302 CAUSE. 



I was in the employ of the Alaska Commercial Company, the former 



lessees of the seal islands, and their instructions 



Leander Cox, p All. were to use the utmost care in taking their quota 



of seals, so that there might be no diminution in 



number from year to year, and I personally know those instructions 



were rigidly enforced. 



And that if no other agency is at work in destroying seal life 100,000 



bachelor seals can be taken from the Pribilof 

 Saml. Falconer,p. 161. Islands yearly for an indefinite period, provided 



the rookeries were in the same condition they 

 were in 1871. Of this I am convinced from the fact that the seals con- 

 tinued to increase during all the time I was upon the islands, when 

 100,000 were killed every year, except one, when 95,000 were taken. 

 The management of the sealeries upon Copper Island, under Russian 



occupation, was left wholly to the native chiefs 

 C.F.EmilKrebs, p. 195. and ignorant laborers of the Russian American 



Company. The work of killing the seals and 

 curing the skins was done by them in a very unsystematic, careless 

 way; but even then it was understood that, as the seals are polygam- 

 ous, the surest way to secure an increase of the herd was to kill off 

 surplus males and spare the females, and this was systematically prac- 

 ticed, resulting, as far as I am aware, most satisfactorily. After theexpira- 

 tionof the franchiseof the Russian American Company, in 1867 1 think it 

 was, and their abandonment of the island and the execution of the 

 lease to Hutchinson, Kohl & Co., in 1871, several different parties 

 visited the island, killed seals injudiciously, and inflicted great injury 

 upon the rookeries. They were restrained to some extent by the na- 

 tives from indiscriminate slaughter, but I have no doubt they killed 

 more male seals than they ought to have done, and perhaps also some 

 females. Upon my arrival at the island, in 1871, the native chief told 

 me that the seals were not as plentiful as they had been formerly. I 

 announced that we intended to secure 0,000 skins that year. They 

 protested that it was too many, and begged that a smaller number be 

 killed for one year at least. We, however, got the 0,000 skins as pro- 

 posed, and an almost constantly increasing number in every subse- 

 quent year as long as I stayed on the islands, until in 1880 the rook- 

 eries had so developed that about 30,000 skins were taken, without in 

 the least injuring them. This is proved by the fact that the increase 

 for the next ten years allowed still larger numbers to be killed, amount- 

 ing, I think, in one of the years of the second decade of the lease to 

 about 40,000 skins. 



In (Oder to secure uniformity in the methods pursued, respectively, 

 upon the Pribilof Group and Commander Islands the respective lessees 

 of the two interests sent Capt. Daniel Webster, an expert sealer of 

 many years' experience in the business, and who was at the time in the 

 service of the Alaska Commercial Company at St. Pa.nl Island, to as- 

 sist and instruct me through the summer of 1874 in the best manner of 

 handling seal droves, salting skins, and, generally, in the conduct of 

 the business. In working under his direction I found that the methods 

 pursued by the respective parties upon the different sealeries did not 

 differin any essential feature. The main object in both places was to 

 select good skins for market and spare all female seals and enough vig- 

 orous balls to serve them. When the supply of bulls is more than 

 enough I have no doubt the number of offspring is diminished. The 

 bulls, when overnumerouSj fight savagely for the possession of the cow 



