FUR-SEAL FISHERIES OF ALASKA. 39 



days afterwards a native went to the rookery who had more experience, 

 as that was the first year 1 was there. He found some young seals dead 

 and some dying. There was a line where the keel of the boat had been 

 hauled up. It was on the morning of the 2d of September that the na- 

 tives had reported a schooner standing south, away down the horizon. 

 On the 3d of September the revenue-cutter Rush arrived at St. George, 

 and 1 asked Captain Healy if he had met a schooner, and he said no, 

 he had not seen anything of it. Yet the schooner, twenty -four hours 

 before, had made a raid on the rookery. The weather is so bad that a 

 vessel can not stay in these waters all the winter, but after the 1st of 

 November it will not be found necessary. In November there are not 

 many seals there. In a little while after that there is no inducement to 

 make a raid on the rookeries, but there are a good many in the water 

 south of us. Seals stay on our island until the 1st of December. I 

 used to go out every day and would notice that they got down thinner 

 and thinner, until I might have counted all on the island. In the 

 spring I could count for days all that were on the island. Then they 

 began to come in quantities, but for days I counted seals about the be- 

 ginning of the season. 



Q. What is your impression of the number of seals that visit these 

 rookeries annually ? — A. I never could make it so much as Professor 

 Elliot has done. I made many estimates. I have been to all the rook- 

 eries on these islands many times, and compared them with the space 

 occupied by the carcasses on the killing-ground, and I feel pretty con- 

 fident that the total number has been overestimated. 



Q. He estimated it at something less than 4,0(»0,000 on the two 

 islands f— A. I think he estimates 250,000 to 275,000 on St. George. I 

 have figured it out in several ways, and I think 20,000 that we killed 

 would be 10 per cent, of the killable seals. 



Q. Is that your estimate — 10 per cent, of all that come ? — A. I take 

 that for one thing. I take our killing ground, where we kill 20,000, and 

 where we lay these seals along as close as we could, so as to give us 

 greater area. We want to make room to take the next year another 

 piece, so that by the third year we could get back again. I measured 

 off that space two or three different times where 20,000 carcasses lay, 

 and where I considered they lay as close as on the rookeries. I came 

 to the conclusion we had about 40,000 at Zapadny, 30,000 at Staroiateel, 

 and about 50,000 at North rookery, 10,000 to 15,000 on Little East 

 rookery, and about 25,000 or 30,000 on East rookery. That is all the 

 rookeries. 1 could never make it any more than that during that time. 

 I measured the places carefully. 



Q. Do you put it at the same numbers annually! — A. About. I think 

 the breeding seals on the rookeries come in about the same numbers; 

 but the first year I was up there we killed 20,000 with great ease and 

 in a short time, and I considered that we could kill more easily; and I 

 recommended Colonel Otis to make a bigger allowance for St. George, 

 because we wanted to bring uj) our men's dividends a little. The next 

 year he gave permission to take 25,000 on St. George, and they would 

 take 75,000 on St. Paul. We got 21,000 or 22,000 that year. We had 

 exceeded in our estimate the number that we could take at that time; 

 and they had to finish our quota on the other island. Later in the sea- 

 son, perhaps two weeks after that, we could have got perhaps 10,000 

 more seals, but we certainly could not get them when we wanted them. 



Q. Have the natives any other means of livelihood except this fur- 

 seal business f — A. Nothing they can live upon. Their means of sub- 

 sistence for a large part during the spring and summer are sea-birds 



