Feb- 26, 1898,] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
171 
is divided up in small groups and the animals killed 
by striking each a single blow upon the head with a 
club. The skins are rapidly removed by the natives, 
counted by agents of the Treasury, and placed in the 
salt-houses of the lessees for a month's curing, when 
they are shipped to San Francisco. The selecting and 
killing- is accomplished without noise or disturbance, 
and everything is done decently and in order. 
The seals arrive at the islands in June; their young 
are born thfe latter part of June and the eariy part of 
July. After the young are born the female seals, or 
"matkas," as they are Called, go to sea, frequently swim- 
ming as far as 200 miles from the islands, retlirning 
at more or less rcgulat intervals to nui-se their yoUng. 
The ditTetent rookery communities afe divided up, as 
stated, into harems, each one jealously guarded by a 
large male. The males who arrive at the islands first 
fight furiously for the possession of territory. The fe- 
males, arriving soon after the males have established 
themselves, are divided up among them. The young 
seals remain with their mothers for about a month, not 
learning how to swim until the latter part of August. 
The entire seal herds remain about the islands until 
late in the fall, when the annual migration to the Pacific 
Ocean takes place. The class of skins obtained under 
* Government direction on the Pribilof Islands is of the 
highest quality, the animals selected being three-year-old 
males of nearly uniform size, killed when the fur is in 
best condition, and making a large number of skins of 
one grade. The pelagic catch, on the contrary, is obtained 
at sea, in season and out of season. It consists of young 
and old, male and female, and the skins more or less 
injured by shooting and Spearing, the two methods em- 
ployed in taking them. While the pelagic skin has only 
a value of from $7 to $10; the yalue of the Pribilof skin 
ranges from $20 to $30. 
The merits of the claim in the United States in the 
long-protracted Bering Sea controversy may be seen 
at a glance. Our resources are wisely and economically 
managed, and would preserve the breeding stock for- 
ever; pelagic seaHng is wasteful to the last degree, and 
is a suicidal industry that has practically cut its own 
throat. The pelagic sealing fleet, as a whole, has been 
losing money for two or three seasons. Renewed ef- 
forts were made by the United States Government dur- 
ing the past season to put a stop to it, but negotiations 
are for the present closed. In the meantime American 
citizens, a small number of whom were engaged in 
pelagic sealing, have been prohibited from engaging in 
the pursuit of seals at sea, and Congress has recently 
passed laws prohibiting the importation of seals taken 
in pelagic sealing into the United States. These 
restrictions, together with the fact that the seals 
are fewer in number each season, will probably 
result in driving the remainder of the foreign 
pelagic sealing fleet out of existence. So long as pe- 
lagic, or indiscriminate, sealing in any form remains, 
the restoration of the seal fisheries will be impossible. 
The Bering Sea controversy was precipitated by the 
capture of Canadian sealing vessels in Bering Sea. Later 
on the matter was placed in the hands of the Tribunal 
of Arbitration at Paris. This tribunal, having decided 
that the United States had no jurisdiction over Bering 
Sea outside of territorial limits, the Canadian Govern- 
ment presented claims for damages on the part of those 
whose vessels had been seized, and their value having 
been considered by the recently appointed Bering Sea 
Claims Commission, they will be paid for by the United 
States. Pelagic sealing, however, has been continued 
in some form during the past ten years, and the seal 
herd is now so greatly decimated that the surplus males 
available for killing do not amount to more than 10,000 
a year. 
The earlier dealings of the Russian Government with 
pelagic sealers on the Asiatic side were even more sum- 
mary than those of the United States Government. The 
punishment for poaching on those waters was prompt. 
Many vessels were seized and many sealers imprisoned; 
in some cases the unfortunate hunters were condemned 
to the mines in Siberia. Sealing has been engaged in 
chiefly by vessels belonging to British Columbia, a few 
from the United States and Japan taking part in it. 
Pelagic Sealing. 
