ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 205 



"Hawkins' Maiden-land;" lie said nothing about seals. In 1598 they 

 they were seen by a Dutch squadron, Verhagen, and Sebald de Wert 

 commanding; thej'^ touched and, ignorant of i^rior discovery, named 

 them "Sebald's Islands." Capt. William Dampier, an Englishman, 

 nearly one hundred years after, in 1(386, visited them and styled them 

 " Sibbet de Wards ; " he does not speak of seals there. They were 

 finally called the Falkland Islands by Strong, an English navigator, 

 in 1G89; the manuscript journal of Strong yet remains unpublished 

 and filed away in the archives of the British Museum. Captain 

 Cook's emphatic mention of the fur seal at South Georgia in 1771 

 gradually drew the attention of fur sealers to a focus, when, from 

 1801 to 184:0, inclusive, the whole Antarctic sealing ground was rav- 

 aged by them, and the Falkland Islands were the head center of all 

 their operations. Great Britain took immediate jurisdiction, for the 

 first time, over the Falkland Islands in 1833. 



Extraordinary absence of sealing data. — Such, in brief, are 

 the circumstances that attended the early discovery of these celebrated 

 Falkland Islands, which were the rendezvous of a large sealing fleet 

 for a period of nearly thirty years — from 1800 to 1826, inclusive; yet, 

 in spite of it, I can find little or no evidence of the extent of the catch 

 thereon, or of the general location of the vast rookeries known to be 

 slaughtered here during that extended interval. If these islands had 

 been far beyond the track of commerce, as are all the other Antarctic 

 sealing grounds save Juan Fernandez, then the remarkable, surj) ris- 

 ing want of data in this respect would not be so marked a feature to 

 the history of the subject. The Falkland Islands have not only l^een 

 a common port of entry and departure for vessels of all nations since 

 their discovery in 159-4, but as far back as 1770 they were a bone of 

 contention and long-sustained diplomatic overtures between Spain 

 and Great Britain, which came very near to i^lunging both countries 

 into war on their sole account. I will recite the history of this dis- 

 turbance, because its solution was the direct result of our losing pos- 

 session of Vancouvers Island and all that British Columbian territory 

 to-day south of 54° 40' north latitude — a fur-sealing quarrel at the 

 outset originated the whole difficult3^ 



Troubles here which caused" us the loss of Vancouver's 

 Island. — The piratical cruise of Sir Francis Drake in 1577, followed 

 by that of Thomas Candish, or Cavendish, and John Davies, in 1592, 

 whereby the Spanish settlements and galleons on the west coasts of 

 the American continent were literally ravished, aroused the Castilians 

 to a sense of their future danger, and they began rather slowly to 

 provide means of shelter and future support. In prosecution of this 

 plan for protecting the Spanish settlements and commerce of America, 

 Francisco Bucareli, the governor of Buenos Ayres, on the 10th of 

 June, 1770, forcibly expelled the handful of British "sealers" from 

 their little establishment. Port Egmont, on the Falkland Islands. As 

 soon as the news of this expulsion reached London, the English sec- 

 retary of state. Lord Weymouth, addressed, September 12, a demand 

 to the court at Madi-id for the immediate disavowal, on its part, of the 

 acts of Bucareli, and called for the prompt and unconditional restitu- 

 tion of the islands in the condition which they were before the writs 

 of removal were executed. War was imminent, but Louis XV, of 

 France, tendered his good offices as a mediator betv\^een the two dis- 

 putants. The Spanish Government acceded to this and placed the 

 entire settlement of the controversy in the hands of the King of 

 France, for his disposition as he should consider proper for the honor 



