Steller’s Albatross — AUSTIN 
287 
The feathers are sold as a substitute for cot- 
ton, or for ornamental use. Its fat is used for 
food and manufacturing, and the dried meat 
makes fertilizer. Forty men and women came 
here and began to slaughter albatrosses last year. 
To catch the birds, they approach them in parties 
of four to prevent the bird from flying up. 
They can only run with outstretched wings until 
they come to a slope or get a favorable gust of 
wind; so they are chased upward from below. 
Thus the birds in the reeds have to be sur- 
rounded, but the incubating birds are very easily 
approached. They are killed by striking them on 
the head with a club, and it is not difficult for 
a man to kill between 100 and 200 birds daily. 
When I left the island in July, the decrease 
of birds was not yet perceptible. Likewise, they 
were as tame as they were early in the season. 
After staying on this unique southern island 
with the albatrosses as my friends, I have felt an 
intimate feeling of attachment for them, with 
which feeling I have written this paper. 
The Japanese settlement on Torishima, which 
gained its living almost entirely by killing 
albatrosses, increased steadily as the feather trade 
continued to grow through the 1890’s, and by 
1900 it boasted a population of at least 300. 
The immensity of their scale of operations is 
suggested by the hand-railway they built to carry 
feathers from the top of the island to the shore, 
where a cableway to the roadstead in Chitose 
Bay facilitated loading the spoils. Yamashina 
( 1942: 244) estimates that they had slaughtered 
at least 5,000,000 albatrosses by August, 1903, 
when the island’s volcano erupted and stopped 
the feather gathering temporarily by killing all 
the Japanese inhabitants. As the eruption oc- 
curred during the non-breeding season (of the 
albatrosses) its only effect on the birds was to 
destroy part of the former nesting territory. 
Very little information is available about con- 
ditions on Torishima between 1903 and 1930. 
The Japanese resettled the island a few years 
after the eruption, and began their feather har- 
vesting again, but nothing further was written 
about the island and its birds until Viscount 
Yamashina landed there on February 15, 1930. 
He was able to spend only a few hours on the 
island, but after returning to Tokyo he wrote 
(1931: 5-10): 
Torishima is no longer as it used to be, al- 
though it is probably still the most important 
breeding place of this bird. . . . 
When we climbed to the top of the crater 
wall we saw a Haliaetus pelagicus fly away. The 
flat bottom of the huge crater, 350 yards wide 
and 900 yards long, was filled with damp spots 
or pools caused by the rain. Here we found 
about 20 Steller’s Albatrosses, which, according 
to the villagers accompanying us, are unable to 
fly out from the bottom of the crater and re- 
main there to become the victims, one by one, 
of the eagle we saw. 
The top of the crater wall was pebbly. At 
the east end of it we found a colony of about 
400 Diomedea albatrus. No unhatched eggs re- 
mained but we found about 30 chicks, grown 
to the size of a cat. . . . Walking further along 
the edge of the crater we found a sandy plain 
extending from the east end, one corner of 
which was occupied by about 1,000 Steller’s 
Albatrosses. This constitutes the main breeding 
colony on the island. Even taking into consider- 
ation the eggs stolen by the natives, we get some 
idea of the low rate of reproduction of this 
species from the fact there were less than 100 
chicks among the birds. 
The south side of the crater wall was cov- 
ered with reeds, but in bare spots here and there 
we found smaller colonies from 20 to 100 birds 
each. In one of these I saw with my own eyes 
the terrific slaughter which I could hardly bear 
to witness. Only the word "slaughter” can ex- 
press the sight. This called to my mind the para- 
graph in Hornaday’s "The Tragedy of the 
Laysan Albatross” (p. 242). "Schlemmer, the 
slaughterer, bought a cheap vessel, hired 23 
phlegmatic and cold-blooded Japanese laborers 
and organized a raid on Laysan.” I hope to pre- 
vent any further such unpleasant occurrences in 
Japan. 
Yamashina was as good as his word, and, 
largely as a result of his efforts, Torishima was 
declared a "Kinryoku” (no hunting area) in 
1933 for a period of 10 years. We will never 
know whether this designation would have 
saved the colony, for the inhabitants of the is- 
land, in anticipation of the impending legisla- 
tion, wiped out the birds before official word of 
