362 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES ETSH COMMISSION. 



little interest was manifested in its capture, but it was not until the close of the 

 last century that the pursuit was begun in earnest. Hardy mariners, stimulated by 

 the hope of sharing in the profits of the fur trade which the Russians had developed 

 with the Chinese, searched out the resorts of the southern fur seal ; ravaged them year 

 after year, in season and out of season; slaughtered the helpless creatures with clubs 

 on land regardless of age or sex; gathered a harvest of sixteen or seventeen million 

 skins, and by 1830 had practically destroyed, in the southern seas, this valuable 

 fur-bearing animal. If all these resorts were in their original condition and under 

 wise and prudent direction, they could easily supply to the fur trade annually some- 

 thing like half a million skins, with corresponding advantage to an army of skilled 

 artisans. As it is, indiscriminate butchery has left only the Lobos Islands rookeries 

 at the mouth of the La Plata River and a few insignificant resorts at Cape Horn and 

 the Cape of Good Hope, the total yearly yield of which is, as before stated, less than 

 15,000 skins. Such destruction is left absolutely without justification in the face of 

 man's entire ability to maintain the fur-seal rookeries at the highest possible limits 

 permitted by the operation of nature's restrictions, or when depleted to develop them 

 again. This is not idle speculation, but rests upon a firm foundation of fact furnished 

 by the history of the fur seal of the north. 



The northern fur seal and its relation to the sealskin industry. — The two great resorts 

 of the northern fur seal are the Pribilof and Commander islands in Bering Sea. 

 Robbens Reef, a rocky islet in the Okhotsk Sea, has a small rookery, and a few 

 localities of minor importance are found along the Kurile Islands. While the Rus- 

 sians who first discovered these resorts prohibited all interference from outsiders, their 

 own treatment of the seals was similar to that practiced by the sailors in the south. No 

 attention was paid to sex, season, or period of procreation, and it was not long before 

 the end came there just as it had done in the south. The Russians were taught by 

 this severe lesson that the only way in which the rookeries could be restored and 

 perpetuated was to protect the females from death and the breeding-grounds from 

 molestation. This course, accompanied by practically a suspension of killing during 

 certain years, was rigidly adhered to with the result that when the rookeries of the 

 Pribilof Islands were turned over to the United States in 1867 their condition, instead 

 of being one of exhaustion, approximated that which existed when they were first 

 discovered. The truth of this will be more apparent when it is stated that in 1868, 

 before the United States could assume and exercise control over its newly acquired 

 possessions, nearly a quarter of a million skins were improperly taken from the islands 

 of St. Paul and St. George by unauthorized persons without apparently producing 

 any diminution of the numbers which came the following year. 



Although there are but four of these northern localities, and Russian mismanage- 

 ment from time to time played such havoc with them that the catch was an uncertain 

 quantity, still they have contributed since their discovery between 5,000,000 and 

 6,000,000 skins to the fur trade, or about one-third as many as have been furnished 

 by the southern resorts. From the time that the fur seal of the south ceased to be of 

 commercial importance trade has relied upon these rookeries. Thanks to the more 

 enlightened policy employed by the Russians, and adopted and improved upon by 

 the United States, these rookeries of Bering Sea contributed to commerce for the 

 twenty years ending with 1889 a uniform yearly quota of nearly 150,000 pelts, 

 which formed the basis of and made possible the systematized sealskin business of 



