42 THE SEALS AND WALRUSES. 



"This ground, over which the Sea Lious are driven, is mostly a rolling level, thickly grassed 

 and mossed over, with here and there a fresh-water pond into which the animals plunge with great 

 apparent satisfaction, seeming to cool themselves, and out of which the natives have no trouble in 

 driving them. The distance between the sea-lion pen at Northeast Point and the village is about 

 ten miles, as the Sea Lions are driven, and occupies over live or six days under the most favorable 

 circumstances, such as wet, cold weather; and when a little warmer, or as in July or August, a 

 few seasons ago, they were some three weeks coming down with a drove, and even then left a 

 hundred or so along on the road. 



After the drove has been brought into the village on the killing-grounds, the natives shoot 

 down the bulls and then surround and huddle up the cows, spearing them just behind the fore 

 flippers. The killing of the Sea Lions is quite an exciting spectacle, a strange and unparalleled 

 exhibition of its kind. . . The bodies are at once stripped of their hides and much of 



the flesh, sinews, intestines (with which the native water-proof coats, &c., are made), in conjunction 

 with the throat linings (cestythagm), aud the skin of the flippers, which is exceedingly tough and 

 elastic, and used for soles to their boots or ' tarbosars.' 



"As the Sea Lion is without fur, the skin has little or no commercial value; the hair is short, 

 and longest over the uape of the neck, straight, aud somewhat coarse, varying iu color greatly as 

 the seasons come and go. For instance, when the Eumetopias makes his first appearance in the 

 spring, and dries out upon the laud, he has a light-brownish, rufous tint, darker shades back and 

 under the fore flippers and on the abdomen ; by the expiration of a month or six weeks, loth June, 

 he will be a bright golden-rufous or ocher, and this is just before shedding, which sets iu by the 

 middle of August, or a little earlier. After the new coat has fairly grown, and just before he leaves 

 the island for the season, in November, it will be a light sepia, or vandyke-brown, with deeper 

 shades, almost dark upon the belly. The cows, after shedding, do not color up so dark as the 

 bulls, but when they come back to the land next year they are identically the same in color, so 

 that the eye, iu glancing over a sea-lion rookery in June and July, cannot discern any noted 

 dissimilarity of coloring between the bulls and the<sows; and also the young males aud yearlings 

 appear in the same golden brown and ocher, with here and there an animal spotted somewhat like 

 a leopard, the yellow, rufous ground predominating, with patches of dark-brown irregularly inter- 

 spersed. I have never seen any of the old bulls or cows thus mottled, and think very likely it is 

 dm- to some irregularity in the younger animals during the season of shedding, for I have not 

 noticed it early in the season, and failed to observe it at the close. Many of the old bulls have a 

 grizzled or slightly brindled look during the shedding period, or, that is, from the 10th August 

 up to the 10th or 1'Oth of November. The pups, when bom, are of a rich, dark chestnut-brown; 

 this coat they shed in October, and take one much lighter, but still darker than their parents', but 

 not a great deal. 



Although, as I have already indicated, the Sea Lion, in its habit and disposition, approxi- 

 mates the Fur .Seal, yet in no respect does it maintain and enforce the system and regularity found 

 on the breeding-grounds of the. Callurhinw. The time of arrival at, stay on, and departure from 

 the island is about the same; but if t.he winter is an open, mild one, the Sea Lion will be seen 

 frequently all through it, and the natives occasionally shoot them around the island long after the 

 Fur Seals have entirely disappeared for the year. It also does not confine its landing to these 

 Pribylov Islands alone, as the Fur Seal unquestionably docs, with reference to our continent, for it 

 has been and is often shot upon the Aleutian Islands and many rocky islets of the northwest coast. 



"The Sea Lion in no respect whatever manifests the intelligence aud sagacity exhibited by 

 the Fur Seal, aud must be rated far below, although next, in natural order. I have no hesitation 



