300 
THE STORY OF THE SEAL . 
where he kept it for some time; but at length growing tired of it had it killed 
for the sake of its skin. 
The chief sealing districts, or, as they are called, “sealing-grounds,” in 
the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans are West Greenland, the Newfound¬ 
land district, the Jan-Mayen seas, Nova Zembla and the Kara Sea, the White 
Sea, and the Caspian. The most important of these is the Jan-Mayen, 
where, as in all other districts except the Caspian, the Greenland seal is the 
kind mainly hunted. So incessant and unremitting has been seal-hunting in 
the icy Jan-Mayen seas that the numbers of these animals have been very 
sensibly diminished; and as far back as 1871 attention was called to the neces¬ 
sity of some stringent regulations being applied to the sealing trade. This 
was followed in 1876 by an enactment on the part of the British Govern¬ 
ment establishing a close-time for seals, so far as their own subjects were 
concerned; and not long after similar action was taken by the other govern¬ 
ments interested. 
The chief sealing-trade in the North Pacific was the capture of the 
elephant-seals on the Californian coast—a trade which has of necessity come 
to an end by the extermination of the object of pursuit. In the more south¬ 
ern seas the trade was likewise confined to the capture of elephant-seals. 
From their great abundance and their large size, the pursuit of these animals 
was a paying occupation in the early years of this century. Now, however, 
as we have seen, these seals are exterminated from most of their former 
haunts, and only remain in any numbers on Kerguelen and Heard Islands, 
where they would also long since have disappeared had it not been for the 
inaccessible nature of the beaches they frequent. Consequently, the southern 
sealing-trade has now shrunk to almost nothing, although there is a prospect 
of it being revived in the neighborhood of the Antarctic pack-ice. 
Of the various methods of capturing seals in the northern seas notably 
the oldest is that of harpooning from canoes, or kayaks, as now practiced by 
the Esquimaux. The kayak, which is made of skins, although upwards of 
eighteen feet in length, is so light as to be easily carried in the hand. In 
“sealing” the victim is approached within some twenty-five feet, when the 
harpoon is hurled from a wooden “thrower.” The harpoon, in addition to its 
line, is furnished with a bladder attached by another cord, which marks the 
course of the seal while below the water, and enables the hunter to follow its 
track and wound it with his lance time after time as it comes to the surface to 
breathe, until it is finally despatched. The lance is thrown from the hand, 
and, after striking the seal, always detaches itself and floats on the surface. 
