Sealing Horrors 95 



party of 'longshoremen, was found to have a nice little 

 family of fourteen lull-grown Seals in his capacious 

 maw. And it is highly probable that he came to 

 grief through chasing another one which fled ashore 

 on a falling tide. Sharks, too, are apt to take toll of an 

 unwary or sleeping Seal, turning noiselessly beneath 

 them and taking a huge bite out of them, as they 

 are wont to do out of a fish. But when it is remem- 

 bered that the Seal is gregarious only while ashore 

 or on the ice, it will at once be seen that the toll 

 taken of them by these voracious sea monsters is 

 after all very small. The white bear gets a few 

 Seals too, but not many compared with the enor- 

 mous numbers of them that may be seen lying about 

 on the ice. 



The one enemy which counts is man. I do not 

 propose to harrow my readers' souls by describing the 

 method of slaying Seals for market, not only for the 

 valuable seal skins which adorn our ladies in winter, 

 but for the oil and leather. It is a sordid, horrible 

 business, which cannot be written about nicely. There 

 is a grim and bloody reality about it that horrifies. 

 For my part I shall never forger Burn-Murdoch's cry of 

 horror in his book, Edinburgh to the Antarctic, where 

 he speaks of the newly flayed Seal lifting itself redly 

 towards heaven in the glowing sunshine as if asking its 

 Maker why this thing should be. The seal-fishery 

 is, no doubt, apart from its horrible and unnecessary 

 brutality, a terrific business for man to engage in. 

 Whether in the howling Antarctic, among those stern 

 rocks of South Georgia or South Shetland, or in the 

 Arctic among the ice-floes, it is a test of man's 

 capacity to endure that has probably no equal. Every 

 day death in his most awful forms must be faced. Filth, 

 stench, hunger, and blighting cold must be met as part 



