MUSHIE ROOKERY. 255 



The people of the Yakuno Man claimed to have takeu a few black pups there 

 the same year aud to have seen one seal on the rock the very morning when I myself 

 landed there in 1896 and found none. 



6. MusHiR Rookery. 



The history of the discovery of Mushir rookery is not so clear. Captain Snow 

 states that the schooner Selena^ in 1881, the same year in which he discovered 

 Srednoi, obtained 50 seals on Mushir. However, the iirst great haul was made the 

 following year (1882) by the schooner Mary 0. Bohm, the number of seals taken 

 being 1,240, according to Snow. 



Ko other schooner seems to have exploited Mushir that year, as Srednoi was all 

 they could attend to. It should be noted, however, that E. P. Miner, who was that 

 year in the Otome, states that "we worked both rookeries [Mushir and Srednoi] 

 that summer [1882] " (Fur Seal Arb., viii, p. 701), 



The foreign SQhooners did not exploit the Kuril rookeries to any extent in 1882, 

 as they devoted all their energies to sea-otter hunting and to raiding Eobben Island. 

 Captain Snow assures me that the only foreign vessel which obtained skins in the 

 Kurils that year was the Penelope, which secured 87 seals on Mushir in July, 1883. 

 Snow himself called at the rock just after this occurred. "For some reason or 

 other," he writes me, "the Mushir rookery (which is on a high peaked rock, and 

 difficult of access except in very fine weather) was only visited by the few of the 

 hunters, who, arriving soon after the Penelope had cleared off the seals, found nothing 

 worth remaining for." 



Mushir rookery was not exhausted, however, probably due to the greater diffi- 

 culty in landing and working' the Seal Kock, for in 1884 at least 1,758 skins were 

 obtained there. Petersen, in the Diana, took 960 seals there, and the Nemo got 400. 

 E. P. Miner, then mate on the Penelope, on his return from the north, got " a few 

 seals on the Mushir Rocks " (Fur Seal Arb., viii, p. 702), 30 according to Snow. 

 The Adele got 118 and the Felix 250. 



It seems that Snow, in the Nemo, and Petersen, in the Diana, were the only ones 

 who visited Mushir in 1885, but the catch was small, only 384 and 107, respectively; 

 but this nearly exhausted the rookery, for in 1886 the Diana only got a doubtful 

 hundred on " Mushir, Kaikoke, etc. " During later years only a few unrecorded individ- 

 uals have been taken there, not separately enumerated in the catches; thus Miner 

 states that in 1886 he visited Raikoke Island, Mushir Rocks, and Srednoi, "but got 

 only about 500 seals" (Fur Seal Arb., viii, p. 702). 



Since then nothing authentic is heard of Mushir rookery until 1893, when the 

 GhisMma Maru took 3 seals there on September 19 (according to Mr. Fozawa's 

 statement in letter to me of November 2, 1896), and Mr. Nozawa's assistant saw 10 seals 

 in the water near it, except the general statement of Mr. Niva that until about 1892 

 the Third GhisMma Maru killed there about 30 to 40 seals every year. More definite 

 ■ is his account of the killing of four old males weighing 300 to 400 pounds, according 

 to his oral statement to me in Tokyo in 1896, which were taken on the west side of 

 Sea Lion Rock on September 11, 1894, when he was cruising in the same vessel (Rep. 

 Jap. Pish Bur., 1894, pp. 201-202). 



'This is probably the German schooner Helena, Captain Oolder, vrhich was seized by the 

 Russians in 1884: at Robben Island, It having "raided that island five years." (See my Russian Far- 

 Seal Islands, p. 57.) 