The ocean sealing fleets frequent four hunting grounds 
during the year — two in Bering Sea, adjacent to the 
jPribilof and Commander Islands, and two in the Pacific 
Ocean, ofiE the American and Asiatic coasts. The 
Pribilof, or Bering Sea, sealing ground lies to the 
westward and southward of the Pribilof Islands. The 
Commander Island sealing ground - extends almost 
around the islands, its most important part lying to the 
southeastward. The Japan sealing ground, which dur- 
ing the last four or five years has been the most import- 
ant of the Pacific sealing grounds, has its southern limit 
in about the latitude of Yokohama. Its southern and 
central portions are about 400 miles wide. The Ameri- 
can, or northwest coast, sealing ground extends from 
Santa Barbara, Cal., northward along the coast to Ber- 
in Sea, a distance of nearly 3,000 miles. It is divided 
into three favorite sealing areas. The first extends for 
about 100 miles north, south and west of San Francisco. 
The second, and most important, from the coast of 
Oregon to the northern end of Vancouver Island. The 
third extends from Sitka, Alaska, to Middleton Island. 
Sealing vessels, starting out for the full season's work, 
engage for a short time in sealing in the winter on the 
northwest coast sealing grounds; then, proceeding di- 
rectly across the Pacific Ocean, begin operations on 
the Japan coast about the middle of March. By the 
end of June the seals have left this region on their 
northward migration, and they are followed by the seal- 
ing fleet to sealing grounds around Pribilof and Com- 
mander Islands, in Bering Sea. As the sealing about 
the Pribilofs is not concluded until late in September, 
the vessels return to British Columbia generally after 
a cruise of nine or ten months. Although this voyage 
is a long one, and many of the schooners of small size, 
the number of disasters that have occurred is surpris- 
ingly small. The number of schooners operating in these 
waters has until recently varied from 75 to 100. It does 
not appear that the various tracts of ocean frequented 
by the fur seals during their migrations have any direct 
relation to the coast fishing banks. The greatest part 
of any sealing ground is entirely off soundings, and the 
investigations of the last two or three years have shown 
that the actual food o£ the seal consists o£ .squid, and not 
fish. 
The American and Asiatic seal herds migrate nearly 
between the same degrees of latitude. The length of the 
route followed by the former is nearly twite that of the 
latter. It extends not merely through twenty-five de- 
grees of latitude, but through fifty-five degrees of 
longitude, while the Asiatic has but thirty degrees 
of longitude to traverse. The greatest extreme 
range of the American herd is but little short of 3,500 
miles. Both herds arrive at and depatt from their sum- 
mer habitat in Bering Sea simultaneously, and in their 
migrations follow the continental shores. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
■ The Hickory Bend. 
The other evening, when I was at the home of a 
friend of mine, the lady of the house introduced a nov- 
elty in the way of comestibles, to wit, a large dish of 
shellbark hickory nuts, the same all cracked and ready 
for immediate consumption. This I call a novelty, and 
such it is in the city, though there was a time when it 
would have been no novelty either to my friend or my- 
self. As it so happens, both he and m5rself spent our 
youth at points adjacent to the same stream, though he 
was about a hundred miles lower down the river than 
I was, and neither of us had at that time ever heard of 
the other, though I once walked all over his country 
quite in ignorance of his existence. Now all along that 
stream, which in its way was a wonderful one, grew 
many forests of those trees common to the middle West 
— maple, elm, hackmatack, basswood, and above all, the 
hickory tree. Hickory timber, more or less scattered 
and solitary-looking as it usually is, grew in spots back 
from this river, and was native to all the country lying 
along it for 200 miles. Even so far down the 
river as the point where my friend lived when he was a 
boy there sometimes grew that most prized tree of all 
trees prized by boys, the giant "shag-bark" hickory, 
which produced the huge hickory nuls we called the 
"shag-barks." All other hickory nuts were as dross to 
these, and the family which started in to winter with 
a couple of barrels of them down cellar was held one 
to be socially envied. These mtts cannot be bought in 
open market very often at any price, for the entire 
United States do not produce any very large crop of 
them. 
The best of our big shag-barks in the old days were 
about twice as large as a large English walnut — so large 
that a man could not meet the finger and thumb of his 
hand about one of them. The meat was very sweet, not 
so oily and bitter as that of the average hickory nut. 
