ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, Q. C. M. P. 23 



grateful tribute, iu recognition of the protection that they derive from 

 the beneficent rule of the Agents and Lessees of the United States, 



Now, from these imaginative pictures highly creditable to the human 

 sympathies, and to the imaginations also of those who composed tliem, 

 I would like to turn in prosaic fashion to the actual facts. What are 

 the actual facts? I am not now dealing at all, the Tribunal will under- 

 stand, with any considerations which go to build up, in the estimation 

 of the United States, their claim to property. I am simply consider- 

 ing whether there are not certain matters which ought to be borne in 

 mind by this Tribunal in order that it may be able to consider 



747 this question of pelagic sealing without having its reason dis- 

 torted by passion or prejudice: whether there are not other facts 



which ought to be presented to it, in order to mitigate the tale of sup- 

 l)Osed horrors attendant upon the practice of pelagic sealing: horrors 

 from which as they contend (but contend untruly as we submit) killing 

 on land is free. Now for this i^urpose I may refer the Tri- 

 bunal at once to chapter 14 of the Counter-Case of the uJif^g^erotn't'^lird 

 British Government. It begins on page 260. Its subject kniing on the is- 

 is: "Management of the Pribilof Islands by liussia and ^^°*^^' 

 the United States". On page 261 there is a general statement, which 

 I Mill not trouble to read, of the method of driving which is there prac- 

 tised, as the most injurious feature of the system practised on the Pri- 

 bilof Islands, and it then proceeds to point out — citing authorities upon 

 the subject — its unnatural and destructive character. 



But 1 turn from those general arguments and general statements to 

 page 262, where citations, very a propos^ are taken from the reports of 

 Mr. Elliott beginning as far back as 1872, that is to say five years after 

 the acquisition of Alaskan territory fi-om Russia. He says: 



A drove of seals on hard or firm grassy ground, in cool and moist weather, may be 

 driven with safety at the rate of half-a-mile an hour; they can be urged along with 

 the expenditure of a great many lives, however, at the speed of 1 mile or 1 1/4 miles 

 per hour; but this is seldom done. 



Further on he speaks of the disposition of the old seals to fight rather 

 than endure the panting torture of travel, 

 and on the next page he writes : 



The progression of the whole caravan is a succession of starts, spasmodic and irreg- 

 ular, made eveiy few minutes, the seals pausing to catch their breath, and make, 

 as it were, a plaintive survey and mute protest. Every now and then a seal will 

 get weak iu the lumbar region, then drag its posteriors along for a short distance, 

 finally drop breathless and exhausted, quivering and panting, not to revive for 

 hours — days, perhaps — and often never. During the driest driving days, when the 

 temperature does not combine with wet fog to keep the path moist and cool, quite a 

 large number of the weakest animals in the droves will be thus laid out and left on 

 the track. 



This prostration from exertion will always hapjien no matter how carefully they 

 are driven; and in the longer drives, such as 2 1/2, and 5 miles from Zapadnie on the 

 west, or Polavina on the north, to the village of St. Paul, as much as 3 or 4 per cent, 

 of the whole drive will be thus dropped on the road; hence I feel satisfied, from my 

 observation, and close attention to this feature, that a considerable number of those 

 that are thus rejected from the drove, and are able to rally and return to the water, 

 die subsequently from internal injuries sustained on the trip, superinduced by this 

 over-exertion. 



Then a citation is made from Lieutenant Maynard of the United States 

 service. This is in 1874, that is to say eight years after the acquisition 

 of the islands : 



There has been a waste in taking the skins, due partly to the inexperience of the 

 Company's Agent, and partly to accident and the carelessness of the natives. In 



748 making the drive, particularly if they are long on, and the sun happens to 

 pierce through the fog, some of the seals become exhausted and die at such a 



