1 82 Sport and Life. 



Behring Sea, but it was chiefly in the hands of foreigners, and 

 Ethoen, the then Governor, intending to secure for his ships also 

 the monopoly in this business, addressed earnest representations to 

 the Russian Government, requesting that armed cruisers might be 

 sent out for the preservation of Behring Sea as a mare clausum. 

 This demand, notwithstanding the prodigious influence exercised 

 by the company at St. Petersburg, the Minister of Foreign Affairs 

 refused to comply with, on the grounds that it would be necessary 

 first to abrogate the treaty stipulation in force between Russia, 

 America, and England, which gave American citizens and British 

 subjects the right of free navigation, fishery, and trading in Alaskan 

 waters. At the expiration of the third term Californian> capitalists 

 came forward, and offered the Russian Government a million sterling 

 for a twenty years' lease of Alaska, and, as this was far more than 

 what'the Government had hitherto received for the franchise, the 

 proposition was on the eve of being accepted when Seward, 

 Secretary of State, suddenly stepped in and made his now famous 

 offer on behalf of the United States. The final bid was made on 

 March 23, 1867, through the Russian Minister at Washington by 

 cable, and already, on the 3oth of the same month, at four o'clock 

 in the morning, was the treaty signed. Its ratification by Congress 

 was obtained only after a hard fight. 



For the first two years after the purchase no serious attempt 

 was made by the U.S. Government to protect the seal rookeries, 

 and in consequence great slaughter occurred. More than a quarter 

 of a million skins are said to have been taken there in 1868, so that 

 when, after two years' lobbying at Washington, the subsequently 

 so-much-talked-of lease for a term of twenty years of the Prybiloff 

 Rookeries was granted to the Alaska Commercial Company of San 

 Francisco, it was the highest time stringent protective measures 

 were instituted. The main conditions of the lease were briefly 

 these : The take of pelts annually to be strictly limited to 100,000 

 skins of male seals, to be obtained under Government surveillance 

 of the U.S., revenue cutters, to assist the company in preventing 

 poaching. The rent was 11,000 per annum, and for every skin a 



