SEAL LIFE ON THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 127 



APPENDIX. 



PELAGIC SEALING. 



Deposition of Milton Barnes, *i><'<-il employee of United States Treasury 



on *S7. Pnul 



OF ALASKA, 

 St. Paul Island^ ,VN : 



I, Milton Barnes, being duly sworn according to law, depose and say 

 as follows: I \\\\\ a citi/rn of the United States, and when at home 

 reside near Columbus, Ohio. Have been temporarily stationed during: 

 the last year on the island of St. Paul, one of the fur-seal or Pribilof 

 group in Bering Sea, as a special employee of the United States 

 Treasury Department on said island. 



One day during the latter part of August or fore part of September 

 last (exact date forgotten), Col. Joseph Murray, one of the Treasury 

 agents, and myself, in company with the British commissioners, Sir 

 George Baden Powell and Dr. liawsoii, by boat visited one of the seal 

 rookeries of that island known as Tolstoi or English Bay. On arriv- 

 ing there our attention was at once attracted by the excessive num- 

 ber of dead pups, whose carcasses lay scattered profusely over the 

 breeding ground or sand beach bordering the rookery proper and 

 extending into the border of the rookery itself. The strange sight 

 occasioned much surmise at the time as to the probable cause of it. 

 Some of the carcasses were iu an advanced stage of decay, while others 

 were of recent death, and their general appearance was that of having 

 died of starvation. There were a few that still showed signs of life, 

 bleating weakly and piteously, and gave every evidence of being in a 

 starved condition, with no mother seals near or showing them, any 

 attention. 



Dr. Dawson while on the ground took some views of the rookery with 

 his kodak, but whether the views he took included the dead pups I 

 could not say. Some days after this can not state exact date I drove 

 with Mr. Fowler, an employee of the lessees, to what is known as Half- 

 way Point, or Polavina rookery. Here the scene was repeated, but on 

 a more extensive scale in point of numbers. The little carcasses were 

 strewn so thickly over the sand as to make it difficult to walk over the 

 ground without stepping on them. This condition of the rookeries in 

 this regard was for some time a topic of conversation in the village by 

 all parties, including the more intelligent ones among the natives, some 

 of whom were with Mr. J. Stanley Brown in his work of surveying the 

 island, and brought in reports from time to time of similar conditions 

 at substantially all the rookeries around the island. It could not, of 

 course, be well estimated as to the number thus found dead, but the 

 most intelligent of the natives chief of the village told me that in his 

 judgment there were not less than 20,000 dead pups on the various 

 rookeries of the island, and others still dying. Dr. Akerly, the lessees 7 

 physician at the time, made an autopsy of some of the carcasses, and 

 reported that he could find no traces of any diseased condition what- 

 ever, but there was an entire absence of food or any signs of nourish- 

 ment in the stomach. Before Dr. Dawson left I called his attention to 

 what Dr. Akerly had done, but whether he saw him on the subject I 

 can not tell. 



And further deponent saith not. MILTON BARNES. 



