96 JOHN BURROUGHS 



On the afternoon of Sunday, July 9th, we dropped 

 anchor off St. Paul Island, one of the Pribilofs, the 

 famous resort of the fur-seals. A special permit from 

 the Secretary of the Treasury gave us the privilege. 



TWO-HATCH BIDARKA. 



There is no harbor here and the landing, even in calm 

 weather, requires to be carefully managed. The island 

 is low with a fringe of loose boulders around it, which in 

 places looked almost like an artificial wall. The Govern- 

 ment agent conducted us a mile or more through wild 

 meadows starred with flowers and covered with grass 

 nearly knee high, to the boulder-paved shore where the 

 seals were congregated. Those of our party who had 

 been there before, not many years back, were astonished 

 at the diminished numbers of the animals — hardly one 

 tenth of the earlier myriads. We visited eight or ten 

 ' harems,' as they are called, groups of a dozen or more 

 females, each presided over by a male or bull seal, whose 

 position was usually upon a kind of throne or higher 

 boulder in the midst of his wives. Every few minutes 

 this male, who was much larger and darker in color than 

 the females, would lift himself up and glance around 

 over his circle as if counting his flock, then snarl at some 

 rival a few yards away, or turn and threaten us. We 

 gazed upon them and trained our cameras at leisure. 

 Often a young male, wifeless and crowded back by 

 older bulls, threatened us near the edge of the grass 

 with continued demonstrations of anger. These unmated 

 males were in bad humor anyway, and our appearance 



