rUR-SEAL HERD OF ALASKA, 



71 



vegetation completely cover the hauling grounds of 1874, so much 

 so that the pool is being actually sodded over.^ 



To recapitulate. — For Great Eastern Rookery, Julv 18, 1913, we 

 find 102 bulls and 3,825 cows, 3,500 pups. For Little East, 2 bulls, 

 30 cows, 27 pups. Season of 1890, Great Eastern had 112 bulls, 

 4,500 cows, 4,300 pups; season of 1874, Great Eastern had 714 



bulls, 3,000 cows, 12,500 pups; season of 1890, Little Eastern had 

 62 bulls, 2,500 cows, 2,300 pups; season of 1874, Little Eastern had 

 112 bulls, 6,000 cows, 5,450 pups. 



1 With regard for the condition and appearance of the Great Eastern Rookery in 1890: On page 56, House 

 Document 175, Fifty-fourth Congress, first session, is the following official description of it under date 

 of July 20,1890: 



"In 1873-74 this breeding ground ranked third in the list of five that were found on the Island of St. 

 George. To-day it seems to have been the heaviest loser. It has literally dropped down to a mere skele- 

 ton of its form in my early siuvey (1873). That extended rocky flat here from which the rookery ground 

 proper gently rises on the hill slope was one of the most attractive hauling grounds for the hoUuschickie 

 on St. George Iti years ago; now its entire surface is covered with a most luxuriant turf: it looks like 'd 

 Kentucky blue-grass meadow. 



"I think that this rookery presents the most perfect illustration and eloquent, too, of that ruin and 

 demoralization wrought by the present order of scraping the breeding lines on all of the rookeries in getting 

 the daily drives of k'illable seals. It presents itself so in this plain manner. 



"In 1873 there was only iWOfeet of rookery sea margin here; 200 feet of this total was a solid massing 

 of the breeding seals up the hillside from the sea, as shown by the 1874 tint upon the accompanying map. 

 It was 200 feet deep and contained 20,000 of the 25,000 seals, all told, that then existed at this point, 'ro-day 

 there is 3,275 feet of rookerv sea margin here; a straggling ragged belt, not even a full harem's width or 

 depth, except under that side-hill expansion between F and G, where there is, mstead of the 200 feet of 

 massing cited above only 30 feet of average depth. This driving by the lessees repeated day after day 

 has created that long extension of over 3.000 feet to the sea margin of 1874, on this rookery, wh'lc the seals 

 themselves are barely one-third the number they were at first record." 



