NEWS FROM HOME 179 



ing places, they set out for the North in the 

 early spring. They first appear in March in 

 the waters off California. Coastwise vessels 

 find the sea alive with thousands of them. They 

 travel slowly northward following the coast line, 

 fifty or a hundred miles out at sea, feeding on 

 fish and sleeping on the surface. Regularly 

 each year in April, a revenue cutter setting out 

 from Port Townsend for patrol service in 

 Behring Sea and Arctic Ocean waters, picks up 

 the herd and convoys it to the Pribiloffs to guard 

 it against the attacks of poachers. The seals 

 swarm through the passes between the Aleutian 

 islands in May and arrive at the Pribiloffs in 

 the latter part of that month or early in June. 



They remain on the Pribiloffs during the 

 breeding and rearing season and begin to depart 

 for the South again in the latter part of Sep- 

 tember. They are all gone as a rule by Novem- 

 ber, though in some years the last ones do not 

 leave until December. They are again seen as 

 they crowd through the Aleutian channels, but 

 all track of them is lost a few hundred miles to 

 the south. At what destination they finally ar- 



