376 



ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



Catch of British Columbia schooners in the vicinity of Copper Island after they were 

 warned out of Bering Sea, 1891, and included in tabulated statement tvith Bering Sea 

 catch. 



JUNE 13, 1896. 



SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your note of June 

 9, inclosing a note dated June 4 from the British ambassador to your- 

 self. Sir Julian's note is in reply to your letter of June 6, 1*95. I 

 have carefully considered the same and have the honor to give the fol- 

 lowing re"sum6 of the correspondence leading up to said letter. 



On January 23, 1895, the late Secretary Gresham in a communication 

 to the British Government, stated that the slaughter of seals at sea in 

 1894, both American and Asiatic, was unprecedented in the history of 

 pelagic sealing. 



On May 17, 1895, the British Foreign Office by letter denied this 

 statement, making the further assertion that in the season of 1891, 

 12,000 more seals were killed from the American herd than in 1894. 



On June 24, 1895, you replied to the foreign office, calling to its 

 attention a serious error in the returns cited by it to justify the above 

 denial. This error consisted in the fact that in the figures cited by the 

 British foreign office for 1891 in said letter (British vessels, 49,615 ; 

 American vessels, 18,000; total, approximately, 68,000) there were in- 

 cluded 8,432 seals killed from the Asiatic herd on the western side of 

 Bering Sea by British and American vessels, warned from the eastern 

 side by American cruisers under the modus vivendi. Of these seals 

 6,616 were estimated by you to have been killed by British vessels, and 

 1,816 by American vessels. You further pointed out that by deducting 

 these Russian seals, there was left a total of 59,568, as the corrected 

 pelagic catch for 1891; that, on the other hand, adding to the United 

 States official figures of the catch for 1894 (55,686), the estimated num- 

 ber of skins taken from the American herd contained in the 6,836 skins 

 landed at American ports and classed as " undetermined" in the 

 American returns, there was left a total of 61,838 as the catch of 1894, 

 fully sustaining the contention of your predecessor that the catch from 

 the American herd of 1894 exceeding that of 1891 or any previous year. 



The British ambassador in his letter of June 4, 1896, incloses a report 

 from the collector of customs at Victoria. This report discloses the 

 fact that the original official returns of the British Government for 

 1891, upon which the said Government based the above mentioned 

 denial, were in error, as claimed by you, in that they included, as a 

 part of the catch, from the American herd some 6,595 seals killed by 

 11 British vessels in Russian waters from the Asiatic herd. 



