726 APPENDIX TO COUNTER-CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN.. 



2. In 1879 I became master of the schooner "Alexander,"^ and' con- 

 tinned in her till the fall of 1885, when I got the " Helen Blam." which 

 I have commanded ever since. 



3. My principal hunting has been for sea-otter, bnt have incidentally 

 hunted seals. 



4. I have crossed in the mail-steamer " Gallic" from Yokohama to 

 San Francisco, makiug a course 45° north, and have seen seals more or 

 less every day — this was in the month of January — and have returned 

 the beginning of February, at a course about 36° north, and have again 

 seen seals almost daily during the voyage. 



5. Sometimes in going north along this coast seals are seen strag- 

 gling in ones and two, and at others in schools, and these schools are 

 generally mixed as to age and sex, and in schools they are harder to 

 get than otherwise, for there is always a watch, and I have never 

 known such a theory among sealers as there being a leader to a school, 

 and the habit of a sealer is to get the first one he can. 



6. Along the coast we get more females than anything else, and the 

 females are mostly carrying young. 



7. I hunted otter along the Kurile Islands from 1872 till 1883, and 

 know that up to 1879 there were no rookeries on Rakoke Island or 

 Moo-shir Rocks, and seals up to that time never hauled-nj) on either of 

 these islands to breed, but I learn that they were found there in 1880 

 or 1881. 



8. I think seals are decreasing, for I hear so from those on the Island 

 of Shumagin and other islands in that vicinity, and I don't think I see 

 so many myself. 



9. Seals are getting more wary from being hunted so much more 

 than formerly. 



10. I did not hear of any vessels having got seals in Behring Sea 

 this year other than those that were warned or seized, and I sliould 

 have known it, I am sure, had there been any. 



11. Nothing has been i)aid or promised me for making this deposi- 

 tion, and I have read it over, and it is correct. 



(Signed) A. F. Carlson. 



Subscribed and sworn to before me, this 29th day of November, 1892. 

 [SEAL.J (Signed) Lincoln Sonntag, Notary Public. 



129 Dejiosition of Frederick Crocker. 



State of California, City and County of San Francisco. 



Frederick Crocker, of San Francisco, being duly sworn, deposes and 

 says: 



I am a resident of the city of San Francisco, and an American sub- 

 ject. I have been a seal-hunter since 1881, and have hunted on the 

 American, Japan, and Russian coasts, and Behring Sea. I have sealed 

 in the schooners " Mary Ellen," "Victoria," "Penelope," "San Jose," 

 "O. S. Fowler," "C.H.White," "C.G.White," the "Bowhead," and 

 have also hunted out of several vessels from Yokohama. 



I first hunted among the Kurile Islands in 1881, and found rookeries 

 on the Stred-noi and Mushire Rocks and Raikoke Islands, and we made 

 good takes — cannot say now exactly how many — that year I was in the 

 "Diana," sailing from Yokohama. I know of no other places on those. 

 islands where seals haul-out. 



