ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



115 



companies, represented by as many agents or leaders, and all of them 

 vied one with the other in taking as many fur seals as they could c^ 



Fur-seal skins taken from the Pribilof Islands for shipment and sale. 



Period. 



1797-1831 (34 years)a 

 1831-1843 (31 years)a 

 1843-1861 (19 years)a 



1863 



18615 



1864 



1865- - 



1866 - 



Number 

 of skins. 



1,333,374 



468, f.03 

 373.000 

 ? SO, 000 

 ? 35, 000 

 ? 26, 000 

 ? 40, 000 

 ? -43, 000 



Period. 



1867 

 1868 

 1869 

 1870 

 1871 

 1873 

 1873 

 1874 



Number 

 of .skins. 



? 48, 000 

 343,000 

 87,000 

 9,965 

 63,000 

 99,000 

 99,630 

 99,830 



Period. 



1875_ 



1876 



1877 



1878 



1879 



1880.-- 



Total 



Number 

 of skins. 



99,500 

 99, 00(J 

 83. 500 

 95, 000 

 99,968 

 99,950 



3,561,051 



a Including about 5,000 annually from the Commander Islands. 



The manner in which the seals are taken. — By reference to the 

 habit of the fur seal, which I have discussed at length, it is now plain 

 and beyoud doubt that two-thirds of all the males which are born — 

 and they are equal in numbers to the females born — are never per- 

 mitted by the remaining third — strongest by natural selection — to land 

 upon the same breeding ground with the females, which always herd 

 thereupon en masse. Hence this great band of "bachelor" seals, or 

 "hoUuschickie," so fitly termed, when it visits the island is obliged to 

 live apart entirely, sometimes and some places miles away from the 

 rookeries; and in this admirablj^ perfect method of nature are those 

 seals which can be properly killed without injury to the rookeries 

 selected and held aside by their own volition, so that the natives can 

 visit and take them without disturbing in the least degree the entire 

 quiet of the breeding grounds where the stock is perpetuated. 



The manner in which the natives capture and drive the "hoUus- 

 chickie " up from the hauling grounds to the slaughter fields near the 

 two villages of St. Paul and St. George and elsewhere on the islands 

 can not be improved upon. It is in this way: At the beginning of 

 every sealing season — that is, during May and June — large bodies of 

 the young "Ijachelor" seals do not haul up on land very far from the 

 water — a few rods at the most — and when these first arrivals are sought 

 after the natives in capturing them are obliged to approach slyly and 

 run quickly between the dozing seals and the surf before they can take 

 alarm and bolt into the sea. In this manner a dozen Aleuts running 

 down the sand beach of English Bay in the early morning of some 

 June day will turn back from the water thousands of seals, just as the 

 mold board of a plow lays over and back a furrow of earth. When 

 the sleeping seals are first startled they arise and seeing men between 

 them and the water immediately turn, lope, and scramble rapidly back 



^ The attempt on my part to get an authentic list of the numbers of fur seals 

 slain upon the Pribilof Islands prior to 1868 has simply been, to my mind, a par- 

 tial failure. My investigation a^nd search for such record has satisfied me that it 

 does not exist. Memoranda of shipments only, each season, were made by the 

 agents of the Ru.ssian company when the vessels took those skins from the seal 

 islands to Sitka, and of these skins again count was only made of such as were 

 exported to China or Russia, no mention being made anywhere of the number 

 which was consumed in Alaska by the conapany's large force of attaches, or else 

 destroyed at New Archangel. This method of accounting for the yield from the 

 Pribilofs from 1806 or 1817 up to 1867 naturally confuses a correct determination as 

 to the sum total — renders it, perhaps, very inaccurate. This explanation is, at 

 least, due to the reader. 



