President Jordan’s Saga of the Seal.

David Starr Jordan, President of Leland Stanford Junior University, has many times deserved well of his country. As a scientific man he has, we believe, given to the American public and the world a greater number of original monographs on important branches of current investigation than has any of his distinguished contemporaries. From his special department of ichthyology, in which he became an expert fully a score of years ago, he has branched into nearly all fields of scientific exploration, finding ever new paths, leading to new regions and new empires of knowledge.

Upon this basis is builded Dr. Jordan’s fame as an educator. In two great States of the Union he has presided over the affairs of high-grade institutions of learning. After a successful career as President of the Indiana University, he was selected from the great array of American scholars to preside over the destinies of Leland Stanford Junior University, at Palo Alto, California. But the onerous duties and responsibilities of these positions have hardly distracted Dr. Jordan’s mind from his central motive and aim of scientific investigation. Through all the years of his busy career he has prosecuted his researches with the most conspicuous success.

Meanwhile, he has endeared himself to the American people as an able publicist, whose writings and leadership have become potent in many lines of our public policy. President Cleveland had the good judgment to select Dr. Jordan to preside over the inquiry into the condition of affairs in Bering Sea. The fur-seal imbroglio had already become an international menace; the peace of great nations was threatened by it. It has thus fallen to Dr. Jordan’s lot in his official position to conduct an inquiry of the highest importance. He is the United States Commissioner in charge of the fur-seal investigation, and it is this fact and the results of this fact that now bring him to the fore in a literary production, the only adverse criticism on which is its brevity. Would it were longer.

In 1896 Dr. Jordan published his “Observations on the Fur Seals of the Pribilof Islands.” This was a preliminary report. But it is nevertheless replete with statements of the bottom facts and of generalized information from which a clear notion of the condition of affairs in the fur-seal regions must be derived. It is not of this work, however, that we shall at the present speak, but rather of Dr. Jordan’s later production, “Matka and Kotik; a Tale of the Mist-Islands.”[18]

It appears that during his investigations from a scientific and official point of view the author’s mind has been profoundly impressed on the sentimental and poetic side by the conditions in which he found himself in the Pribilof Islands. The result of this profound impression is the little work before us. Though it is done in prose it is none the less a poem; it is the Saga of the Seals. It is a poetic appeal to all Christendom in the simple and dramatic way of Frithiof and his contemporaries.

“Matka and Kotik” will be a revelation to those of Dr. Jordan’s friends and admirers who were not already acquainted with the deep, clear vein of poetry in his composition. I have noted that several of our nineteenth-century scientists have this vein. Huxley was of this number; the spirits at the sÉances used to designate him as the “Poet of Science.” Dr. Jordan in “Matka and Kotik” vindicates his right to be known as the American Poet of Science.

It is evident that while the President of the Fur-Seal Commission was performing his duty in the Pribilofs, in the summer of 1896, his mind became profoundly impressed with the sorrows of the seal. Not only have commerce and the equity of nations been outraged in this matter, but the cry of humanity is heard. Aye, more; the cry of the seals themselves is heard; and it is this cry that Dr. Jordan has interpreted and sent to the world. Not satisfied with the preparation of his preliminary report, he has found opportunity to appease his sense of indignation, by writing this book, every line of which tells a story of avarice and crime and butchery which, if we mistake not, the roused-up spirit of mankind will soon abate.

Dr. Jordan’s book is a sort of dramatical story, the personÆ of which are all Seals except one man, Apollon the Destroyer, and a few of the creatures such as Chignotto, the sea-otter; Bobrik, her son; Epatka, the sea parrot; Eichkao, the blue fox; Isogh, the hair-seal; Amogada, the walrus; Sivutch, the sea lion; and Kagua, his wife, etc. The principal actors are Atagh, an old “beach-master” living on the Tolstoi Mys; Matka, his wife; Kotik, their child; Unga, Atagh’s brother; Polsi, Matka’s brother; Minda and Lakutha, Kotik’s sisters; Ennatha, Matka’s sister, and Annak, Ennatha’s child. It is the manner of life and fate of these personages that Dr. Jordan has delineated in the “Tale of the Mist-Islands.” He tells us that it is a true story—that the author personally knew Matka before Kotik was born, and that he witnessed the events which he describes.

I shall not attempt to give an extended review of the story of “Matka and Kotik.” I must satisfy myself and, I trust, incite the interest of the readers of The Arena, by sketching only an outline of the Saga of the Seal. The scene of the story is the Mist-Island, or, more properly, certain parts of the shore and headlands of that island whereon the seals pass an important part of their migratory life. From these coast lines they take to sea at certain seasons and swim away, generally to the south. Tolstoi Head is the point of observation from which Dr. Jordan begins his charming delineations of seal-life, and there he concludes the story; which, in the meantime, transforms itself into the pathos of sad separations and finally into the dumb tragedy of slaughter and death.

The author gives character—human character—to his personages, discriminating them according to their natures into beings whose very names, notwithstanding the limited range of their faculties, bring us into intimate and profound sympathy with them. Old Atagh, the lordly sea-bull of the Tolstoi Mys, looms up grandly above the rest—

In shape and gesture proudly eminent.

Matka, the wife, is an embodiment of her sex. Kotik is the child of her choice. All her offspring are veritable children: the uncles are uncles, the aunts are aunts, the cousins are cousins, and the rest are the rest. Even the “supers” appear in the nebulous names of the drama.

The point of the “Tale of the Mist-Islands,” the great lesson of it, is the horrid abuses and cruelties to which the seals have been subjected by the brutal fur-pirates who have thronged the Alaskan waters in the past two decades, and whose intolerable lust of slaughter and devastation has threatened the extinction of the fur-seal race. If the story of “Matka and Kotik” could be perused, as it should be, by the American people, the very mothers of the country would rise up against the piratical butchers of the Pribilofs, who would quail under their frown. Meanwhile, diplomacy drags its length, and official reports carry to Congressional Committees a vague statistical account of what has been done and is still doing in the Alaskan waters.

I most heartily commend to all who are interested—and who is not?—in the fur-seal question and in the manner of its solution, Dr. Jordan’s interesting little book. I have hardly ever seen a better piece of English than this. The author’s style is admirable. I scarcely recall another book so monosyllabic and terse. Whoever commences to read “Matka and Kotik” will continue to the end. The story fascinates while it instructs. I dare say that Dr. Jordan, in the scientific sketches which are cunningly scattered in these paragraphs, is always correct.

If our space permitted, we should be glad to make extended quotations in illustration of the sterling merits of this tale of our far Northwest. I shall be obliged to conclude the review with only a single extract, but must first remark that “Matka and Kotik” is illustrated with forty-two striking photographic reproductions, the beauty and excellency of which can hardly be too highly praised. To these are added thirty-four pen sketches by Miss Chloe Frances Lesley, a student in zoÖlogy in Leland Stanford Junior University. The illustrations which appear are adapted to the text with perfect good taste. We also note “The Calendar of the Mist-Islands.” This is appended to the story proper, as is also the map of the Mist-Island. In the calendar Dr. Jordan gives a diary of the movements of the seals beginning January 1st and ending November 15th. These notes convey a great amount of scientific information in the most condensed and interesting form. It is evident that Dr. Jordan has written under a strong sense of the significance of the scenes which he wishes to portray. At the close, he says: