THE FUR SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 



349 



and their young. From this rookery to the village, a distance of less than a quarter of a mile, the 

 " holluschickie " are driven, which are killed for their skins, on the common track or seal-worn 

 trail that not only the " bachelors " but ourselves travel over en route to and from Starry Arteel 

 and Zapadnie ; it is a broad, hard-packed erosion through the sphagnum, and across the rocky 

 plateaux in fact a regular seal road, which has been used by the drivers and victims during the 

 last eighty or ninety years. The fashion on Saint George, in this matter of driving seals, is quite 

 diiferent from that on Saint Paul. To get their maximum quota of 25,000 annually, it is necessary 

 for the natives to visit every morning the hauling grounds of each one of these four rookeries on 

 the north shore, and bring what they may find back with them for the day. 



LITTLE EASTERN ROOKERY.* From the village to the eastward, about half a mile again, is 

 a little eastern rookery, which lies on a low, bluft'y slope, and is not a piece of ground admitting 

 of touch more expansion. It has superficial area for the reception of about 13,000 breeding seals 

 and their young. 



LITTLE EASTERN 



\ 



THE GREAT EASTERN. This is the last rookery that we find on Saint George. It is an imita- 

 tion, in miniature, of Tolstoi on Saint Paul, with the exception of there being no parade ground in 

 the rear, of any character whatever. It is from the summit of the cliffs overlooking the narrow 

 ribbon of breeding seals right under them that I have been able to study the movements of the 

 fur-seal in the water to my heart's content ; for out, and under the water, the rocks, to a consider- 

 able distance, are covered with a whitish algoid growth, that renders the dark bodies of the 



"The site of this breeding ground and that of the marine slope of the killing grounds to the east of the village, 

 on this island, is where sea-lions held exclusive possession prior to their driving off by the Russians so the natives 

 affirm the only place on Saint George now where the Eumetopias breeds is that one indicated on the general chart 

 between Garden cove and Tolstoi Mees. 



