230 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. _ 



land, or dry broken rocks or shingle, rather, upon which to take 

 their positions and remain undisturbed by the weather and the sea 

 for a lengthy jaeriod of reproduction. If the rookery-ground is 

 hard and flat, with an admixture of loam or soil, puddles are speed- 

 ily formed in this climate, where it rains almost every day, and when 

 not raining, rain-fogs take rapid succession and continue the satur- 

 ation, making thus a muddy slime, which very quickly takes the 

 hair off the animals whenever it j^lasters or wherever it fastens on 

 them ; hence they carefully avoid any such landing. If they oc- 

 cupy 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 return to the sea for relief. 



This inspection of some natural characteristics of the Pribylov 

 group renders it quite plain that the Seal Islands, now under discus- 

 sion, ofler to the Pinnipedia very remarkable advantages for landing, 

 especially so at St. Paul, where the ground of basaltic rock and of 

 volcanic tufa or cement slopes up from many points gradually above 

 the sea, making thereby a perfectly adapted resting-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 per- 

 fect physical peace and security. There is not a rod of ground of 

 this character offered to these animals elsewhere in all Alaska, not 

 on the Aleutian chain, not on the mainland, not on St. Matthew or 

 St. Lawrence. Both of the latter islands were surveyed by myself, 

 with special reference to this query, in 1874 ; every foot of St. Mat- 

 thew shore-line was examined, and I know that the fur-seal could 

 not rest on the low clayey flats there in contentment a single 

 day ; hence he never has rested there, nor will he in the future. 

 As to St. Lawrence, it is so ice-bound and snow-covered in spring 

 and early summer, to say nothing of numerous other physical dis- 

 advantages, that it never becomes of the slightest interest to fur- 

 seals. 



When Pribylov, in taking possession, landed on St. George a 

 part of his little ship's crew, July, 1786, he knew that, as it was un- 

 inhabited, it would be necessary to establish a colony there from 

 which to draft laborers to do all killing, skinning, and curing of 

 the peltries ; therefore he and his associates, and his rivals after 

 him, imported natives of Oonalashka and Atkha— passive, docile 

 Aleutes. They founded their first village a quarter of a mile to the 

 eastward of one of the principal rookeries on St. George, now 



