bfllios at ihf liino nf their di-ath this m what is now a inort- or 

 less foodless wildcrnoss. You just cannot support such herds of 

 huge animals, needing literally tons of fresh food and roughage 

 daily simply to maintain themselves, on (he present meager 

 tundra vegetation— which, incidentally, is available for only a 

 few weeks every year. When you add all the other creatures 

 mentioned above (and the volume of their remains shows that 

 they existed by the tens of thousands), the whole matter verges 

 on the incomprehensible. Thus, it seems that, while the center 

 and northeast of our continent were lying under the grip of an 

 icecap, this today slightly more northern land was somewhere 

 farther south, down in the sun. bathed in a much longer day 

 than now. and so able to grow abundant food for vast herds of 

 large animals and to support deciduous trees bearing soft fruits. 

 This seems to be a logical conclusion. 



How. why. and when did all these animals that we now find 

 in the muck get killed; and so suddenly that their bodies did not 

 have time to rot or even start to decay in some instances: indeed 

 so abruptly in one case that flowering buttercups they were 

 feeding on when death struck, were found still lodged un- 

 swallowed between their teeth? This is truly a conundrum, but 

 there is another one even more inexplicable. How did they get 

 instantly deep-frozen, a state which, according to frozen-food 

 specialists, requires an enormous and almost instantaneous drop 

 in temperature? And how. beyond this, did so many of them 

 get torn limb from limb? What natural force is strong enough 

 to fear the whole head off an elephant in a fresh condition and 

 hurl it into a mass of smashed tree trunks, bits of other animals, 

 boulders, and sludge, and then freeze the whole mass so 

 suddenly and deeply that it has remained unspoiled for thou- 

 sands or tens of thousands of years? But not all these heaps of 

 animal flesh and particulated vegetation are fresh. Some are 

 either partly or most pronouncedly decomposed, and on occasion 

 the stench from this (on opening up the permafrost, which is 

 now done with cold-water jets for gold-mining in this area) is 

 so nauseating that the hardiest operators quit. 



Permafrost is altogether remarkable. It prevents atmospheric 

 moisture from sinking into the soil and so literally floods the 

 land, helping in the creation of bog and swamp conditions, 

 stunting vegetal growth by drowning roots, and bringing on all 

 manner of other unpleasantnesses. Yet under proper circum- 

 stances the most luxuriant vegetables can be grown on the 

 shallow surface layer that does thaw out in the short and violent 

 Arctic summer. So rapid is this growth in some cases — the area 

 around Dawson City is notable for this — that plants have to be 

 shaded from the sun to prevent their running to seed. It is weird 

 to think that one-seventh of the land surface of our earth is 

 covered with permafrost and that about half of this (mostly in 

 Siberia) is riddled with plant and animal remains aggregating 

 untold millions of tons. 



FIN-FOOTED NOMADS 



Although the Bering Sea and the North Pacific are heavily 

 populated with a wide variety of mammalian, bird. fish, and 

 invertebrate life, there are two animals that command our 

 special attention in this area. These are the Sea Bear or Fur Seal. 

 and the Sea Otter. The story of both is a sad one but with a 



Overleaf: Sundry forms of the Dish-faced or Brown Bears 

 are found in Alaska and on its offshore islands, the largest 

 on Kodiak Island and the adjacent mainland. 



fairly happy ending. The Sea Bear is a relative of the Sea Lions 

 and is thus an eared seal, as distinct from the ordinary or carl<- 

 seals. One species is native to this part of the North Pacific, an I 

 it once existed there in millions. However, the while man, so"; 

 after his arrival both from the east and the west, discovered ili.i 

 these animals assembled once a year, all together, and in onl 

 a few places, notably on islands and in particular on the liitl. 

 Pribiloff Islands, to give birth to their young and then to brco ! 

 With their customary avarice, these new human arrivals went i 

 work slaughtering these animals without any regard to con 

 serving a breeding stock. 



As a result of this atrocious activity, the numbers of these 

 magnificent beasts, yielding such beautiful soft fur. were by 1910 

 reduced to an estimated 150,000. Then, fortunately, modem ideas 

 of conservation gained the ascendancy: open-ocean sealing was 

 banned and annual quotas were established. Today there are 

 estimated to be once again over 3,000,000 of these animals. Sea 

 Bears are fairly large animals, the bulls reaching six feet, the 

 cows some four feet; but the former may weigh over five hun- 

 dred pounds. They have a dense yellow underfur. but the coarse 

 overfur of the males is almost black and that of the females 

 gray: both are reddish below. They give birth to only one young 

 once a year, but the older males assemble large harems and 

 guard these with tremendous vigor during the breeding period 

 on the islands. During the rest of the year they cruise the ocean, 

 extending their range as far south as California. There are 

 smaller southern species, one of which may still not be extinct 

 and used to concentrate around the islands of Baja California. 



Another remarkable marine animal of this area that is still 



Below: A young Canadian lynx. This cat is predominantly a 

 bird-eater hut does not disdain lemmings and mice. 



