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Show 1868.] MR. R. BROWN ON THE SEALS OF GREENLAND. 439 by the middle of April, leave for home, to complete their supplies in order to be off by the 1st of M a y to the Davis's Straits whale-fishery. During the months of March and the early part of April the sealers are subject to all vicissitudes of weather, calm and storm suddenly alternating, while the thermometer will stand for weeks at zero, or even many degrees below it. The number of Seals taken yearly by the British and continental ships (principally Norse, Dutch, and German) in the Greenland sea when they get among them will average upwards of 200,000, the great bulk of which are young "saddlebacks," or, in the language of the sealer, " whitecoats." When they have arrived at their maxim u m quality, 80 generally yield a tun of oil; otherwise the general average is about 100 to the tun. In 1859 good oil sold for about ^33 per tun ; add to this the value of 100 skins at 5*. each, and the whole will amount to ^£58 sterling. From this simple calculation a very good estimate may be formed of the annual commercial value of the Greenland "Seal Fishery;" for, supposing 2000 tuns of oil to be about the annual produce, and assuming £58 as the value per tun inclusive of the skins, the whole produce of the fishery will amount to the yearly value of £116,000 sterling (Wallace). 'This, of course, does not take into calculation the produce the Danish Government derives from their colonies on the west coast of Greenland (which I notice under the head of each Seal), nor what the Russians derive from the coast of Spitzbergen and from the White Sea. The " fishery," however, is very precarious. Some years little or nothing is got, the ice being too thick for the ships to "get in to them." In one year it may happen that the fishery in the Spitzbergen Sea proves a failure while the Newfoundland one is successful. For some years past it has proved in the former sea almost a failure * . There seems, indeed, little doubt that the fishery must fail in course of time, as have the Seal- and Whale-fisheries in some other parts of the world ; and if Seal-hunting is pursued with the energy it is at present, that day cannot be far distant. Some of the sealers laugh at this idea ; but where is the enormous produce the South Seas used to yield, superior to anything ever heard of in the north. No doubt the South-Sea hunters said the same thing; and doubtless when the inhabitants of Smeerenberg, that strangest of all strange villages, saw the Whales sporting in thousands in their bays, and the oil-boilers steaming above the peaks of Spitzbergen, they laughed at the idea of their ever becoming scarce ! Yet how false that idea has proved ! for in our day the waters of those high northern seas are rarely troubled, even by a wandering Mysticete that perchance may have missed its way in making a passage from one secure retreat to another. So will it ultimately be with the Seals. Indeed some are even now of opinion that they are diminishing in numbers; at least they have evidently reached their zenith, as shown by statistics ; and taking into * It has been rather more successful in Newfoundland. This year (1868) up to the 28th of April 250,000 Seals had arrived at St. John and Harbour Grace. Vide a good account of the sealing by the continental vessels in Petermann's ' Geogr. Mittbeil.' Feb. 1868. |
