Part 1

[Illustration:

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART

Fifth Series

ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832

CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)

NO. 152.—VOL. III. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1886. PRICE 1½_d._]

SEALSKIN COATS, ALIVE AND DEAD.

The ladies of England, who, living at home at ease, shield themselves from the inclemency of our not very rigorous winters in their elegant sealskin coats, think little, and know less, of the curious animal from which their beautiful garment is taken, and of the peculiar circumstances of its habitat and capture. Nor can their ignorance be deemed much of a reproach, seeing that until recently, even scientists were accustomed to regard the fur-seal as but a variety of the hair-seal, not unknown on the shores of Scotland, and abounding in the North and West Atlantic. But the two are quite dissimilar in their individuality and character, and as Mr H. W. Elliott, of the Smithsonian Institute of the United States—to whom we are chiefly indebted for the substance of this article—says, ‘the truth connected with the life of the fur-seal, as it herds in countless myriads on the islands of Aleutian Alaska, is far stranger than fiction.’ Mr Elliott spent three years in continuous observations on the spot, and is the first to afford us a complete and trustworthy view of the strange eventful history.

The fur-seal formerly abounded in the southern hemisphere on the borders of the Antarctic Circle; but reckless killing has well-nigh exterminated it there, and now, one may say that the only habitat of commercial importance is in that portion of the North Pacific which washes the Aleutian division of Alaska; and even here, the range is practically confined to four comparatively small islands. These islands were discovered by the Russian navigator Pribylov in 1786, and are still called by his name. They lie about two hundred miles due north of the group usually called the Aleutian Islands, off the western extremity of the Alaska peninsula. The Pribylov Islands rest in the very heart of Behring Sea, but far enough south to be free from permanent ice-floes, and thus to escape the ravages of the polar bear; while also far enough from the mainland and inhabited islands to be free from the attacks of the primitive races. Thus the seals had collected and bred there for countless ages, undisturbed by beast or man, until the Russians first broke in upon their preserves. They have been the objects of constant attention and pursuit ever since.

There are three kinds of seals. The _Phoca vitulina_ is the common hair-seal, which may often be seen on our north-western shores, which the fishing-vessels of Dundee, of Hull, of Peterhead, and of Greenock, go out to Greenland and Labrador to catch every season for the sake of the oil—the skin being of little value—and specimens of which, alive or stuffed, we may fairly assume every one of our readers has seen somewhere or other. There is probably not an aquarium of the country which has not a family of them. Then there is the _Eumetopias stelleri_, which the Russians call ‘Seevitchie,’ and which is known to our mariners as the ‘sea-lion.’ This and the walrus, which may be considered akin, are found in all the circumpolar regions. Lastly, there is the _Callorhinus ursinus_, called ‘Kantickie’ by the Russians, which is the true fur-seal, and which is the subject of our sketch. It has no generic affinity with the others, and is of quite different habits. As has been said, it is now found only on four islands of Behring Sea.

Of the fur-seal, it has been said that there is no known animal on land or water which can take higher physical rank, or which exhibits a higher order of instinct, closely approaching human intelligence. The male fur-seal is in his full prime at six or seven years of age, and will then measure from six and a half to seven and a half feet from snout to tail. He will weigh between four hundred and six hundred pounds—the latter weight, however, being found only in older animals, and not very frequently. He has a small head, with a muzzle and jaws not unlike both in size and form to those of a pure Newfoundland dog. The lips, however, are firm, and pressed together like those of man, and the large eyes of blue-gray are capable of expressing both soft and fierce emotions. On the upper lip he has a long moustache of grayish bristles, which are often long enough to extend over his shoulder. He swims with his head high over the water, and on land walks with an undulating carriage and head erect. If frightened, he will run as fast as a man, but not very far—thirty or forty yards sufficing to exhaust his wind. The hind-feet are longer than the fore-feet or flippers, and in shape are very like the human foot elongated to twenty inches or so, and with the instep flattened. There are three toes on the hind-feet; but the fore-flippers are fingerless hands some eight or ten inches broad.

