FUR-SEAL HEED OP ALASKA. 65 



To re capitulate. —For the Reef and Garbotch Rookeries, July 10 

 1913, we find 393 bulls, 15,000 cows, 13,500 pups. 



CENSUS OF SEEVITCHIE KAMMEN. 



{Part of reef .) 



[Field notes to accompany the chart and survey of condition of Seevitcliie Kammen rookery St Pauls 

 Island Pribilov group, Sunday, July 20, 1913, by Henry \V. Elliott and A. F. Gallagher, special' agents 

 House Committee Expenditures Department of Commerce.] ° > i- & 



(The condition of the rookery, when comj)arison is made with that 

 of 1890, is founded uj)on the published ofRcial survey made by 

 Henry W. Elliott and Charles J. Goff, July 10, 1890, and duly pub- 

 lished as House Document 175, Fifty-fourth Congress, first session 

 pages 31, 32, 33.) 



The survey of the Reef rookery includes a rock known as Seevitchie 

 Kammen, which is 800 or 900 feet oft" from the reef and to the south- 

 ward and at sea. 



In 1874 it was covered with the black and yellow forms of fur seals 

 and sea lions, and the sea here usually is curlmg in shoal breakers or 

 sputtered with tide rips. It is a small rocky islet, much less than a 

 ciuarter of a mile m length: upon it, in 1874, the seals bred. It was 

 the place where they hauled out first in the season as holliischickie, 

 and were the earliest arrivals usually of the season, being found there 

 sometimes as early as the midelle of April. 



A survey of it to-day shows that the sea lions have totally aban- 

 doned it and while the seals have taken possession of it as a breeding 

 ground, upon it we find about 2,800 cows, about 75 bulls, about 

 2,500 holluschickie, and about a dozen polsecatchie. These breeeling 

 seals, while not massed, have distributed themselves over the rock 

 proper, often to the highest ground, upon which the sea lions once 

 laid; the latter have been persistently driven ofi^ by the natives since 

 1890, who came over to drive and kill the holluschickie in turn. The 

 sea-lion feature of this rock has entirely disappeared; there are none 

 here. This breeding ground has been firmly established by the seals, 

 which have sought refuge here from the incessant hustling and driving 

 to which they have been subjected on the Reef rookery margins by 

 the natives ekiring the past 15 or 20 years. In the course of time, 

 when the Reef regains its former shape and numbers, histor;^ will 

 repeat itself, anel many of these breeding seals return to their original 

 habitat; and the sea lions also, if they are not disturbed. 



This closes the survey of the Reef and Garbotch rookeries. 



To recapitulate. — Grand sum total for Reef and Garbotch, 393 bulls, 

 15,000 cows, 13,500 pups; Seevitchie Kammen, 75 bulls, 2,800 cows, 

 2,520 pups; total, 468 bulls, 17,800 cows, 16,020 pups. Lagoon, 8 

 bulls, 250 cows, 230 pups. 



whole field from the summit of Fox Hill, the interior of it was fairly green, and only straggling bands of a 

 dozen seals here and a hundred there were hauling over it. , . ^ , . 



" Eighteen years ago these slopes of Garbotch and the Reef Parade were covered with angry, eager, lusty 

 bulls, two and three weeks before the first one of the cows arrived. They came in by the h-l'l May in -such 

 numbers as to fdl that space at close intervals of 7 to 10 feet apart solidly from the shore line to the ndge 

 summit and over even so far that it required the use of a club vigorously, before we coulil get upon Old 

 Jolui Rock from the rear: then, too, at that time, they fighting in every direction under our eyes. 



"This season I do not observe a bull here where I saw at least 10 at this time 18 year.s ago. Now, not a 

 fight in progress; there are not bulls enough to quarrel. They are now scattered apart so widely 

 over this same ground as to be 100 and even 150 feet apart over ground where m lS/2 an interval of 10 feet 

 between them did not exist." 



118C4— 13 5 



