DESTRUCTION OF FUR-SEALS 129 



Elliott, the Seals on the islands now numbered 959,455. 

 From 1871 to 1889, except for four years, over 100,000 male 

 Seals had been taken annually, on the islands, and paid for. 

 The total revenue derived by our Government during that 

 twenty-year period was $6,350,000. In 1890 the Seals killed 

 and secured at sea numbered 40,814, while the number killed 

 and lost was unknown. 



1891. — An agreement called a modus vivendi (or way of 

 living in peace) was made between England and the United 

 States, for three years, designed to close Bering Sea to pelagic 

 sealing pending the result of the Paris Tribunal. Practically, 

 it amounted to nothing. 



1893. — The case of the pelagic sealers was tried before the 

 Paris Tribunal, and through the ineffective management of 

 our case we lost on practically all our contentions. The 

 pelagic sealers emerged from the contest with full license to 

 kill Seals at sea everywhere outside a sixty -mile radius of the 

 Pribilof Islands. Because Japan, China, and Russia were not 

 parties to the tribunal, the people of those nations were not 

 bound by the award which kept American, Canadian, and 

 English sealing vessels sixty miles away from the Seal islands ! 



1894. — In this year 61,838 Seals were killed at sea and 

 secured, while an unknown number were killed and lost. 



1895. — ]VIr. J. B. Crowley (member of Congress in 1903), 

 as a special agent of the Treasury Department, assisted in 

 counting the dead bodies of about 30,000 Fur-Seal "pups," 

 on the Seal islands, which had starved that year by reason of 

 the kilhng of their mothers while at sea in search of fish. 

 {Congressional Record.) There were 56,291 Seals killed at 



