APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 855 
It will be remembered that on the 27th May last the Undersigned had the honour 
of reporting to your Excellency upon the statement of Special Agent Goff and his 
assistants, in which he at some length reviewed the statements therein contained. 
‘This Report was approved by your Excellency on the 6th June, 1891, and the Under- 
signed would now invite attention thereto. 
He had at that time occasion to regret that the ex parte Report of Mr. Henry W. 
Elliot, to which reference had frequently been made, had been withheld from publi- 
cation, and not communicated to the Canadian Government. 
The newspaper extract now referred to the Undersigned, however, contains a 
lengthy introduction to this Report of Mr. Elliot, apparently embracing the princi- 
pal features dealt with in detail in the body of his Report. 
This article is prefaced by the statement that Mr. Blaine is, through this Report, 
in possession of information not previously at his disposal, which, it is argued, 
cannot fail to impress upon all concerned the necessity for immediately preventing 
the killing of seals in the open waters of Behring’s Sea; but it is to be noticed that 
the preponderance of the evidence referred to in the Report is entirely opposed to 
that particular view. It is submitted that the Report really aims at the operations 
on the breeding islands by the lessees of the United States Government. 
Mr. Elliot says: 
“T embarked upon this mission with only a faint apprehension of viewing any- 
thing more than a decided diminution of the Priblyloft rookeries, caused by pelagic 
sealing during the last five or six years, but from the moment of my landing at St. 
Paul’s Island on the 2ist of last May, until the close of the breeding season, those 
famous ‘rookeries’ and ‘hauling-grounds’ of the fur-seals thereon, and of the St. 
George Island, too, began to declare, and have declared, to my astonished senses the 
fact that their utter rnin and extermination is only a question of a few short years 
from date, unless prompt and thorough measures of relief and protection are at once 
ordered on sea and on land by the Treasury Department and enforced by it.” 
He enters into a lengthy explanation of the reasons for the discrepancy between 
his present statement and the views expressed by him with regard to the inexhausti- 
ble supply of seals upon the rookeries during the term of 1872-74, when he was “‘ firmly 
satisfied that, as matters were then conducted,” there was no reason to fear injury 
to the regular annual supply of male life necessary to the perpetuation of the rook- 
eries. 
He gives as reasons for his complete change of opinion, and for now finding ‘ only 
ascant tenth of the number of young male seals which I [he] saw there in 1872,” 
the following: 
“1, From over-driving without heeding its warning first begun in 1879, dropped 
then until 1882, then suddenly renewed again with increased energy from year to 
year until the end is abruptly reached, this season of 1890. 
“2. From the shooting of fur-seals (chiefly females) in the open waters of the 
North Pacific Ocean and Behring’s Sea, began a business in 1886, and continued to 
date.” 
It will be observed that this second reason is given for the decrease principally of 
young males, while further on in the same Report, and throughout the whole contro- 
versy, pelagic sealing is and has been held to be particularly destructive to females. 
Unlike all previous Reports of the United States Treasury Agents, this takes the 
initiative in ascribing the alleged enormous decrease of seal life on the rookeries 
primarily to the lessees of the breeding-islands; but, like all others, it reiterates the 
oft-refuted statement that the shooting of fur-seals (chiefly females) in the open 
waters of Behring’s Sea and the North Pacific Ocean is responsible, though second- 
arily, for the alleged diminution of seals on the breeding-grounds. 
85 - Itis worthy of notice that this appears to be the first occasion upon which 
United States Special Agents have attributed the falling-off to the operations 
of sealers in the North Pacific Ocean outside Behring’s Sea; and to this, no doubt, is 
due the extension of the ground recently proposed by Mr. Blaine to be covered by 
the arbitration. 
It will not be forgotten that the Undersigned, when refuting the statements as to 
the killing of females in Behring’s Sea (the only waters under dispute), has fre- 
quently shown that it might be true that the pursuit of seals along the coast and 
outside Behring’s Sea was destructive by reason of the killing of females with pnp, 
during their slow movements before they enter that sea, but that, after entering, the 
females made a swift passage to the rookeries in a bee-line, and the danger no longer 
existed. 
The question in dispute is not as to the destruction of seal life outside Behring’s 
Sea, but the right of the United States to monopolize the seals in Behring’s Sea to 
the extent of excluding other nations from their pursuit in those waters. The 
authorized Agents of that Government have, in the past, either failed in their duty, 
or were unable to appreciate the significance of the gradual and certain decline of 
the seals dwelt upon by Mr. Elliot; for he now reports that not until 1889 has there 
