244 OKAL ARGUMENT OF HON. EDWAED J. PHELPS. 



of the seal herd. On that point perhaps you will bear with me while 

 I at first, consider very briefly, if General Foster will be so kind as to 

 aj?sisc me by pointing" out, what has taken i^lace elsewhere. The islands 

 marked in red, on the map now before the Tribunal, were islands 

 Avhich the testimony says were once poj^ulous; where the seals were as 

 numerous as they are on the Pribilof Islands, and were obtained in 

 great numbers. What has become of them! Except I believe on the 

 Lobos Islands where some measures have been taken to prevent indis- 

 criminate killing some years ago, where there are a few left, though 

 hardly enough to be commercially important, they are gone from every 

 one of them; so that with the small exception of what there are on 

 the Lobos Islands, there are no seals in the world — fur-seals, I mean. 

 Except on the Pribilof Islands, and the Commander Islands, in Behr- 

 ing kSea, they are all gone. When the sealers first visited the Island 

 of Mas-a-Fuero, off the coast of Chili, in 1797, there were estimated to 

 be 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 on the islaiuls. More than 3,000,000 were 

 killed, and the skins carried to Canton in seven years thereaiter. hi 

 1807 they were almost exterminated, and in 1891 Captain Gaffney 

 visited the islands and saw 300 or 400, killing a few. All this is froiu 

 the evidence in the Case. 



Juan Fernandez is a few miles eastward of Mas-a-Fuero. Dampier, 

 who visited tliis island in 1083, says that seals swarm as thick about 

 the island of Juan Fernandez, as if they had no other place in the 

 w^orld to live in. There is not a bay or rock that one can get ashore 

 on but is full of them. There the unrestrained taking of the seals on 

 the land began in 1797, and in the year 1800 there were no seals to be 

 found on any ])art of it. In 1891, the island was visited, and a few fur 

 seals were seen, but very few. 



The coast of Chili has the same history. I need not read the story 

 over again. The sanje about Cape Horn and the Falkland Islands. 

 There they are not quite gone, because the British since 1881 have pub 

 an Ordinance in force which was presented to the Tribunal in another 

 connexion, and they are gradually increasing, but as yet assume no 

 commercial importance. On the South Georgia Islands and Sandwich 

 Land 300 miles enat of Cape Horn, when first discovered, fur-seals 

 existed in very great numbers. In 1800 a single vessel took 57,000 

 skins. 1(3 vessels visited South Georgia that year, and in a few years 

 not less than 1,500,000 were taken from the Islands. In 1822, they 

 were reported as almost extinct. In 1874, after many years' rest, the 

 Islands were visited, and 1,450 skins were taken. In 1875, five vessels 

 secured 000, and in 1870, four vessels could only obtain 110. 



In 1892 Captain Budington found the seals in that region practically 

 extinct, only a few straggling ones being seen. 



The South Shetland Islands is another place. The first sealing ves- 

 sels in 1819 readily obtained cargoes of very tine skins. The news of 

 the discovery was quickly spread and by the end of the next year a fleet 

 of 30 vessels reached the region to gather the valuable pelts. Captain 

 Weddell gives this account: 



The quantity of seals taken off these Islantls by A'essels from tliiferent parts during 

 the years 1821 and 1822 may be computed at 320,000 and tlie quantity of sea-elephimt 

 oil at 1)60 tons. This valualde aniuuil, the fur-seal, nui;ht, by ai law similar to that 

 which restrains fishermen in the size of the nu^sh of their nets, have been spared to 

 render annually 100,000 fur-seals i'or uuiuy years to come. This would have followed 

 from not killing the mothers until the young were able to take the water and e'^en 

 then only those which appeared to be old together with a ])roportion of the males 

 thereby diminishing their total number but in slow progression. This system is 

 pr;i! Used at the River la Plata. The Island of Lobos at the mouth of that river 

 contains a quantity of seals. 



