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a venture. The little schooners carry a white crew, to work them and partly to hunt, and a number of Indians to hunt exclusively, the latter bringing along their native canoes which they work with paddle and a sail, two men in each canoe, with oftentimes a native woman as "steersman." The value of the skins, and the comparatively small capital with which the industry can be prosecuted for only sailing crafts are used-make it a favorite pursuit for the illicit sealers also who frequently outwit the cruisers of the interested powers, invade the rookeries and slaughter great numbers, or harry the swimming herds and secure very substantial plunder indeed thereby.

The most famous of these poachers was Hansen, "the flying Dutchman," and hero of many daring exploits. In 1884, when chased by the U. S. cutter Curwin he sailed his schooner, the Adele, over a shoal, while the cutter, racing after him, grounded there and he escaped. Another time he and his men landed at St. Paul Island, menaced the alert guards with rifles and carried off nearly a thousand skins from the salt houses in which they lay stored. Later still he and his crew raided the rookery on St. George's Island one dark and stormy night, and though a cruiser was at anchor in the offing, succeeded in getting away with over two hundred pelts. On yet another occasion

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he made into a harbor near the Russian rookeries on the Siberian coast, apparently as if damaged and desiring to refit, and under cover of night looted a nearby sealery and made off with a liberal stock of pelts, being far beyond the horizon when the outrage was discovered the next morning. The recital of his achievements, outwitting the cruisers and guards who patrol the seal islands, would fill a volume, but in the end he met a sailor's death, being sunk with all hands by a tempest in mid-Pacific.

Kearney, the hero of Kipling's "Three Sealers," actually figured in the incident upon which the poem is based. In his schooner he sailed from Yokohama for

INDIAN SEALING CANOES.

the rookeries and raided a small Russian island off Kamchatka, where a garrison had formerly been maintained, but had then been withdrawn. His men clubbed some seals, stole some Russian uniforms left behind and went on their way rejoicing, intending to raid an ampler section, where, through the mist, they saw another poacher at work. So Kearney rigged his men in the Muscovite uniforms, improvised a funnel out of a windsail, converted a stove pipe into a dummy "long-tom," and moved slowly in, like a cruiser coming to her anchorage. The poachers at work ashore decamped, leaving their plunder behind them, and the bogus cruiser helped herself to the

loot which lay ready at hand, only requiring to be gathered in. Kearney was the principal figure in many thrilling dramas of the industry. exhibiting the recklessness of the full-blooded mariner, but now he has retired and runs a sailors' boarding house in Yokohama.

McLean, said to be the original of Jack London's "Sea Wolf," is a third interesting person

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PELAGIC SEALING FLEET, IN WINTER QUARTERS AT VICTORIA, B. C.

Varying types of vessels used in this bloody business.

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Gate, and eventually transferred his operations to British Columbia, where he had charge of a pelagic sealer, until recently. In 1904 some Americans backed him in buying a schooner, she securing a Mexican register. He enlisted a reckless crew and started to raid the Copper Island rookeries, only to be met with a volley from the guard which fatally wounded one man and caused the others to retire, when she made for Victoria with two hundred and fifty pelts aboard and was seized and fined for infractions of the Canadian Marine laws.

This lawlessness frequently met its .punishment in the killing or maiming of the poachers-for the guards shoot on sight at invading gangs or else in their

arrest and imprisonment and the confiscation of such seals as they have on board, if they are captured by cruisers. International law marks with most drastic penalties its disapproval of seal poaching, and dungeon doors yawn for those who engage in it, yet such are its fascinations and rewards that the practice cannot be stamped out.

Storm and sea have also worked their wrath upon the sealing crafts, legal or poaching, as the elements respect no human distinctions and every year sees whole crews fail to return, their vessels doubtless sent down into the ocean's caves by the ruthless tempest, or their frail crafts dashed to pieces against the rocky inlets, their crews enduring the

most trying hardships ere they reach home, sometimes traversing hundreds of miles of storm-swept ocean in open boats, and at others having to spend weary months on desolate rocks until a rescuing sail heaves in sight.

The history of the fur-seal affords a

Commodore Islands, and the little islands off Sakhalin. To these places the furseals resorted in millions. So long as the supply of sea-otter skins continued little attention was given to the fur seal. It is a curious fact that the first business in fur-sealskins was with China, and

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that they were then used there, not as clothing but for covering packages. The demand in China led to the development of the fishery, seals being indiscriminately slaughtered thousands, with the result that they were soon cleared out from many of the islands to which they used to resort and they are now found south of the equator at three places only, namely, at Cape Horn, on the little island of Lobos at the mouth of the Plate, and on three small islands near Angra Pequena. It is computed that between 16,000,000 and 17,000,000 of furseals were killed on the southern sealing grounds, between 1790 and 1830.

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DISTANT VIEW OF SEALS ON AN ISOLATED BREEDING BEACH IN THE PRIBYLOFF ISLANDS.

good illustration of what man can do to the denizens of the deep when his interests lead him to pursue them with avidity. Before its skin became a fashionable article of attire in Europe the furseal frequented at least thirty island groups in the southern hemisphere during the breeding season, as the Falklands, South Shetlands, Galapogos, etc., while in the northern regions it visited only the Pribyloff Islands in the Bering Sea, the

The Bering Sea fur-seals, as already shown, are now nearing extermination also, and hence the call for a revision of the regulations of the Paris Tribunal. It is not a fanciful or a pessimistic prediction that unless some prompt measures are taken to secure the perpetuation of this species the fur seal will become extinct in the not distant future.

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ELECTRIC HEAT ACCOMPLISHES WHAT OTHER METHODS FAILED TO DO.

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