72 THE DEPONENTS AND THEIR EXPERIENCE. 



Billy Williams, being duly sworn, deposes and says: I was born at 



Kas-aan and have lived there all my life. Am 25 



Billy Williams, p. 300. years old. Am a hunter by occupation, and have 



hunted fur-seal every year for the last five years, 



always hunting in Dixons Entrance and off Prince of Wales Island 



between March and June. 



C. A. Williams, being duly sworn, says that he is a citizen of the 

 United States and a resident of the city of New 



C. A. Williams, p. 535. London, in the State of Connecticut, and is 63 

 years of age. 



First. That he was a member of the firm of Williams & Haven, 

 whose business has of late been carried on by him under the firm name 

 of 0. A. Williams & Co.; that said firms have been and the latter -till 

 is engaged in the whaling and seal-hunting business, and prior to the 

 formation of said firm of Williams & Haven, upwards of forty years 

 ago, the same business was carried on by deponent's father and grand- 

 father, from the beginning of this century. That during the time said 

 business has been in deponent's hands he has employed upwards of 

 twenty-five vessels in the sealing business and has liad as many as eight 

 or ten vessels at one Lime engaged in that business. That deponent's 

 vessels have taken seals during the last forty years from the North 

 Pacific, Cape of Good Hope, Cape Horn, South Shetland Islands, South 

 Georgia, Crozetts, Desolation Islands, Sandwich Land, and Gough 

 Island. 



That immediately after the cession of Eussian America to the United 

 States deponent dispatched the American bark Peru to the Bering 

 Sea from Honolulu (where deponent at that time had for some years been 

 residing), for the purpose of investigating the possibilities of seal fish- 

 ing in that locality. That about the year 1870 deponent was associ- 

 ated with several other gentlemen in forming the Alaska Commercial 

 Company, which company obtained, in the year 1870, a lease from the 

 United States Government for a period of twenty years of the right to 

 take seals on the Pribilof Islands, in the Bering Sea, those islands con- 

 sisting of St. Paul, St. George, and Walrus islands. At the expiration 

 of the said lease, in 1890, the United States Government iuvited bids 

 for a lease for a second period of twenty years, and a lease was given to 

 the North American Commercial Company, and in this company depo- 

 nent has never had any interest. That during the whole of the period 

 which deponent has been engaged in this business it has had his close 

 attention. Deponent has talked at great length with the captains of 

 his various ships, most of whom are now no longer living, and with 

 officers of the Alaska Commercial Company; he has also inspected 

 many thousands of skins of seals caught by his vessels, and has also 

 seen many thousands of skins in the warehouses of C. M. Lampson & 

 Co., in London. The members of that firm at the present time are Sir 

 George Lampson, Emil Teichman, Norman Lampson, and Alfred Fraser. 

 The firm of C. M. Lampson & Co. receive, handle, and sell a very much 

 larger number of seal skins than all the other houses in the world to- 

 gether. The whole catch of the Alaska Commercial Company was 

 annually consigned to that firm for sale at public auction in the city of 

 London, and much the larger proportion of all the other catches that 

 have been made by deponent's vessels in other parts of the world have 

 likewise been consigned to them; and the present lessees of the Pribilof 

 Islands, deponent understands, still consign their catches to them, as 



