FUiR-SEAL FISHERIES OF ALASKA. 75 



merated ^ — A. I sliall coine to that. Tlie cause of the extermination 

 of seals ill those localities was the indiscriminate character of the 

 slaughter. Sometimes as many as fifteen vessels would be hanging 

 around these islands awaiting oj^portunity to get their catch, and every 

 vessel would be governed by individual interests. Tliey would kill 

 everything that came in their way that furnished a skin, whether a 

 cow, a bull, or a middle-grown seal, leaving the young pups just born 

 to die from neglect and starvation. It was like taking a herd of cattle 

 and killing all the bulls and cows and leaving the calves. The exter- 

 mination was so complete in these localities that the trade was ex- 

 hausted, and voyages to those places were abandoned. About 1870, 

 nearly tifty years after the discovery of the South Siietland Islands, 

 when the occupation of Alaska by the cession of liussia to the United 

 States of the Bering Sea was brought about 



The Chairman. I want to interrupt you to ask a question bearing 

 on that point. Were those rookeries in the South Seas never under the 

 protectorate of any government at all ? 



The Witness. Never. 1 was going to say that when the cession was 

 made by Kussin to the United States of this territory, and the subject 

 of the value of fur seals, or the possible value, was brought to mind, 

 jitople who had been previously engaged in that business revisited these 

 southern localities, after a lapse of nearly fifty years, and no seals were 

 found on the island of Desolation. These islands have been used as 

 the breeding place for sea-elephants, and that creature can not be ex- 

 terminated on that island, for the reason that certain beaches known 

 as "weather beaches" are there. The sea breaks rudely upon these 

 beaches, audit is im])ossible to land upon them. There areclifl's, some- 

 thing like 300 to 500 feet, of shore ice, and the sea elephant finds a safe 

 resort on these beaches, and still preserves enough life to make the pur- 

 suit of that animal worth following in a small way. 



1 have vessels there, and have had, myself and father, for fifty or 

 sixty years. But this is incidental. The island of South Shetland, and 

 the island of South Georgia, and the island of Sandwichland, and the 

 ])iegos off Cajje Horn, and one or two other minor jioints were found to 

 yield more or less seal. In this period of fifty years in these localities 

 seal life had recuperated to such an extent that there was taken from 

 them in the six years from 1870 to 1870 or 1877, perhaps 40,000 skins. 



Q. After they had been abandoned for fifty years f — A. Yes; today 

 they are again exhausted. The last year's search of vessels in that re- 

 gion — I have the statistics hereof a vessel from Stonington from the 

 South Shetland Islands, reported in 1888, and she procured thirty-nine 

 skins as the total result of search on those islands and South Georgia. 



One of my own vessels ])rocured sixty-one skins, including eleven 

 pups, as the total result of her voyage; and, except about Cajie Horn, 

 there are, in my opinion, no seals remaining. I do not think that one 

 hundred seals could be procured from all tlie localities mentioned by a 

 close search. Any one of those localities I have named, under proper 

 l)rotection and restrictions, might have been perpetuated as a breediug 

 ])lace for seals, yielding as great a number per annum as do the islands 

 belonging to the United States. 



Now, the trade in those localities is entirely exhausted, and it would 

 be inijiossible in a century to restock those islands, or bring them back 

 to a point where they would yield a, reasonable return for the invest- 

 ment of capital in hunting skins. That, in brief, completes the history 

 of the fur seal in the South Atlantic Ocean. 



