254 RICPORT OF BRITISH COMMlJSSIONERS. 



largest group, have been visited rejieatedly diiriug the last eighty years, and nnni<;r- 

 ous shore parties have lived there. On the Snares, sealers' huts still stand. The 

 coasts of Stewart's Island have yielded large unmbers of seals. 



"The Rev. Wm. Yate, a missionary, in 1828-35, after describing the enornions 

 number of whales destroyed (black or inshore whales) writes: 'There are also sev- 

 eral establishments for the seal hshery on the coast of New Zealand or on the small 

 islands in the vicinity of the coast. A number of sailors are landed and left to kill 

 and skin the seals, many thousands of which are destroyed in the course of a few 

 months.' Earlier than this, in 1815, the Rev. S. Marsden, the first missionary in New 

 Zealand, writes narrating the adventures of the Maori Chief Diraterra and ten Talii- 

 tians and ten Europeans who were placed as a sealing party on the Honnty Islands. 

 They suffered great privations, but in a few mouths, on sixteen rocks with a total 

 area of about 100 acres without vegetation or water, killed and skinned 8,000 seals. 

 This is enough to show you that once these ])]aces were densely peopled with seals. 

 The Chatham Islands were another scaling ground, but of them I know very little. 

 All this relates to matters which happened so long ago that sealers are a dead race, 

 while, as you know, whalers who came later or lasted longer are only represented 

 by a very few old men. As for middle-aged natives like myself, we heard in our 

 youth of whales, but not of seals. 



"Sealing has been closed for a good many years, before which the Maoris of Riv- 

 erton xised to visit the west coast and get a few, and though poaching never wholly 

 stopped, it did not pay very well. This year a sapient Covernment has opened a 

 season, and two vessels have been sent to the islands. One reports getting 150 from 

 the Chathams and Bountys, and the other 450 from the Auckland, but there is some 

 underhand work over it, and more may have been got, as the crew are accused of 

 stealing 300 skins. This is by far the largest take for many years, and has, I think, 

 about finished the fur-seal in New Zealand waters. 



" I visited live groups of islands last year in the summer, and saw one fur-seal, and 

 from this and other facts concluded that they were very scarce now. 



"Now, as to the cause of this, there is but one answer. Reckless killing and dis- 

 turbance in the rookeries. Mr. Dawson need not trouble himself about pelagic seal- 

 ing. There is not and never was such a thing in these waters. You could not 

 183 have it in our wide and angry sea. Calui days are almost unknown where you 

 get south of New Zealand, and I never heard of seals being seen in the open 

 ocean. Certain it is that ocean sealiug is and always has been an unknown thing 

 here. 



"In December 1887 some very interesting articles appeared in the 'Melbourne 

 Argus' on 'The Sealers at Wdrk,' by a man who was shipwrecked in the ' Derry 

 Castle' at the Auckland Islands, and rescued by seal poachers. I have tried to get 

 these papers, but they are out of print. He describes the modus operandi. They 

 carry a long rope and lower one of the party over the cliffs hundreds of feet high. 

 He gets oft' at the mouth of the cave where tlie seals lie, and cuts off" their retreat. 

 He then proceeds to club them, and send up their skins by the rope. This is done 

 because it is so dangerous to put in a boat on the open coast with a fearful sea run- 

 ning. The whales, so enormously iilentiful prior to 1840, are, as I have said, almost 

 extinct. This is due to slaughtering them in the breeding bays, and to the occupa- 

 tion of these bays as shipping ports. 'Ihe ott'-shore whale (sperm whale) is still lively, 

 though greatly reduced in numbers. Disturbance, as you know, is as great a 

 destroyer as actual killing. I believe it will pay our Government some day to 

 restore the seal fisheries. It would be interesting to experiment with northern seals, 

 as they might migrate, and so people the islands and coasts, while the facts I have 

 mentioned, and the direct testimony of Captain Fairchild, who assures me that this 

 is the case, seem to show that ours keep very much to the native spot. If I can see 

 Captain Fairchild I will get some further facts from him. I think Filhol could give 

 Mr. Dawson some iutbrmation, as he told me a great deal about seals when he was 

 here, which I have forgotten. 



"This is about all I can tell you at present. Of this I am certain, that unless the 

 American seal fisheries are subjected to some kind of management, they will follow 

 the late of ours, though it will take longer to eft'ect it in their case." 



8. — Extract from Letter from Baron Nordeusk'iold to Dr. Duiisoit, dated Stockholm, 



September 2, ISOl. 



My personal experience about the higher animal life in the Behring Sea is A'ery 

 limited, and all the information I could collect you will find in Chapters XIV aiid XV 

 of the second volume of the "Vega Voyage," which work, perhaps, can be useful to 

 you by my references to the older literature, to which I had a fuller access than any 

 of the previous authors on the subject. The collections of invertebrates brought 

 from the Behring Sea and the adjacent part of the Polar Sea by the scientific staff 

 of the " Vega" were very large. 



