204 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



playing and sunning themselves) for a mile or two from the shore. When they 

 come ont from the Sea they bleat like Sheep for their yonng; and though they pass 

 through hundreds of other's young ones before they come to their own, yet they 

 will not suffer any of them to suck. The young ones are like Puppies and lie 

 much ashore, but when beaten by any of us. they as well as the old ones will 

 make toward the Sea, and swim very swift and nimble: though on shore they lie 

 very sluggishly, and will not go out of our way unless we beat them, but snap at 

 us. A blow on the Nose soon kills them. Large Ships might here load themselves 

 with Seal Skins and Trane oyl; for they are extraordinary fat. (Dampier: A New 

 Voyage Round the World, 1G83; fifth edition, revised, 1703; vol.i, pp. 88, 90.) 



Dampier, not Cook, first to note the fur seal. — This account 

 of Dampier will be instantly recognized, as far as lie speaks of their 

 habits, as an exact portrait of a breeding rookery of the fur seal. It 

 is painfully brief, however; but it antedates Steller's contribution to 

 the life and habits of the CalJorhinus some sixty years, and is a hun- 

 dred years nearly in advance of Captain Cook's mention of the same 

 subject on the South Georgian (1771) and the Falkland islands (1774). 

 He, therefore, and not Cook, deserves the credit of being the first man 

 to call the attention of the civilized world to the value and the numbers 

 of the fur seal as it existed in southern waters, while Steller enjoys 

 the same reputation with respect to those of the north. ^ 



But after searching through scores of antique traveler's volumes 

 and reading the musty records through and through — after extended 

 personal intei'course with several of the very men who were active in 

 fur sealing throughout the Antarctic forty years ago— I have nothing 

 but a mass of disjointed and conflicting data to show as to the real 

 number of fur seals slain in the waters south of the equator; while 

 the record made hy these men of the life and habit of Aretoceplialus 

 aiisfralis is that odd medley of fact and fiction which destroys the 

 value of the one and the romance of the other. 



The Falkland Islands: Their discovery.— Capt. John Davies, 

 an Englishman, and a companion of Sir Thomas Cavendish, who made 

 a privateersman's voyage to the South seas in 1592, was the first per- 

 son who saw the Falkland Islands. In 1594 Sir Richard Hawkins 

 landed upon them and called them in honor of his queen and himself, 



' William Dampier was the boldest and clearest headed navigator of all who 

 then sailed into unknown seas. He discovered Australia a century before Cook 

 saw it, cruising at that time as a buccaneer; his narrative gave Defoe the idea 

 and supplied the incidents of Robinson Crusoe, on Juan Fernandez; and there 

 is no question in my miud that he possessed those qualities which distinguished 

 Captain Cook to the fuUtst extent. He only lacked the power of the Government 

 behind him to have made a much earlier record, and entirely as meritorious as is 

 the one which Cook left for posterity. 



Although Dampier gives the first sensible and positive description of the fur 

 seal that I can find, yet there is one reference to this animal much earlier; but it 

 reqiiires the reading of an expert to notice that it arose from the sight of a fur 

 seal. It is found in the account of Henry Braiier, or Brewer, who, in behalf of 

 the Dutch West India Company, landed on the coast of Staten Land, March 9, 

 1642, en route to Chile. Here, at Valentines Bay, he " saw among the rocl^s sev- 

 eral sea lions and sea dogs, about the bigness of a good European calf; some of a 

 grayish, some of a brownish color, making a noise not unlike our sheep, and at 

 the approach of our men they betook themselves to the sea."' (Churchill: Voyages: 

 London, 1700: vol. I, p. 456.) As the fur seal is the only one of its family that 

 makes a "noise not unlike our sheep," there is no question that Henry Brewer saw 

 a number of female Arctocephalus australis. in esijecial; though males were along, 

 they being so much larger, he deemed different, and termed them seal ions. 



Juan Fernandez, the Spanish navigator and adventurer, who. in 1563-1567, dis- 

 covered, preempted, and colonized the island of his name, died there in 1575 or 

 thei'eabouts; with his decease the settlement was abandoned. He probably was 

 the first of all civilized men to really know what a fur seal was, but he has left 

 no record, to my knowledge, of the fact. 



_J 



