SEAL-HUNTING JAN MAYEN SEALING-GROUNDS. 499 



number of steamships have been added. In 1873, of the one 

 hundred and seven sealing- vessels fitted out from the ports of 

 Newfoundland, nearly one-fifth were steamers. Notwithstand- 

 ing-, however, this comparatively small number of vessels, the 

 *' catch" for that year is said to have been 526,000.* 



The number of vessels sailing from other provincial ports is 

 usually small in comparison with the number from Newfound- 

 land, and they are generallj" of smaller size.t 



3. Jan May en or ''Greenland''' Seas. The icy seas about Jan 

 Mayen are the sealing-grounds par excellence of the English and 

 continental seal-hunters. According to Moritz Lindeman, the 

 chief sealing-district is a circular area four hundred miles in 

 diameter, the central point of which is the island of Jan Mayen, 

 but it varies somewhat in diU'erent years in consequence of the 

 unstable position of the ice-fields. The point where the great- 

 est slaughter occurs is a small area on the meridian of Green- 

 wich, between 72 and 73 N. lat., about two hundred miles 

 northeast of Jan Mayen.| In this limited district are taken an- 

 nually about 200,000 Seals. 



Lindeman, in his history of the Arctic Fisheries, has sketched 

 in considerable detail the general history of the whale- and seal- 

 fisheries of the North Atlantic. From this exceedingly inter- 

 esting and important memoir we learn that sealing was prose- 

 cuted as early as 1720 from the ports of the Weser, and that in 

 the year 1760 nineteen sailing-vessels from Hamburg took 44,- 

 722 Seals ; and that in 1790 the Hamburg fleet took 45,000. In 

 1850 twelve vessels returned with 48,800. Few statistics, how- 

 ever, can be gathered respecting the early history of the seal- 

 fisher}'", those given relating generally to the amount and value 

 of the cargo rather than to the number of Seals taken. The ves- 

 sels were engaged principally in the whale-fishery, pursuing, 

 however, either Seals, Whales, or Walruses, as opportunity fa- 

 vored. Lindeman gives a few detailed statistics relating to the 



* Carroll, Seal and Herring Fisheries of Newfoundland, p. 7. 



t In 1856, about live thousand Seals were taken by vessels from the Mag- 

 dalen Islands; in 1867, about three thousand two hundred, and the follow- 

 ing year only about eight hundred and fifty. Ann. Bep. of Depart, of Marine 

 and Fisheries for 1868. 



tPeterm. Mittheil., Erganzungs heft Nr. 26, 1869, Taf. 1, 2. 



Die Avktische Fischerei der Deutschen Seestadte 1620-1868. In Vergleich- 

 ender Darstellung von Moritz Lindeman, Erganzungs heft Nr. 26, zu Peter- 

 mann's Geographischen Mittheiluugen, pp. vi, 118, mit zwei karten von A. 

 Petermann, 1869. 



