208 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



miles in extent, and half of this area is unproductive. Then, too, 

 a struggle for existence would reduce the flesh and vitality of these 

 cattle to so low an ebb that it is doubtful whether they could be 

 put through another winter alive, especially if severe. I was then 

 and am now strongly inclined to think that if a few of those Sibe- 

 rian reindeer could be brought over to St. Paul and to St. George 

 they would make a very successful struggle for existence, and be 

 a source of a good supply, summer and winter, of fresh meat for 

 the agents of the Government and the company who may be living 

 upon the islands. I do not think that they would be inclined to 

 molest or visit the seal- grounds ; at least, I noticed that the cattle 

 and mules of the company running loose on St. Paul were careful 

 never to poke around on the outskirts of a rookery, and deer would 

 be more timid and less obtrusive than our domesticated animals. 

 But I did notice on St. George that a little squad of sheep, brought 

 up and turned out there for a summer's feeding, seemed to be so 

 attracted by the quiet calls of the pups on the rookeries that they 

 were drawn to and remained by the seals without disturbing them 

 at all, to their own physical detriment, for they lost better pastur- 

 age by so doing. The natives of St. Paul have a strange passion 

 for seal-fed pork, and there are quite a large number of pigs on 

 the Island of St. Paul and a few on St. George. Such hogs soon 

 become entirely carnivorous, living, to the practical exclusion of all 

 other diet, on the carcasses of seals. 



Chickens are kept with great difficulty. In fact, it is only pos- 

 sible to save their lives when the natives take them into their own 

 rooms or keep them over their heads, in their dwellings, during 

 winter. 



While the great exhibition of pinnipedia preponderates over 

 every other feature of animal life at the Seal Islands, still there is a 

 wonderful aggregate of ornithological representation thereon. The 

 spectacle of birds nesting and breeding, as they do on St. George 

 Island, to the number of millions, flecking those high basaltic bluffs 

 of its shore-line, twenty-nine miles in length, with color-patches of 

 black, brown, and white, as they perch or cling to the mural cliffs 

 in the labor of incubation, is a sight of exceeding attraction and 

 constant novelty. It affords a naturalist an opportunity of a life- 

 time for minute investigation into all the details of the reproduc- 

 tion of these vast flocks of circumboreal water-fowl. The Island of 

 St. Paul, owing to the low character of its shore-line, a large pro- 



