REPORT OP BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. 211 



861. Equally valuable to the treatment of the seals in the North 

 Pacific is Ihe more recent history of sealing in the South Seas. The 

 excessive slaughter of seals by man on the breeding islands alone had 

 brought about the commercial extermination of the once abundant fur- 

 seal before the year I80O. 



From that period for thirty or forty years sealing was carried on bat 

 fitfully and seldom. Sir John Ross, writing of Kerguelen Land in 

 1840, says: "Of marine animals the sea-elephant and several species 

 of seals were formerly in great abundance, and aniuially drew a num- 

 ber of vessels to these shores in pursuit of them. They have now, after 

 so many years of persecution, (juite deserted the place or have been 

 completely annihilated." All other writers and travellers give similar 

 descriptions of the methods and results of this excessive slaughter. 

 The otficers of Her Majesty's ship " Beagle," surveying the intricate 

 passages of Magellan's Straits and Tierra del Fuego in I80U, speak in 

 similar strain, and it is noticeable that Charles Darwin, when visiting 

 these old-time resorts of the fur-seal in 1832-34, and contributing so 

 much of permanent value to natural history, does not make even a 

 single allusion to the fur-seal. 



8(j2. It is instructive to Jiotice, however, that in later years, as civil- 

 ized nations began to assert sovereignty over these wild shores, so did 

 they claim the right to the seals and to control the breeding ])laces. 

 Augustus Earle, who has published an interesting account of Tristan 

 d'Acunha in the year 1834, thus recounts the experience of one of the 

 islanders named Kichard: " By one of those sudden acts of treachery 

 and cruelty which have been so common on the coast of South America 

 the vessel to which he belonged while quietly engaged in picking up 

 seal on the shore was seized by an armed Republican cruizer on pre- 

 tence of her occupation being unlawful, and her crew (for whom Rich- 

 ard had the honour of cooking) were lodged in durance vile, and 

 145 the only chance they had of escaping from perpetual imprison- 

 ment was by entering the Rei)ublican army." 



863. All accounts speak of change in the habits of the fur-seal. In 

 Tristan d'Acunha they are described as having deserted the open 

 beaches and taken to haunting caves and ledges inaccessible to man. 

 On the Auckland group they now resort to the beaches and ledges below 

 the steep cliffs on the western shores, where the peri)etual heavy surf 

 renders it impracticable for man to land. But on some islands, as on 

 Adam's Island, the sealers have made roadways for themselves over 

 the rocks and ice of the interior down on to these beaches. This is, 

 however, not always practicable, and it is said that under the protec- 

 tion of intractable })reci pices the fur-seal are unmolested and very 

 plentiful on MacDonald's Island, one of the Kerguelen group. 



864. A traveller, Mr. Chapman,visiting Adam's Island in 1889, writes: 

 " We landed at tlie cave where the seal huts are. . . . These seal- 

 ers make an easy road across the island, and when they arrive at the 

 cliffs at the other side, lower some of their number to the ledges and 

 caves where they slaughter seals. The slayers and the skins are then 

 drawn up. It is wholly illegal, but it goes on, so that the fur-seal are 

 nearly exterminated." 



865. The naturalists on the "Challenger" frequently observed fur- 

 seal in 1873-74. Of Nightingale Island it is reported: "The caves, 

 with the sloping ledges leading up to them, are frequented by fur-seals. 

 Four years before the visit of the exi)edition 1,400 seals had been killed 

 on the island by one ship's crew. Seals were very much scarcer in 1873, 

 but the island was visited regularly once a-year by the Tristan people. 



