ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 277 



far trade which the Russians had developed with the Chinese, searched 

 out the resorts of the southern fur seal; ravaged them year after year, 

 in season and out of season; slaughtered the helpless creatures with 

 clubs on land regardless of age or sex; gathered a harvest of 10,000,000 

 or 17,000,000 skins, and by 1830 had practically destroyed, in the south- 

 ern seas, this valuable fur-bearing animal. If all these resorts were in 

 their original condition and under wise and prudent direction, they could 

 easily supply to the fur trade annually something like a half a million 

 skins, with corresponding advantage to an army of skilled artisans. As 

 it is, indiscriminate butchery has left only the Lobos Islands rookeries 

 at the mouth of the La Plata River and a few insignificant resorts at 

 Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, the total yearly yield of which 

 is, as before stated, less than 15,000 skins. Such destruction is left abso- 

 lutely without justification in the face of man's entire ability to maintain 

 the fur seal rookeries at the highest possible limits permitted by the 

 operation of nature's restrictions, or when depleted to develop them 

 again. This is not idle speculation, but rests upon a firm foundation of 

 fact furnished by the history of the fur seal of the north. 



THE NORTHERN FUR SEAL AND ITS RELATION TO THE SEAL-SKIN 



INDUSTRY. 



The two great resorts of the northern fur seal are the Pribilof and 

 Commander islands in Bering Sea. Robbens Reef, a rocky islet in the 

 Okhotsk Sea, has a small rookery, and a few localities of minor impor- 

 tance are found along the Kurile Islands. While the Russians who 

 first discovered these resorts prohibited all interference from outsiders, 

 their own treatment of the seals was similar to that practiced by the 

 sailors in the south. No attention was paid to sex, season, or period of 

 procreation, and it was not long before the end came there just as it had 

 done in the south. The Russians were taught by this severe lesson 

 that the only way in which the rookeries could be restored and per- 

 petuated was to protect the females from death and the breeding 

 grounds from molestation. This course, accompanied by practically a 

 suspension of killing during certain years, was rigidly adhered to, with 

 the result that when the rookeries of the Pribilof Islands were turned 

 over to the United States in 1867 their condition, instead of being one 

 of exhaustion, approximated that which existed when they were first 

 discovered. The truth of this will be more apparent when it is stated 

 that in 1868, before the United States could assume and exercise con- 

 trol over its newly acquired possessions, nearly a quarter of a million 

 skins were improperly taken from the islands of St. Paul and St. George 

 by unauthorized persons without apparently producing any diminution 

 of the numbers which came the following year. 



Although there are but four of these northern localities, and Russian 

 mismanagement from time to time played such havoc with them that 

 the catch was an uncertain quantity, still they have contributed since 

 their discovery between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000 skins to the fur trade, 

 or about one- third as many as have been furnished by the southern 

 resorts. From the time that the fur seal of the south ceased to be of 

 commercial importance trade has relied upon these rookeries. Thanks 

 to the more enlightened policy employed by the Russians, and adopted 

 and improved upon by the United States, these rookeries of Bering 

 Sea contributed to commerce for the twenty years ending with 1889 a 

 uniform yearly quota of nearly 150,000 pelts, which formed the basis 

 of and made possible the systematized seal-skin business of modem 



