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114 Cruise of the “A lert.” Hardships of Seal-Hunting.
500 sealskins, which he sold to a German dealer on shore, at the
rate of 30^-. a skin, this being considered a good price for Sandy
Point, and generally only given for the first arrivals in port ;
cargoes arriving late in the season not realizing more than 25.?.
a skin. In the present state of the home market, furs being in
request, these skins, on being landed in England, whither they
are conveyed by the mai 1-steamers, are bought by the furriers
for about apiece ; so that the dealers at Sandy Point make a
large profit by their share in the trade. Sealers fitting out at
Sandy Point also usually get their stores and provisions on credit,
and at an exorbitant valuation, from the same dealer to whom
they subsequently sell their skins. The produce of the skins,
moreover, as they are sold to the dealers at Sandy Point, is
divided into three equal lots, of which one is divided among the
crew, while the remaining two go to the owner, out of which
he has to pay for the provisions and stores consumed on the
cruise. It is calculated that the outlay on the stores swallows
up about one-third of the entire sum, so that eventually
about one-third of the value of the skins remains as the profit
of the owner. In a very good season, the master and owner of
a sealing schooner of thirty tons will make a clear profit of as
much as £2,000, while each man of the crew (usually twelve
m number) would get a share amounting to il8o, on which to
spend the blank eleven months of the off-season in idleness and
debauchery.
The Magellan sealing season extends over the months of
December and January. In or about the last week of November,
the fur seal {Arctocephalus Falklandiais) and the sea lion {Otaria
pibata) “ haul up” on the rocks of the outer coasts, and bring
forth their young. The breeding places, or “ rookeries,” which
they usually select, are small, low-lying, rocky islets, which are
exposed to the swell of the great ocean, and over M'hich, in heavy
weather, the sea makes a more or less clean sweep. Situated as
these rocks are, it is often a very difficult and dangerous matter
to effect a landing, so that, to make sure of it, a sealing master
usually arranges his cruise so that he may reach the vicinity of
the rookery about a month before the breeding time. He then
takes advantage of the first fine day to land a party of men on
the rock with fuel, camping arrangements, and a large supply of
provisions. The latter is essential, for it may be two or three
months after the season is over before he can get a favourable
day for embarking the men and the stock of skins. Cases have
occurred where men have been weather-bound on the rocks for
months, and reduced to the brink of starvation, although making
use of seal-flesh and shell-fish as long as they could get them. The
diffeient sealing captains are, of course, very careful to conceal
from each other the position of the “ rookeries” of which they
know ; and they have got so much into the habit of deceiving
each other in this respect, that it may be laid down as a safe rule,
that if a sealing master says he has landed his men on some rocks
to the northward, it is more than probable that the real locality is
somewhere in a southerly direction. After the camping parties
have been established at the “ rookeries,” the sealing vessel with
the crew, now reduced to a very small number, is employed for
the next month or two in cruising in search of new hunting-
grounds. In this pursuit they sometimes wander for hundreds of
miles from the place where the men have been landed, traversing
unsurveyed channels and islets, trusting confidently that at night
time they can always find some sheltered place where they can
either anchor close in shore, or, if the water be too deep, as it
generally is, make fast to a tree. When cruising in this way,
they kill numbers of the Magellan sea-otter {Lutra felind), an
animal which they include in their line of business, although not
at all to the same extent as the fur seal. The fur of the otter
when dressed is of great beauty ; but as it is not now in fashion
in Europe, it commands a very small price in the market, the
salted skins, on delivery in England, only realizing about 2y. apiece.
When the long brown hairs which form the animal’s apparent coat
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