We boys watched ver3' jealously the crop of any big 
shag-bark we had discovered, and after the first frosts 
had ripened and loosened the great nuts we were early 
on the ground with our sacks. These fine, large nuts, 
with red-faced apnies to aid them, made the basis of 
many an eA'ening's refreshments for "company" in the 
old days. Many a time I have mashed my thumb crack- 
ing these big nuts with a hammer, the anvil for this 
operation consisting of a flatiron held between the 
knees. Nowadays Ave folks who belong to the haute 
noblesse and live on soufflees and that sort of thing most 
all the time rather feel superior to anything so good as 
a shag-bark hickorj^ nut, so that I may say the hickory 
nut is not recognized so fully by society as, for instance, 
the peanut. But when I saw these big shag-barks the 
other evening I fell upon them with joy, and I mixed 
with them a plenty. It was like a section of the old 
times come back again, although these nuts, it was said, 
came from some place in Ohio, and were not quite so 
big as those my friend and I used to gather on our old 
river when we were boys. 
I remember so distinctlj' one great horseshoe bend in 
the old river, known far and wide, even beyond the 
confines of our county, as the "Hickory Bend." Here 
there was a space of high, rich alluvial soil held in the 
bent arm of the river, perhaps a hundred acres or two 
in extent, and on this particular piece of soil grew a 
grove of the giant trees which I have mentioned. I do 
not know of any such trees anywhere unless it may be 
in parts of the rich cane-covered delta of the Mississippi 
River, and I cannot speak as to the nuts of that locality. 
In this hickory grove there were perhaps not a hundred 
trees in all, but each tree would in a good year shake 
down, I should say, a sack or perhaps two sacks full 
of these great nuts. I know that farmers came there 
from many miles away and loaded wagons with the nuts; 
and I recollect very well the hostility we boys felt 
toward grown men who thus poached on our preserves. 
The farmers would sometimes begin the harvest too 
soon, climbing the trees and threshing ofi: nuts not yet 
fully ripe. Such a course was against our creed. We 
preferred the nuts which had fallen of their own weigTit, 
and which lay, the end of the great rough husk just 
temptingly open, in the rustling brown leaves which 
made a carpet over that rich bottom ground. 
The Hickory Bend — dear me! I wonder if it is still 
there, or has any vandal dared to cut down the great 
old trees for wood? I hope it is still as it was in that 
respect, though in many others it can never again be 
what it was. Here, in the very old days, when my father 
was hunting deer, before I was born, this bend of the 
winding river was a famous place for a deer. Many is 
the wild turkey my father shot there, this with the old 
squirrel rifle which was born in Ole Virginny, and which, 
so they tell me, was in that gentleman's hands about as 
good for a turkey flying as if sitting, provided it was a 
fair shot on the rise. My father always said that a wild 
turkey would jump up high in the air and then line 
out its flight straight, but stopping for an instant as it 
changed its perpendicular to its horizontal flight. If 
one caught it just as it stopped at this instant, it was a 
stationary mark and easy for a good rifleman to hit. 
In my time the wild turkeys were about all gone 
from that country, but I remember once seeing a flock 
in that bend, when we were out hunting there for wild 
grapes. I often saw the turkeys which my father killed, 
but I was not big enough to hunt then. I can just re- 
member, very vaguely, of seeing the carcass of a deer 
once on our kitchen floor. When I began to hunt we 
found the Flickory Bend a good place now and then 
for a flock of quail that had strayed in from a nearby 
cornfield, and we found rabbits there, and it was one of 
the best places on the whole river bottom for squirrels. 
Here, too, was one of the best points we knew for ducks, 
for this bend ran far out into the bottom grass grounds, 
and the duck flight passed over a corner of it as it made 
up or down the Wi'iterway, which, at that time, was a 
great thoroughfare for waterfowl in their migration, t 
know that one time I started oUt rabbit hunting, one day 
late in the fall, when there was a little snow, and seeing 
a few flocks of dUcks crossing the country toward the 
river, I kept on walking that way, some seven or eight 
miles, till I got to the river bottoms. At a point on 
the blufi' oppo.site the Hickory Bend I saw as fine a 
sight as often greets a boy's eyes. Great ribbons of 
wildfowl were moving up the river bottom, a solid 
string of ducks, it seemed, almost as far as the eye could 
reach in either direction, and apparently inexhaustible. 
Slowly, confused by the storm, they seemed to be crawl- 
ing along the timber in search of shelter, at a loss to 
know where to go. Slowly, as though pulled by some 
irregular hand, the vast dark ribbon wound along the 
wide and shallow valley, now and then rising in a deep 
curve or again dropping down, but always clinging to 
the edge of the timber. I can see that picture to-day as 
plainly as I could then — can sec the deliberate, dull flight 
of the fowl, and even remember the forks and splits in 
the big dark band as it moved steadily up the river 
bottom. That was a great day for the gunners, had 
many known it, and when late that night I got home 
my father was as much excited as I. 
