THE OCEAN MAMMALS 367 



seals/' as they are called, have mostly passed along the 

 Labrador coast. 



When these poor creatures are killed, the waste is terrible. 

 I have seen three or four thousand bodies of young seals, 

 freshly stripped of their furry jackets, left to rot, or be a 

 prey for sharks, as the case may be. The sealing industry 

 is a very popular one, however, in Newfoundland. The 

 sealing masters are the great men of the fishery, and there 

 can be no question that from the sealer's point of view, 

 the adventure, the call for pluck and hardihood, and the 

 gamble of it, beyond the few dollars each man may make, 

 are great attractions. It is not true, so far as I have seen, 

 that brutalities, such as flaying alive, are ever practised. 

 Nor can any one, knowing the men as intimately as I 

 do, ever believe them capable of any such abominable 

 atrocities. 



The " beater seal" returns as a "bedlamer" with his 

 fellow-beaters left from the previous year, when the old 

 seals come south next winter. He plays about among the 

 floes, and returns again north in the spring, to come back 

 a " young harp" the third winter, ready to do his share in 

 maintaining the race. Often, however, he does not breed 

 till the fourth year, when he assumes the dignity and name 

 of an " old harp." The saddle, or harp, is a large, bilateral, 

 black, wing-shaped patch across his back showing well on 

 the lighter, drab-coloured skin of the rest of his body. 



Even when the dangers of the ice-floes are over, where 

 many old seals, as well as the young, are slaughtered, the 

 harp is still not safe on his northern journey. In May and 

 June, along the shores of Labrador huge frame nets are put 

 out from a capstan on the land. The great room of net 



