RELATING TO ST. PAUL ISLAND. 153 



Subscribed iiiul sworn to before me, an officer enipowcd to administer 

 oatlis under section 1070, IJevised Statutes of the United States, on 

 tliis the 3d day of Jnne, 1802, at St. Paul Island, Alaska. 



Wm. H Williams, 

 Treasury Agent in Charg, of Seal Islands. 



Deposition of George II. Temple, assistant agent of lessees on St. Paul 



Island. 



habits. management. 



State of Vermont, 



Count}/ of Orange, ss: 



George II. Temple, Laving been duly sworn, deposes and says: I am 

 32 years old ; a native of Vermont, where I ninv reside. . 



I was bred to the occupation of farming, and am at ^^P^rieuce. 

 present a hardware merchant in my native town of Kandolph. 



From ISSO to 1882 I was employed by the AJaska Commercial ( 'om- 

 pany at St. I'aul Island, Alaska, as assistant agent, and in that position 

 became familiar with the work of handling, driving, and herding the 

 killable seals, and with the habits and ]»eculiarities of tlie breeding 

 seals on the rookeries, both of which have, in the main, been accurately 

 and intelligently described by II. W. Elliott in his "Report on the Seal 

 Islands of Alaska," pnblislied by the Department of the Interior, Census 

 Office, 1884. I think he might, however, have made his description of 

 the animals and the manner of obtaining their skins for market more 

 intelligible to the ordinary reader by following more closely the analogy 

 between the seals and farm animals, which invariably strikes the ob- 

 server who is familiar with tlie rearing, handling, and slaughtering of 

 both. 



A farmer on going to the seal islands at once notices, as I did, that the 

 term " seal hunting," so called, conveys no idea of the 

 business .of taking seals for their skins as it is there o/se"is*^" chaiart.r 

 carried on. It is in no sense "hunting," the work of 

 bringing in for slaughter from their accustomed haunts and slaying 

 such number of killable seals from day to day as will serve as a day's 

 work for those engaged in the killing being in no way different from 

 that pursued by the larmer in driving up his farm herd and selecting 

 and killing such as he sees fit; the only diflerence being that, in the 

 case of the seals, the pasture in which they feed is the broad ocean, out 

 of which the seal farmer can not drive them. He must wait until they 

 come on shore; bnt he can count with absolute certainty on their com- 

 ing within his reach in due time, provided only their natural enemies 

 oppose them, and they are spared while at sea by their human enemies, 

 who may, with perfect propriety, be termed "seal hunters." 



The analogy can be further profitably followed by comparingthe system 

 usually pursued in breeding domestic animals with the 

 methods adopted by the late lessees of the seal fisheries ,,,,4"!^}°"°"^ ^" ^""" 

 in ijreserving all the female seals, and enough males for 

 breeders, and also in their manner of driving, yarding, herding, select- 

 ing for slaughter and for breeding, handling the young, and generally 

 in the management of the herd; the exception in this respect being 

 found chiefly in the fact that the seals, after they are a few months old, 

 can not be manipulated with the hands, because of their juopensity to 

 bite, but must be always kept at arm's Icngtli by the hcrdmasrs seal 



