744 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
now seems clear, to set in from the beginning, twenty years ago, under the present 
system. 
Had, however, a check been as slowly and steadily applied to that “driving” as it 
progressed in 1879-82 upon those great reserves of Zapodnie, South-west Point, and 
Polayina, then the present condition of exhaustion, complete exhaustion of the 
surplus supply of young male seals, would not be observed—it would not have 
happened. 
But, however, no attention was given whatever to the fact that in 1882 the reserves 
were suddenly, very suddenly, drawn upon, steadily and heavily for the first time, 
in order that a prompt filling of the usual annual quota should be made before or by 
the usual time of closing the sealing season for the year, viz., 20th July; and until 
the Report for 1889, above cited, of the Treasury Agent in charge, came into the 
Treasury Department, not a suggestion ever had been made in official writing, from 
1872-74 to that hour, of the slighest prospect even of the amazing diminution of seal- 
life which is now so painfully apparent. 
Naturally enough, being so long away from the field, on reading Mr. Charles J. 
Goff’s Report for the season’s work of 1889, I at once jumped to the conclusion that 
the pelagic sealing, the poaching of 1886-88, was the sole cause for that shrinkage 
which he declared manifest on those rookeries and hauling grounds of the Pribylott 
Islands—such a great shrinkage as to warrant him in the declaration which he makes 
in that Report, that he believes that not over 60,000 young male sealscan be secured 
here in 1890, and if more can be, that they should not be taken. 
Still, even then, charging it in this manner all to the poachers was not quite satis- 
factory to my mind. I could figure out from the known number of skins which these 
hunters had placed on the market a statement of the loss and damage to the rook- 
eries—to the females and young, born and unborn, for that is the class from which 
the poacher secures 85 per cent. of his catch; and I was prepared to find by these 
figures that the breeding grounds had lost heavily, but that did not even then satisfy 
me as to his statement, which came so suddenly in 1889, that little more than half of 
the established annual quota of 100,0C0 hollenschickie suitable for killing could or 
would be secured here in 1890; for, great as my estimated shrinkage on the breeding 
grounds was, due to the work of the poachers, yet that would not, could not, explain 
to my mind tlie nine-fold greater shrinkage of that supply from the hauling grounds 
which must exist, or else 60,000 young males might beeasily taken, judging from my 
notes of such work in 1872. Therefore, I landed here much confused in thought as 
to what I should observe. 
58 I began at once, and finished by the 9th June, an entire new topographical 
survey and triangulation of the landed area of the seven rookeries of the St. 
Paul’s Island and those of the St. George Island on the 19th and 20th July, so as 
to have these charts ready for instant use when the time came in which to observe 
the full form and number of the breeding seals as they laid upon this ground, viz., 
10th to 20th July inclusive; thereafter until the closing of the season on St. Paul, 
19th July, and on St. George up to 4th August, I have daily recorded the full details 
of the hauling, the driving, and the killing of seals there, the condition of the 
breeding animals, their arrival and behaviour, &e. A thousand varied incidents 
have been faithfully observed, as my field notes will testify, and which appear in all 
their detail in the following Appendix to this Report. 
The present condition of these fur-seal preservers is nothing new to the history of 
their case while in the hands of the Russians. Twice before, in the comparatively 
short period of a century since they were first opened to the cupidity of man, have 
they been threatened with the same ruin that threatened them to-day; in 1806 and 
1807 all killing was stopped to save them, but resumed again in 1808—too soon; for, 
after seventeen years of continual adoption of half-way measures, the full and nec- 
essary term of rest was given to them in 1834; the story of this ‘‘Zapooska” of the 
Russians in 1834, and the causes which led them to the threatened extermination of 
those fur-seal interests on the Pribyloff Islands, is one that is now timely in its repe- 
tition, and should be heeded. 
When these islands were first discovered, in 1786-87, an indiscriminate rush was 
made to them by the representatives of every Russian trading organization then in 
Alaska—by every one then able to fit out a vessel and hire a number of men. These 
eager, greedy parties located on and near all of the large rookeries and hanling 
grounds, and killed as many as they could handle; in those days all the skins were 
air-dried and not salted, and that made the work of sealing then far slower and much 
more difficult than it is now, since the present system of salting skins practically 
offers no delay whatever to the work of killing and skinning. In my mind, there is 
no doubt but that this inability to cure rapidly the skins for shipment in 1786-1805, 
as fast as they could then be killed and skinned—not one-tenth as fast as they can 
be to-day,—that this delay alone saved the Pribyloff rookeries from utter extermina- 
tion in those early days. Certainly it was and must have been the cause, for at least 
thirteen different trading organizations had their vessels and their men around, and 
olds 
r,s 
