chooners and small steamers manned by as
savage and lawless men as have sailed the seas since the days of the
slave-trade, put out from scores of ports, each captain eager only to make
the biggest catch of the year, and heedless whether after him there should
be any more seals left for the future. This sort of hunting soon began to
tell on the numbers of the hapless animals, and the United States
Government sent out a party of scientific men in the revenue cutter
"Lincoln," to investigate conditions, particularly in the Pribylof
Islands, which had long been the favorite sealing ground. As a result of
this investigation, the United States and Great Britain entered into a
treaty prohibiting the taking of seals within sixty miles of these
islands, thus establishing for the animals a safe breeding-place. The
enforcement of the provisions of this treaty has fallen upon the vessels
of the revenue service, which are kept constantly patrolling the waters
about the islands, boarding vessels, counting the skins, and investigating
the vessel's movements. It has been a duty requiring much tact and
firmness, for many of the sealers are British, and the gravest
international dissension might have arisen from any unwarrantable or
arbitrary interference with their acts. The extent of the duty devolving
upon the cutters is indicated by some figures of their work in a single
year. The territory they patrolled covered sixty degrees of longitude and
twenty-five of latitude, and the cruising distance of the fleet was 77,461
miles. Ninety-four vessels were boarded and examined, over 31,000 skins
counted, and four vessels were seized for violation of the treaty. In the
course of this work, the cutters engaged in it have performed many useful
and picturesque services. On one occasion it fell to one of them to go to
the rescue of a fleet of American whalers who, nipped by an unusually
early winter in the polar regions, were caught in a great ice floe, and in
grave danger of starving to death. The men from the cutters hauled food
across the broad expanse of ice, and aided the imprisoned sailors to win
their freedom. The revenue officers, furthermore, have been to the people
of Alaska the respected representatives of law and order, and in many
cases the arbiters and enforcers of justice. Along the coast of Alaska
live tribes of simple and ignorant Indians, who were for years the prey of
conscienceless whites, many of whom turned from the business of