78 WILD LIFE IX NEW ZEALAND. 



A Mr. Scott, on the authority of Mr. Morris, an old Sydney 

 sealer by profession, remarks that " to so great an extent was 

 this indiscriminate killing carried that in two years (1814-15) 

 no less than 400,000 skins were obtained from Penantipod, or 

 Antipodes Island, alone, and necessarily collected in so hast 

 manner that very many of them but were imperfectly cured. The 

 ship ' Pegasus ' took home 100,000 of these in bulk, and on her 

 arrival in London the skins, having heated during the voyage, 

 had to be dug out of the hold, and were sold as niainnv a sad 

 a n<l reckless waste of life." 



Later on the Bounties were visited; then the Auckland Islands 

 were discovered and exploited; and still later the Campbell and 

 Macquarie Islands. It is quite impossible to arrive at any estimate 

 of the quantity of oil and seal-skins taken in this destructive trade ; 

 and, further, many of the most successful sealers did not state 

 too definitely where they obtained their catches. 



A letter written in Sydney about 1824 states that " I do assert 

 of late the southern and western coasts of New Zealand have been 

 infested with Europeans and New-Zealanders who without con- 

 sideration have killed the pups -before they are prime, and the 

 claprnatches before pupping, for the sake of eating their care;> 

 the consequence of which is that the increase of [sic] seals will be 

 totally extinct in about three years on the coast. This circumstance 

 will illustrate what I am about to observe when I state that the seals 

 will not resort to the ground frequented by man." According to 

 the late Dr. Me Nab, the great seal trade nf New Zealand was prac- 

 tically over by 1830. Captain Benjamin Mori-ell, of fhe Ameriean 

 schooner " Antarctic," visited the Southern Islands in that year, 

 and here are his own words:- "Although ihe Auckland Islands 

 once abounded with numerous herds of fur and hair seals, the 

 American and English seamen engairi'd in this business have made 

 such elean work of it as scarcely to leave a breed ; at all events, 

 there was not. ono fur-seal to be found on the 4th January. 1830. 

 We therefore got under way on the morning of Tuesday, the fjth. 

 at 6 o'clock, and sin-red for another cluster of islands or, rather, 

 roc k s called ' thr Snares.' . . . We searehed tin-in in vain for 

 fur-seal, with whieh ili.-v formerly abounded. The population was 

 extinct cut off, root and branch." 



