APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 465 
From the official Report made to the House of Representatives in 1889: 
In former years fur-seals were found in great numbers on various islands of the 
South Pacific Ocean, but after a comparatively short period of indiscriminate 
slaughter the rookeries were deserted, the animals having been killed or driven 
from. their haunts; sv that pow the only existing rookeries are those in Alaska, 
another in the Russian part of Behring’s Sea, and a third on Lobos Island, at the 
mouth of the River Plate in South America. 
All these rookeries are under the protection of their several Governments. 
The best estimate as to the number of these animals on the Alaska rookeries 
places it at about 4,000,000; but a marked diminution of the number is noticed 
within the last two or three years, which is attributed by the testimony to the fact 
that unauthorized persous during ‘the summers of 1886, 1887, and 1888 had fitted out 
expeditions and cruized in Alaskan waters, and "by the use of fire-arms destroyed 
hundreds of thousands of these animals without regard to age or sex. 
The law prohibits the killing of fur-seals in the Territory of Alaska or the waters 
thereof, except by the lessee of the Seal Islands, and the lessee is permitted to kill 
during ‘the months of June, July, September, and October only; and is forbidden to 
kill any seal less than 1 year old, or any female seal, ‘‘or to kill such seals at any 
time by the use of fire-arms, or by other means tending to drive the seals away from 
those islands.” (Revised Statutes, section 1960.) 
Governor Simpson, of the Hudson Bay Company, in his ‘‘ Overland Journey Round 
the World,” 1841-42, p. 130, says: 
“‘Some twenty or thirty years ago there was a most wasteful destruction of the 
seal, when young and old, male and female, were indiscriminately knocked in the 
head. This imprudence, as any one might have expected, proved detrimental in two 
ways. The race was almost extirpated, and the market was glutted to such a degree, 
at the rate for some time of 200,000 skins a-year, that the prices did not even pay the 
expenses of carriage. The Russians, however, have now adopted nearly the same 
plan which the Hudson Bay Company pursues in recruiting any of its exhausted dis- 
tricts, killing only a limited number of such males as have attained their full growth, 
a plan peculiarly applicable to the fur-seal, inasmuch as its habits render a system 
of husbanding the stock as easy and certain as that of destroying it.” 
In the year 1800 the rookeries of the Georgian Islands produced 112,000 fur-seals, 
From 1806 to 1823, says the ‘‘ Encyclopedia Britannica, ” “the Geor gian Islands pro- 
duced 1,200,000 seals, and the Island of Desolation has been equally productive.” 
Over 1,000,000 were taken from the Island of Mas-:i-I'uera and shipped to China in 
1798-99. (Fanning’s ‘‘ Voyages to the South Sea,” p. 299.) 
In 1820 and 1821 over 300,U00 fur-seals were taken at the South Shetland Islands, 
and Captain Weddell states that at the end of the second year the species had there 
become almost exterminated. In addition to the number killed for their furs, he 
estimates that ‘not less than 100,000 newly-born young died in consequence of the 
destruction of their mothers.” (See Elliott’s Report, 1884, p. 118.) 
In 1830 the supply of fur-seals in the South Seas had so greatly decreased that the 
vessels engaged in this enterprise ‘‘ generally made losing voyages, from the fact that 
those places which were the resort of seals had been abandoned by them.” (Fan- 
ning’s ‘‘ Voyages,” p. 487.) 
At Antipodes Island, off the coast of New South Wales, 400,000 skins were obtained 
in the years 1814 and 1815. 
Referring to these facts, Professor Elliott, of the Smithsonian Institution, in his 
able Report on the Seal Islands, published by the Interior Department in 1s84, says: 
“This gives a very fair idea of the manner in which the business was conducted 
in the South Pacific. How long would our sealing interests in Behring’s Sea with- 
stand the attacks of sixty vessels carrying from twenty to thirty men each? Not 
over two seasons. The fact that these great southern rookeries withstood and paid 
for attacks of this extensive character during a period of more than twenty years 
speaks eloquently of the millions upon millions that must have existed in the waters 
now almost deserted by them.” 
425 Mr. R. H. Chapel, of New London, Connecticut, whose vessels had visited all 
the rookeries of the South Pacific, in his written statement before the Com- 
mittee on Commerce of the House of Representatives, said: 
“As showing the progress of this trade in fur-seal skins, and the abuses of its 
prosecution, resulting in almost total annihilation of the animals in some localities, 
it is stated on good authority that, from about 1770 to 1800, Kerguelen Land, in the 
Indian Ocean, yielded to the English traders over 1,000,000 skins; but open compe- 
tition swept off the herds that resorted there, and since the latter year hardly 100 
per annum could be obtained on all its long coast. Afterwards Mas-aé-Fuera Island, 
near Juan Fernandez, was visited, and 50,000 a-year were obtained; but as every one 
that desired was free to go and kill, the usual result followed—the seals were exter- 
minated at that island, and also at the Galapagos group near by. 
BS, PTV 30 
