270 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



after birth than their mother's. They, too, comically spit or cough 

 when aroused suddenly from a nap or driven into a corner, open- 

 ing their little mouths (like young birds in a nest) when at bay, 

 backed up in some crevice or against grassy tussocks. 



Indeed, so similar is that call of the female to the bleating of 

 sheep that a number of the latter, which the Alaska Commercial 

 Company had brought up from San Francisco to St. George Island 

 during the summer of 1873, were constantly attracted to the rook- 

 eries, and were running in among the " holluschickie " so much that 

 they neglected better pasturage on the uplands beyond, and a small 

 boy had to be regularly employed to herd them where they would 

 feed to advantage. These transported Ovidce, though they could 

 not possibly find anything in their eyes suggestive of companionship 

 among the seals, had their ears so charmed by those sheep-like ac- 

 cents of the female pinnipeds as to persuade them in spite of their 

 senses of vision and smell. 



The sound which arises from these great breeding grounds of 

 the fur-seal, where thousands upon tens of thousands of angry, vigi- 

 \J lant bulls are roaring, chuckling, and piping, and multitudes of 

 seal-mothers are calling in hollow, bleating tones to their young, 

 that in turn respond incessantly, is simple defiance to verbal de- 

 scription. It is, at a slight distance, softened into a deep boom- 

 ing, as of a cataract ; and I have heard it, with a light, fair wind to 

 the leeward, as far as six miles out from land on the sea ; even 

 in the thunder of the surf and the roar of heavy gales, it will 

 rise up and over to your ear for quite a considerable distance away. 

 It is a monitor which the sea-captains anxiously strain their ears 

 for, when they run their dead reckoning up, and are lying to for 

 the fog to rise, in order that they may get their bearings of the 

 land. Once heard, they hold on to the sound, and feel their way 

 in to anchor. The seal-roar at " Novastoshnah " during the summer 

 of 1872 saved the life of a surgeon,* and six natives belonging to 

 the village, who had pushed out on an egging trip from Northeast 

 Point to Walrus Island. I have sometimes thought, as I have lis- 



* Dr. Otto Cramer: The suddenness with which fog and wind shut down and 

 sweep over the sea here, even when the day opens most auspiciously for a short 

 boat-voyage, has so alarmed the natives in times past that a visit is now never 

 made by them from island to island, unless on one of the company's vessels 

 Several bidarrahs have never been heard from, which, in earlier times, at- 

 tempted to sail, with picked crews of the natives, from one island to the other. 



