742 APPENDIX TO COUNTER-CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



11. Notbing has been paid or promised me for m.aking tliis statement, 

 which I have read over and have found correct. 



(Signed) lloscoE Wheeler, Jiuir. 



Subscribed and sworn to before me, this 7th day of December, 1892. 



[SEAL.] (Signed) Lincoln Sonntag, Notary Fublic. 



Deposition of James Garthrat. 



State of California, City and County of San Francisco. 



James Carthrat, of San Francisco, having been duly sworn, deposes 

 and says: 



1. I reside in San Francisco, in the State of California, and am in my 

 80th year. 



2. Have been master and owner of sealing- vessels, but have never 

 hunted myself. 



3. In 1883 went out sealing for the first time in the vessel " San Diego," 

 of which I was master, and sealed only fifteen days. I went out every 

 year till 1887. When I was in the vessel " Sylvia Handy " I was always 

 out as master. In 1887 the vessel was seized with 1,679 skins, which 

 were confiscated. 



4. Always sealed along the coast and in theBehring Sea, and noticed 

 no diflerence in the number of seals from the first to the last year. 



5. I never was out in a boat with a seal hunter, but have seen hunters 

 Ivilling near the vessel, and know that hunters do not lose many by 

 sinking, and a really good hunter loses very few, not over 5 in 100. I 

 have seen my head hunter, William Thomas, on one occasion in 1885, 

 bring in seventeen pelts with seventeen shots. I know of my knowledge 



that he only fired seventeen shots. They mostly use the shot-gun. 

 139 6. I myself i)ersonally never killed a seal. 



7. In my recollection I got more females than males along the 

 coast. About 60 per cent., I think, would be about the average run of 

 females, and it would run about the same in Behring Sea, but for two 

 years they ran about the same there. On the coast the cows are 

 mostly carrying pups, and in the Sea they were mostly in milk. Have 

 had a good many barren cows. In the latter i)art of July and August 

 I have seen hunters get cows in milk down near the Aleutian Islands, 

 and I would think they were taken at least 200 miles from St. George 

 Island to the southward. 



8. Early in the present year I made a statement to a Mr. Evans, an 

 United States Government Agent, in his office on California Street, in 

 this city. He questioned me in regard to sealing, and asked me if it 

 was not a fact that hunters lost nine out of ten of their seals. I said, 

 " Nothing of the kind." That a good hunter would not lose 10 per 

 cent, by sinking, and perhaps not 5 per cent. He told me that the Com- 

 pany, meaning the North American Commercial Coni])any, said that 

 the pelagic hunters lost 30,000 to save 1,000, to which I replied that 

 my hunters must have lost over 60,000 in one year, for the " San 

 Diego " in 1885 got over 2,000 skius. 



9. Cannot now remember what else I said, but it was something t-o 

 the same eft'ect as I have said to-day. It was a sworn statement. I 

 gave the same person statements once or twice before, and last time he 

 promised to pay me, but has never done so, and I do not now ever 

 expect to get paid by hhn. 



