AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS. 309 



however, four thousand two hundred and twenty were again killed, 

 according to the bishop's table, and according to which there was also 

 a steady increase in the size of this return from that date along up 

 to 1850, when the Russians governed their catch by the market 

 alone, always having more seals than they knew what to do with. 



Again, in this connection, the natives say that until 1847 the 

 practice on these islands was to kill indiscriminately both females 

 and males for skins ; but after this year, 1847, that strict respect 

 now paid to the breeding-seals, and exemption of all females, was 

 enforced for the first time, and has continued up to date. 



In attempting to form an approximate conception of what th 

 seals were or might have been in those early days, as they spread 

 themselves over the hauling and breeding grounds of these remark- 

 able islands, I have been thrown entirely upon the vague statements 

 given to me by the natives and one or two of the first American 

 pioneers in Alaska. The only Russian record which touches ever 

 so lightly upon the subject* contains a remarkable statement 



* Veniaminov : Zapieskie ob Oonalashkenskaho Otdayla, 2 vols. , St. Pe- 

 tersburg, 1842. This work of Bishop Innocent Veniaminov is the only one 

 which the Russians can lay claim to as exhibiting anything like a history of 

 Western Alaska, or of giving a sketch of its inhabitants and resources, that 

 has the least merit of truth or the faintest stamp of reliability. Without it we 

 should be simply in the dark as to much of what the Russians were about dur- 

 ing the whole period of their occupation and possession of that country. He 

 served, chiefly as a priest and missionary, for nineteen years, from 1823 to 

 1842, mainly at Oonalashka, having the Seal Islands in his parish, and was 

 made Bishop of all Alaska. He was soon after recalled to Russia, where he 

 became the primate of the national church, ranking second to no man in the 

 Empire save the Czar. He was advanced in life, being more than ninety 

 years of age when he died at Moscow, April 22, 1879. He must have been 

 a man of fine personal presence, judging from the following description of 

 him, noted by Sir George Simpson, who met him at Sitka in 1842, just as he 

 was about to embark for Russia: "His appearance, to which I have already 

 alluded, impresses a stranger with something of awe, while in further inter- 

 course the gentleness which characterizes his every word and deed insensibly 

 moulds reverence into love, and at the same time his talents and attainments 

 are such as to be worthy of his exalted station. With all this, the bishop is 

 sufficiently a man of the world to disdain anything like cant. His conversa- 

 tion, on the contrary, teems with amusement and instruction, and his com- 

 pany is much prized by all who have the honor of his acquaintance." Sir 

 Edward Belcher, who saw him at Kadiak in 1837, said : "He is a formidable- 

 looking man, over six feet three inches in his boots, and athletic. He im 

 presses one profoundly." 



