688 INVESTIGATION OF THE FUK-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 



on an average there were at least 400 engaged on these islands every season from the 

 beginning of this work in 1787 with the old company, and Baranov put them off in 

 1799-1800. 



' ' Then the company resolved to colonize the islands and have the workmen's families 

 live up there with them, so as to avoid this constant uncertainty of the shipment of 

 hunters to the islands every year. So in 1800 the first permanent habitations were 

 made by the natives for homes and by the company for agents' dwellings, and the 

 first churches were consecrated on both islands. Most of these early people were on 

 St. Paul Island just as you see them now. 



"Taking sealskins in those days was very different work from what you have been 

 watching. Every hunter had to daily stretch and air-dry all the skins he took. 

 This process made the work very slow then compared to what it is now. No one 

 used salt, and no one could have used salt even had they known how in those days, 

 since the Chinese market was the only one then open for sealskins, and then buyers 

 wanted the parchment skins, which they tanned and Avore without plucking. 



' '.When all of these men rushed into the work after Pribilov's discovery, they quickly 

 saw and as quickly agreed among themselves that they must not and would not 

 destroy the breeding seals. They saw that they could get vast numbers of hollus- 

 chickie and many young females without disturbing the rookeries. This satisfied 

 them and they kept the agreement among themselves faithfully. It was the only 

 thing that they did agree upon, for a more quarrelsome, greedy set of managers never 

 got together. 



" Every energy was put out in getting the skins, and immense numbers were taken. 

 There is no count or record made of what the number was annually taken by them. 

 They did not tell one another, and each trader's only concern was to get his season's 

 catch safely off from the islands, and as safely laid down at Petropavlovsk, when the 

 skins met the Siberian buyers for the Chinese market at Kiachta. I have heard my 

 father say that it is a good day's work for a man to prepare 30 parchment sealskins, 

 for the stretching and placing of the frames involve much time and frequently strip- 

 ping. You can get some idea of what 400 men might do on this basis. They could 

 make between 1,000 and 1,200 skins a day. Take June, July, August, September, 

 and October, into about 20th November, you will have about 120 to 130 working days 

 at the most, and that would give a result of some 130,000 to 150,000 skins for their 

 season's work. I am inclined to believe that this is all that they could handle or did 

 get at best, and very likely they did not get so many, or if they did, many hundreds 

 if not thousands of skins were spoiled in preparation. In spite of this immense annual 

 catch of seals, no legend comes down to me of any scarcity of the supply while these 

 hunters worked the islands from 1787 up to 1799, which was the last season they had 

 this opportunity. Baranov lost no time in getting rid of them as soon as the imperial 

 authority from St. Petersburg came to him as governor of the Russia-America Co. 



"As to the manner of driving seals for the killing on these islands, I assure you that 

 the breeding seals were never disturbed seriously on any of the rookeries and never 

 have been in the slightest degree worked by the old company. They all drove in 

 the past as you have seen them drive on the islands this summer, but with this marked 

 difference: Now 100,000 skins can be at once cured within a week or 10 days from 

 the knife. Then it required the labor of 400 men to cure such a catch in "parchment " 

 or "laftak" shape, all through June, July, August, September, and October annually. 

 Now it is all done between the 14th of June and the 1st of August in the salt kenches. 



"This necessity of getting only a few skins daily in the past, so as to properly cure 

 them, made it imperative to continue the daily work all through the season of four 

 or five months. In this manner a great many cows would be swept into the drives 

 every August, September, and October, since the breeding season on the rookeries 

 ends by the middle of August, and then the cows often stray over into the path of 

 tiie drivers. Of course a good main- cows were taken in this way, but you will clearly 

 perceive that ir was unavoidable, and that the breeding grounds were never disturbed. 

 You call it "enlightened selfishness"? Well, I hardly understand it thai way. It 

 was fear of one another that caused them to live up to this agreement of theirs not 

 to disturb the breeding grounds in their time, and it was fairly forced upon the old 

 company by the evidence of swift diminution of this life as early as 1804, 1805, or 

 soon after it took sole charge. 



"As to the number of seals in the past and earliest working of the islands, have you 

 asked the old native- on St. Paul about it?" (I then read mv notes of the conferences 

 of July, 1872, to him. 



" You have done direct what I was going to tell you to do. Those men are the only 

 ones now living who know anything at all about the subject. No one survives here. 



' "When my father first went up there in 1804 he was assured by the natives i hat the seals 

 were becoming less and less even - season, and that there were not then near so many 



