Omaha daily bee., 1890-09-16
THE QUESTION SETTLED.
tn ere Are Few Seals lie n In Bch ring
Sen 10 q iinrrcl a bOmI.

The Bchring Sea quest on is praci-
cally settled. Ii Ike the famous casu OF
JarndyCovs Jarndyce. II has come TO an
end because the property indispute has
bcen absorbed while the criminants
quarrelcd about IT, says the San Fran.
cisco Examiner
The Alaska fur seal is all but ey-
tinct and 1t does not matter now whc thcr.
the Behring Sea is an open ocean or "a
closed sea. An industry that has al
ready yielded tho United States govern
mcnt SS,OOO, 600, and would have vie ldcd
81 900, 600 n ycarfor the next twenty
years If II had been preserved, has been
destroyed by poachers in the sh ort space
OF live years, and no one but n few
| drunken seal pirates dozen schooner
| owners and few makers of firearms
| have benefited 10y this des tuction.
Five yeas ago the government cx perts
estimated that from 5, 900, 600 to O,O6OOoo
seals visited the PribylOb islands every
ear Tor breeding purposes. That was
| after the Alaska commercial Comp0ny
had held n lease Of the islands for fl fteen
yeors and had taken 100, 600 seals annu-
ally Then the seal pirates went to work
in the Behring sea, and this year the
new lessees Of the islands were only abo
to find W,900 seals they could kill, and
TO get that number they took such small
seals that the average weight of the
skins was rednded from seven to five
pounds.
Now the news comes from Victoria Z
O., that tine pirate Sc aler5 have not been
abeto kill many seals, the big schooner
Trlm ph only catching 900, while the
Other SchoOners' cate hes range from 400
To loO. AS 1t takes about 1900 skins to
make sealing voyage of large
schooner profitable even at the present
high price OF Illicit skins, twill be seen
that theseal pirates have spoiled their.
own game aswell as their ncighbors.
THERE'S still strong evidence than tho
failure to make a good cate h to show
that the A Alaskan roo lieries on the Am
erlcan side have been ruined. Prof.
elliott, whose monograph on the seal
Islands is the ac ceptcd aut hority on that
subject, has just returned from st.
George with pin 0tog raphS showing the
deserted condition of the roollcrics.
Grass has grown on the once favoritc
breeding places, and seal life is shown TO
be scarce that rocks which once tccmcd
with he animal S at The breeding season
are bare and deserted.
Instead of the half million or moro
bachelor seals from which the a laslln
company was always able to take ita
pick, the new company could not find
21OOO. Prof Elliott has gone to Wash
lngton to tell W hat II e knows about the
determination of seal life, and Mr. Tinglc.
who foryears was treasury agent uD
there, has gone east on the same mis-
sion.
How it was done great many people
know. There we're more than sixty
sschooners In the Behring this year talk
ing seals They began about the end of
April, heading off the seals on their
way to the rookeries and are still out
Laying for them as they are returning
from the breeding grounds. There were
more than forty sch oone rs in the busi-
ness last year. These sch ooners average
-four boats with a h unter in each boat;
some OF the large ones carry sixo eight
boats and some half u dozen Indian :
hunte ers who work cheapera and are less
trouble.
Sixty schooncrs at an avera 90 of loco
S kins each would be 10000 seals, and as
the seal pirates kill atleast five sealsfo
every one they secure the record would
stand 300, 600 seals killed for the season.
Add to this the 100, 900 killed legally on
[ he islands and there is "a total Of 100000
peryear, r2,4OOOOO in SIX years.