FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OF THE COMMANDER ISLANDS 
305 
In 1898 and 1899 the number of skins taken did not much exceed 9,000, but 
the catches of the Japanese pelagic sealers were slowly increasing in spite of the 
dwindling of the herd. The lease of the Russian Seal Skin Co. was now nearing 
its termination, the last season under the contract being that of 1900, but extended 
over to the end of the 1901 season as noted above. Quite naturally, then, and 
especially as every seal spared on the islands meant one more possible skin for the 
pelagic sealers, the lessees bent every effort to get by any means whatever as many 
seals as possible. 
It was thought by us who witnessed the "raking and scraping" of the rookeries 
in 1895 to 1897, when the extreme methods applied yielded respectively 16,056, 
14,946, and 11,335 skins, that the limit of what was possible had been reached; 
but notwithstanding the facts that similar methods prevailed in 1898 and 1899 
and that pelagic sealing still continued to take its toll, the lessees succeeded in 
taking 12,540 skins in 1900 and 10,065 in 1901. Aliui^y. jlvifi 
The new lessees, the Kamchatka Commercial-Industrial Co., were not able 
to keep up this pace, but considering the circumstances and the condition of the 
herd they did pretty well, taking 7,107 skins in 1902 and 7,806 in 1903. Diu-ing 
the disastrous years of the war (1904-5) they even took 8,319 and 8,990, respec- 
tively. However, these years brought about the final collapse of the Commander 
Islands rookeries. It has already been mentioned how the war was taken advan- 
tage of by the Japanese raiders to partially destroy the rookeries. It may now 
be told how the war, by causing enormous losses to the leasing company, also 
became an active factor in the ultimate demoralization of the killing on land. 
While the Russians at the outbreak of the war were endeavoring by negoti- 
ations to obtain permission for the company to navigate its ships vmder a foreign 
flag, the Japanese seized the company's steamer Kotilc in Yokohama harbor and 
shortly afterwards its schooner Bobrilc in the harbor of Hakodate, less than three 
weeks after the opening of hostilities in January, 1904, thus crippling the company 
at the beginning of the sealing season, though it was able afterwards to charter the 
American steamer Redondo for the island service. This vessel, however, proved 
worthless, and the Mineola, which replaced her, was wrecked in the Okhotsk Sea 
near Tigil on the west coast of Kamchatka, involving a total loss of the cargo of 
goods and furs. During 1905 two more ships were chartered but both were 
captured by the Japanese in August, 1905. This capture involved a loss of 4,030 
fur-seal skins. It should be added that the rookery at Robben Island, which also 
was included in the company's lease, was lost to the Russians from the beginning 
of the war. Altogether the Kamchatka company's losses were enormous, and 
quite naturally its managers tried to save as much out of the wreck as possible. 
From 1895 to 1897 there was still a superabundance of adult male seals on Cop- 
per Island, though on Bering Island the bulls were relatively much scarcer, due to 
the fact that the character and situation of the rookeries were much more favor- 
able for a close killing than on Copper Island. At that time, however, the 
proportion of the sexes was not such as to cause alarm if pelagic sealing could have 
been stopped within a short time, a hope that was perfectly legitimate in view of 
the unanimous recommeindations made by the seal experts from England, Japan, 
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