FUR-SEAL FISHERIES OF ALASKA. 63 



releasing tlie smaller ones from each drive, when on the killing grounds. 

 In other words, taking all tlie young male seals as driven, over 1 year 

 old and under o years, would have saved on an average for every year, 

 the lives of at least 50,000 to 00,000 holluschickie! while those spared 

 from the club, annually during the last twenty years, were rendered 

 worthless for rookery service from the immediate or subsequent effect 

 of severe overland driving whenever they lived through it. 



It is a fact now plainly established that hereafter, should seals ever 

 be driven for tax and shipment of their skinsy agaiu on these islands, 

 no cuUliuj of the " drices " should be permitted. The market for the skins 

 will promptly adjust itself to the several ages, sizes, and their value. 

 The rookeries, however, will not, can not, endure any further adjustment 

 of that fixed scale of size on the Idlling grounds. If it is resumed, then 

 the extermination of the fur seal is right at hand, insofar as its life on the 

 Prihilov Isl<(nds is concerned, even if all pelagic sealing is prohibited!^ 



I searched for danger to these interests on every side in 1872-1874:. 

 I could detect no disease whatever, even of the most tritliug character, 

 in the vast herds: and no legend even, much less statement, of any 

 sickness among the seals was extant.^ 



But the importance of making an accurate record of the areas and 

 position of those great breeding grounds as I found them in 1872-1874 

 was not lost on me; it impressed me deeply; and these surveys were 

 made tlien of each rookery. In order that the officers of the (lovern- 

 ment who came after me, charged with the care and protection of these 

 interests, might understand the feasibility of annually surveying these 

 breeding grounds without disturbing the animals in the least degree, I 

 said then: 



Diirino' tlio tirst week of inspection of some of those earliest arrivals the "see- 

 catchie," which I have described, will Irequeutly take to the water when approached ; 

 bnt these runaways (|uickly return. Jiy the end of May, however, the same seals 

 will hardly move to the right or left when you attempt to pass through them. Then, 

 two weeks before the females begin to come in and (piickly after their arrival, the 

 organization of the fur-seal rookery is rendered entirely iuditterent to man's presence 

 on visits of quiet inspection, or to anything else save their own kind, and so con- 

 tinues during the rest of the season. 



I have called attention to the singular fact that the breeding seals upon the rook- 

 eries and hauling grounds are not affected by the smell of blood or carrion arising 

 irom the killing tields or the stench of blubber fires wliich burn in the native villages. 

 This trait is conclusively illustrated by the attitude of those two rookeries near the 

 village of St. Paul : for, the breeding ground on this spit, at the liead of the lagoon, is 

 not more than 40 yards from the great killing grounds to the eastward, being sepa- 

 rated from those spots of slaughter and the 70,000 or 80,000 rotting carcasses thereon 

 by a slough not more than ten yards wide. These seals can smell the blood and 

 carcasses upon this field from the time they land in the spring until they leave in the 

 autumn, while the general southerly winds waft to them the odor and sounds of the 

 village of St. Paul, not over 200 rods south of them, and above them in plain sight. 



'See suggestions for Revised Regulations. Appeiulix, p. 228. 



-The thought of what a deadly epidemic would effect among these vast congrega- 

 tions of Pinnepedia was one that was constant in my mind when on the ground and 

 among them. I have found in the British Annals (Fleming's), on page 17, an extract 

 from the notes of Dr. Trail: " In 1833 I inquired for my old accjuaintances, the seals 

 of the Hole of Papa Westray, and was informed that about four years before they 

 had totally deserted the island, and had only within the last few months begun to 

 reappear. * * * About fifty years ago multitudes of their carcasses were cast 

 ashore in every bay in the north of Scotland, Orkney, and Shetland, and numbers 

 were found at sea in a sickly state.'' This note of Trail is the only record which I 

 can find of a fatal e])idemic among the seals. It is not reason;'ble to suppose that 

 the Pribilov rookeries have never suffered from distera])ers in the past, or are not to 

 in the future, simply because no occasion seems to have arisen during the compari- 

 tively brief period of their human domination. 



