FUR-SEAL HEED OF ALASKA. 



187 



controversy to which he refers in his letter 

 to Mr. Windom, does it not look strange 

 that he makes no mention whatever of the 

 matter in his diary? It seems almost in- 

 conceivable that so important a matter as 

 the unlawful killing of female seals should 

 not have been recorded at the time. 



Mr. Elliott. It is recorded in the 

 Treasury Department. 



Dr. EvERMANN. Not until two months 

 later does he put the matter on record. 

 He has explained why he did not embody 

 this information in his final report to Mr. 

 Windom, but that does not explain why 

 it is not even hinted at in his ' 'Daily field 

 notes," which, he states, are given in 

 extenso in Section VIII of his 1890 report. 



In his letter to Secretary Windom he 

 claims that he discovered that three fe- 

 males had been killed and straightway 

 ordered all killing stopped. Because 

 three seals had been killed illegally he 

 stopped all killing. Is that what an 

 an efficient and fair-minded agent would 

 have done? No; not at all. On the con- 

 trary, an intelligent agent, competent to 

 cope with the situation, would have 

 stopped the killing of females, if such 

 were being killed, but would have con- 

 tinued the proper killing of males, just 

 the same. No one except Mr. Elliott has 

 claimed there was not an abundance of 

 killable males. Indeed, Daniel Webster, 

 who was in immediate charge of the kill- 

 ings on the islands for more than 20 years, 

 and the chief, Anton Melovidov, have 

 both stated under oath that 60,000 good 

 merchantable skins could have been taken 

 in 1890 without any injury to the herd. 

 These respective statements follow. 



Here is a copy of the sworn statement 

 made by Daniel Webster. It touches 

 upon several matters. They are all more 

 or less pertinent, but I will not read them 

 all. (Hearing No. 10, p. 489, Apr. 19, 

 1912.) 



Those ' 'affidavits' ' were simply bogus — 

 they were false ab initio. They were re- 

 ceived by Mr. Foster on April 3, 1891, in 

 this Mills letter aforesaid, and then what 

 happened? 



On or about the 5th of April Mr. Charles 

 J. Goff was called into Secretary Charles 

 Foster's office and told that he need not 

 concern himself with the seal-island busi- 

 ness any further; that "the department 

 had other business for him to transact at 

 Montreal," Canada (i. e., looking after 

 immigration cases). Goff was directed to 

 proceed there forthwith (and he did). 

 No complaint againt him was uttered by 

 Foster — just called him in, and sent him 

 to Montreal in the ' 'regular order of 

 official business' ' which governs all the 

 special agents. Goff was astonished; he 

 was speechless, but obeyed. 



Now, gentlemen, what happened? We 

 come right back to this letter of Ogden 

 Mills. A new administration took charge 

 March 4, 1895. I determined to get 

 copies of those ' 'affidavits' ' which Charles 

 Foster published a mention of in the New 

 York Tribune, May (9?), 1891, as his 

 authority for that suppression of my re- 

 port of 1890, and those of my official asso- 

 ciates, Messrs. Goff, Murray, Nettleton, 

 and Lavender. 



I called on Secretary John G. Carlisle 

 of the Treasury. He evinced the live- 

 liest interest in this question and asked 

 Assistant Secretary Charles S. Hamlin to 

 go with me to the chief supervising special 

 agent's office and furnish me with copies 

 of those affidavits, Capt. Healey's letter, 

 etc. 



Did we find those affidavits or the 

 Healey letter? No. We traced them out 

 from the Ogden Mills letter receipt in 

 April, 1891, to one division after another, 

 only to find that they had been received, 

 had been noted, and had disappeared 

 from the files when Charles Foster left the 

 Secretary's office, March 4, 1895. 



WTiy were those ' 'affidavits' ' and that 

 letter of Healey removed and taken from 

 the official files when Charles Foster pub- 

 lished notes of them as his official warrant 

 for suppressing the sworn official reports 

 of Charles J. Goff and his three assistants 

 in charge of the seal islands for ] 890, and 

 my special report of 1890 to Mr. Windom, 

 ordered by act approved April 5, 1890? 



WTiy? Because their authors had per- 

 jured themselves, and if those ' 'affidavits" 

 had been in the hands of John G. Carlisle 

 the lessees would have been obliged, in 

 my opinion, by Mr. Carlisle to surrender 

 their lease. That is why they were ab- 

 stracted by or with the full knowledge 

 and consent of Charles Foster, Secretary 

 of the Treasury, on or some time before 

 March 4, 1895. Nobody else could have 