The female fur-seal is from four to four and a half feet in length from snout to tail, lithe in form, without the heavy covering of fat round the shoulders which the male has, and with beautiful, gentle, intelligent, dark-blue eyes. She will weigh from fifty to a hundred pounds, according to her condition. Her manners are as amiable as her eyes, and she never fights with her neighbours, as her quarrelsome lord and master does. The cow-seal has but one voice—a sort of bleating half-way between the cry of a calf and that of an old sheep—and this is used for calling the young, which, curiously enough, are known as ‘pups,’ although the mothers are ‘cows,’ and the fathers ‘bulls.’ The male seal, however, has four voices. One is for battle, and resembles the puffing of a labouring locomotive; another is a hoarse loud roar; a third is a sort of low gurgle or growl; and a fourth, a sort of chuckle, half-hiss, half-whistle. The breeding-grounds are called ‘rookeries,’ and there, during the season, the din of roars, puffs, growls, and whistles from countless thousands of vigorous ‘bulls,’ is ceaseless, and in volume has been compared to the boom of Niagara.

It is odd that the breeding-place of ‘bulls’ and ‘cows’ should be called ‘rookeries,’ but so it is. The first to arrive at these rookeries are the bull-seals, and the season begins about the first of May. As it is ‘First come, first served,’ and as there is an unwritten law among them that a bull requires a clear space of from six to eight feet square for the accommodation of himself and family, there is much scrambling and fighting for plots, and the late arrivals may be driven away without being allowed a landing-place at all. They fight with great strength and courage—only the adult males, however—running at each other with averted heads, and then seizing each other with their teeth. The battles are often long, and the wounds severe; but these soon heal; and an adventurous ‘bull’ thinks nothing of forty or fifty desperate combats in a season. While fighting, they utter both their roar and their whistle, the hair is sent flying in all directions, and the eyes gleam with angry fire. It is said that in a seal-fight there is always an offensive and a defensive party, and that if the latter is beaten, he simply vacates his position to the victor, who does not follow his foe, but lies down on the conquered territory and gives vent to his chuckle.

Although the cows are amiable, they are not particularly demonstrative to their infants, which are born immediately after the females are located in the rookeries. Twins are very rare, and mothers always suckle their own young. The pups do not know their own mothers, and if separated from them, will take with the greatest alacrity to the first kindly cow which will console them with her rich creamy and abundant milk. The pups, for the first three months after birth, are jet black in colour, and bleat in a minor key after the fashion of the cows. At birth, a pup will weigh three or four pounds, and measure twelve or fourteen inches in length. Curiously enough, the pup-seal cannot swim, and even if he is several weeks old, will helplessly sink, if thrown into the water. But about the second week of August begins one of the most curious episodes of seal-life—the education of the young. By the time he has counted six weeks or so of life, the pup-seal begins to feel an inclination to play on the margin of the sea, where, as the waves flow and recede, the shore is alternately covered and uncovered. The baby-seal finds that thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of his fellow-babies have been smitten with the same curiosity about the sea almost simultaneously with himself, and that the beach is swarming with tumbling, floundering, gurgling, whistling, playful, yet nervous young animals. By-and-by, one plucks up courage to try a plunge in the deeper surf; others follow; one gets carried beyond his depth, and in frantic struggles to reach the shore again, discovers that he has a power of locomotion even in the water. It is but feeble; and when a kindly wave chucks him out of harm’s way on to the rocks, he is blown and exhausted. But he takes a short sleep, and then has another go; and after a few more efforts, finds, to his great delight, that he is even more at home in the water than on the land. For the next few weeks the coast-waters of the islands are black with the little fat bodies revelling in their new-found power, and gamboling among the breakers like children on the grass. It used to be believed by the old sailors that the parent seals drove their young ones into the water and taught them forcibly to swim; but more recent and careful observation places it beyond doubt that the parents take no part whatever in the process of education, but leave the young ones to learn the battle of life for themselves.

By the time the breeding season is over, all the young seals have become able-bodied swimmers. By this time, too, the pups have grown to thirty or forty pounds-weight, and have changed the black coat of infancy for the thick, gray, hairy coat of youth. At this age, the coats of both male and female are similar; indeed, not until the third year do they assume their permanent differences. The outer coat of the full-grown bull is of a dark-brown colour, and the hairs are short and crisp; beneath, like the down under the feathers of a bird, is the close, soft, elastic fur, so esteemed by man, or rather woman. The full-grown cows, as they come into the rookeries at the beginning of the season, are of a dull, dirty-gray colour, which, after they have been a short time on land, changes to a rich steely gray on the back, and snow-white on the chest and belly; but after a few weeks the white changes into a dull ruddy colour, and the steel gray into a brownish gray. The breeding season is over by the end of July; the families begin to break up, and the rookeries to be disorganised during August. By the middle of September, all order and distinction is lost, and the young ones have commenced life on their own account. By the end of October, all the mature seals have left the islands; and by the end of November, even the youngest have disappeared.

