Fur-bearing Animals of the Pacific Slope. 183 



tax of half a guinea (2.62^-dols.) was collectable, while the company 

 undertook to provide the natives on the islands with all the 

 necessaries of life, schools, &c. After 1890, when this lease 

 expired, the annual take was reduced to 7500 skins, in accordance 

 with the conditions of the modus vivendi, the U.S. Government 

 claiming that, in consequence of pelagic or open sea sealing, chiefly 

 pursued by the " Canadian poachers," the herd on the Prybiloff 

 Islands had been greatly reduced. 



On the Prybiloff group are, as has already been mentioned, the 

 only breeding grounds of the fur seal in North American waters. 

 The only others known to man worthy of any note in the northern 

 hemisphere are those on three small islands on the coast of Asia 

 i.e., the Commander or Komandorski group, consisting of Behring 

 and Copper Islands, and in the Okhotsk Sea, Robben Island. The 

 distance between the Prybiloff and the Commander Rookeries is 

 about 750 miles, and between these two groups runs the line 

 dividing the Asiatic from the American Behring Sea according to 

 the Treaty of March 30, 1867. Whether American born seals 

 frequent these rookeries on the Asiatic coast, and vice versa, is a 

 disputed point, both sides producing evidence in support of their 

 theories, the conflicting. nature of which illustrates the difficulties 

 that beset the paths of the arbitrators. 



Having said so much regarding the history of our subject, one is 

 tempted to take a closer look at the Prybiloffs during the breeding 

 season, when the beaches on these islands present scenes described 

 by those who have visited what is probably not only the most 

 isolated spot on the globe, but also one of the most unique sights in 

 the animal kingdom. 



Of the two islands St. Paul and St. George, with a superficial 

 area of thirty-three and twenty-seven square miles respectively, the 

 former is by far the most important, for of its forty-two miles of 

 coast line, sixteen and a half miles are seal beaches, the other island 

 having only two and a quarter miles of its coast line used as 

 breeding ground. This " hauling-up ground," as it is technically 

 known, consists of shelving shore covered with large boulders, 



