ing themselves on the shore rocks, and the hunters stalk
and shoot them.

Newfoundlanders carry on their sealing in steamers built for the
purpose. They go out to the great ice floe, far out to sea and quite
too far for the liveyeres to reach in small craft. Here the seals are
found in thousands. These vessels, depending upon the size, bring home
a cargo sometimes numbering as many as 20,000 to 30,000 seals in a
single ship, and there are about twenty-five ships in the fleet.

This terrible slaughter has seriously decreased the numbers. The
Labrador Eskimos used to depend upon them largely for their living.
They can do this no longer, for not every season, as formerly, are
there enough seals to supply needs. All of the five varieties of North
Atlantic seals are caught on the coast--harbor, jar, harp, hooded and
square flipper. The last named is also called the great bearded seal
and sometimes the sealion. The first named is the smallest of all.

Scarce a year passes that we do not hear of a serious disaster in the
Newfoundland sealing fleet. Sometimes severe snow storms arise when
the men are hunting on the floe, and then the men are often lost.
Sometimes the ships are crushed in the big floe and go to the bottom.
The latest of these disasters was the disappearance of the _Southern
Cross_, with a crew of one hundred seventy-five men.

One of my good friends, Captain Jacob Kean, used to command the
_Virginia Lake_, one of the largest of the sealers. She carried a crew
of about two hundred men. A few years before Captain Kean lost his
life in one of the awful sea disasters of the coast, he related to me
one of his experiences at the sealing.

Captain Kean was in luck that year, and found the seals early and in
great numbers. The crew had made a good hunt on the floe, and they are
loading them with about a third of a cargo aboard when suddenly the
ice closed in and the _Virginia Lake_ was "pinched," with the result
that a good sized hole was broken in her planking on the port side
forward below the water line. The sea rushed in, and it looked for a
time as though the vessel would sink, and there were not boats enough
to accommodate the crew even if boats could have been used, which was
hardly possible under the conditions, for the sea was clogged with
heaving ice pans.

The pumps were manned, and Captain Kean, and with every man not
working the pumps, with feverish haste shifted the cargo to the
starboard side and a