the arrival of the bulls. The cows are later by 

 three weeks or more, but by the middle of June the rookeries 

 are crowded, and the land existence of these curious animals has 

 fairly commenced for the year. Here they remain for four or five 

 months or longer, during which time the inhabitants of the island 

 are hard at work slaughtering and preparing the skins to a number 

 previously regulated by the Company. The departure of the 

 animals is not so regular as their advent. If a cold winter is to be 

 expected they go earlier ; if the reverse they remain considerably 

 longer, but their usual date of leaving is about November 20th. 



Early on the morning after our arrival we landed for our 

 expedition across the island. As we walked through Nikolsky, as 

 the little settlement has been recently christened by the captain 

 of H.I.M.S. Afrika, numerous stolid-looking Aleuts turned out to 

 stare at us and to wish us drastia. Nature having altogether 

 declined to supply them with wood, they have overcome this 

 obstacle to the construction of boats in the same manner as the 

 Esquimaux and other northern tribes,— by the use of skins ; and 

 beautifully-modelled canoes, not unlike Greenlanders' kayaks, and 

 smiilar in every way to some we saw afterwards among the Kurile 

 islanders near Cape Lopatka, were lying near many of the huts. 

 The lidarrahs, open boats of very large size, are made in like 

 manner by stretching skins over a wooden framework, but though 

 capable of being sailed, and of carrying a considerable quantity of 

 cargo, their shape by no means commends itself to a sailor's eye. 

 The agent of the Alaska Commercial Company had kindly provided 

 us with dog-sledges, and we found them "inspanned" and waiting for 



