CHAPTER V 
AMERICAN SEALERS IN THE SOUTH 
“ Ever they hear the floe-pack clear and the blast of the old bull- 
whale 
And the deep seal-roar that beats off-shore above the loudest 
gale; 
Ever they greet the hunted fleet — lone keels off headlands 
drear — 
When the sealing schooners flit that way, at hazard, year by 
year.” 
— Rudyard Kipling. 
W HERE nearly everything is left to conjecture it 
is impossible to trace out clearly the succession of 
events which led to the next advance in discovery. It 
is now, we fear, impossible to say when the first Ameri- 
can sealer made his way to South Georgia, the name by 
which Cook's “ Isle of Georgia ” has been known since 
the beginning of the nineteenth century. Weddell, writ- 
ing in 1825, when both fur-seals and sea-elephants were 
almost extinct on the island, mentioned that the fur seal- 
skins brought with the sea-elephant oil to England were 
of so little value on account of the furriers not knowing 
how to dress them, that their capture was almost neg- 
lected. “ At the same time,” he says, “ the Americans 
were carrying from Georgia cargoes of these skins to 
China, where they frequently obtained a price of from 
5 to 6 dollars apiece. It is generally known that the 
English did not enjoy the same privilege; by which 
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