DESTRUCTION OF FUR SEALS. 229 



ities. As regards color and the variations of color with age, 

 the Cape of Good Hope species appears not to differ apprecia- 

 bly from the others.* 



DESTRUCTION OF THE FUR SEALS FOR THEIR PELTRIES. 



The value of the peltries of the Fur Seal has led to whole- 

 sale destruction, amounting at some localities almost to exter- 

 mination. The traffic in their skins appears to have begun 

 toward the end of the last century. Captain Fanning, of the 

 ship " Betsey," of New York, obtained a full cargo of choice Fur 

 Seal skins at the island of Masafuera, on the coast of Chili, in 

 1798, which he took to the Canton market. Captain Fanning 

 states that on leaving the island, after procuring his cargo, he 

 estimated there were still left on the island between 500,000 

 and 700,000 Fur Seals, and adds that subsequently little less 

 than a million of Fur Seal skins were taken at the island of 

 Masafuera alone,t a small islet of not over twenty-five miles 

 in circumference, and shipped to Canton.J Captain Scammon 

 states that the sealing fleet off the coast of Chili, in 1801, 

 amounted to thirty vessels, many of which were ships of the 

 larger class, and nearly all carried the American flag. Not- 

 withstanding this great slaughter, it appears that Fur Seals 

 continued to exist there as late as 1815, when Captain Fanning 

 again obtained them at this island. 



In the year 1800, the Fur Seal business appears to have been 

 at its height at the Georgian Islands, where, in the single season, 

 112,000 Fur Seals are reported to have been taken, of which 

 57,000 were secured by a single American vessel (the "Aspasia," 

 under Captain Fanning). Vancouver, at about this date, re- 

 ported the existence of large numbers of Fur Seals on the south- 

 west coast of New Holland. Attention was at once turned to 

 this new field, and in 1804 the brig " Union," of New York, Capt. 

 Isaac Pendleton, visited this part of the Australian coast, but not 

 finding these animals there in satisfactory numbers, repaired to 

 Border's Island, where he secured only part of a cargo (14,000 

 skins), owing to the lateness of the season. Later 60,000 were 

 obtained at Antipodes Island. About 1806, the American ship 



*See Gray, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 4thser.,i, 1868, pp. 218, 219 ; Scott, 

 Mam. Recent and Extinct, 1873, pp. 14, 15 ; also Pages, in Buffon's Hist. Nat., * 

 Suppl., vi,p. 357. 



t Tanning's Voyages to the South Sea, etc., pp. 117, 118. 



t Ib., p. 364. 



$Ib.,p.299. 



