ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR RICHARD WEBSTER, Q. C. M. P. 161 



They did, and they are here, Mr. President, if the Court desires to see 

 them. Then he says. 



Some days after this — cannot state exact date — I drove with Mr. Fowler, an 

 employ^ of the lessees, to what is known as Half Way Point, on Polovina rookery. 



That is the other one I mentioned. 



Here the scene was repeated, but on a more extensive scale in point of numbers. 

 The little carcasses were strewn so thickly over the sand as to make it difficult to 

 walk over the ground without stepping on them. This condition of the rookeries 

 in this regard was for some time a common tojiic of conversation in the village by 

 all parties, including the mure intelligent ones among the natives, some of whom 

 were with Mr. J. Stanley Brown in his work of surveying the island and brought in 

 reports from time to time of similar conditious at substantially all the rookeries 

 around the Island. It could not, of course, bo well estimated as to the number thus 

 found dead, but the most intelligent of the natives — chief of the village — told me 

 that in his judgment there were not less than 20,000 dead pups on the various rook- 

 erics in the island and others still dying. Dr. Ackerly, the lessees' physician at the 

 time, made an autopsy of some of the carcasses. 



And so on. Now I note in passing that the Rejiort on the face of it is 

 obviously not in accordance with the fticts because there was an exami- 

 nation made by Professor Dawson, Sir George Baden Powell and Col. 

 Murray, of the actual condition of the other rockeries, and it will be 

 found in the United States papers that they also put the mortality at 

 the same place — namely Tolstoi and Polavina. 



Now Mr. President I call attention if you please to the fact, if you 

 will kindly look at the Appendix to Mr. Elliott's Report of 1890, that he 

 Is day by day visiting these rookeries in the year 1800 and making his 

 field notes. For instance, this particular rookery is called "Tolstoi". 

 It was visited — (I am reading from page 240), on the 12th June; the 

 21st June; the 23rd June; the 24th June; the 27th June; the 30th June; 

 the 1st July; the 7th July, and the 10th July. And the next one — the 

 Polavina rookery — is visited on the 3rd June; the 4th June; the 25th 

 June; and on the 3rd July; and you will find in later parts of the same 

 record, careful notes taken of the condition of tliese rookeries on a 

 number of later days to which 1 shall have to call attention in connection 

 with another part of the case. I have already told you on many of these 

 occasions he was accompanied by these Treasury Agents. 



It is quite impossible to come to the conclusion that if there was in 

 1890 anything corresponding with this, it would not have been seen. 

 But we have a very remarkable indirect corroboration of this. Pro- 

 fessor Palmer was there. He too knew nothing about seals till he went 

 there in the year 1890, and the United States have printed at page 201 

 of their Counter Case that part of Professor Palmer's Report which the 

 British Commissioners had not annexed to their Report because it did 

 not bear directly upon the particular point that they were discussing 

 and for which they were citing Professor Palmer's Report. But on page 

 291 it will appear that Professor Palmer, a stranger to the island, had 

 his attention called to the death of the seals — that is to say, seals killed 

 by the surf, and himself noticed seals killed in the same way that Mr. 

 Macoun noticed in that bay to which I called attention, called Zoltoi 

 Beach — killed as we know seals frequently were killed by the surf — and 

 yet there is not a reference in the whole of Professor Palmer's paper 

 from beginning to end, to any abnormal occurrence as to the seals either 

 at Tolstoi or Zapadnie or any other rookery in the island at all. 



Mr. Carter. — Do you mean that he imputes the death of them to 

 the surf! 



Sir Richard Webster. — I say what Mr. Palmer describes is un- 

 doubtedly the death from surf. 



B S, PT XiV 11 