In the fall we made a favorite picnic ground of this 
valued spot of the Hickory Bend, and sometimes we 
would make up a family camping party and spend a 
night there. I think it was in that same bend of the 
river that I spent my very first night away from home 
and my first night in camp; and every incident of that 
fearsome experience will linger in my mind always, I 
presume. They told me that the owl was a Avol.f, and 
I believed their cruel jest and shivered all night in 
terror. 
The way into the arm of the Hickory Bend was a 
winding and long one, known not to all the drivers 
who could follow the plain, "main -traveled road" out 
from tovvn. Here bayous at high-water times cut off the 
higher ridge, and one needed to know what soft places 
to avoid and where to keep to reach the high ground 
and how to dodge the tangled thickets of bush and 
brier. Once in to the shelter of the big trees, no wind 
could harm us, no matter how it howled up above. Our 
simple camping outfit served to make us all very happy, 
and we had enough to eat from the spoils of the land. 
At one corner, so to speak, of the Hickory Bend was 
one of the deepest "holes" known in all that part of 
the river, and here we caught catfish at night on set 
lines and bass and wall-eyed pike on our minnows. One 
of those keen pictures which one so often carries with 
him of some experience of the forest or stream I have 
novv in mind — one that happened here on one of our 
fishing trips. We were catching wall-eyed pike in the 
deep water near to the bank, and I had a bite from one 
of those wary fish. As I pulled up the line slowly, the 
fish followed up the bait and got above it, watching as 
it rose and apparently eager to strike it if it made any 
attempt to escape. The fish hung poised in the water, 
clearly visible, with its body partly bent and seeming 
full of suppressed action. Every fin all over its back 
was erect in anger or eagerness, and the whole attitude 
was plainly that of the animal about to spring. I could 
almost say its eye shone eagerly, but one needed not to 
see that last expression of keen, kcyed-up vigor and 
readiness. The whole picture was one of indescribable 
grace and strength, and I can see it still, with other 
views from the old bend of the river, remembering it 
especially as the only time I ever saw a fish with any- 
thing which resembled expression or character of its 
own. 
Such were some of the attractions of a stream which 
both my friend and myself knew well, and I wish we 
might either of us find another country which could 
offer the same delights that this once did. All tliese 
things are called up by the sight of the big shag-bark 
nuts. I am sure my friend must be mistaken in the 
locality from which these nuts came. Surely some of 
them, at least, dwarfed in these dwarfing days, must 
have grown on that very spot where I used to gather 
them when I was a boy, in the old Hickory Bend; else 
there could not have uncoiled from one of them so' long 
a panorama of mental views in and about that com- 
fortable spot. There, as they say, was the whole thing 
in a nutshell! 
Failure of the Whitefish. ^ 
Superintendent Nevins, in the course of his report 
to the State Fish Commission of Wisconsin, finds oc- 
casion to comment on the scarcity of the whitefish in 
the waters of Lake Michigan and inland lakes. He says: 
"On account of the close season in Michigan we failed 
to get any whitefish eggs on the west and north shores 
of Green Bay, where we have never failed to get a limited 
number heretofore. On Dec. 7 I went with a crew of 
four men to Long Lake, Washburn county, to get in- 
land lake whitefish eggs for the Milwaukee hatchery. 
\ye had twenty-seven gill nets and one pound net. In 
eighteen days' fishing we got only 560 fish, about 100 
of which were females. The result of it all is we have 
no whitefish eggs in the hatchery this winter." 
Charles Higgins, a fish dealer of Milwaukee, says of 
the whitefish in his latittide: 
"Twenty years ago we could go out two miles with a 
couple of men and a few yards of netting and catch 
thousands of pounds of fish, while to-day we have to 
employ steam tugs to go out twenty miles or more with 
miles of nets, and less than i,ooolbs. is the reward of a 
day's work. We haven't a whitefish in Lake Michigan 
to-day, and the trout are rapidly disappearing." 
There is nothing in the above of a special interest to 
sportsmen, excepting the rather astonishing fact that 
even such large waters as the Great Lakes not only 
can be, but have been depopulated of their choisest fish 
through persistent fishing for the market. The black 
hass and the muscallunge are no longer taken in the 
