THE SEAL ISLANDS OF ALASKA. 



A. INTRODUCTION. 



1. HISTORY AND OBJECTS OF THE MEMOIR. 



THE WRITER'S OPPORTUNITIES FOR.OBSERVATION. During the progress of the heated controversies that took 

 place pending the negotiation which ended in the acquisition of xYlaska by our government, frequent references wero 

 made to the fur-seal. Strange to say, this animal was so vaguely known at that time, even to scientific men, that it 

 was almost without representation in any of the best zoological collections of the world: even the Smithsonian 

 Institution did not possess a perfect skin and skeleton. The writer, then as now, an associate and collaborator of 

 this establishment, had his curiosity very much excited by those stories, and in March, 1872, he was, by the joint 

 action of Professor Baird and the Secretary of the Treasury, enabled to visit the Pribylov islands for the purpose 

 of studying the life and habits of these animals. 



The fact is, that the acquisition of those pelagic peltries had engaged thousands of men, and that millions of 

 dollars have been employed in capturing, dressing, and selling fur-seal skins during the hundred years just passed 

 by ; yet, from the time of Steller, away back as far as 1751, up to the beginning of the last decade, the scientific 

 world actually knew nothing definite in regard to the life-history of this valuable animal. The truth connected with 

 the life of the fur-seal, as it herds in countless myriads on the Pribylov islands of Alaska, is far stranger than fiction. 

 Perhaps the existing ignorance has been caused by confounding the hair-seal, Plioca vitulina, and its kind, with 

 the creature now under discussion. Two animals more dissimilar in their individuality and method of living can, 

 however, hardly be imagined, although they belong to the same group, and live apparently upon the same food. 



The notes, surveys, and hypotheses herewith presented are founded upon the writer's personal observations 

 in the seal-rookeries of St. Paul and St. George, during the seasons of 1872 to 1874, inclusive, supplemented 

 by his confirmatory inspection made in 1876. They were obtained through long days and nights of consecutive 

 observation, from the beginning to the close of each seal season, and cover, by actual surveys, the entire ground 

 occupied by these animals. They have slumbered in the author's portfolio until the present moment, simply for the 

 reason that he desired, before making a final presentation of the history of these islands and the life thereon, to visit 

 the Russian seal-islands, the "Commanders", viz, Bering and Copper islands, which lie to the westward, 700 miles 

 from our own, and are within the pale of the czar's dominion. 



PREVIOUS OBSERVATIONS OF STELLER AND OTHERS. In treating this subject the writer has trusted to 

 nothing save what he himself has seen; for, until these life-studies were made by him, no succinct and consecutive 

 history of the lives and movements of these animals had been published by any man. Fanciful yarns, woven by the 

 ingenuity of whaling captains, in which the truth was easily blended with that which was not true, and short 

 pa rag i aphs penned hastily by naturalists of more or less repute, formed the knowledge that we had. Best of all was 

 the old diary of Steller, who, while suffering bodily tortures, the legacy of gangrene and scurvy, when wrecked with 

 Vitus Bering on the Commander islands, showed the nerve, the interest, and the energy of a true naturalist. He 

 daily crept, with aching bones and watery eyes, over the bowlders and mossy flats of Bering island, to catch glimpses 

 of those strange animals which abode there then as they abide to day. Considering the physical difficulties that 

 environed Steller, the notes made by him on the sea-bears of the North Pacific are remarkably good; but, as I have 

 said, they fail so far from giving a fair and adequate idea of what these immense herds are and do, as to be absolutely 

 valueless for the present hour. Shortly after Steller's time, great activity sprang up in the South Atlantic and 

 Pacific over the capture and .sale of fur-seal skins taken in those localities. It is extraordinary, that though whole 

 fleets of American, English, French, Dutch, and Portuguese vessels engaged, during a period of protracted enterprise, 

 of over eighty years in length, in the business of repairing to the numerous rookeries of the Antarctic, returning 



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