60 



THE FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



LOW PLATEAU 

 Gmss, <*n*l very 



LOW 



P L ATEAU 



GI--CLSS 

 aid fioctly 



eastward of this rookery, over which the " holluschickie " haul in proportionate numbers, and from which the natives 

 make their drives, coming from the village for this purpose, and directing the seals back, in their tracks.* Starry 



Ateel has 500 feet of sea and cliff margin, 

 with 125 feet of average depth, making 

 ground for 30,420 breeding-seals and 

 their young. 



NORTH KOOKERY. Next in order, and 

 half a mile to the eastward, is this breed- 

 ing-ground, which sweeps for 2,750 fet 

 along and around the sea froutof a gently 

 sloping plateau ; t being in full sight of 

 and close to the village. It has a super- 

 ficial area occupied by 77,000 breeding- 

 seals and their young. From this rook- 

 ery to the village, a distance of less than 

 a, quarter of a mile, the "holluschickie" 

 are driven which are killed for their 

 skins, on the common track or seal-worn 

 trail, that, not only the "bachelors" but 

 ourselves travel over en route to and from 

 Starry Ateel and Zapadnie; it is a broad, 

 hard-packed erosion through the sphag- 

 num, and across the rocky plateaux in 

 fact a regular seal road, which has been 

 used by the drivers and victims during 

 the last eighty or ninety years. The 

 fashion on St. George, in this matter of 

 driving seals, is quite different from that 

 on St. Paul. To get their maximum quota of 25,000 annually, it is necessary for the natives to visit every morning 

 the hauling-grounds of each one of these four rookeries on the north shore, and bring what they may find back with 

 them for the day. 



inadvertently surprised by me on the edge of the west face to Otter island. They plunged over from an elevation, there, not less than 

 200 feet in sheer elevation, and I distinctly saw them fall in scrambling, whirling evolutions, down, thumping upon the rocky shingle 

 beneath, from which they bounded, as they struck, like so many rubber balls. Two of them never moved after the rebound ceased, but 

 the third one reached the water and swam away like a bird on the wing. 



While they seem to escape without bodily injury incident to such hard falls as ensue from dropping 50 or 60 feet upon pebbly beaches and 

 rough bowlders below, and even greater elevations, yet I am inclined to think that some internal injuries are necessarily sustained in 

 most every case, which soon develop and cause death ; the excitement and the vitality of the seal, at the moment of the terrific shock, 

 is able to sustain and conceal the real injury for the time being. 



* Driving the "holluschickie" on St. George, owing to the relative scantiness of hauling area for those animals there, and consequent 

 small numbers found upon these grounds at any one time, is a very arduous series of daily exercises on the part of the natives who attend 

 to it. Glancing at the map, the marked considerable distance, over an exceedingly rough road, will be noticed between Zapadnie and 

 the village ; yet, in 1872, eleven different drives across the island, of 400 to 500 seals each, were made in the short four weeks of that season. 



The following table shows plainly the striking inferiority of the seal-life, as to aggregate number, on this island, compared with 

 that of St. Paul : 



NORTH ROOKERY 



Scale-. 



The same activity in "sweeping" the hauling-grounds of St. Paul would bring in ten times as many seals, and the labor be vastly 

 less; the driving at St. Paul is generally done with au eye to securing each day of the season only as many as can be well killed and 

 skinned on that day, according as it be warmish or cooler. 



tl should say "a gently sloping and alternating bluff plateau"; 2,000 feet are directly under the abrupt faces of low cliffs, while the 

 other 750 feet slope down gradually to the water's edge ; these narrow cliff belts of breeding fur-seals might be properly styled "rookery 

 ribbons". 



