310 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



which is, in the light of my surveys, simply ridiculous now that is, 

 that the number of fur-seals on St. George during the first years 

 of Russian occupation was nearly as great as that on St. Paul. A 

 most superficial examination of the geological character portrayed 

 on the accompanying maps of those two islands will satisfy any un- 

 prejudiced mind as to the total error of such a statement. Why, 

 a mere tithe only of the multitudes which repair to St. Paul in per- 

 fect comfort over the sixteen or twenty miles of splendid land- 

 ing ground found thereon could visit St. George, when all of the 

 coast-line fit for their reception on this island is a scant two and 

 a half miles ; but, for that matter, there was at the time of my ar- 

 rival and in the beginning of my investigation a score of equally 

 wild and incredible legends afloat in regard to the rookeries of St. 

 Paul and St. George. Finding, therefore, that the whole work 

 must be undertaken de novo, I went about it without further 

 delay. 



Thus it will be seen that there is, frankly stated, nothing that 

 serves as a guide to a fair or even an approximate estimate as to 

 the numbers of the fur-seals on these two islands, prior to the re- 

 sult of my labor. 



At the close of my investigation during the first season of my work 

 on the ground in 1872 the fact became evident that the breeding 

 seals obeyed implicitly an imperative and instinctive natural law of 

 distribution a law recognized by each and every seal upon the 

 rookeries prompted by a fine consciousness of necessity to its own 

 well-being. The breeding-grounds occupied by them were, there- 

 fore, invariably covered by the seals in exact ratio, greater or less, 

 as the area upon which they rested was larger or smaller. They 

 always covered the ground evenly, never crowding in at one place 

 here to scatter out there. The seals lie just as thickly together 

 where the rookery is boundless in its eligible area to their rear and 

 unoccupied by them as they do in the little strips which are ab- 

 ruptly cut off and narrowed by rocky walls behind. For instance, 

 on a rod of ground under the face of bluffs which hem it in to the 

 land from the sea there are just as many seals, no more and no less, as 

 will be found on any other rod of rookery ground throughout the 

 whole list, great and small always exactly so many seals, under 

 any and all circumstances, to a given area of breeding-ground. 

 There are just as many cows, bulls, and pups on a square rod at 

 Nah Speel, near the village, where in 1874, all told, there were only 



