THE PACIFIC OCEAN. 233 
unsuspectingly remain while their fellows were slain 
and skinned; but latterly they have learned to 
guard against the new dangers, by placing them- 
selves on insulated rocks, from which they can in 
a moment throw themselves into the water. We 
may form a notion of the zeal with which this com- 
mercial enterprise was prosecuted, as well as of its 
valuable character, if it had been pursued with pru- 
dent restrictions, from the fact that in the years 
1821 and 1822, there were taken from the South 
Shetland Isles, 320,000 skins of Fur-Seals, and 940 
tuns of Sea-Elephant oil. The former valuable ani- 
mal might, by proper precautions, have been made 
to produce 100,000 skins annually, for a long time 
to come. “This would have followed from not 
killing the mothers till the young were able to take 
the water ; and even then, only those which appeared 
to be old, together with a proportion of the males, 
thereby diminishing their total number, but in slow 
progression. The system of extermination was prac- 
tised, however, at South Shetland; for whenever a 
Seal reached the beach, of whatever denomination, 
he was immediately killed and his skin taken; and 
by this means, at the end of the second year, the 
animals became nearly extinct; the young, having 
lost their mothers when only three or four days old, 
of course all died, which, at the lowest calculation, 
exceeded 100,000.”* 
Other species of Otaries, which frequent these 
seas, have large heads, clothed with long shaggy hair, 
* Weddell’s Voyage, p. 141. 
2 
