5U1 
iiiuJe ot altack, that it is hartlly luasuiiable to expect the Seals Avill 
long survive the indiscriminate slaughter to which they are ex])Osed; 
ami it seems probable that, sooner or later, these animals will bo 
so reduced in numbers that it will not pay commerciall}’^ to incur 
tlie heavy outlay now requisite for their successful pursuit.* A 
remnant will thus bo left to continue the species and except those 
who have so recklessly wasted what might, with common prudence, 
hav'o lor an indefinite period continued to bo an important source 
of profit, probably nobody will be much the worse, but the results of 
tlio extermination ol the resident species found on the coast ice 
throughout the j'car would be disastrous in the extreme. 
So long as the natives killed the Seal and Walrus with the rude 
weapons at their command no harm wiis done ; and an abundant 
supply of nutritive food, peculiarly suitable to the requii-ements of 
hfo in the high latitudes which they inhabit, could always be 
obtained ; but of late they have boon supplied with guns, and arc 
encouraged to destroy the Seals, not only for their own reiiuire- 
ments, but in order to dispose of their skins. What the result 
will bo it is not difficult to predict. As the North American 
Indian was dependent upon the Iluflalo for his very existence, 
so are these northern races dependent on tlie Seal and the Walrus, 
and without them must as surely perish ; but with this differenatq 
that tlie Ked man will leave a country which in time may be 
one vast food-producing tract— the Esquimaux, a frozen wilderness, 
in which no man but himself can dwell. That such a consummation 
is greatly to be feared there is but too much evidence; and if 
recent reports are to be relied ujion, already in the countries 
bordering on Eehriiig Strait, the natives are rapidly disappearing 
in consequence of the wasteful destruction of their staff of life. 
The population south of St. Lawrence’s Lay are said to have 
been reduced by the destruction of the Walruses, on which they 
subsist, by one-third of their former number; and “in a village 
■which formerly contained two hundred inhabitants, only one man 
survived.” The Whalers say that, “for every hundred Walruses 
killed, a native family must perish by starvation,” and they, therefore, 
I am informed that it requires 15,000 Seals, equal to about £7200 to 
pay tlie expenses of one of tlie large Newfoundland steam-sealers. 
