THE FUK SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 331 



There is not a trace of granitic or a gneissic rock found in situ. Metamorphic bowlders have been 

 collected along the beaches and pushed up by the ice-floes which have brought them down from 

 the Siberian coast away to the northwest. The dark-brown tufa blufl's and the breccia walls at the 

 east lauding of Saint Paul Island, known as "Black Bluffs," rise suddenly from the sea GO to 80 

 feet, with stratified horizontal lines of light-gray calcareous conglomerate, or cement, in which are 

 imbedded sundry fossils characteristic of and belonging to the Tertiary age, such as Cardium 

 grcenlandicum, C. decoratum, C. astarte, C. pectunculata, &c. This is the only locality withiu the 

 purview of the Pribylov islands where any paleontological evidence of their age can be found. 

 These specimens, as indicated, are exceedingly abundant. ~i brought down a whole series, gathered 

 there at the east landing or " Navastock," in a short half-hour's search and labor. 



WHY THESE ISLANDS ABE FREQUENTED BY FUR-SEALS. The fact that the fur-seals frequent 

 these islands and those of Bering and Copper, on the Knssian side, to the exclusion of other land, 

 seems at first a little singular, to say the least ; but when we come to examine the subject we find 

 that these animals, when they repair hither to rest for two or three months on the land, as 

 they must do by their habit during the breeding season, require a cool moist atmosphere, impera- 

 tively coupled with firm, well-drained land, or dry, broken rocks, or shingle rather, upon which to 

 take their positions and remain undisturbed by the weather and the sea for the lengthy period of 

 reproduction. If the rookery ground is hard and flat, with an admixture of loam or soil, puddles 

 are speedily formed in this climate, where it rains almost every day, and when not raining, rain- 

 fogs take quick succession and continue the saturation, making thus a muddy slime, which very 

 quickly takes the hair off the animals whenever it plasters or wherever it fastens on them ; hence, 

 they carefully avoid any such landing. If they occupy a sandy shore the rain beats that material 

 into their large, sensitive eyes, and into their fur, so they are obliged, from simple irritation, to 

 leave and hunt the sea for relief. 



The seal-islands now under discussion offer to the Pinnipedia very remarkable advantages for 

 landing, especially Saint Paul, where the ground of basaltic rock and of volcanic tufa or cement 

 slopes up from so many points gradually above the sea, making thereby a perfectly adapted rest- 

 ing place for any number, from a thousand to millions, of those intelligent animals, which can lie 

 out here from May until October every year in perfect physical peace and security. There is not 

 a rod of this ground of that character offered to these animals elsewhere in all Alaska, not on the 

 Aleutian chain, not on the mainland, not on Saint Matthew or Saint Lawrence. Both of the latter 

 islands were surveyed by myself, with special reference to this query, in 1874 ; every foot of Saint 

 Matthew shore line was examined, and I know that the fur-seal could not rest on the low clayey 

 lava flats there in contentment a single day ; hence he never has rested there, nor will he in the 

 future. As to Saint Lawrence, it is so ice bound and snow-covered in spring and early summer, to 

 say nothing of numerous other physical disadvantages, that it never becomes of the slightest in- 

 terest to the seals. 



COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE OF THE ALASKA EOOKERIES. With the exception of these seal- 

 islands of Bering Sea, there are none elsewhere in the world of the slightest importance to-day; 

 the vast breeding-grounds bordering on the Antarctic have been, by the united efforts of all 

 nationalities misguided, short-sighted, and greedy of gain entirely depopulated ; only a few thou- 

 sand unhappy stragglers are now to be seen throughout all that southern area, where millions 

 once were found, and a small rookery protected and fostered by the government of a South Amer- 

 ican state, north and south of the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. When, therefore, we note the 

 eagerness with which our civilization calls for seal-skin fur, the fact that, in spite of fashion and its 

 caprices, this fur is and always will be an article of intrinsic value and in demand, the thought at 



