1868.] MR. R. BROWN ON THE SEALS OF GREENLAND. 439 



by the middle of April, leave for home, to complete their supplies in 

 order to be off by the 1st of May to the Davis's Straits whale-fishery. 

 During the months of March and the early part of April the sealers 

 are subject to all vicissitudes of weather, calm and storm suddenly 

 alternating, while the thermometer will stand for weeks at zero, or 

 even many degrees below it. 



The number of Seals taken yearly by the British and continental 

 ships (principally Norse, Dutch, and German) in the Greenland sea 

 when they get among them will average upwards of 200,000, the 

 great bulk of which are young " saddlebacks," or, in the language of 

 the sealer, " whitecoats." When they have arrived at their maxi- 

 mum quality, 80 generally yield a tun of oil ; otherwise the general 

 average is about 100 to the tun. In 1859 good oil sold for about 

 ^33 per tun ; add to this the value of 100 skins at 5s. each, and 

 the whole will amount to j658 sterling. From this simple calcula- 

 tion a very good estimate may be formed of the annual commercial 

 value of the Greenland " Seal Fishery ; " for, supposing 2000 tuns 

 of oil to be about the annual produce, and assuming j£58 as the value 

 per tun inclusive of the skins, the whole produce of the fishery will 

 amount to the yearly value of ^6116,000 sterling (^Wallace). This, 

 of course, does not take into calculation the produce the Danish Go- 

 vernment derives from their colonies on the west coast of Greenland 

 (which I notice under the head of each Seal), nor what the Russians 

 derive from the coast of Spitzbergen and from the White Sea. The 

 " fishery," however, is very precarious. Some years little or nothing 

 is got, the ice being too thick for the ships to "get in to them." 

 In one year it may happen that the fishery in the Spitzbergen Sea 

 proves a failure while the Newfoundland one is successful. For some 

 years past it has proved in the former sea almost a failure * . There 

 seems, indeed, little doubt that the fishery must fail in course of 

 time, as have the Seal- and Whale-fisheries in some other parts of the 

 world ; and if Seal-hunting is pursued with the energy it is at pre- 

 sent, that day cannot be far distant. Some of the sealers laugh 

 at this idea ; but where is the enormous produce the South Seas used 

 to yield, superior to anything ever heard of in the north. No doubt 

 the South-Sea hunters said the same thing ; and doubtless when the 

 inhabitants of Smeerenberg, that strangest of all strange villages, 

 saw the Whales sporting in thousands in their bays, and the oil-boilers 

 steaming above the peaks of Spitzbergen, they laughed at the idea of 

 their ever becoming scarce ! Yet how false that idea has proved ! for 

 in our day the waters of those high northern seas are rarely troubled, 

 even by a wandering Mysticete that perchance may have missed its 

 way in making a passage from one secure retreat to another. So 

 will it ultimately be with the Seals. Indeed some are even now of 

 opinion that they are diminishing in numbers ; at least they have 

 evidently reached their zenith, as shown by statistics ; and taking into 



* It has been rather more successful in Newfoundland. This year (1868) up to 

 the 28th of April 250,000 Seals had arrived at St. John and Harbour Grace. Vide 

 a good account of the sealing bv the continental vessels in Petermann's ' Geogr. 

 Mittheil.' Feb. 1868. 



