WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS. 189 



vellous exhibitioDs of massed animal-life that is known to man, 

 civilized or savage ; here is exhibited the perfect working of an 

 anomalous industry, conducted without a parallel in the history of 

 human enterprise, and of immense pecuniary and biological value. 



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 move- 

 ments 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 

 paragraphs 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 gan- 

 grene and scurvy, when wrecked with 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 boulders 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 fall' 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 Ameri- 

 can, English, French, Dutch, and Portuguese vessels engaged dur- 

 ing a period of protracted enterprise of over eighty years in length 

 in the business of repairing to the numerous rookeries of the Ant- 

 arctic, returning annually laden with enormous cargoes of fur-seal 

 skins, yet, as above mentioned, hardly a definite line of record has 

 been made in regard to the whole transaction, involving, as it did, 

 so much labor and so much capital. 



The fact is, that the acquisition of these pelagic peltries had en- 

 gaged thousands of men, and that millions of dollars had been em- 

 ployed in capturing, dressing, and selling fur-seal skins during the 

 hundred years just passed by ; nevertheless, from the time of Stel- 

 ler, away back as far as 1751, up to the beginning of the last dec- 

 ade, the scientific world actually knew nothing definite in regard 

 to the life history of this valuable animal. The truth connected 



