LIFE IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS 



The whale fisheries of the Bering Sea and the Arctic 

 Ocean beyond, are the most extensive of any that have 

 been pursued of late years, and the most dangerous. We 

 met a fleet of whalers at Port Clarence, just below Bering 

 Strait, waiting the retreat of the ice of the Arctic Ocean 

 from the American coast. Then they would penetrate 

 eastward, where the business is the most profitable, but is 

 attended with peculiar dangers. In Baffin Bay the whalers 

 fear being frozen in; here the greatest danger is of a very 

 different kind. The great Arctic ice-pack retreats north- 

 ward in summer, it returns as the season advances, and is 

 driven against the American coast, and woe to the vessel 

 that does not escape to the west of Point Barrow, or get 

 behind the shelter of a friendly island. The story of 

 crushed vessels and of heroic adventures, along that coast 

 is an exciting one. 



We sometimes see white bears and small Arctic animals 

 temporarily in our zoological gardens, but those who would 

 see the whale and the walrus must visit them at their own 

 homes; it will be some time before they will call upon us, 

 put up at our aquaria, and receive visitors there. 



Sea lions and fur seals abound along the coast of Alaska 

 and its islands. The former are found at places along 

 the coast as far south as Southern California, but the 

 great shore resorts of the fur seal are Pribyloff Islands in 

 the Bering Sea, where they resort in herds of hundreds of 

 thousands, and where they furnish the most fascinating 

 exhibition of wild animal life to be found on the globe. 



They spend most of their lives at sea and come to these 

 islands in summer to rear their young, to shed their coats, 

 and to have a social summer outing. The Pribyloff Islands 

 are so much of the time hidden by fogs, that they were not 

 discovered for years after being looked for by the early 

 Russian hunters, who saw the seals passing every summer, 

 into the Bering Sea from the Pacific Ocean. The rook- 

 eries extend along the shore at intervals for miles. The 

 animals begin to arrive in May, the males first, where the 

 larger and stronger ones take possession of some particular 

 place on the shores, preferably where there is an abundance 

 of rocks. They fight with each other until the victors 

 have established a title to a homestead. They are zealous 



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