Whither? That is one of the conundrums of nature, as is also the question, where do the seals die? It is certain that none perish from natural causes on the islands, and all that is known of their doings elsewhere is, that they seem usually to shape a southern course. They are lost in the vast mazes of the Pacific, not to be seen of man again until the following summer. They have natural enemies in sharks and other submarine animals of prey; but it is not thought that their numbers suffer much diminution on this account. Their own food is fish, and Mr Elliott has calculated that an adult male seal will consume forty pounds, and an adult female ten to twelve pounds, per day, of fresh fish. Taking, with the young ones, an average of ten pounds per day each, and the numbers annually frequenting the rookeries of the Pribylov Islands—which have been ascertained by careful measurement and estimate at about four millions and three-quarters—we have a total of six millions of tons of fish consumed every year by the fur-seals! The figures are stupendous, but they seem beyond doubt.

As to the now approximately known number of seals, there is no reason to believe that it is any greater than it was when the islands were first discovered; and while the number will not be decreased by the present method of capture, it is not thought that it will increase. The supply of fur-seals, then, may be taken as a fixed quantity, with a known annual yield to man. That yield is restricted by the law of the United States to one hundred thousand skins per annum. The government holds the islands for the State and leases the right of capture to a Company, who are permitted not to take a larger number than that just mentioned. They employ the natives of the Aleutian Islands, who work in gangs, under their chiefs, and receive forty cents, or one shilling and eightpence, for every ‘pelt’ or hide they hand to the Company’s officials. Government officers, again, keep a separate tally; so there is a double check upon the Company, who cannot easily, even if they wish, exceed their prescribed rights. As the annual birth-rate is about one million, of which one half are males, the number annually abstracted by man can have no appreciable effect in reducing the supply or in affecting the natural increase. The average natural life of the male seal is believed to be from fifteen to twenty years, and that of the female, about ten years, so that deaths by man on the rookeries, and from submarine foes during the winter, suffice to keep the race within the bounds now known.

The men operate only on the haunts of the ‘bachelor’ seals. It is presumed that about two-thirds of the males are not allowed to land on the rookeries by the stronger and abler remanent, so that the wants of man can be supplied without interfering with the operations of the breeding-grounds. When the ‘bachelors’ are dozing about the shores in the early summer, the natives get in quietly between them and the sea. The seals on perceiving the men turn to run inland, and are easily driven to the appointed killing-grounds. Three or four men can easily guide and secure as many thousand seals, and the driving is done leisurely, for if the animals become overheated, the fur is injured. The men therefore allow them to rest from time to time, and renew the drive by clattering and shouting, to startle the seals to fresh exertions. They move with the docility of a flock of sheep, and only the old bulls ever show fight. These last will occasionally make a stand and act on the defensive; but as they are of little value commercially, the bellicose oldsters are allowed to drop out and go their own ways. It is only the animals between one and five years old which are desired, for after the fifth year, the fur deteriorates, the undergrowth becoming shorter and coarser. The thickest and finest pelts are those of the third and fourth years. Beneath the skin is a dense layer of oily blubber, which, unlike the blubber of the hair-seal, has a very offensive odour.

The work of catching and pickling the pelts occupies June and July, by which time the Company will have secured its legal number of one hundred thousand, or as many short of the number as circumstances have confined them to. After July, the seals begin to moult, and the skins become of less and less value as the season advances. Altogether, three hundred and ninety-eight persons are employed annually on the Pribylov Islands in this work.

After the ‘catch’ is ended, the skins are taken in the Company’s steamers to San Francisco, and thence nearly all or about nine-tenths are shipped to London, for London has the monopoly of the preparation of these furs for market. The skins as they come into England are very different in appearance from what we see on the backs of our lady-friends. They are indeed very unattractive; and all the coarse stiff outer hair has to be carefully extracted before the rich under-fur is seen. This last is then dyed and dressed. It is hurried or defective dyeing and dressing which accounts for the variation in prices of the finished furs, for there is little difference in the original quality. The more careful and skilful the work of the furrier, therefore, the dearer becomes the sealskin jacket.

The Alaska Commercial Company’s lease of the islands is for twenty years from the 1st of May 1870, and they pay the government a rental of eleven thousand pounds per annum for the islands, and a tax of eight shillings for each sealskin, ten and sixpence for each fur-seal skin, and fifty-five cents for every gallon of oil, shipped. The Company is also bound to supply the inhabitants with a stipulated quantity of dried fish, firewood, and salt; to maintain a school on each island for the education of the natives; and not to sell or give any ‘distilled spirituous liquors’ to the natives. We believe that the Company has in only one year (1881) taken its full number of skins, the usual number shipped being from ninety to ninety-five thousand. Between 1870 and 1881, the Company had paid the United States Treasury nearly three and a half millions of dollars in rent and royalty.

BY ORDER OF THE LEAGUE.

CHAPTER XVI.

Consumed by conflicting emotions, and torn by a thousand hopes and fears, Maxwell set out on his journey to Rome. At any hazards, he was determined to commit no crime, and trusted to time and his own native wit to show him a way out of the awful difficulty which lay before him. All the old familiar country he passed through failed to interest him now; he saw nothing but his own fate before his eyes; and the Eternal City, which had once been a place of mystery and delight to him, now looked to his distorted fancy like a tomb, every broken statue an avenging finger, and every fractured column a solemn warning.

It was night when he arrived and secured apartments—the old ones he had occupied in his student days, the happiest time in his life, he thought now, as every ornament recalled this silent voice or that forgotten memory slumbering in some corner of his brain. He could eat nothing; the very air of the place was oppressive to him; so he put on his hat and walked out into the streets, all alive with the citizens taking their evening walk, and gay with light laughter over flirtations and cigarette smoke. He wandered long and far, so far, that it was late when he returned; and there, lying on the table, was a sealed packet, bearing the device of the Order, and in the corner two crossed daggers. He groaned as he opened it, knowing full well the packet contained the hated ‘instructions,’ as they were called. He tore them open, read them hastily, and then looked out of the window up to the silent stars. And it was Visci, his old friend Carlo Visci, he was sent here—to murder! The whole thing seemed like a ghastly dream. Visci, the truest-hearted friend man ever had; Visci, the handsome genius, whose purse was ever ready for a fellow-creature in need; the man who had sat at his table times out of number; the student who was in his secrets; the man who had saved his life, snatched him from the very jaws of death—from the yellow waters of the Tiber. And this was the friend he was going to stab in the back some dark night! A party of noisy, light-hearted students passed down the street, some English voices amongst them, coming vaguely to Maxwell’s ears, as he sat there looking on the fatal documents, staring him in the face from the table.

‘Et tu, Brute!’

Maxwell looked up swiftly. And there, with one trembling forefinger pointing to the open documents, stood the figure of a man with a look of infinite sorrow on his face, as he gazed mournfully down upon the table. He was young—not more than thirty, perhaps, and his aquiline features bore the marks of much physical suffering. There were something like tears in his eyes now.

‘Carlo! is it possible it is you?’ Maxwell cried, springing to his feet.

‘Yes, Fred, it is I, Carlo Visci, who stand before you. We are well met, old friend; you have not far to seek to do your bidding now. Strike! while I look the other way, for it is your task, I know.’

‘As there is a heaven above us, no!’ Maxwell faltered. ‘Never, my friend! Do you think I would have come for this? Listen to me, Visci. You evidently know why I am here; but sure as I am a man, never shall my hand be the one to do you hurt. I have sworn it!’

‘I had expected something like this,’ Visci replied mournfully. ‘Yes, I know why you came. You had best comply with my request. It would be a kindness to me to kill me, as I stand here now.’

‘Visci, I swear to you that when I joined the Brotherhood, I was in the blackest ignorance of its secret workings. When I was chosen for this mission, I did not even comprehend what I had to do. Then they told me Visci was a traitor. Even then, I did not know it was you. Standing there in the room, I swore never to harm a hair of your head; and, heaven help me, I never will!’

‘Yes, I am a traitor, like you,’ Visci smiled mournfully. ‘Like you, I was deceived by claptrap talk of liberty and freedom; like you, I was allotted to take vengeance on a traitor; and like you, I refused. Better the secret dagger than the crime of fratricide upon one’s soul!’

‘Fratricide! I do not understand.’

‘I do not understand either. Frederick, the man I was detailed to murder—for it is nothing else—is my only brother.—You start! But the League does not countenance relationships. Flesh and blood and such paltry ties are nothing to the friends of liberty, who are at heart the sternest tyrants that ever the mouth of man execrated.—But what brings you here? You can have only one object in coming here. I have told you before it would be a kindness to end my existence.’

‘But why? And yet, when I come to look at you again, you have changed.’

‘I have changed,’ Visci echoed mournfully—‘changed in mind and body. My heart is affected, diseased beyond all hope of remedy. I may die now, at any moment; I cannot live four months.’

They sat down together, and fell to discussing old times when they were happy careless students together, and Maxwell did not fail to notice the painful breathing and quick gasping spasms of his friend, altered almost beyond recognition from the gallant Visci of other days.