THE FUR-SEALS AND THE BERING SEA AWARD 11 



arrive first, and taking positions along the shore, each pre- 

 empts, so to speak, a certain space sacred to himself, and 

 there awaits the coming of the females. As they appear, 

 arriving day by day from the sea, great confusion reigns 

 along the shores of the rookeries. Desperate struggles for 

 the females follow, and when a degree of peace is restored in 

 the course of a few days, there results an establishment of 

 many approximately permanent polygamous family groups 

 more or less densely crowded along the littoral of the islands. 

 The younger male seals, known as "bachelors," are unable 

 to cope with the older and stronger ones in their fierce con- 

 tests for possession of the females. They retire and herd 

 together, a discontented throng, at some distance from their 

 jealous elders. The old males keep constantly on the alert 

 to protect their homesteads from the intrusion of other males, 

 or to prevent the members of their own households from 

 deserting them. So jealous are they of their " wives " that they 

 dare not venture away from their positions on shore during 

 the entire breeding season, not even in search of food. The 

 females, soon after landing, give birth to their young, each 

 bearing a single " pup." These helpless little creatures are 

 carefully nurtured by their mothers until they learn to swim 

 and can shift for themselves. The females in search of food 

 make frequent excursions to sea during the breeding season, 

 often going as far as two hundred miles from the island rook- 

 eries, at which distance they have been frequently observed 

 disporting themselves, or quietly sleeping upon the surface 

 of the water. They always return to the care of their young 

 and to the protection of their watchful lords and masters. 



Thus the seals constituting the "American herd" live 

 upon the Pribyloff rookeries from the time of their annual 

 coming in May and June until the late autumn, when the 

 forces of Boreas besiege the islands and the northern seas 

 become tempestuous. The seals then slip into the surf for 

 their long annual swim to the south. They migrate leisurely 

 through various passes between the Aleutian Islands, thence 

 southward in the open Pacific to about latitude ( 35 (oppo- 

 site San Francisco), then making a long sweep inland they 



