312 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



horses are very readily accustomed to the smell, sight and sound of sea lions ; it was 

 indeed easy enough to persuade them to tow dead seals back to my camp on the end 

 of a rope, an act which one would suppose was sufficiently alarming. Sheep and cattle 

 pay practically no attention to sea lions. 



In concluding this section it is desirable to lay stress on the value of the sea lion 

 as an asset to the colony and to emphasize the necessity of keeping permits for its 

 destruction to the lowest possible figure and of granting them only after the most 

 careful consideration. 



COMMERCIAL UTILIZATION 



It has been mentioned on p. 272 that sea lions were valued by the earlier voyagers 

 as a source of supply of fresh meat ; but they were known to have other uses. Hawkins 

 (1593) says: "They are beneficial to man in their skinnes for many purposes; in the 

 mostaches to make pick-tooths, and in their fatt to make train-oyle". In his account 

 of Anson's voyage in 1740 Walter details the uses to which seal oil was put ; he is writing 

 it is true of elephant seal oil prepared at Juan Fernandez, but it is obvious that other 

 seafaring people must have had the same requirements as Anson. Walter says: "The 

 oil made served for several purposes, as burning in lamps, or mixing with pitch to 

 pay the ship's side, or when worked up with wood ashes to supply the use of tallow 

 (of which we had none left) to give the ship boot-hose tops " (that is, to apply between 

 wind and water). Byron replenished his oil supply from sea lions in the Falklands 

 (Callander, 1768), and Cook did the same at New Year Island in 1775, when he found 

 a sea-lion rookery there (Forster, 1777). 



As whalers and sealers ventured more and more into the Southern Ocean the seals 

 of the Falklands attracted their attention. The history of this period is not well known, 

 but seals of all species evidently were far more plentiful then than now. "Sea lion" 

 is used for both Otaria and Mirounga and both species were hunted, the latter almost 

 to total extinction in the colony at a date which may be placed about 1870. Some of 

 the older sealers combined fur sealing and oil cooking, but the two businesses eventually 

 came to be rather separated, in the Falklands at any rate. Even now there may be found 

 the remains of the stone hearths and sometimes the large cast-iron cauldrons used by 

 these sealers, who also prepared a good deal of penguin oil, to the great and permanent 

 detriment of some of the rookeries of those birds. Lance heads surviving from the 

 seal-hunting times are occasionally met with; they are about 30 in. long in the shaft, 

 which is about | in. thick and terminates in an oval blade about 4 by 2| in. Skulls 

 and other bones of sea lions and elephant seals are to be found at the boiling down 

 places. This commercial sealing persisted in the Falklands until within living memory 

 but eventually it died out. 



Besides the oil and hides, other parts of sea Hons have been, and perhaps still are, 

 used in trade. A few years ago, when there were in Stanley two Chinese seamen 

 detained there by some legal matter, one of them approached me with a polite request 

 for a few sea-lion whiskers, for which it was diflicult to imagine that he had any use. 



