Destruction by Man 61 



Beautiful, trustful, and defenseless, these inoffen- 

 sive creatures make a direct appeal to every 

 decent instinct, but as far as the plume-hunters 

 were concerned, the appeal was made in vain. 

 In the spring of 1909 a party of twenty-three of 

 these cold-blooded men landed on Laysan, and 

 began a work of slaughter which for heartless 

 cruelty has perhaps never been equalled by any- 

 one else engaged in this cruel business. Ap- 

 parently it was their intention to kill all the 

 birds on the island and they actually succeeded 

 in butchering three hundred thousand of these 

 innocent creatures before the United States 

 Government, in prompt response to a telegram 

 from Professor William A. Bryan of Honolulu, 

 sent the revenue cutter Thetis and stopped the 

 killing. Sad and almost unbelievable sights 

 greeted Captain Jacobs and the men of the Thetis. 

 Several acres which had been the site of teeming 

 colonies of industrious happy birds, were strewn 

 with bones and dead bodies. Car loads of feath- 

 ers, skins, and wings were ready for shipping, and 

 thousands of other wings were piled in a shed, 

 and it is the bitter truth that many of these wings 

 had been cut from the bodies of living birds 

 which had then been allowed to run away to 

 bleed to death. But the wretches who did this 

 thing — I cannot bring myself to call them men — 



