472 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
less improvidence, and wanton cruelty. The ‘“‘ woeful want” has come that “ woeful 
waste” hasmade. Without thought of the future the misguided hunters persist- 
ently killed every seal that came within theirreach. Oldand young, maleand female, 
were indiscriminately slaughtered, in season and out of season, and thousands of 
little pups not thought worth the trouble of knocking them on the head were left 
to die of hunger alongside of the flayed and gory carcases of their mothers. Every 
coast and island known to be the haunt of the seals was visited by ship after ship, 
and the massacre Jeft unfinished by one gang was continued by the next comers and 
completed by others until, in consequence of none of the animals being left to breed, 
their number gradually diminished so that they were almost exterminated, only a 
few stragglers remaining where millions were once found. In some places where 
formerly they gathered together in such densely packed crowds upon the shore that 
a boat’s crew could not find room to land till they had dispersed them for a space 
with oars and boat-hooks, not one fur-seal was to be found even so long ago as 1835. 
Dr. H. H. McIntyre, Superintendent of the seal fisheries of Alaska for the lessees, 
testified before the Congressional Committee as follows: 
Q. What proportion of the seals shot in the water are recovered and the skins taken 
to market?—A. I think not more than one-fifth of those shot are recovered. Many 
are badly wounded and escape. We find every year, imbedded in blubber of animals 
killed upon the islands, large quantities of bullets, shot, and buckshot. Last year 
my men brought to me as much as a double handful of lead found by them imbedded 
in this way. 
* * * * * * # 
Q. I want to ask you whether or not the 3-year-old seals, or many of them, which 
should have returned this year did not return because they had been killed?—A. That 
seems to be the case. The marauding was extensively carried on in 1885 and 1886, 
and in previous years, and of course the pups that would have been born from cows 
that were killed in 1885, or that perished through the loss of their mothers during 
that year, would have come upon the islands in 1888, and we should have had that 
additional number from which to make our selection this year. The deficiency this 
year is attributed to that cause—to the fact that the cows were killed. And I would 
say further that if cows are killed late in the season, say in August, after the pups 
are born, the latter are left upon the island deprived of the mother’s care, and of 
course perish. The effect is the same whether the cows are killed before or after the 
pups are dropped. ‘The young perish in either case. 
* * * * * * * 
Q. It being conceded that the islands are their home, and no one being interested 
other than the American and Russian Governments, there would be no special reason 
why other nations would object?—A. Only the Governments of the United States and 
England are interested in the Alaskan seal fisheries to any great extent. The United 
States is interested in it as a producer of raw material, and England as a manufac- 
turer of furs. If these two nations were agreed that seal life should be protected. 
I think there would be no trouble in fully protecting it. It is a question of quite as 
much interest to England as to the United States, for she has a large number of 
skilled workmen and a large amount of capital engaged in this industry. 
Professor Elliott, of the Smithsonian Institution, who has spent some time in scien- 
tifically examining the Seal Islands and the habits of the seal, thus describes the 
killing power of the seal-hunter at sea: 
431 His power to destroy them is also augmented by the fact that those seals 
which are most liable to meet his eye and aim are the female fur-seals, which, 
heavy with young, are here slowly nearing the land, soundly sleeping at sea by 
intervals, and reluctant to haul out from the cool embrace of the water upon their 
breeding-grounds until that day, and hour eyen, arrives which limits the period 
of their gestation. 
The pelagic sealer employs three agencies with which to secure his quarry, viz.: 
He sends out Indians with canoes from his vessel armed with spears; he uses shot- 
guns and buck-shot, rifles and balls; and last, but most deadly and destructive of 
all, he can spread the “gill-net” in favourable weather. 
With gill-nets ‘‘underrun” by a fleet of sealers in Behring’s Sea across these con- 
verging paths of the fur-seal, anywhere from 10 to 100 miles southerly from the 
Pribylov group, I am moderate in saying that such a fleet could utterly ruin and 
destroy those fur-seal rookeries now present upon the Seal Islands in less time than 
three or four short years. Every foot of that watery roadway of fur-seal travel above 
indicated, if these men were not checked, could and would be traversed by those 
deadly nets; and a seal coming from or going to the islands would have, under the 
water and above it, scarcely one chance in ten of safely passing such a cordon. 
Open those waters of Behring’s Sea to unchecked pelagic sealing, then a fleet of 
hundreds of vessels, steamers, ships, schooners, and what not, would immediately 
venture into them, bent upon the most vigorous and indiscriminate slaughter of 
these fur-seals; a few seasons of greediest rapine, then nothing would be left of 
Meee 
ogee’ * 
