264 THE SEALS. 



business depended. To this end I directed our superintendent of the 

 sealeries to observe the greatest care in driving, handling, and killing 

 the seals, cautioning him to allow nothing to be done that would in any 

 way tend to alarm or disturb them, or in the least degree interfere with 

 their already well-known orderly, regular habits of breeding and migra- 

 tion. 



The instructions were explicit that no females should be killed, and, 

 further, that bulls enough of mature age should be preserved to serve 

 them. In order to see that these instructions were followed and the 

 business put upon what I confidently believed to be the right basis, I 

 visited the islands in 1871 and 1872 and again in 1877, and was more 

 than satisfied with the result of my investigations. The work was being 

 carried on at these times in a. highly systematic, orderly mauner, show- 

 ing great improvements over the way of doing it under Russian regime, 

 and the result of good management showed itself on every baud. The 

 breeding rookeries had largely expanded in 1877 over the limits of 1800, 

 as I personally observed and as 1 was informed by the Treasury agent 

 in charge, by our superintendent, and by the native chiefs. The natives 

 were enthusiastic in their praise of the American way of doing business 

 and conducting sealing, as compared with what they had been accus- 

 tomed to in former years. 



Yet it required no very deep study nor occult knowledge to bring 

 about the healthy growth of the seal rookeries. It was simply needed 

 to treat them as our ordinary domestic animals are treated to produce 

 the same result. The seals are polygamous, as our horses, cattle, and 

 sheep are, and the best methods of breeding these is equally advan- 

 tageous when applied to the seals. It is an indisputable fact, and known 

 to the most ordinary breeder of domestic animals, that any surplus of 

 males is a positive injury, and results in a progeny inferior in size, 

 quality, and numbers produced. The fierce struggles of the surplus 

 male seals to gain a foothold on the breeding grounds create great dis- 

 order and commotion, and often end in crushing the pups, and some- 

 times even in killing the mothers. This was so well understood by the 

 Russians that, long before the cession of Alaska, they ordered the 

 slaughter, we are told by Veniaminof, of the superannuated males, in 

 order to clear the way for vigorous stock. They succeeded by this in- 

 telligent course in bringing up the rookeries from their depleted condi- 

 tion of about 1810, consequent upon the bad management of prior years 

 and the unpropitions season of 183;*), when the ice nearly annihilated 

 the seal life, to the productiveness in which we found them in 1808. 

 We continued thesame system, with slight modifications, and had every 

 reason, up to 1882, to expect to be able to return the property to the 

 United States at the expiration of our lease in better condition than 

 when we received it. But a force was already gaining momentum long 

 before we noticed any serious disturbance of the herd on the islands 

 that was destined to disappoint our expectations, and, if not checked, 

 to utterly destroy the commercial value of the sealeries. 



I have shown that under good management the seals increase on 

 the Pribilof group, and know such to be the fact; 

 Gustave Niebaum, p. 79. also in regard to the Commander Islands. The 

 methods were the same in the two places, but the 

 Asiatic herd was not seriously molested at sea until 1890, and the in- 

 crease continued up to that date. "Now, pelagic hunting is going on there 

 the same as in the Alaska waters, and already the herd is diminishing 

 as did the Pribilof herd from the same cause several years earlier. The 



