588 ALASKA INDUSTORIES. 



exterminated, in 1805 the Russian Government prohibited their kill- 

 ing for a period of five years, and the rookeries regained their numbers. 

 For a few years after the transfer of Alaska to the United States indis- 

 criminate slaughter of the seals was carried on by seven different firms. 



In 1SG9 the islands were declared a Government reservation, and a 

 company of soldiers stationed on them. In 1870 the seal fisheries 

 were leased for twenty years to the Alaska Commercial Company, of 

 San Francisco, at an annual rental of $55,000 and a tax of $2.62^ on 

 each skin In 1890, at the expiration of their lease, the Alaska Com- 

 mercial Comjiany had paid into the Treasury of the United States 

 $5,956,565.07. Since 1890 the lease of these fisheries has been held by 

 the North American Commercial Comj)any, also of San Francisco, at an 

 annual rental of $100,000 and a tax of $9.62 on each seal. Pelagic 

 sealing and rookery raiding have so diminished the numbers of the seals 

 that 20,000 skins is now the average number killed by the company each 

 season. 



On June 25 we sighted the fog-wreathed cliffs of St. George, but a 

 heavy sea was running, the fog became thicker as we approached the 

 island, and it was not considered safe to attempt to make a landing. 

 The same evening we were in the vicinity of St. Paul, but by this time 

 the fog had become even more dense, and the visit to these famous 

 islands had to be deferred until our return in the fall. Accordingly, the 

 Bear shaped her course for St. Lawrence Island, the largest body of 

 land in Bering Sea. 



In the bright, clear sunshine of June 26, over seas as smooth as 

 glass, we glided past barren St. Matthew's Island, a famous home of 

 bears, with its massive Cape Ui:)right and towering Pinnacle Eock. On 

 June 28 the anchor was dropped off the north side of the village on 

 St. Lawrence Island. A high sea was running, and a long line of 

 angry white breakers dashing upon the icy beach formed a barrier to 

 the crowds of natives whom we could see walking along the shore 

 waiting for a chance to launch their canoes and come to the ship. 

 Among them we could distinguish Mr. and Mrs. Gambell, the teachers 

 who have just completed their first year among these half-civilized 

 people, the only white persons on the island, with no communication 

 with the outside world for eight or nine months of the year. Soon 

 huge cakes of ice came drifting down toward us; the anchor was 

 weighed and the vessel steamed over to a more sheltered position on the 

 south side of the sand spit upon which the village is built. As soon as 

 the anchor was dropped, a fiotilla of oomiaks was alongside, and the St. 

 Lawrence Islanders fiocked on board, stalwart fellows with dark, tat- 

 tooed faces and tonsured heads, like so many very dirty but exceedingly 

 good-natured monks, with massive shoulders developed by almost con- 

 stant use of the paddle, dressed in suits of reindeer fur or hair seal. 

 Some of them wore summer suits of drilling and the poorer ones had 

 shirts constructed of flour bags with the inscription "Franklin Mills 



