APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 195 
but never after 1822 were many animals found there. About 1845 the Antarctic 
fur-sealing was abandoned. In 1871 the industry was renewed, and a few vessels 
secured some valuable furs from the South Shetlands, but ina few years voyages 
there became unprofitable. (See sec. 5, vol. ii, United States Fish Commission 
Report, pp. 402-458. ) 
The same story may be told of Masafuera, from which island about 3,500,000 fur 
seal.skins were taken between the years 1793 and 1807. (See sec. 5, as above, p- 40%.) 
Captain Morrell states that in 1807 ‘the business was scarcely worth following at 
Masafuera, and in 1824 the island, like its neighbour Juan Fernandez, was almost 
entirely abandoned by these animals. (Morrell’ s Voyage: New York, 1832, p. 130.) 
Searcely any seals have since been found at Masafuera. Delano states that in 1797 
there were tsvo or three million fur seals on that island. Elliott, in his Report already 
cited, gives accounts of earlier voyages to Masafuera, &c. I have consulted log- 
books and journals of several voyages, all agreeing in the former abundance, and the 
extermination of the fur seal on Masafuera as wellas on other Antarctic or southern 
islands. 
At the Falkland Islands both fur seals and sea-lions abounded, but there, too, they 
were destroyed. 
The sealing business at South Georgia was most prosperous in 1800, during which 
season sixteen American and English vessels took 112,000 fur seal-skins. Though not 
as important a rookery as some of the other islands, considerable numbers of fur seals 
have been taken from South Georgia. Since 1870 some good cargoes of elephant seal 
oil have been taken there. 
Fur seals were abundant at the Tristan d’Acunha Islands at the beginning of the 
century, and because of the almost inaccessible caves and rocks to which they resort 
a few have survived—or, at least, as late as 1873 a few were annually taken there. 
On the west cost of Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope to the 16th degree of south 
latitude, there was until 1870 a considerable number of fur seals of an inferior qual- 
ity, but they are now practically exhausted, the few skins marketed as coming trom 
there being taken on various hauling grounds on islets farther south and east. (See 
sec. 5, vol. ii, United States Fish Commission Report, p. 415.) 
The Prince Edward group, Crozet Islands, Kerguelen Land, and other smaller 
islands in the Southern Indian and Southern Pacific Oceans, were important 
177 _—sseail fisheries both for the fur and elephant seal. At none of them is any 
number of seals found to-day. The English exploring ship ‘‘Challenger” vis- 
ited Kerguelen Land in 1873-76, and reports: 
“Two of the whaling schooners met with at the island killed over seventy fur 
seals in one day, and upwards of twenty at another, at some small islands off Howe 
Islands to the north. It is a pity that some discretion is not exercised in killing the 
animals, as is done at St. Paul Island, in Behring’s Sea, in the case of the northern 
fur seal. By killing the young males and selecting certain animals only for killing, 
the number of seals even may be increased; the sealers in Kerguelen Island kill all 
they can find.” (See ‘‘ Report of the Scientific Results of the Exploring Voyage of 
Her Majesty’s ship ‘Challenger,’ 1873-76. Narrative of the Cruise. Vol. i, in two 
parts. 4to. Published by order of Her Majesty’s Government, 1885.”) 
In these volumes will be found similar references to other seal islands visited by 
the “Challenger.” In referring to Marion Island the Report says: 
“The ruthless manner in which fur and elephant seals were destroyed by the seal- 
ing parties in the early part of this century has had the effect of almost exterminat- 
ing the colony that used these desolate islands for breeding purposes.” (Vol. i, p. 
294.) 
To recapitulate: concerning seal rookeries south of the equator, I may say that 
there is no single place where any number are now known to resort except on the 
Lobos Islands, off Peru, and at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, and on the neigh- 
bouring hauling grounds at the cliffs of Cabo Corrientes. Here they are, and have 
long been, protected by the Argentine Republic or Uruguay, and the rookery appears 
to remain about the same size, with little apparent increase or decrease in the num- 
ber of animals, as may be seen by statistics of the catch in the Table above given. 
The small rookeries or hauling grounds at Diego Ramirez Islands, Cape Horn, and 
the rocky islets in that vicinity, from 1870 to 1883 or 1884 yielded some return to the 
hardy sealers of Stonington and New London, Connecticut, from which ports a half- 
dozen vessels have been annually sent. Even this last resort of American sealers is 
practically exhausted, and only by much search is a profitable voyage made there. 
Dr, Coppinger, who was at Cape Horn in 1878-82 (‘‘ Cruise of the ‘Alert,’” by R.W. 
Coppinger: London, 1883), tells of the difficulties of sealing at Cape Horn, and of 
the profits made when even a fewskins are secured. In 1880 Captain Temple ‘‘ came 
through the western channels of Patagonia, having entered the straits at Tres Mon- 
a 2 auc on the Cavadonga group of barren rocks he says he found some thousands 
of seals. 
