10 FUR-SEAL FISHERIES OF ALASKA. 



ordeal of elubbiug'. Theu, wlieii driven up into the last surround or 

 "pod," the seals which are spared by cause of beiu*>- unlit to take — as 

 too big or too little, bitten, etc. — are permitted to go off from the kill 

 iug ground back to the sea, outwardly unhurt, most of them ; but I am 

 now satisfied that they sustain, in a vast majoriti/ of cases, internal 

 injuries of (jreater or less degree,^ that remain to work physical disa- 

 bility or (loath thereafter to nearly every seal thus released, and certain 

 injury to its virility and courage so necessary for its station on the 

 rookery, even if it does live to successfully run this gauntlet of driving 

 throughout every sealing season for five or six consecutive years, driven 

 over and over again, as it is, during each one of these sealing seasons. 



Therefore it now api)ears ])lain to me that those young male fur seals 

 which may happen to survive this terrible strain of four or five suc- 

 cessive years of driving overland, are rendered by this act of <lriving, 

 wholly Worthless for breeding purposes ; that they never go to the breed- 

 ing grounds and take up stations there, being utterly demoralized iu 

 spirit if not in body. 



With this knov/ledge, then the full effect of "driving^' becomes 

 apparent, and that result of slowly but surely robbing the rookeries of 

 a full and sustained supply of fresh uervy young male blood, demanded 

 by nature imperatively for their support up to the standard of full 

 expansion (such as I recorded in 1872-1.S74) — that result began, it 

 now seems clear, to set in from the very beginning, twenty years ago, 

 under the present system. 



Had, however, a check been as slowly and steadily applied to that 

 "driving" as it progressed in 1879-18S2 upon those great reserves of 

 Zapadnie, Southwest Point, and Polavina, then the present condition of 

 exhaustion, complete exhaustion, of tue surplus supply of young male 

 seals as compared with the number of females to-day, would not be 

 observed — it would not have happened. 



But, hoM'ever, no attention was given whatever to the fact that in 

 1882 the reserves were suddenly, very suddenly, drawn upon, steadily 

 and heavily for the first time, in order that a prompt filling of the reg- 

 ular annual (juota should be made before or by the usual time of clos- 

 ing the sealing season for the year, viz, July 20; and, until the report 



' I have been repeatedly astonished at the amazing power possessed by the fur seal of 

 resistance to shocks which wojikl certainly Ivill any other animal. To explain clearly, 

 you will ol)8erve, by reference to my maps, that there are a great many clitty places 

 between the rookeries on the shore lines of the islands Sonieof these cliffs are more 

 than 100 feet in abrupt elevation above the surf and rocks awash below. Fre(iuently 

 "bolluschickie,'' iu ones or twos or threes, will stray far away back from the great 

 masses of their kiud, and fall asleep in the thick grass andherbage which covers 

 these mural reaches. Sometimes they will lie down and rest very close to the edge, 

 and then as you come tramping along you discover and startle them and yourself 

 alike. They, blinded by their first traii.sport of alarm, leap promptly over the brink, 

 snorting, coughing, and spitting as they go. Curiously peering after them and look- 

 ing down upon the rocks, !'^0 to 100 feet below, instead of seeing their stunned and 

 motionless bodies, you will invariably catch sight of them rapidly scrambling into 

 the water : and, when in it, swimming otf like arrows from the bow. Three "bollus- 

 chickie" were thus inadvertently surprised by nie on the edge of the west face to 

 Otter Island. They i)lunged over from an elevation there not less than 200 feet in 

 sheer height, and I distinctly saw them fall, in scrambling, whirling evolutions, 

 down, thumping upon tiie rocky shingle beneath, from which they bounded as they 

 struck like so many ruboer balls. Two of them never moved after the rebound 

 ceased, but the third one reached the water and swam away like a bird on the wing 



While they seem to escape without bodily injury incident to such hard falls as 

 ensue from dropping .'>0 or (iO feet u])on pebbly beaches and rough bowlders below , 

 and even greater elevations, yet I am inclined to think that some internal injuries 

 are necessarily sustain<'d in most every case, which soon develop and cause death 

 The excitement and the vitality of the seal at the moment of the terriflic shock la 

 able to sustain and conceal the real injury lor the time being. 



