The Nome nugget., 1901-11-30
The Governments Method of
 iEarming Out Reokeries. ,
"A RANK INJUSTICE.
sAOrth American Commercial C0m- pany, Lessees of the Best ROOk-' .eries-The Corporation Has Away Had a Good Thing.


 suppression of pelagic sealing is the stop put to the use of fire arms by fur seal hunters-with the limits of Boring sea. All sealing vessels caught with fire arms or with green seal skins aboard showing bullet marks are seiz- able by and become forfeited to the United States, and the owners of such vessels, especially captains and mates, are subject to punishment by the United States. This has kept and is keeping a number of revenue cutters on patrol duty in the waters surround- ing the rookeries, and the law isNvigor- ously enforced.
 Every sealing vessel is obliged, be- fore coming to the sealing grond of Boring sea, to enter at Dutch Harbor for inspection. All fire arms are either taken off the ship here or sealed up. The vessel is given a certificate of in7 -spection, and entries giving particulars and specifications to the boarding officers of the cruising cutters are made sin the vessels logs by the custom officials there. If the sealer is boarded by the officers of revenue cutter and the least irregularity is found she is ordered to immediately leave the waters. The boarding officer always enters the order in the log book of the vessel. Disobedience of it would cause prompt seizure of the vessel, and so would broken seals or not sealed up fire arms. .,'
 The board of arbitration also estab- lished around the rookeries a zone with q radius of 60 miles, within the limits of which pelagic sealing was absolutely unlawful. If caught sealing within this line it was all up with the vessel, and nottthat alone, but the captain and mate of the vessel were forced to enter every day into their log book the vessels exact position at noon. The boarding officer would always carefully scan through. the log, and if things did not tally right and there was cause for the least suspicion that the vessel had been on the forbidden ground, she would get her orders to square away for home. She was lucky to get that for it took but little evidence to con- vince the gruff cutter captains that she was prize. This caused many of the old seal pirates to sweat. Never in their lives had they any bother about their vessels position, as long as they were up among the seals. They had but little love for the smart young boarding officers, who figured their reckoning over so closely.
 On and after the decree rendered by the Paris tribunal, the outttters of : Victoria, B. C., fitted and manned their sealing vessels for pelagic sealing in Boring sea with Siwash hunters of the British Columbia coast, who were skilled in the use of spears and light harpoons. Some fair catches were made by vessels so manned. Good hunters, however, were few and far
 
 native population of that coast. Dis satisfied with the life aboard vessel, and not liking to go such long dis .tance and length of time from their homes, the skillful native hunters got -an exaggerated idea of their value and wanted to be recompensed accordingly.
 This together with the high cost of sending vessel to such distant hunt ing grounds has tended to make pelagiC sealing too expensive for the outfitters of Victoria, B. c. And it is just in all these things where the outftters from these shores would have the advantage Within two days sail from the sealing grounds we have here an Eskimo popu. lation who excel everybody in the sue ressfnl hunting of marine mammals UhAegxAtated as yet in many places the Eskimo of Northwestern Alaska are more skilfnl than any other race or the globe, in the use of their lighl spears and harpoons All their hunt ing paraphernalia, from their skir boats and kyaks to their darts, lines and bladders, are well, adapted and jus, as if they had been expressly made fol .pelagic sealing as enforced by tht United States government. And il must be admitted on the side that nt people have got a better right to en gage in pelagic sealing in Bering Ses shan the inhabitants of the shores 0 Alaska.
 Of late years good deal of none! has been spent by the United State government in salaries to commission CTS whose duty it is and has been t' look into and devise necessary mean 70 foster. tho valuable fur seal herds