70 SEAL LIFE ON THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 



had not begun to leave the rookeries in large numbers, or, when leaving them, to do 

 no more than swim or play about close to the shore. It has already been stated that 

 Bryant gives the 25th of July as the opening of the period in which the females 

 begin to leave the rookeries. Maynard states that the bulls, cows, and pups remain 

 within the rookery limits to the same date, while Elliott places this change in the 

 rookeries between the end of July and the 5th and 8th of August. It is, moreover, 

 acknowledged by the best authorities that the dates in seal life upon the islands 

 have become later rather than earlier in recent years, as compared with those in 

 which the dates above cited were ascertained. In the case of the death of pups after 

 the middle of August, it might be an admissible hypothesis that the mothers had 

 been killed at sea and that subsequently to such killing the young had had time to 

 starve to death, but not at dates earlier than this. In the present case the mortality 

 began long before that date, and it seems probable that the deaths which occurred 

 later must be explained by the same cause, whatever it may have been, extending 

 from the original localities and becoming more general 



356. The causes to which the mortality noted may be attributed with greatest 

 probability are the following, but the evidence at present at disposal scarcely admits 

 of a final attribution to one or other of them. If, however, the examination made 

 by Dr. Acland of several of the carcasses be considered as indicative of the state of 

 the whole, one of the two first is likely to aftord the correct explanation : 



(a) It is well known that in consequence of the decreased number of killables 

 found on the hauling grounds in late years it has been found necessary to collect 

 these close to and even on the edges of the breeding rookeries, and that it has thus 

 been impossible to avoid the collection and driving to the killing grounds, with the 

 killables, of all sorts of seals not required, including seecatchie and females. It is 

 also known that the driving and 'killing in the early part of the season of 1891 was 

 pushed with unwonted energy, taking into consideration the reduced number of 

 seals, and it appears to be quite possible that the females thus driven from their 

 young, though afterwards turned away from the killing grounds in an exhausted 

 and thoroughly terrified state, never afterwards found their way back to their orig- 

 inal breeding places, but either went off to sea or landed elsewhere. The places 

 where the greatest number of dead pups were first seen on Tolstoi and Polavina were 

 just those from the immediate vicinity of which drives were most frequently made. 



(6) The appearances, indicating a local beginning and greatest intensity' of mor- 

 tality, with its subsequent extension to greater areas, might reasonably be explained 

 by the origination and transmission of some disease of an epidemic character. 



(c) The circumstances where the mortality was observed to be greatest appeared 

 to be such as to be explicable by a panic and stampede, with consequent overrunning 

 of the young; but, if so, such stampedes must have occurred more than once. They 

 might not improbably have resulted from attempts to collect drives too near the 

 breeding rookeries. 



(d) It is entirely within the bounds- of probability that raiders may have landed 

 on at least Tolstoi and Polavina rookeries without anyone upon the islands becoming 

 cognizant of the fact. Females would in such a case be killed in greatest numbers, for 

 these occupy the stations most easily got at from the seaside, and the killing upon 

 the rookery ground would also unavoidably have resulted in stampeding large num- 

 bers of seals of all classes. (Report of British Bering Sea Commissioners, pp. 61-64.) 



A brief review of the salient points of the foregoing will not be out 

 of place at the present time, even though the Tribunal of Arbitration, 

 before which they were considered and upon which they exerted an 

 influence perhaps, is now a thing of the past. 



In section 340 they tell us : 



We observed and called attention to several hundred dead pups. * The 



bodies were partly decomposed and appeared to have lain where found for a week or 

 more. Neither the Government agent who was with us nor the natives 



forming our boat's crew at the time would at first believe that tne objects seen on 

 the rookery were dead pups, affirming that they were stones. 



Now, all that seems plain enough, but does it not sound rather ludi- 

 crous, to say the least, when it is alleged by any man that a boat's crew 

 of native sealers, whose life work is the handling of seals, could not tell 

 the difference between the decomposed carcass of a pup seal and a stone, 

 when those who had never been to the seal islands before saw the dif- 

 ference at a glance! The commissioners continue: 



The bodies were partly decomposed and appeared to have lain where found for a 

 week or more. 



