FUR-SEAL FISHERIES OF ALASKA. 53 



Detailed analysis of the surveij of Starry Arteel rookery, July 20, 1890. 



[Sea and cliff margin beginning at () and ending at G, 800 feet ] 



Square feet. 

 800 feet soa and cliffmargin between G and 0, with 40 feet average depth, massed 32, 000 



making ground for 16,000 seals — bulls, cows, and pups — against a total 

 in 1873 of 30,420. 



Tills rookeiy, Eajst, and Zapaduie are the only ones on St. George 

 wliicli have, thus far, been landed upon and raided by seal pirates. 

 Three attempts have been made here, but only one at Zapaduie. The 

 damage done was insigniticant, since the marauders were detected 

 before they had fairly got to work, and driven off by the natives and 

 officers of the Government. 



NORTH ROOKERY (1873-74). 

 [Its condition and appearance July, 1S90.] 



Next in order, and half a mile to the eastward, is this breeding 

 ground, which sweeps for 2,750 feet along and around the sea front of 

 a gently slo[)ing plateau,' being in full sight of and close to the village. 

 It has a superficial area occupied by 77,000 breeding seals and their 

 young. From this rookery to the village, a distance of little more than 

 a quarter of a mile, the holluschickie are driven, which are killed for 

 their skins, on the common track or seal-worn trail, that not only the 

 "bachelors'' but ourselves travel over when en route to or from Starry 

 Arteel and. Zapaduie. Tl is a broad, hard-packed erosion through the 

 sphagnum and across the rocky plateaus; in foct, a regular seal road, 

 which has been used by the drivers and victims during the last eighty 

 or ninety years. The fashion on St. George, in this matter of driving 

 seals, is quite difterent from that on St. Paul. To get their maximum 

 quota of 25,000 annually it is necessary for the natives to visit every 

 morning, the hauling ground of each one of these four rookeries on the 

 north shore, and bring what they may find back with them for the day.^ 



'I sliouhl say "a gently sloping and alternating bluff platcan." Two thousand 

 feet are directly under the abrupt faces of low cliffs, while the other 750 feet slope 

 down gradually to the water's edge. These narrow cliff belts of breeding fur seals 

 might be properly styled "rookery ribbons." 



'^I'ho original text of the existing law for the protection of the seal islands pro- 

 vides that 100,000 seals which may be annually taken from them shall be proportioned 

 by killing 75,000 on St. Paul and 25,000 ou\st. George. This ratio was based evi- 

 dently upon the published tables of Veniaminov, which, if accurate, would clearly 

 show that fully one-third as many seals repaired to the smaller island as to the 

 larger one : and, until I made my surveys, 1872-1874, it was so considered by all parties 

 interested. The fact, hovrever, which I soon discovered, is that St. George receives 

 only one-eighteenth of the whole aggregate of fur-seal visitation peculiar to the 

 Pribilov Islands, St. Paul entertaining the other seventeen parts. 



This amazing difference, in the light of prior knowledge and understanding, 

 caused mo,, on returning to Washington in October, 1873, to lay the matter before 

 the Treasury Department and ask that the law be so modified that, in the event of 

 abnormally warm killing seasons, or other reasons, a smaller number might be taken 

 from St. George with a corresponding increase at St. Paul. For unless this was 

 done it might become at any season a matter of great hardship to secure 25,000 

 killable seals on St. George, in the short period allotted by law. The Treasury 

 Department, while fully concurring in my representations, seemed to doubt its 

 power to thus modify the law. 1 carried the question before Congress, January, 

 1874, and secured from that body an amendment of the act of July 1, 1870 (act 

 approved March 24, 1874), which gives the Secretary of the Treasury full discretion in 

 the matter: and fixes the hitherto inflexible ratio ofkilling on each island upon a sluling 

 scale, as it were, for adjustment from season to season, upon a more intelligent under- 

 standing of the subject; aiut, also, tliis amendatory act gives the Secretary of the 

 Treasury the power to fix the legal limit of killing annually, as the case may require. 



As the law is now amended, the killing can he sensibly adjusted each season by 

 the relative number of seals on the two islands : this total will vary decidedly on St. 

 George according as it may be abnormally dry and warm when the period for 

 driving the holluschickie is at hand, or other causes. 



