THE GROWTH OF CANADA 285 



avoidable. On the other side of the continent, 

 however, in the waters of the northern Pacific, 

 a situation had arisen in which, with reversed 

 roles, Americans and Canadians were in dan 

 gerous controversy. 



In the summer of 1886, at the very time when 

 the Canadian revenue cutters were giving most 

 trouble to the cod and mackerel fishermen of 

 New England, American revenue cutters be 

 gan to make trouble for the seal-hunters of 

 British Columbia. The laws of the United 

 States prohibited the killing of fur-seals in 

 Alaska except by a company to whom the right 

 had been leased of taking a limited number of 

 skins, by carefully restricted methods, on the 

 Pribilof Islands in Behring Sea. These is 

 lands were the resort of vast numbers of the 

 animals each summer for breeding. Hunting 

 of the seals on the high seas, beyond the three- 

 mile line, was carried on actively by vessels of 

 American, British, Japanese, and other nation 

 alities. The methods employed by these deep- 

 sea hunters were wasteful of seal life, and were 

 alleged to be the chief cause of a great decline 

 in the number of animals frequenting the 

 breeding-grounds. At the instance of the com 

 pany whose interests were thus threatened, 



