SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE. 285 



centage will be. The reason for this seeming paradox is very simple. 

 The young males, having no family responsibilities, can afford to hunt 

 nearer home, where food can be found if sufficient time is devoted to the 

 search. The mother does not leave her young except when necessity 

 compels her to seek food for its sustenance. She can not afford to waste 

 time on feeding grounds already occupied by younger and more active 

 feeders; hence she makes the best of her way to richer fields fart h el' 

 away, gorges herself with food, then seeks rest and a quiet nap on the 

 surface. Under these circumstances she sleeps soundly, and becomes 

 an easy victim to the watchful hunter. 



A double waste occurs when the mother seal is killed, as the pups 

 will surely starve to death. A mother seal will give sustenance to 

 no pup but her own. I saw sad evidences of this waste on St. Paul 

 last season, where large numbers of pups were lying about the rookeries, 

 where they had died of starvation. 



Adolph W. Thompson (ibid., p. 480) killed females in milk, although he 

 never went nearer to the island than 25 or 30 miles. 



Michael White (ibid., p. 489) killed seals in milk not less than 100 to 

 200 miles from the island. 



William H. Williams (ibid., p. 93), United States Treasury agent in 

 charge of the seal islands in Bering Sea, states that it is a well-known 

 fact substantiated by the statements of reputable persons who have 

 been on sealing vessels and seen them killed 200 miles or more from the 

 islands, and who say that they have seen the decJcs of the vessels slippery 

 of milk flowing from the carcasses of the dead females. He alludes to 

 the thousands of dead pups left ou the rookeries starved to death by 

 the destruction of their mothers as conclusive evidence of the destruc- 

 tion and havoc wrought by the pelagic seal hunters. 



If this cumulative and unimpeachable evidence does not establish the 

 fact which we have undertaken to prove, we must despair of satisfying 

 this High Tribunal or any other tribunal of the correctness of our 

 statements. We submit, however, that it is more than made out — that 

 it must be taken as a fact in the discussion of this case — that the cows, 

 while suckling, go to sea for food ; that they travel long distances, some- 

 times as great as 200 miles; and that during such excursions they are 

 ruthlessly slaughtered by pelagic sealers, in many cases without profit, 

 as they sink and are irretrievably lost. The sickening details, abund- 

 antly furnished by the witnesses, sufficiently characterize the business, 

 and justify the harshest expressions of condemnation. The slaughter 

 thus described constitutes a crime, for it violates the most common in- 

 stincts of our nature and would be punished by the laws of every civi- 

 lized nation, if jurisdiction could only be acquired over the wrong doers. 

 And yet the Commissioners for Great Britain undertake to justify this 



