TPIE FUR-SEAL ISLANDS OF ALASKA. 87 



The young promptly deserted. — You will notice that if you di.sturb aud drive off any portion of tlie 

 rookery, by walking up ia plain sight, those nearest to you will take to the water, instantly swim out to a 

 distance of fifty yards or so, leaving their pups behind, helplessly sprawled around and about the rocks at your 

 feet. Huddled up all together in the water in two or three iiacks or squads, the startled parents hold their heads 

 and necks high out of the sea, peering keenly at yoii, and all roaring iu an incessant concert, making an orchestra 

 to which those deep sonorous tones of the organ iu that great Mormon tabernacle, at Salt Lake City, constitute the 

 fittest and most adequate resemblance. 



MovKJiENTS WHEN UNDISTURBED ON ROOKERY. — You will vdtncss an endless tide of these animals traveling 

 to the water, and a steady stream of their kind coming out, if you but keep in retirement and do not disturb them. 

 When they first issue from the surf liiey are a dark chocolate-brown and black, and glLsten ; but, as their coats dry 

 off, the color becomes an iron-gray, i)assiug into a bright golden rulbus, which covers the entire body alike — shades 

 of darker brown on the pectoral patches and sterno-pectoral region. After getting entirely dry, they seem to grow 

 exceedingly uneasy, and act sis tLough opijressed by heat, until they plunge back into the sea, never staying out, as 

 the fur-seal does, day after daA and week after week. The females and the young males frolic in and out of the 

 water, over rocks awash, iucossautly one with another, just as puppies play upon the geeen sward; and, when 

 weary, stretch themselves out in any attitude that will fit the character of the rock, or the lava-shingle upon which 

 they may happen to be resting; the movements of their supple spines, and ball-and-socket joint attachments, 

 permit of the most extraordinary contortions of the trunk and limbs, all of which, no matter how distressing to 

 your eyes, they seem actually to relish. But, the old battle-scarred bulls of the harem stand or lie at their positions 

 day and night without leaving them, except to take a short bath when the coast is clear, until the end of the season. 



Method of swimming. — When swimming, the sea-lion only lifts its head above the surface long enough to 

 take a deep breath, and then drops down a few feet below, and propels itself, for about ten or fifteen minutes, like 

 a cigar-steamer, at the rate of G or 7 knots, if undisturbed; but, if chased or alarmed, it seems fairly to fly under 

 water, and can easily maintain for a long time a speed of 14 or 15 miles per hour. Like the fur-seal, its propulsion 

 through the water is the work entirely of the powerful fore-flippers, which are sinuiltaneously struck out, both 

 together, and back against the water, feathering forward agaiu to repeat, while the hind-flippers are simply used 

 as a rudder oar in deflecting the ever- varying swift and abrup' course of the animal. On land the hind-flippers are 

 employed just as a dog does his feet in scratching fleas — the long peculiar toe-nails thereof seeming to reach and 

 comb the spots affected by vermin, which annoys them, as it does the fur-seal to a great extent, and causes them 

 both to enjoy a protracted scratching. 



Again, both genera, Gallorhinus and Eumetopias, are happiest when the surf is strongest and wildest; just in 

 proportion to the fury of a gale, so much the greater joy and animation of these animals. They delight in riding on 

 the crests of each dissolving breaker up to the moment when it fairly foams over the iron-bound rocks; at that 

 instant they disappear like phantoms beneath the creamy surge to reappear on the crown of the next mighty billow. 



When landing, they always ride on the surf, so to speak, to the objective point, and it is marvelous to see with 

 what remarkable agility they will worm themselves up steep, rocky landings, having an inclination greater than 

 45°, to those bluff tops above, which have an almost perpendicular drop to water. 



The value of the sea-lion, commercially: Shedding. — As the sea-lion is without fur, its skin has little 

 or no commercial value.* The hair is short, an inch to an inch and a half in length, being longest over the nape of 

 the neck; straight, and somewhat coarse, varying iu color as the season comes and goes. For instance, when the 

 Eumettipias makes its first appearance in the si)ring and dries out after lauding, it has then a light brownish 

 rufous-tint, with darker shades back and under the fore flippers and on the abdomen; by the expiration of a month 

 or six weeks, about the 15th of June generally, this coat will then be weathered into a glossy rufous, or ocher; and 

 this is so<m before shedding, which sets in by the middle of August, or a little earlier. After the new coat has 

 fairly grown, and just before the animal leaves the island for the sea iu November, it is a light sepia or vandyke 

 brown, with deeper shades, almost black, upon the abdomen. The cows after shedding never color up so darkly as 

 the btdls; but when they come back to the land next year they return identically the same in tinting; so that the 

 eye, in glancing over a sea-lion rookery during June and July, cannot discern any dissimilarity in color, at all 

 noteworthy, existing between the coats of the bulls and the cows ; and also the young males and yearlings appear 

 in the same golden-brown and ocher, with here and there an animal which is noted as being spotted somewhat like 

 a leopard, the yellow rufous-ground predominating, with patches of dark-brown, blotched, and mottled irregularly 



* The sca-liou and liair-seala of Berinp; sea, having no coinnicrcial value in the eyes of civilized men, have not been subjects of interest 

 enouj;li to the inoneers of those waters for mention iu particular ; such record, for instance, as that given of the walrus, the sea-otter, and 

 the fur-seal. Steller was the first to draw the line clearly between them and seals in general, especially defining their separation from the 

 fur-seal ; still, his description is far from being definite or satisfactory in the light of our present knowledge of the auinuil. 



In the South Pacific and Atlantic the sea-lion has been curiously confounded by many of the curliest writers with the sea-elephant, 

 Macrorhinus leoniHiis, and its reference is inextricably entangled with the fur-seal at the FalUlands, Kerguelen's Land, and the Crozettes. 

 The proboscidean seal, however, seems to be the only pinniped which visits the Ant.arctic continent ; but that is a mere inference of mine, 

 because so little is known of those ice-bound coasts, and Wilkes, who gives the only record made of the subject, saw no other animal 

 there save this one. 



