SEAL LIFE ON THE PRIHILOF ISLANDS. 341 



eign powers sealed orders to be opened in Bering Sea were given to 

 the revenue officers, directing them not to make seizures, and while 

 these orders were withheld from American hunters they appear to have 

 been published to the British fleet, for the usual number of British ves- 

 sels made a profitable season's cruise, sending into market more than 

 10,000 skins; at the same time our American vessels were deterred by 

 the tone of the published regulations of our Government from under- 

 taking their usual voyages. 



The operations of the marauders in the North Pacific and Bering Sea 

 beyond the jurisdiction of British Columbia, and exclusive of what is 

 known as the u Victoria catch " proper, may be summarized, not with 

 absolute accuracy, but correctly enough for all practical purposes, about 

 as follows: 



1883, 1,000, and 1884, 5,000 skins, estimated without reliable data at 

 hand; 1885,12,000; 1886,27,500; 1887,25,000; and 1888,19,000 skins 

 reported by Messrs. C. M. Lampson & Co., of London ; 1889, 10,761 skins 

 to August 1, landed at Victoria, British Columbia. 



Add to this the Victoria catch for the same seven years, which has 

 averaged about 12,000 skins per annum 84,000 and we have a total 

 of 184,261 skins sent to market in less than seven years. To represent 

 the destruction of seal life, this number should be nearly doubled to 

 include the loss of one young seal in embryo or left to starve upon the 

 islands for nearly every adult killed; and again doubled, perhaps, to 

 compensate for the unknown factor of waste in killing. Just what pro- 

 portion of seals killed are actually secured we do not know, but we are 

 confident that the loss of dead seals in the rough water of the open sea, 

 and the wounding and subsequent death of many more, is a large per- 

 centage of those taken. Beyond this, we must also take into the 

 account the demoralization of the herd, the infraction of their steady 

 migratory habits and their possible deviation from their accustomed 

 haunts, and the consequent destruction of the industry within our 

 borders if indiscriminate slaughter is continued. I append a list of 

 vessels reported engaged in sealing the present season. 



1 have at hand data from this year only on which to base an estimate 

 of the respective numbers of seals killed in the waters of the North 

 Pacific and Bering Sea. It appears that during the present season at 

 least 5,201 skins, exclusive of the catch of the American vessels, were 

 taken after the sealers left the Straits of Fuca and before they passed 

 the Alaskan peninsula, for that number were transshipped to the British 

 schooner Wanderer at Sand Point and sent back to Victoria to avoid 

 possible capture by our revenue vessels. The British schooners Path- 

 finder, T/Vrt, and Sapphire landed in Victoria their spring catches, 

 amounting to 1,719 skins, early in June, and again sent down by the 

 Wanderer 2,039 skins about the middle of July. This latter number 

 must have been captured in the Pacific in less than six weeks, and 

 many of them among the Shumagin Islands and along the coast to the 

 westward of Kodiak, clearly within American waters. 



Attention should also be directed to the fact that by preconcerted 

 action all the British vessels rendezvoused at Sand Point, Ounga Island, 

 Alaska, where there is neither port of entry nor customs officer sta- 

 tioned, and there, in utter disregard of customs law or international 

 right, transshipped cargo, received supplies brought from a foreign 

 port, and landed and sold whisky to the Alaska natives. 



Until the present season we have been under the impression that the 

 catching of seals in the waters of the North Pacific would be difficult 

 and unprofitable, and that seal life could be preserved by maintaining 



