ALASKA. 261 



THE FtJE-SEAL EOOKBRIES OF THE SOUTH AT- 

 LANTIC. 



While the Callorhinus is found in such great numbers in the 

 North Pacific, there is nothing of its genus found in the waters 

 of the Nortli Atlantic, and none to speak of in the South Pacific, 

 and to-day the whole number found elsewhere than Alaska is 

 quite small, though in early days, some hundred years ago, 

 when the fur-seal was first discovered on the South Shetland 

 Islands, they were so abundant and so nu-tnerous that hundreds 

 ■of thousands were annually taken — taken without the slightest 

 regard to sex or condition, although the skins were not of great 

 value then. So numerous were these animals that for over fifty 

 years an immense number, several hundred thousand skins, 

 were yearly secured in this reckless, ruinous fashion, and it was 

 not until the beginning of the last decade that the supply grew 

 so small that scarcely a vessel of the former fleets remained on 

 the ground ; and last season, the winter of 1873-'74:, less than 

 15,000 were gathered from the ground upon which many mil- 

 lions of fur-seals were found forty years ago resting and 

 breeding. 



The government of Buenos Ayres has from the first protected 

 and cared for a small rookery of fur-seals under the bluffs at 

 Oabo Corrientes, on its coast, where some 5,000 to 8,000 are an- 

 nually taken, but the seals here have no hauling-grounds like 

 those on Saint Paul ; they are taken with much labor under the 

 high clifls of this portion of the coast. This is the only govern- 

 menti aid and care that the seals have ever received outside of 

 Bering Sea. The followiug extract shows the way in which the 

 fur-seals of the south came into notice : 



" Soon after Captain Cook's voyage in the Eesolution, per- 

 formed in 1771, he presented an official report concerning New 

 Georgia, in which he gave an account of the great number of 

 elephant-seals and fur-seals which he had found on the shores 

 of that island. This induced several enterprising merchants to 

 fit out vessels to take them ; the former for their oil, the latter 

 for their skins. Captain "Weddell states that he had been cred- 

 ibly informed that during a period of about fifty years not less 

 than 20,000 tons of oil were procured annually from this spot 

 alone for the London market, which, at a moderate ])rice, would 

 jield about £1,000,000 a year. 



