126 



And liere comes to view the most dangerous and difficult task and 

 the most irritating that the two Governments will have to perform in reg- 

 ulating as between these pelagic sealers their rights while they are pur- 

 suing and capturing fur-seals with double-barreled shotguns. The 

 pelts are worth $10 each, a much larger sum than is the average yield 

 of the richest gold mine per diem to the gold hunters; and we know 

 how impossible it is to restrain by law the violence that has attended 

 their struggles for "diggings," where none of them own the soil or 

 any privilege in it except to discover new leads and to dig for gold. 



On the high seas 30 miles or more from any land there are no courts 

 and can not be any efficient police by either or both nations. Conced- 

 ing to them the best intentions and the most honorable zeal in protect- 

 ing the rights of all concerned, they will fail to prevent those personal 

 oonflicts between the ravenous pelagic sealers around the 30-mile zone, 

 especially, which in the end will embroil the two countries. 



The United States, as I have observed, may not choose to take up, 

 as an international question, the quarrels of her citizens with Canadian 

 subjects while they are both engaged in doing a great national wrong 

 to that Government; but they will be, naturally, very chary of the 

 dealings of Great Britain with such controversies. There will be no 

 international court for the hearing of such controversies between 

 private persons engaged in sealing in boats and canoes on the high 

 seas, and they will probably be settled by the vis major. The fact that 

 both parties will be heavily armed for assault upon the seals will make 

 such collisions very dangerous, and their occurrence almost certain. 



A United States sealer finds a school, or party of seals and goes to the 

 leeward to get in gunshot of them ; and a party of Canadians desiring to 

 kill them, approaches the seals from the windward and shoots one with 

 a rifle before the other hunter can get in range with his shotgun. A 

 quarrel ensaes and results in bloodshed. By a fiction of law, they are 

 each upon the territory of their respective countries, and the settlement 

 of that case, without the intervention of the Governments, would tax 

 the wisdom equal to that of Solomon. If one sealer in his boat 

 shoots at a seal that another is approaching from the other side, 

 and wounds or kills the hunter, what is to be done in that case? 

 That conflict will result from such occasions is almost certain, and how 

 it can be settled is most uncertain. Illustrations are feeble to portray 

 the difficulties and conjectures are far short of the reality as to the 

 conflicts that must occur in the wild hunt for seals that the British 

 regulations invite. 



