INVESTIGATION OF THE FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 83 



To recapitulate.— For Novashstoshnah rookery: July 5,1913, we 

 find 454 bulls, 17,35S cows, 15,622 pups. Season of 1890 there 

 were 2,600 bulls, 103,937 cows, 95,000 pups; season of 1874 there 

 were 34,000 bulls, 600,000 cows, 540,000 pups. 1 



CENSUS OF REEF AND GARBOTCH ROOKERIES, WITH SEEVITCHIE 



KAMMEN- 



[Field notes to accompany the chart and survey of condition o iReef and Garbotch rookeries, St. Paul 

 Island, Pribilof Group, Thursday, July 10,1913, by Henry W. Elliott and A. F. Gallagher, special agenta 

 of House Committee on Expenditures in the Department ol Commerce.] 



(The condition of the rookery when comparison is made with that 

 of 1890 is founded upon the published official survey made by Henry 

 W. Elliott and Charles J. Goff, July 10, 1890, and duly published- as 

 House Document No. 175, Fifty-fourth Congress, first session, pages 31, 

 32, 33.) 



Beginning with our survey this morning, we find that the thin 

 fringe of breeding seals which laid under the cap at Garbotch inl890 

 has practically disappeared, with the exception of four or five small 

 harems, until we reach the line under the Black Bend. The entire 

 disappearance of that breeding life which was enumerated in 1890 

 as jags R, Q, and P has taken place. No massing or suggestion of 

 massing of a single harem occurs until we reach iag Q of the 1890 

 survey. The Zoltoi bluffs to our back, on which a few hundred hollu- 

 schicke hauled out during the summer of 1890, has been entirely 

 abandoned by those animals, and the natives say that no drive has 

 been made from there since 1896. 



As in 1890 not a single killable seal or holluschack has hauled on 

 Zoltoi sands up to this date. That famous and beautiful gathering 

 place of the bachelors has been completely abandoned by them since 

 1890. 



Upon the surf margin of Black Bend we find to-day a single fringe 

 or line of six "widely separated small harems — one being a full harem, 

 one a ragged harem, and the others controlled each by a single bull 

 with four to five cows. There are no young male bulls in sight. 

 There are no polsecatchie at the water's edge or in the rear. The 

 entire breeding ground area is abandoned as marked on the 1890 

 survey save these noted exceptions. 



Proceeding on our way, we find from the Black Bend that the 

 breeding seals on jags P and Q, of 1890, have entirely disappeared, 

 and the sole survivors are now exhibited by that thin fringe of harems 

 which we have just mentioned. From the summit of the Old John 

 Rock, as we proceed, we find that the first massing which in the 

 slightest degree resembles the^ normal condition of these rookeries is 

 found at the foot of Old John Rock and to the southward to Gerbotch 

 Bight, a distance of some 600 feet; here the harems are banked three 

 and four bulb deep from the water's edge. The bulls are scattered at 

 intervals of 20 to 30 feet apart (the normal distance being from 7 to 10 



i The "podding" of the pups at Novashstoshnah September, 1872: "Although the appearance of the 

 holluschickie at English Bay fairly overwhelms the observer with an impression of its countless multi- 

 tudes, yet I am free to declare that at no one point in this evolution during the reproductive season have 

 I been so deeply stricken with the sense of overwhelming enumeration as I have been when standing on 

 the summit of Cross Hill I looked down to the southward and westward over a reach of 6 miles of alternate 

 grass and sand dune stretches, mirrored upon which were hundreds of thousands of these little black pups 

 spread in sleep and sport within this restricted field of vision. They appeared as countless as the grains 

 of sand upon which they rested." (Elliott, p. 46, H. Doc. No. 175, 54th Cong., 1st sess.) 



