FUR-SEAL FISHERIES OF ALASKA. 155 



ground in worse and worse shape for a bad season at the least. This 

 drivino- from the immediate vicinity of a breeding ground was never 

 done iit'ter June 5, in iny time. Then rarely, and only to get a few hun- 

 dred seals early, as they first arrived for the natives' food. This always 

 took place before any noteworthy arrival of the cows. 



Jiihi !), 1S!)0. — 1 made a close reconnoissance of the breeding seals as 

 they hiy upon th'e ground at Zapadnie, both upper and lower wings, this 

 morning immediately after the natives had driven the small S(iuads of 

 holluschickie which they alone find here now, and only m spots, laying 

 up in close proximity to the cows. I went over at 4 a. m. purposely to 

 see the modus operandi of the driving, and then to get a fair idea of the 

 full expansion of Zapadnie as it stands to day. 



July Jl, 1890.— In company with Mr. Charles J. Goff I visited and 

 surveyed the entire sweep of Upper and Lower Zapadnie rookery 

 to-day. * * * 



It is impossible to convey the queer sense of utter desolation which 

 the vacant seal area of 1872 on rhis fine rookery carries to my mmd this 

 morning. Grass and flowers are springing up over those broad areas 

 back of the breeding grounds, where in 1872, thousands upon thousands 

 of young male seals hauled out and over, during the entire season, with- 

 out being visited by any man then, except myself. Nobody at that time 

 ever thought of such a thing as coming over from the village to make 

 a killing at Zapadnie.* And then, too, those splendid areas of hauling 

 ground in English Bay, are all grass-grown, mosses, lichens, and flowers, 

 which in 1872-1874 so astonished Maynard and myself by their teeming 

 squadrons of young male seals. 



Judging from the appearance of the grass, I should say that the seals 

 must have ceased to haul here to any great extent as late as 1883: 

 and, by 1884-85, to have suddenly droi)pe(l out of the field in large num- 

 bers. That no seals have hauled in the rear of these breeding lines of 

 1872-1874 since 1878-79, is certain : because this area in now well sodded 

 and sprinkled with a full crop of Aychaur/elica, which never comes in 

 sooner than eight or ten years after the seals have once destroyed it. 

 This time of the regrowth of "pochkie" was well demonstrated to me 

 at Zapadnie in 1876. There, in 1868, Morgan's sealing party built a 

 salt house right in the center of a well-polished hauling ground of 

 holluschickie. The seals at once, of course, abandoned a large space 

 directly and indirectly dominated l)y this salt house, and the killing 

 gangs. The grass upon this abandoned hauling ground of 1868, was 

 pretty well tufted and established when I first saw^ it in 1872, and in 

 1876 small heads of the Archangelica began to sprout everywhere anew 

 over it. This shows that eight years after the seals ceased to haul upon 

 a hitherto well-polished area by thein, plenty of rank grass was growing 

 u))on it with many flowering plants, and a beginning of a new garden 

 of that rank, umbelliferous Arch angelica, abo^•e specified. 



POLAVINA. 



June ,9, 1890. — As there is not the slightest ap]>earance of change to 

 the sea margin of this bluff banded rookery during the last sixteen 

 years, nor is there ever likely to 1)e, I simply redraw my original land 

 anglesof 1872-1874, establishing, however, two additional stations — one 

 on the point at the grotto, B, and the other on the beach below at 0. 

 This will cover the showing of any change that the breeding seals may 

 present on that i)ortion of the rookery ground which can be altered by 

 surf and ice floe ])ressure during storms in the fall and the winter and 

 early s])riiig. The land angles of Little Polavina are precisely as they 

 were in 1872. 



