214 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
sion steamers to the Pacific to develop our fisheries, and shortly before Professor 
Baird’s lamented death he wrote me that the ‘‘ Albatross” would be sent to our 
waters, and she is now on her way out. 
These Gloucester fishermen will render valuable assistance to Captain Tanner. It 
is to the fishermen of Gloucester, Cape Cod, and the coast of Maine that the United 
States Fish Commission is largely indebted for much of the valuable information 
respecting the Atlantic fisheries, which has been published by that admirable Bureau 
of the Smithsonian Institution. 
Hitherto no protection has been given our Pacific fishermen by our Government. 
The Treaty of 1818 does not allude to the Pacific coast, nor does the present Treaty, 
so far as I am informed, make any provision for or allusion to the fisheries of the 
North Pacific. British Columbia is,as it were, sandwiched between ‘Washington 
and Alaska; our interests are identical, and at present the most harmonious and 
kindly feeling exists between the people of British Columbia and ourselves. Every 
steamer for Alaska which takes the inside passage passes through the waters of 
British Columbia, affording a means of delightful recreation to thousands of tourists. 
This kindly feeling should be encouraged, and particularly in reference to our fisher- 
men who wish to fish the waters of the coast from the Columbia to Alaska. 
But these New England fishermen ask more than to fish along the coast; they wish 
to explore the waters of Behring’s Sea and the Arctic Ocean, and to be permitted to 
take any of the products of the ocean in American waters without the annoyance 
they have been subjected to for so many years on the Canadian coasts of the 
Atlantic. 
Ever since the lease of the Pribylov Islands to the Alaska Commercial Company, 
that powerful monopoly has persistently deceived the Congress of the United States 
and the American people by arrogantly asserting that all the tin seals of the North 
Pacific Ocean congregate on the Islands of Saint Paul and St. George, and that the 
indiscriminate slaughter of those seals would soon exterminate the race. The latter 
part of this assertion is true, but the first, I assert, is a physical impossibility. The 
seals of the North Pacific,in countless myriads, could not, by any process of their 
own, find room on those two comparatively insignificant islands, and I am prepared 
to prove that the southern seals, from the Gulf of Tehuantepec and Gulf of Cali- 
fornia, which come north every season, differ from the seals of the Pribylov Islands, 
and never “haul out” on that group. The indiscriminate slaughter of fin seals in 
early days on the Island of Massafuero, on the coast of Chile, and on the San Benito 
Islands of Lower California, drove the seals away from those once famous rookeries, 
and they seem to have acquired new habits. A paid writer of the company, Henry 
W. Elliott, in an otherwise excellent monograph on the fin seal islands of Alaska, 
boldly asserts that the seals of the North Pacific a]l congregate on the Pribylov 
Islands. He further asserts that those seals have their pups on land, and that if a 
pup is thrown into the water it cannot swim, but will sink like a stone, and takes 
me to task for asserting that the pups of the seals taken at Cape Flattery can swim 
as soon as born and even when taken alive from the mother’s womb.* 
In 1883 I was instructed by Professor Baird to investigate the habits of the fin seals 
and to make a Report thereon, which Report may be found in the Bulletin of the 
United States Fish Commission (vol. iii, 1883, p. 201). In that Report I have shown 
by thirteen witnesses, some of them Government officials, that the fin seals of Cape 
Flattery do have their pups in the water, on the kelp and at other places not yet 
discovered, and that the pups swiin as soon as born; this evidence as against 
193 Mr. Elliott’s unsupported, dogmatic assertion that the pups will sink like a 
stone. I believe that Mr. Elliott is correct so far as the seals of the Pribylov 
Islands are concerned, and I know that Iam correct so far as regards the seals of Cape 
Flattery, and, believing that both of us are correct, it proves incontestably that the 
seals which come from the south to Cape Flattery differ in their habits from those 
of Behring’s Sea. 
These eastern fishermen, knowing the value of the rookeries, are desirous that the 
law protecting the seals on the Pribylov Islands, as well as the provisions of the 
lease to the Alaska Commercial Company, should be rigidly enforced. But they do 
not believe that the term ‘‘adjacent waters” named in that lease ever meant or was 
intended to mean all the waters of the North Pacific Ocean. They believe that they, 
as American citizens, have aright to fish or hunt in the American waters of Behring’s 
Sea, outside of 3 nautical miles from any island or the mainland of Alaska. They 
believe that William H. Seward did not purchase Alaska for the Alaska Commer- 
cial Company, but forthe wholenation. ‘These fishermen from New England demand 
as aright that they be permitted to pursue their honourable business in the Amer- 
ican waters of the North Pacific, Behring’s Sea, and the Arctic without being treated 
as criminals and hunted down and seized and imprisoned by the pivatical Revenue 
*United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries, Special Bulletin 176, a Mono- 
graph of the Seal Islands of Alaska, by Henry W. Elliott, 1882, p. 166, last paragraph. 
