484 OTHER SEAL HERDS. 



7 vessels took about 5,000. Up to about 1880 from 100 to 200 seals were 

 taken annually from these islands. Since 1880 the rookeries were not 

 worked till 1888-'89. That season I visited the islands aud took 39 

 skins. I again went there tins year and took 41. 



Sandwich Land. — In 1875-'70 I visited these islands; there were 3 or 

 4 vessels in the fleet. We searched the southern islands and found 

 nothing. One vessel went to the northern islands and took abqnt 2,000 

 skins. In 1870-'77 I was there again, the fleet consisting of 6 vessels. 

 We took altogether about 4,000. The next season some vessels again 

 visited the islands, but did not take 100 seals. In 1880-8! 2 vessels 

 stopped there, but got no skins. From that time until I called there 

 this season they had not been worked. I took 400 skins. Perhaps 200 

 more could be taken there, but not more, and that would clear them 

 up, except what few young seals might live through this season. I 

 have never been on the Lobos Islands, but in passing the month of the 

 Platte in September I have seen seals in the water a hundred miles 

 from the islands. 



Prom hundreds of thousands of seals resorting to these islands and 

 coasts, the numbers have been reduced to a few 

 Jas. w. Budington, p. hundreds, which seek the land in scattered bands 

 595. (Antarctic.) am i rus j 1 to tlie sea on t ] ie approach of man. 



Manner of sealing. — When I first began sealing in 1871, these rook- 

 eries had not been worked for twenty-five or thirty years, and the 

 seals had had a- chance to increase. The seals were then very tame, 

 and were all killed with clubs. So tame were they you could go around 

 among them like you could among cattle, and at one place they 

 wouldn't get out of the way, so had to be knocked in the head in order 

 to make room to set up a tent. Before 1880, however, the seals had 

 become wild from hunting, and we had to use guns, killing them on 

 the rookeries aud in the water, wherever we could get at them. 



Waste <>/ life. — We killed everything, old and young, that we could 

 get in gunshot of, excepting the black pups, whose skins were un- 

 marketable, and most all of these died of starvation, having no means 

 of sustenance, or else were killed by a sort of buzzard, when the mother 

 seals, having been destroyed, were unable to protect them longer. So, 

 too, these birds ate the carcasses of the dead pups, and little traces 

 were to be found of the bodies. The seals in all these localities have 

 been destroyed entirely by this indiscriminate killing of old and young, 

 male and female. If the seals in these regions had been protected, and 

 only a certain number of "dogs" (young male seals unable to hold 

 their positions on the beaches) allowed to be killed, these islands and 

 coasts would be again populous with seal life. The seals would cer- 

 tainly not have decreased, and would have produced an annual supply 

 of skins for all times. 



As it is, however, seals in the Antarctic regions are practically ex- 

 tinct, and I have given up the business as being unprofitable. The 

 whole annual catch for 7 vessels has not exceeded 2,000 skins for the 

 last four years. 



I have observed the habits of the seals frequenting these localities, 



and I spent fourteen consecutive months on one 



Ge0 VAntarc&c 5 ) 96 ' island, called by us West Cliff, located on the 



coast of Chile, about a hundred miles north of the 



Straits of Magellan. On that cruise we were three years away from 



