FAR AND NEAR 



and gather in groups as the boat approached their 

 rookerv. 



Then, after the landing was effected, they disap- 

 peared, and we could see the spray rise up as the 

 monsters plunged into the water. Hundreds of them 

 were in a small lake a few rods back from the shore, 

 and the spectacle which the procession of the huge 

 creatures made rushing across the beach to the sea 

 was described as something most extraordinary. 

 Those who were so fortunate as to witness it placed 

 it among the three or four most memorable events 

 of their lives. 



On the afternoon of Sunday, July 9, we dropped 

 anchor off St. Paul Island, one of the Pribilofs, the 

 famous resort of the fur seals. A special permit 

 from the Secretary of the Treasury gave us the 

 privilege. There is no harbor here, and the landing, 

 even in calm weather, requires to be carefully man- 

 aged. The island is low, with a fringe of loose boul- 

 ders around it, which in places looked almost like an 

 artificial wall. The government agent conducted us 

 a mile or more through wild meadows starred with 

 flowers and covered with grass nearly knee-high, to 

 the boulder-paved shore where the seals were con- 

 gregated. Those of our party who had been there 

 before, not many years back, were astonished at the 

 diminished numbers of the animals, — hardly one 

 tenth of the earlier myriads. We visited eight or ten 

 "harems,'* as they are called, groups of a dozen or 



104 



