ORAL ARGUMENT OF FREDERICK R. COUDERT, EBQ. 413 



Mr. Carter. — Tliese were all in Behriiig Sea? 



Mr. CouDERT. — Yes. I will uow ask Mr. Lausiug to point out Una- 

 laska Island. 



[Mr. Lansing- then did so.] 



Mr. Phelps. — That is, 150 miles from the Pribilof Islands. 



Mr. CouDERT. — Directly in the course of migration. As I have said 

 before, Captain William Cox was 100 miles to the W( st. 



The President of the Tribunal Mill remember that some question was 

 raised the other day as to the number of seals taken by i^elagic sealers. 

 Captain Cox is the gentleman who took 1,000 in 4 days, and this testi- 

 mony, the learned Tribunal will observe, also corroborates the charges 

 thatwe have made. Before dismissing the subject I will call attention 

 to this fact, that nowhere does any one witness, of all this number 

 whose deposition I have read, claim that seals were caught more than 

 200 miles to the West of the islands. When you consider that the 

 Commander Islands are 800 miles off, you will notice that all these are 

 in the zone of the Pribilof Islands, and are in that particular group. 



Mr. Justice Harlan. — The Commander Islands are 800 miles to the 

 West, you say. 



Mr. Coudert. — Yes. 



Sir Charles Eussell. — I did not know that. 



Mr. Coudert. — Very nearly, in round figures, 800 miles. 



Now with regard to the question of dead pu])s the learned Tribunal 

 will find that considerable space is devoted to the examination of that 

 question, and the origin of their death. Of course these animals will 

 die, as all animals will, and a certain portion of them would perish 

 under the best circumstances, but when there is a large loss, and that 

 loss is coincident with the death of the mother, I do not think we need 

 go into any careful examination or balancing of testimony. If we find 

 a man with a bullet through his brain lying on the ground, even in the 

 hot sun of July, we assume that he was killed by that bullet, and not 

 by sunstroke, and so when we find, at a certain period of the year, 

 that a large number of pups die on the islands, that they are emaci- 

 ated, and when they are opened there is nothing in their stomachs, or 

 nothing but a very little milk; and you are shown at the same time 

 that the mothers upon which they depend for sustenance have been 

 killed — unless something can be shown that jyrimd facie appears to 

 account for the death outside these natural causes, we must assume 

 that they died of starvation, and that is what the testimony undoubt- 

 edly shows. 



Therefore, I will not dwell upon that. I prefer to let the matter 

 stand as it is, and hear what arguments our friends on the other side 

 may have to state on the subject. We simi)ly say, the natural cause of 

 death is the death of the mother, and if it were true, as it is not, that 

 a mother would suckle more than her own, and would take a waif when 

 she found it, from maternal instinct and charity, then the difficulty 

 would be only slightly minimized, because the supply of food would not 

 be sufficient to go around and nourish all the young. 



I will here interrupt the regular course of my argument to answer a 

 question of the learned President of the Tribunal with regard to the 

 action of Eussia in seizing pelagic sealers. In the Case and Counter 

 Case of the United States and Appendix on pages 201, 202, 203 and 204 

 is all the information that we have upon the subject. It is imi)erfect; 

 it is by no means as full as the Tribunal might like to have it; but the 

 learned Arbitrators will understand that that is not a subject upon 

 which we can have any official evidence, and we must let the evidence 

 such as has appeared in the Case speak for itself. 



