A NEW FUR-SEAL ROOKERY 
151 
up and painted the vessel and boats. The weather 
was beautiful, and we had some wild-fowl shooting 
and lots of fishing. We sailed for Yokohama on 
October 4, reaching that port on the 12th, with 
150 large and about 30 small skins. They were a 
splendid lot, and were classed by the late Mr. Phil- 
lipeus, a well-known fur expert, who was in Yoko¬ 
hama at the time of our arrival, as follows : 60 No. 1, 
62 No. 2, 18 No. 3, 10 No. 4, the remainder being 
cubs and pups. The catch realized over £3,000. 
This trip was as uneventful as it was successful. 
Beyond the usual heavy gales and narrow shaves 
from getting on the rocks, nothing particularly 
exciting occurred. To me the trip proved interest¬ 
ing on account of the new places visited. 
In February, 1879, I began to make preparations 
for my next hunting trip. Early in March I decided 
to go down to the Bonin Islands to get some 
hunters, and took passage in the s.s. Toyoshima 
Mam . We arrived at Port Lloyd, as the harbour 
was called at that time, on the morning of the 6th. 
The Bonin Islands had only recently become a 
Japanese possession, but already some 200 Japanese 
had emigrated there, and we were taking down 
165 more, some of whom were convicts. Formerly 
the islands were peopled by only about a dozen 
families, mostly the descendants of European or 
American sailors who had married native or half- 
caste wives from some of the Pacific islands. They 
supported themselves by rearing a few cattle, grow¬ 
ing vegetables and fruit, and catching turtle. Their 
produce was traded off chiefly to whaling - ships, 
numbers of which used, in earlier days, to call in at 
Port Lloyd every spring on their way to the northern 
