Note 58 — VII.

"It seems," says Lord Macartney, "that the Chinese possess remarkable skill in the dressing of seal-skins, by which they remove the long coarse hair, so as to leave merely the soft tender skin, and simultaneously manage to render the hide thin and pliant. Only the prospect of some such enormous profit could at any time induce human beings to pass fifteen months at a stretch on so ungenial a spot, which, moreover, their occupation must render yet more loathsome. They killed the seals as they basked in the sun on the rocks along the shore, and around the broad natural rock basins. As only the skins were of any value to them, they left the flayed carcases exposed to rot on the ground, and these lie heaped together here in such masses that it was difficult to avoid treading on them, when one reached the shore of the island. At every step some disgusting spectacle presented itself, while an unutterably nauseous smell of decaying matter poisoned the surrounding atmosphere. In the summer months the seals flock hither, all at the same period, in herds sometimes numbering 800 to 1000, of which usually only about one hundred are killed at a time. This is the utmost number that five men can skin in the course of a single day, it being necessary to peg them together on the spot, on account of the drying up of the skin. For want of the requisite vessels only an inconsiderable quantity of the train-oil, which these animals contain, is collected. A portion of the best of the blubber is melted, and serves these people in lieu of butter. The seal which frequents these islands is the Southern or Falkland seal (Arctocephalus Falclandicus of Gray—Phoca fusilla of Schreber). The female weighs ordinarily from seventy to one hundred and twenty pounds, and is from three to five feet long, the male usually considerably larger. In their natural state these animals are not particularly timid; sometimes, indeed, they plunge all together into the water when any one approaches them; but quite as often they remain sitting quietly on the rocks, or raise themselves erect with a menacing growl. A sharp blow on the snout with a stick seems sufficient to kill them. Most of those that approach the shore are females, the proportion they bear to the males being about thirty to one. This apparent disproportion between the sexes, according to observation hitherto, is explained as follows:—The Southern seal at certain periods often undertakes distant wanderings from one tract to another; and certain of these tracts, such as the Cape of Good Hope and the islands of St. Paul and Amsterdam, are only frequented by the females when about to bring forth, and by the younger males of the school. In winter the huge snouted seal, or Sea Elephant (Macrorhinus, "long snout," elephantinus of Gray—Phoca leonina of Schreber), which sometimes attains a length of twenty-five or even thirty feet, comes in great numbers to these islands, where they herd together like sheep in the natural coves which the coast is broken into, in which the males announce the presence of a herd by a vehement growling, deepening into a loud roar."