210 PELAGIC SEALING. 



Destruction of in a dispatcli to the Britisli Admiralty, dated 



nursing females. 



at Victoria, August 24, 1886, states that three 

 British Columbian sealing schooners had been 

 seized by the United States revenue cruiser 

 Corwin, seaward seventy miles from off the land, 

 killing female seals.^ Edward Shields, of Sooke 

 District, Vancouver Island, a hunter on the 

 British schooner Carolina, which was seized in 

 Bering Sea in 1886, states that they were during 

 the whole cruise out of sight of land, adding, 

 "The seals we obtained were chiefly females."^ 

 The sealers, who have given testimony on this 

 point in behalf of the United States, agree that 

 nearly all the seals taken in Bering Sea are 

 mothers in milk.^ Moses, a Nitnat Indian 

 hunter from Vancouver Island, in speaking of a 

 voyage he made to Bering Sea, says: "We 

 caught nineteen hundred seals, all of which were 

 captured in the sea close to Unalaska; most all 

 of them were cows in milk; but when we first 

 entered the sea we killed a few cows that had 

 pups in them."* Charles Peterson, a sealer with 

 four years' experience, after stating that most all 

 the seals taken in Bering Sea were cows in milk, 

 adds: "I have seen the deck almost flooded 



« Britisli Blue Book, U. S. No. 2 (1890), C-6131, p. 1. 

 « Britisli Blue Book, U. S. No. 2 (1890), C-6131, p. 8. 

 3 William H. Long, Vol. II, p. 458 j Henry Mason, Vol. II, p. 4G5; 

 E. P. Porter, Vol. II, p. 347. 

 * Moses, Vol. II, p. 310. 



