Depletion of the Fur-Seal in the Southern Seas. 449 
referring to the Maoris at the nephrite cutting village, 
Kararoa, say: ‘‘ Of these only the old man and woman had 
ever seen a white man. They remembered the sealers.” 
Even at that date, however, it was worth while to visit the 
“rookeries” occasionally. Two years before the exploring 
party went down, 150 sealskins had been obtained at the 
Steeples. Another point had not been visited for ten years, 
and it is mentioned that fifteen years earlier a sealing ves- 
sel had been lost, and those of her crew who escaped had 
been murdered by Maoris. 
I am unable to give the northward limit of the seals. 
They were extremely plentiful in Bass Strait, in lat. 38°, 
and on this island at least as far north as Cape Foulwind, 
lat. 42°. While not unknown in the North Island, they 
were evidently rare there. Mention is made in a book ofa 
vessel coming from the Fiji Islands with sealskins, but, if 
this is not a mistake, I suspect that this locality was given 
out to mislead competitors, the vessel having really come 
from some previously unvisited spot in the vicinity of New 
Zealand, which it was thought undesirable to make known. 
Some idea of the number of seals in suitable localities 
will he gathered from a few facts which may be mentioned. 
New Sonth Wales was colonized in 1788, and very soon 
after, whalers and sealers began to frequent the neigh- 
boring seas. In that year Messrs. HEnderby’s ship, the 
Emilia, rounded Cape Horn, and first carried the sperm 
whale fishery into the Pacific Ocean. As early as 1793 an 
American sealer, on his way to his own cruising grounds, 
called at Sydney and expressed surprise that they had no 
small craft on the coast, as he had observed a plentiful 
harvest of seals as he came along. 
The insularity of Van Diemen’s Land was discovered by 
Messrs. Bass and Flinders in 1798. In the vicinty of Bass 
Strait they met the sealing vessel Vautilus, which obtained 
9,000 seals on that cruise. Seals of several species in enor- 
mous numbers were seen. Mr. Flinders likens the scene 
to a crowded farmyard, and Mr. Bass ‘“ had to fight his way 
