296 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



path left by common consent, as it were, between the harems. On 

 these trails of j)assage they come and go in steady files all day and 

 all night during the season, unmolested by the jealous bulls which 

 guard the seraglios on either side as they travel — all peace and 

 comfort to the young seal if he minds his business and keeps 

 straight on up or down, without stopping to nose about Mght or 

 left ; all woe and destruction to him, however, if he does not, for in 

 that event he will be literally torn in bloody gripping, from limb to 

 limb, by vigilant "see-catchie." 



Since the two and three year old " holluschickie " come up in 

 small squads with the first bulls in the sj^ring, or a few days later, 

 such common highways as those between the rookery ground and 

 the sea are travelled over before the arrival of the cows, and get 

 well defined. A passage for the " bachelors," which I took much 

 pleasure in observing day after day at Polavina, another at Tolstoi, 

 and two on the Reef, in 1872, were entirely closed up by the " sea- 

 catchie " and obliterated when I again searched for them in 1874. 

 Similar passages existed, however, on several of the large rookeries 

 of St. Paul. One of those at Tolstoi exhibits this featiu-e very 

 finely, for here the hauling-ground extends around from English 

 Bay, and lies up back of the Tolstoi rookery, over a flat and rolling- 

 summit, from one hundred to one hundred and twenty feet above 

 the sea-level. The young males and yearlings of both sexes come 

 through and between the harems at the height of the breeding 

 season on two of these narrow pathways, and before reaching the 

 ground above, are obliged to climb up an almost abrupt bluff, 

 which they do by following and struggling in the water-runs and 

 washes that are worn into its face. As this is a large hauling- 

 ground, on which, every favorable day during the season, fifteen 

 or twenty thousand commonly rest, a view of skilful seal-climbing 

 can be witnessed here at any time during that period ; and the 

 sight of such climbing as this of Tolstoi is exceedingly novel and 

 interesting. AYhy, verily, they ascend over and upon places where 

 a livel}' man might, at first thought, say with great positiveness 

 that it was utterly impossible for him to climb ! 



The other method of coming ashore, however, is the one most 

 followed and favored. In this case they avoid the rookeries alto- 

 gether, and repair to unoccupied beaches between them ; and 

 then extend themselves out all the way back from the sea, as far 

 from the water, in some cases, as a quarter and even half of a mile. 



