A NEW FUR-SEAL ROOKERY 
149 
our time elsewhere. However, she left, and we 
again had the island to ourselves, getting some 
thirty or forty more before we finally left it. 
Five miles to the westward of the north end of 
Shiashikotan lies the island of Ekarma. We visited 
it on August 6, and, after anchoring under the lee 
of the land, lowered boats and pulled to its northern 
point, where, in a kelp patch, we came across a 
school of about twenty otters, amongst them being 
a perfectly white one. A strong breeze having 
sprung up, however, causing rough water, and making 
good shooting impossible, we failed to make a single 
catch. One shot which I fired at the white otter 
when he was “ standing 55 with his head and neck 
well out of water appeared to strike him in the 
throat, going through from side to side. He im¬ 
mediately went under-water in the thick kelp, and 
that was the last ever seen of him. 
Whilst lying at Shiashikotan it was necessary to 
fill up our tanks with fresh water, and we anchored 
off a small waterfall which was fed by the melting 
snow on the mountain immediately above it. There 
was nothing like even a small brook to feed this 
fall, which was formed by the convergence of several 
small streams in narrow, shallow, ditch-like channels 
running down the steep slope of the mountain. The 
cliff was about 90 feet high, and the water ran over 
the edge and dropped about 30 feet on to a flat 
ledge of about 150 square feet in area, where the 
water formed a shallow pool with a number of rocks 
in it, and from this it ran down a very steep slope 
into the sea. After filling our water-casks, some 
of us climbed, with difficulty, up on to this ledge, 
and found the pool full of trout from a few inches 
