REPORT OF BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. 175 



[sic] in 1876. In 1877, the last season I spent on the ishmds, there was 

 an evident increase in tlie numbers of this class."* In the same year, 

 before a Committee of Congress on the Alaska Commercial Company, 

 he repeats his statement as to the too heavy rate of killing-, saying: ''I 

 think that the number of 1()0,()()(> was a little more than ought to have 

 been begun with. I think if we had begun at 85,000, there would have 

 been no necessity for diminishing. On the other hand, \ think that 

 within two years from now it might be increased."! 



080. In 1876, a lengthened inquiry was made by a Committee of Con- 

 gress in regard to the operations of, and certain charges made against, 

 the Alaska Commercial Company. This Committee does not seem to 

 have had clearly before it the fact, that the actual number of seals 

 killed under the lease considerably exceeded 100,000, but the view 

 arrived at as to the killing of 100,000 seals annually, included in 

 118 the official report of the investigation is plainly expressed as fol- 

 lows: "It is certain that to kill more than this num])er (100,000) 

 would tend to a rapid decrease of the annual supply, and end in the 

 extinction of the animals on these islands long before the expiration of 

 the twenty years that the lease had to run." J 



681. From 1877 to 1887, such allusions as can, be found to the general 

 condition of the seals upon the Pribyloff Islands in contem])orary reports 

 are almost uniforndy of an optimistic character; and a i)eiusal of these 

 reports might well lead to the belief that a contiinied and satisfactory 

 increase in number was in i^rogress, which, if truly representing the 

 facts, should have brought the rookeries in this period of eleven years 

 into a state of unexampled prosperity, though the facts were in reality 

 far different. 



682. The only reference to any decline met with in these Eeports — 

 and that is an incidental one — is due to Assistant Treasury Agent 

 Wardman, who shows that there was a decrease in the number of "kill- 

 able" seals on St. George Island in 1882, as compared with 1881. His 

 statement serves to prove, at least, that the practical limit of killables 

 on St. George had been reached in 1882, at a number of 21,000 or 22,000, 

 and that the balance of a quota of 25,000 accorded to that island had 

 to be made up on St. Paul.§ 



683. Though not to be found in the contemporary Eeports, the true 

 history of these years can. now be very clearly understood, in a general 

 way, as the result of more recent investigations and of our own inquiries. 



684. Mr. Elliott's "Monograph" of the Pribyloff Islands is based on 

 examinations carried out in 1872-74, and his statements of fact clearly 

 show that nearly half the breeding rookeries and hauling grounds were 

 at this x)eriod, and had been for at least ten years previously, entirely 

 exempt from "driving," and therefore constituted reserves of seal life, 

 and esijecially of young male seals. He writes: 



As the matters stand to-day, 100,000 seals alone on St. Paul can be taken and 

 skinned in less than forty workinji; days, xcithin a rad'ms of 1^ miles from the village, 

 and from the salt-house on North-east Point ;\\ hence the driving, Avith the exception of 

 two experimental drives which I witnessed in 1872, has never been made from longer 

 distances than Tolstoi to the eastward [westward], Lukannon to the northward, 

 and Zoltoi to the southward^f the killing grounds at St. Paul village. 51 



Session, ^.^j,.„.> ^,„. „^^.., ^.. „„. 



IIThe italics are not employed in the oi'iginal. 

 ii United States Census Report, p. 72. 



