212 REPORT OF BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. 



The Germans killed only seven seals at Inaccessible Island daring their 

 stay, but the Tristan people killed forty in December 1872."* 



806. Of the Crozet Island the report was: "The islands are fre 

 queiited by elephant- and fur-seals, although they are not so plentiful 



as formerly The flesh of the seals and birds, the eggs of 



the latter, together with the Kerguelen cabbage, form a nourishing 

 diet on which the sealers residing at times on one or other of the islands 

 have usually lived." 



807. Of Kerguelen Island it is said : " Two of the whaling schooners 

 killed over seventy fur-seals on one day, and upwards of twenty on 



another It is a pity that some discretion is not used in 



killing the animals." 



808. Another entry tells us of the Messier Channel: "The steam- 

 pinnace left Gray Harbour at 4 A. M. with several naturalists and offi- 

 cers, and joined the ship in the evening at Port Grappler " (in January 

 1870). " On the way landing was eflected at several spots, and a num- 

 ber of birds were procured; a very large number of fur-seals {Arctoce- 

 phaltis) were seen, and six were shot, the skins and skeletons of which 

 were preserved." 



809. In regard to Australia, Sir F. McCoy, kindly supplying us with 

 inibrmation from the National Museum, Melbourne, states of the Uuo- 

 taria cinerea: " Tlie decline or destruction of the fishery is certainly 

 attributable to the indiscriminate slaughter of the seals on the few 

 islands ofl' the south coast, esi)ecially in Western Port, where the old 

 males and gravid females resorted in the summer to bring forth and 



tend the young The fur-seal fishery was conducted simply 



by manning a boat suitable for landing on the islands, the lauding 

 usually taking place at night, and then the seals were killed indis- 

 criminately by clubbing them on the nose with large sticks 



The Australian fur-seals were never fislied for in the open ocean." 



870. Thus, over all these forty years, vessels, most of them under the 

 United States flag, have continued to haunt the breeding places of the 

 fur-seal in the South Seas for the purpose of killing all that could be 

 killed, regardless of sex or condition. 



The records show that the number of vessels fitting out in New Eng- 

 land ports for this fishery averaged since 1840 from six to ten or twelve 

 each year. 



871. At the time of the revival of sealing in the North Pacific in 1867 

 and following years, several more vessels were dispatched to the South 

 Seas and very considerable catclies were made, although not in num- 

 bers at all comparable to those of the old days. Nevertheless, vessels 

 returned with cargoes of 1,000, 1,000, and even 2,700 choice skins. 



872. A summary and authoritative nccount of what occurred was 

 given in 1880 by the Honourable C. A. Williams, of Connecticut, before 

 the House of Representatives: "People who had been previously 

 engaged in the sealing business revisited these southern localities after 

 a lapse of nearly fifty years, and no seals were found on the Island of 

 Desolation The Island of South Shetland, and the Island 



of South Georgia, and the Island of Sandwich Land, and the 

 146 Diegos off Cape Horn, and one or two minor points, were found 



to yield more or less seal. In this period of fifty years in these 

 localities seal life had recuperated to such an extent that there was 

 taken from them in the six years from 1870 to 1877 perhaps 40,000 

 skins To-day they are again exhausted I do 



* "Challenger Expedition Rajwrt," vol. i, p. 264 et seg. 



