194 ORAL ARGUMENT OF JAMES C. CARTER, ESQ. 



When they passed into the control of the United States, and during 

 the year 18(i8, there was no reguhir authority established upon the 

 islands, and consequently the islands were open to predatory excursions 

 of all sorts; many exi)e(litions were sent thither and made raids upon 

 the islands, if raids they could be called. There was nobody there to 

 prevent them, and they took an enormous number. 



The President. The Russian lessees had no more power? 



Mr. Carter. The Russians had no authority to ]uevent it. The 

 United States Government had established no authority. 



The President. Was the Russian company dissolved by the very 

 fact>— 



Mr. Carter. No; but it had no longer any title to the breeding 

 places. 



The President. And no American company had been formed? 



Mr. Carter. No; no new American comjiany had been formed, and 

 the United States Government had established no authority over them. 

 So there was a period of lawlessness there. Anyone could do as he 

 pleased. There was a sort of interregiuim so to speak. That was 

 availed of by many persons who made an indiscriminate attack— or to 

 some extent indiscriminate— upon the seals. In the first year they took 

 about 1*40,000. 



Mr. Justice Harlan. What year was that? 



Mr. Carter. 1808. They tried to confine themselves, even then, to 

 the taking of males; and they were greatly aided in that ellbrt, aiul the 

 seals were greatly spared, by the natural aversion which the natives 

 who did the driving had acquired against killing a female. The estab- 

 lishment of the system and its long maintenance upon the island, of 

 saving the females, its obvious benefits and utilities, its manifest neces- 

 sity to a jireservation of the herd, had so habituated the natives to it 

 that they had accpiired an aversion to the killing of females; and that 

 aversion had a beneficial effect even during this period of unregulated 

 capture. Still, it is not im])robable, and there is some evidence to show, 

 that there were i)erhaps thirty or forty thousand females taken at that 

 time. Subsequently to that the United States established its authority, 

 leased tlie pro]>eity to a company by a lease, one of the regulations of 

 which gave the United States i)ower to control the number tiuit should 

 be taken annually; and under that the lessees, from the first, began to 

 take > 00,000 young males a year. 



The President. Can the Government fix the number every year? 



Mr. Car'IER. Every year. 



The President. And alter the number every year? 



Mr. Carter. Alter the number. 



The President. Without owing any indemnity to the company? 



Mr. Carter. Absolutely at its own pleasure; and it has agents, 

 superintendents, there, for the purpose of observing the condition of 

 the herd in order to enable it to exercise that discretion the more 

 wisely. 



I may say further in reference to the slaughter of females, and to the 

 protections against it, the United States upon acquiring the sover- 

 eignty over the islands, passed laws making it a penal offence to kill 

 any female. It was a ])enal offence to kill any seal at all witliout its 

 authority, and a penal offence to kill any female under any circum- 

 stances. It began, as I say, by taking 1(M),000 a year. 



The President. Is that written down in the grant also, that they 

 are not to kill females? 



Mr. Carter. 1 cannot say. 



