steller's acoount op the fur seal. 207 



Now about the hunting of these animals. Those that we first blinded on laud with 

 stones were afterward dispatched with clubs without any artifice. But the beasts are 

 so tenacious of life that two or three men beating only their heads with clubs could 

 scarcely kill them with 200 blows, and frequently would have to rest and refresh 

 themselves two or three times. When the cranium is broken into little bits and 

 almost all the brains have gushed out, and all the teeth have been broken, he still 

 attacks them with his flippers and keeps on fighting. I have purposely broken the 

 skull and i)ut out the eyes of one and then left him, and afterwards for more than two 

 weeks he still stood alive and unmoved, like a statue, in the same place. 



In the sea around Kamchatka they very seldom come ashore on the mainland, 

 but they are wounded at sea by the natives with an iron spear called '^nosoA;," which 

 detaches from the handle and remains in the body, and this iron part of the spear, 

 because inside it is oblique to the wound, sticks fast. It is bound to a stout thong, 

 the other end of which is held by those sitting in the boat. But the wounded animal 

 flees very swiftly like an arrow, and takes the boat and men along with him, until he 

 pauses, worn out and exhausted with loss of blood. As soon as he pauses they draw 

 him up to them by the thong and pierce him with spears, and if he attempts to upset 

 the boat they crush his front flippers and his head with axes and clubs, lift him dead 

 into the boat, and hasten home. By preference in spring they kill the pregnant 

 females and the young males. But they dare not attack the large, old males, but 

 when they see one they say '■'■ Sipang'''' (the devil), for they mean by that to call the 

 big fellow evil and destructive. So likewise they say if they see a sea lion or a very 

 large sea bear on land when they have no companion or weapons. 



Very many sea bears die a natural death from old age on this island every year, 

 and as many more fall in battle and die from the wounds that they have received ; so 

 that in some parts the whole shore is covered with bones and skulls, as if great 

 battles had been fought there. 



I can not omit to mention that these animals have a very large thymus gland, 

 composed of many little glands, and rolled up in a membranous sac. I have made 

 an incision into a branch of the main artery of the lungs, and when I inserted a little 

 tube and blew in with my mouth I discovered that not only the ventricles of the 

 heart but also the thymus gland swelled up. I would rather not suggest what others 

 may conclude in regard to this, unless I could make many more experiments on other 

 sea beasts. 



Here, at the end, I will mention that it is a very curious thing what the explorer, 

 Dampier, says of the Island Ferdinand (Juan Fernandez), below 36^^ south latitude; 

 he asserts that there upon the land he found the whole shore covered with countless 

 herds of seals, sea lions, and sea bears, in the same way as we found it in Bering- 

 Island. This does not lead uie to believe that these animals come hither from those 

 southern latitudes, for this distance would be far too great, but I gather from it two 

 facts: first, that the sea beasts of the southern hemisphere are the same, or not 

 very different, from those of the northern in about the same longitude; and, second, 

 it is credible that our sea bears spend the winter at about the same degree of north 

 latitude. Perchance some time fate will grant that since we have found their summer 

 camping ground others may somewhere discover their winter home; if this be not 

 the land called " Compagnie land,^' perchance it may be a land lying not far away and 

 some time to be discovered. 



