OPINIONS OF OTHER WITNESSES. 507 



much larger vessels are fitted out, and equipped with more boats to 

 each vessel than on the American side of the Pacific. Unless restricted, 

 they will, in a very few years, by the destruction of the breeding seals, 

 deplete these rookeries, as they have those of Alaska. In fact, two 

 years ago last year, this depletion had already become apparent, and 

 last year the Russian officer in charge ordered the catch to be reduced. 

 I feel convinced, and it is the opinion of others familiar with the busi- 

 ness, that it will be impossible for the company having the privilege of 

 sealing there, to take this year even the 30,000, to which the quota is 

 now reduced. 



The business of pelagic sealing, if permitted to be carried on in the 

 northern waters, must soon result in the extermi- 

 nation of the seal life and the destruction of a J- M. Morton, p. 69. 

 great and valuable industry. It must produce 



untold poverty and distress among the native people of the seal 

 islands, and in various adverse ways affect the material interests of 

 other Alaska settlements and communities. 



As one result of my study of seal life on the islands I have come 

 to the conclusion that if pelagic sealing in Bering 

 Sea and North Pacific should continue for a pe- S. E. Nettleton, p. 76. 

 riod of five years to the same extent as now prac- 

 ticed, seal life upon the Pribilof Islands will have become extinct. 



In contemplating this destruction, the natives of the seal islands are 

 most deeply interested, for they are wholly de- 

 pendent upon the seals for a livelihood. The an- s. H. Mcintyre, p. 53. 

 cestors of the three hundred people now upon the 



islands were taken there more than one hundred years ago, and their 

 descendants have been born and bred to their occupation of seal kill- 

 ing and know no other. Prior to 1868 the Russians furnished them 

 only indifferently well with coarse articles of food and clothing which 

 the seals did not supply, but left them to live in unhealthy conditions 

 in their damp underground houses, often unsupplied with fuel and not 

 infrequently short of food. Under the liberal management of the 

 Americans they have been provided with comfortable wooden houses, 

 an abundance of coal to heat them, warm clothing, well-taught schools 

 in comfortable schoolhouses, attractive churches in the Greco-Russian 

 faith, to which they are devotedly attached, and, in short, with all the 

 comforts and many of the luxuries of civilization. With these sur- 

 roundings they have made remarkable progress, rendered possible by 

 their income of more than $40,000 per annum from the seal fisheries, 

 without which they are left in absolute poverty, and must either leave 

 their island home in search of other employment of which they know 

 nothing, rely upon the charity of the Government for meager support, 

 or starve. They rightly charge these dire alternatives upon the pe- 

 lagic seal hunters, who have ruthlessly destroyed the herd in which 

 every native had a certain vested right, in the exercise of which he 

 deserved the protection of the Government into whose care he has 

 come. 



And it is plain to anyone familiar with this animal that extermina- 

 tion must soon follow unless some restrictive nieas- T ,, TJT . 

 ures are adopted without delay. Dan l Weister >P- 18i - 



