TAKEN IN SAN FRANCISCO. .505 



cessful hunters. It is like being a clever rifle shot. If the best hunt- 

 ers lose ten or lifteen in a hundred the other kind lose ten times as 

 many, if not more. Green hands will throw away a lot of ammunition, 

 shooting at everything they see, whether it is in range or not. You 

 can not stop them. They will wound more than they kill. If the 

 mother of a young seal is killed the pup is very likely 

 to die. It will be so weak that the first storm will """^ p"^^- 

 dash it ashore and kill it, or it may die of starvation. I have seen 

 l)n]»s hardly larger than a rat from lack of nourishment. A starved 

 or neglected orplian pup is nearly sure to die. At one storm the na- 

 tives found over three liuudred pups washed ashore in a little cove, and 

 the water around was full of dead jiups. It is certain that nearly all 

 the dead pups were orphans. The female seal when 

 suckling her young has to go out into the ocean in '*^™*'*^ feeding. 

 search of food, and it is those females, or females on the way to the 

 breeding grounds to give birth to the young, that we kill in the Bering 

 Sea. We find some barren female seals — female seals too old to breed, 

 or that for some reason have not bred. I have often wondered that 

 there are not more barren seals. Tlie males on the islands will secure 

 twenty or twenty-five females, and the male being constantly engaged 

 in fighting, it is likely that many of the females are neglected. A 

 young seal does not take to the water naturally. He 

 has to be taught to swim. The hair seal will pup any- .^^^'^^ "»* *'»p''"> 

 where, and the pups will go right into the water, but 

 the fur s<'<ils are forced to go ashore to bring forth their young and 

 forced to leave their young on land, while they go into the water to 

 feed and l)athe. I suppose that if everyone could kill seal in the Ber- 

 ing in a few years the seals Avould .all be dead except the males, and in 

 time the seals would be exterminated." 



VALUE OF SEIZED VESSELS. 



In ascertaining the value of the vessels that have been seized by the 

 United States Government for illegal sealing in the 

 Bering Sea I got the record of actual sales in every ^^^aiue of seized ves- 

 case where the vessel had changed hands during the 

 past six years. Many of the schooners were bought by their last own- 

 ers at private sale, but others had been sold at auction. The seized 

 schooners belonging to Boscowitz and Warren were all sold at auction 

 in the year 1885 and were bought in by a i)arty in the interest of Bos- 

 cowitz for 11 each above the lien on them. No one bid higher than 

 that, for the excellent reason that the lien represented in every case 

 the lull value of the boat and outfit, and was given by Warren, in whose 

 name the boats stood, to secure Boscowitz, who, being an American, 

 coiild not legally own an interest in boats sailing under the British 

 flag. I append a certified copy of the sale of these vessels at public 

 auction in Victoria in 1885. 



T. T. Williams. 



Victoria, B. C, October J, 18S9. 



United States of America, 



State of California, City and County of San Francisco, ss : 



I, Clement Bennett, a notary puldic in and for said city and county, 



residing therein, duly commissioned and sworn, do certify that on this 



4th dity of April, A. D. one thousand eight hundred and ninety-two, I 



carefully comi^ared the foregoing copy of a report of T. T. Williams 



