RELATING TO PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 77 



In these various positions the care and maiiageratiitof seal rookeries 

 and system and methods oi killing seals and curing' and transporting 

 their skins to market has been my study. I visited the Pribilof Isl- 

 ands in 1867 and had charge of seal killing there in 1868 and 1869. 

 When the Alaska Commercial Company obtained the lease in 1870, of 

 the right to take seals for their skins, I instructed the superintendent 

 and agents of the company in regard to the way in which the work had 

 been done, and outlined to them the policy to be i>ursued in the future. 

 The lease of the Alaska Commercial Company had twenty years to run, 

 and it was for our inteiests that the very best methods should be 

 adopted for managing notonly the "bachelors, "then ready for slaughter, 

 but also the breeding herds upon which the future of our business de- 

 l^ended. To this end I directed our superintendent of 

 the sealeries to observe the greatest care in driving, pi^y^rofleasees. ^'°" 

 handling, and killing the seals, cautioning him to allow 

 nothing to be done that would in any way tend to alarm or disturb 

 them, or in the least degree interfere with their already well-known 

 orderly, regular habits of breeding and migration. 



The instructions were explicit that no females should be killed, and, 

 further, that bulls enough of mature age should be i^reserved to serve 

 them. In order to see that these instructions were followed and the 

 business put upon what I confidently believed to be the right basis, I 

 visited the islands in 1871 and 1872 and again in 1877, and was more 

 than satisfied with the result of my investigations. The work was 

 being carried on at these times in a highly systematic, ^^ ^^^^^^ methods 

 orderly manner, showing great improvements over the und^r Ameri^n mau^ 

 way of doing it under Eussian regime, and the result agement. 

 of good management showed itself on every hand. The breeding 

 rookeries had largely ex^janded in 1877 over the limits of 1869, as I 

 personally observed and as I was informed by the Treasury agent in 

 charge, by our superintendent, and by the native chiefs. The natives 

 were enthusiastic in their praise of the American way of doing busi- 

 ness and conducting sealing, as comijared with what they had been 

 accustomed to in former years. 



Yet it required no very deep study nor occult knowledge to bring 

 about the healthy growth of the seal rookeries. It was 

 simply needed to treat them as oiu? ordinary domestic How the growth of 

 animals are treated to produce the same result. The t^'; ';;«'• "leswas pro- 

 seals are polygamous, as our horses, cattle, and sheep 

 are, and the best methods of breeding these is equally advantageous 

 when applied to the seals. It is an indisi^utable fact, and known to the 

 most ordinary breeder of domestic animals, that any surjdus of males 

 is a positive injury, and results in a progeny inferior in size, quality, and 

 numbers produced. The fierce struggles of the surplus male seals to 

 gain a foothold on the breeding grounds create great disorder and com- 

 motion, and often end in crushing the x)ups, and sometimes even in kill- 

 ing the mothers. This was so well understood by the Russians that 

 long before the cession of Alaska they ordered the slaughter, we are 

 told by Veniaminof, of the superannuated males, in order to clear the 

 way for vigorous sto(;k. They succeeded by this intelligent course in 

 bringing up the rookeries n-om their depleted condition of about 1840, 

 consequent upon the bad management of prior years, and the unpro- 

 pitious season of 1835, when the ice nearly annihilated the seal life, to 

 the productiveness in which we found them in 1868. We continued 

 the same system, with slight modifications, and had every reason, up 

 to 1882, to expect to be able to return the pro^jcrty to the United States 



