15 



by the tides. When the tide is flooding we have the broad waters of 

 the Pacific rolling towards the coast ; but at ebb tide the cold glacier 

 waters from the shore run out and on the top, being lighter, and hence we 

 find a diminution in temperature of about seven degrees F. From the 

 observations it would appear that the mean summer temperature of the 

 ocean outside of the immediate coast of south-eastern Alaska is about 

 54 F., which is that of the atmosphere too. 



The resources of Alaska are in order of value, furs, fish, min- 

 erals and timber. 



Among furs the seal fur stands vastly pre-eminent. 



Our first knowledge of the seal dates back some two hundred 

 years, when in 1684 William Dampier, the privateer, in his voyage round 

 the world, visited the island of Juan Fernandez, of Robinson Crusoe 

 fame, in the South Pacific, and there saw thousands upon thousands of 

 the fur seal. 



It appears, however, that a hundred years elapsed ere the fur 

 became a prized article of commerce. Amongst other places in the 

 South Sea in which formerly the fur seal abounded, may be mentioned 

 Masafuera, the South Shetland, Falkland and Georgian islands. 



Greed, improvidence and indiscriminate slaughter of old and young, 

 male and female, in a - comparatively few years brought about the 

 inevitable, almost annihilation of the seal herds in the South Pacific. 

 In two short years, 1821 and 1822, 320,000 seals were taken from the 

 South Shetland islands alone. They killed all and spared none. The 

 Falkland islands were the rendezvous of a large sealing fleet for a period 

 of nearly thirty years, 1800 to 1826 inclusive, and during this period 

 the whole Antarctic sealing ground was ravaged by the fur-sealers. 



While British and American sealers were scouring the South Seas, 

 the seal industry began to gain an importance in quite another quarter 

 of the globe the Pribilov islands in Alaska. Let us dwell for a 

 moment on the. history of the discovery of these valuable islands. The 

 Russians, in their search for fur and new fields, reached the shores of 

 Kamtchatka at the close of the seventeenth century, and there, for the 

 first time, beheld the beautiful and costly fur of the sea-otter. The 

 animal bearing this pelage then abounded on the coast, but by the 



