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Updated: May 29, 2025
The roar of the breakers told of a shallow sea, yet mist veiled the sky, and they were above waters whose shallows drop to sudden abysmal depths of three thousand fathoms. Sheets of smoking vapor rose from the sea, sheets of flame-tinged smoke from the crevasses of land volcanoes which the fogs hid. Out of the sea came the hoarse, strident cry of the sea-lion, and the walrus, and the hairy seal.
The sea-lion, with its stouter limbs, can lift its forepart, raise its head and look about it, and even flop about the ice-fields at a respectable rate. And there is no doubt that one of these is as much above an earless seal as fifty years of Europe are better than a cycle of Cathay.
If we could stay over for awhile, there are a great many interesting things we could see; an old Greek church and the government school are in the town, and Bogoslov's volcano and the sea-lion rookeries are on the island of St. John, which rose right up out of the sea in 1796 after a day's roaring and rumbling and thundering.
Whereat Crooked-Eyes was afraid and went and talked with Three-Legs and Pig-Jaw. And all three went and talked to Dog-Tooth. And Dog- Tooth spoke to Sea-Lion, and Sea-Lion sent a runner with a message to Tiger-Face. And Tiger-Face sent his guards, who burned Long- Fang's house along with the fire-brew he had made. Also, they killed him and all his family.
So he left the funnel to drip, that being a process he had no means of expediting, and moored the sea-lion to the very rock that had killed him, and was proceeding to dig out the seals, when a voice he never could hear without a thrill summoned him to dinner. It was a plentiful repast, and included roast pintado and cabbage-palm.
"A sea-lion, my lads!" cried Mr Jonathan Kilby, who at that moment appeared close to us from among the high grass. "Jump up and attack him." The beast having no legs, and being able only to make progress with his fins, had not advanced so far as we expected. Our friend, having in the meantime drawn the small shot from his gun, and put a ball instead, fired at the head of the beast.
In ancient days, an Aino chieftain of Iwanai went to sea in order to catch sea-lions, taking with him his two sons. They speared a sea-lion, which, however, swam off with the spear sticking in its body. Meanwhile a gale began to blow down from the mountains. The men cut the rope which was fast to the spear. Then their boat floated on. After some time, they reached a beautiful land.
"Gammon, Vernon, none of your blarney!" growled out the old sea-lion, pretending to be angry, albeit he looked pleased at Dad's covert allusion to the Napier motto, which he had always endeavoured to act up to. "I'm sick of false compliments, old shipmate. I've had plenty of them and to spare from those mealy-mouthed, false-hearted, longshore lubbers in there!"
The older houses were named by the natives much as were the inns of old England; the Gooch-haet, or wolf house; the Tahn-haet, or sea-lion house; the Kahse-haet, or cow house, and others, named for different animals. The Kahse-haet was named from the head of a cow being brought there from a wreck off the coast in which the animal was drowned.
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