(Mclntyre 1870). The island was being governed by Lieuten- 

 ants Barnes and Henderson of the United States Revenue 

 Marine, assisted by soldiers on each island. Two representa- 

 tives of Hutchinson, Kohl & Company and two representatives 

 of Williams, Havens & Co. were present on St. Paul and a "like 

 number" on St. George. The total Aleut population of the 

 Pribilofs was 371. Congress had enacted a law, approved 27 

 July 1868, forbidding the killing of seals for commercial use. 

 In February 1869, the Secretary of the Treasury gave permis- 

 sion for "two men selected by each of said firms to remain on 

 each island to care for the property of their principals" (U.S. 

 Congress, House 1870a: 13). The Secretary also permitted the 

 Aleuts to "kill such small numbers [of seals] as may be abso- 

 lutely necessary for their sustenance and clothing" (U.S. Con- 

 gress, House 1870a: 13). Mclntyre interpreted this liberally. He 

 instructed Lieutenants Barnes and Henderson to allow the 

 Aleuts to sell skins to the traders, and the total sealskin take 

 for the year 1869 was, as we have stated, 85,901 . Mclntyre was 

 a business-man's business-man; he became the first superin- 

 tendent of the Alaska Commercial Company in the following 

 year, 1870. 



Research During the Interregnum 



In August 1868, Dall revisited the Pribilofs (U.S. Congress, 

 Senate 1895, part 3, p. 22-23). He had landed on St. Paul Is- 

 land in 1865. When he stopped for 5 d at St. George Island in 

 1868, he was evidently the first scientist on the Pribilofs after 

 the acquisition by the United States. He took measurements of 

 a freshly killed male and a female seal (Allen and Bryant 

 1870:78). Under Dall's direction, Henry Wood Elliott later 

 drew the first sketch of Alaskan fur seals since the time of 

 Choris (Dall 1870:489). 



Dall subsequently recommended a five-point program for 

 conserving the fur seals. Point 4 specifies that "killing should 

 be restricted to one hundred thousand annually, of which 

 twenty- five thousand should be taken from St. George's, and 

 seventy-five thousand from St. Paul's" (Dall 1870:497). Dall 

 revisited the Pribilofs in 1874 and 1880 but did no research on 

 seals. 



Perhaps in company of Wilson, Charles Bryant, first special 

 agent of the Treasury Department, arrived on the Pribilofs 

 "early in March, 1869, but it was not until the spring of 1871 

 that order was finally brought out of the confusion into which 

 the fisheries had been thrown by the change in ownership" 

 (Bryant 1890:902). 



When he arrived on the islands in 1869 "the islands were 

 then in charge of Kazean Shisenekoff, a Creole born on the is- 

 land and educated in the [Russian] school at Sitka. . .. This 

 Kazean governed the islands twenty-seven years. ... He kept a 

 record in manuscript of his observations and left it on the 

 island at his death, but before my arrival there it had been used 

 to paste over the cracks in the ceiling of the hut of one of the 

 natives and so was lost" (Bryant 1880:389). 



In 1869, Bryant drew maps — mere sketches — of the islands, 

 and collected the first good series of museum specimens (Allen 

 and Bryant 1870:1, 90, 93). From the six skins and skeletons 

 which he collected, Allen presented a table of measurements 

 and drawings of the skulls and certain other parts (Allen and 

 Bryant 1870:77-82, pis. 2, 3). In 1869 he also made the first 

 "census" of the seal population. On the basis of a total rook- 

 ery shoreline 18 mi (29 km) long, averaging 15 rods (247.5 ft, 



75.4 m) wide, and occupied by 20 breeding adults per square 

 rod (25.3m 2 ), he figured that there must be 3,133,200 breeding 

 adults and pups (Allen and Bryant 1870:106). This is more 

 than twice the number present today and it was probably an 

 overestimate. 



To test the homing ability of seals, Bryant had, in November 

 1870, 50 young males selected from one rookery, and marked 

 the right ear, and 50 more selected from another rookery, 2 mi 

 (3.2 km) distant from the first, were marked on the left ear. 

 The result was that in 1873, when they were of the proper age 

 to be taken for their skins, four of them were killed on St. 

 Paul's Island, at points more or less distant from the place 

 where they were marked, and two were found on the Island of 

 Saint George (Bryant 1880:401). Still later (1885) George R. 

 Tingle noted one of the bulls that Bryant had clipped 14 yr be- 

 fore in a drive on the reef, indicating a regular return to 

 rookery of birth (U.S. Treasury 1898-99 part 2, p. 280; Jordan 

 and Clark 1898b). 



Bryant wrote (1880:390-391) that the Russians killed few 

 seals over 3 yr old because of the labor of handling the skins of 

 older and larger animals. From 1871 to 1873, the Alaska Com- 

 mercial Company, obliged to pay a fixed tax per skin, raised its 

 sights to larger animals with the thought of making more prof- 

 it per skin. It found, however, that the skin of a 3-yr-old 

 brought a better price than did skins of larger animals. "From 

 this date [1873] only the three- year-old seals have been taken" 

 (Bryant 1880:391). 



Bryant (1880:403) first recorded cryptorchids (males with in- 

 fantile testes) and hermaphrodites. 



"Captain Bryant says that he took, respectively, 18 and 24 

 seal pups from the stomachs of two killers [killer whales, Or- 

 cinus orca]" (Lucas 1899d:93). Maynard (1876), a contempo- 

 rary of Bryant, wrote in 1876 (p. 6) that "a single killer-whale 

 has been found to have fourteen young seals in his stomach 

 when killed." Bryant himself wrote (1880:407) that "in three 

 cases where they [killer whales] have been caught young seals 

 have been found in their stomachs, leaving no doubt of their 

 object in approaching the island." Although we have searched 

 carefully, we have not found Bryant's original account. "On 

 tracing [Bryant's] stories they seem to have no basis in fact so 

 far as the islands are concerned, having apparently been trans- 

 ferred as sailors' yarns from events among the hair seals on the 

 Labrador coast" (Jordan et al. 1898:506). A footnote in a re- 

 port by Elliott (1876:89) stated that "in the stomach of one of 

 these animals [killer whales] (year before last) fourteen small 

 harp-seals were found — Michael Carroll's Report, Canadian 

 Fisheries, 1872." 



The following anecdote may represent the only authentic 

 stomach examination of a killer whale on the Pribilofs: "In 

 the year 1868 Mr. E. Norton, while on St. Paul Island, ob- 

 served a killer chasing seals, swimming with such force that he 

 ran aground and was unable to get off. When the tide went out 

 Mr. Norton cut it open and found three seals in its stomach" 

 (Falconer 1874:59). 



Bryant remained on the islands for at least 8 yr, 1869 to 1877 

 (Bryant 1880:382; Murray 1898b:34). The Jordan Commission 

 listed him (erroneously we believe) as being "responsible for 

 the record in the log of the island of St. Paul" as late as 1893 

 (U.S. Treasury 1898-99, part 2, p. 256). 



As part of his plan to describe the marine mammals of the 

 Northwest coast, Charles M. Scammon took detailed measure- 

 ments of five female fur seals in an Indian lodge at "Kiddy 



