489 
vessels liaJ to go on to Orkney to complete their crews. The result 
of the voyage has been given above. 
Iron steam-ships, however, had but a short reign. In due course 
they sailed, but some never returned. !Meeting with rough weather 
several of them came in contact with the ice, and the ‘Empress of 
India,’ the ‘Eecruit,’ and the ‘Innuit’ went to the bottom. Since 
this disastrous voyage (with one exception, the ‘Eiver Tay,’ from 
Dundee, which met with a like fate in Davis Straits in 1868, her first 
year) no iron steam-ships have ventured to brave the thick-ribbed ice. 
Tlio Dundee whaler ‘ lay,’ a full-rigged ship of GOO tons, was 
fitted with an au.xiliary screw in 1858; and tlic introduction of 
steam soon proved so advantageous that new wooden steam-vessels 
were speedily built, and tlie old sailing vessels converted, so that 
in 18()9 the whole of the Dundee fleet were screw-steamers. At 
first the crows of tlie steam-vessels, from want of knowledge of tlie 
habits of their prey, were not very successful; but after a time it 
was discovered, that if the Seals were sighted in the water and 
followed till they took to the ice to produce their young, by allow- 
ing two or three days to elapse, they became so reluctant to desert 
their olfspring that both parent and young fell easy victims. Tlie 
men were tlien let loose, and shot down every mother Seal which 
ventured upon the ice to suckle its young, or even showed its head 
above water : tlie young Seals being of little value so e;irly in the 
season Avere allowed to crawl aAvay and die. It need hardly bo 
said that this mode of hunting the Seals simply meant extermina- 
tion, and rapidly jiroduced most disastrous effects. 
Captain David Gray, in a touching letter published in ‘Land 
and ^A'atc-r' for ]\Iay, 1874, pleading for a close-time in order to 
afford some protection to the Seals Avhen most required, after giving 
a most interesting account of the habits of the Seals when nureing 
their young upon the ice, thus describes the manner in Avhich the 
sealing Avas at that time prosecuted : — 
“To give some idea of the reverse of this picture, I aauII endeavour 
to describe Avhat came under my notice on the 29th of March. 
The men belonging to the five ships Avere all on the ice by four 
o’clock in the morning; the liarpooners, to the number of forty 
or upAvards, shooting the old ones, the rest of the crews dragging 
the skins to the ships, and before night upAA’ards of four thousand 
L L 
VOL. lit. 
