290 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
the stones of the beach, or swam with incredible agility among 
the breakers, played, caressed each other, and quarrelled. At 
one place two old animals fought, uttering a peculiar hissing 
sound, and in such a way as if the attack and defence had 
been carried -out in studied attitudes. At another place a 
feigned combat was going on between an old and a young 
animal. It looked as if the latter was being instructed in the 
art of fighting. Everywhere the small black young ones crept 
constantly backwards and forwards among the old sea-bears, now 
and then bleating like lambs calling on their mothers. The 
young ones are often smothered by the old, when the latter, 
frightened in some way, rush out into the sea. After such an 
alarm hundreds of dead young are found on the shore. 
“ Only ” thirteen thousand animals had been killed that year. 
Their flayed carcases lay heaped on the grass by the shore, 
spreading far and wide a disagreeable smell, which, however, 
had not frightened away their comrades lying on the neighbour¬ 
ing promontory, because, even among them, a similar smell 
prevailed in consequence of the many animals suffocated or 
killed in flght with their comrades, and left lying on the shore. ^ 
Among this great flock of sea-bears sat enthroned on the top of 
a high stone a single sea-lion, the only one of these animals 
we saw during our voyage. 
For a payment of forty roubles I induced the chief of the 
village to skeletonise four of the half putrefied carcases of the 
sea-bear left lying on the grass ; and I afterwards obtained, by 
the good-will of the Kussian authorities, and without any 
payment, six animals, among them two living young, for 
stuffing. Even the latter we were compelled to kill, after 
1 Elliott {loc. cit. p. 150) remarks that not a single self-dead seal is to be 
found in the ‘^rookery,” where there are so many animals that they pro¬ 
bably die of old age in thousands. This may he explained by the seals, 
when they become sick, withdrawing to the sea, and forms another con¬ 
tribution to the question of the finding of self-dead animals to which I 
have already referred (vol. i. p. 322). 
