stinct, however. The pups weigh about six pounds at birth, but grow with amazing rapidity, attaining about fifty pounds weight within a month. It is at this time that the hunters descend upon them, and a shipload of them is the most valuble prize known to colonial commerce. The "whitecoats" are too inert to move; they lie and await the hunter with big, pleading eyes, and a strange, humanlike whimper, such as that of a baby in distress. So real in its seeming is this plaint that at night young sealmen cannot be persuaded that children are not crying on the floe, and even in the act of slaughter, the sob has been known to unman hardened voyagers.

The whitecoats are killed by a heavy blow on the head from a stout, iron-tipped club or "gaff," which fractures the skull. The body is then cut open; the skin, with its adherent layer of rich, golden fat, known as the "pelt," is separated from the valueless carcass, and this "pelt" is dragged to the ship by the sealmen by means of a 66 hauling rope" which is part of his outfit. But if the ship is too far off, a large heap of pelts is made on a "pan," or flat islet of ice, being marked with a flag by day and a torch by night, so that she may pick them up as she cruises along behind the hunters.

The parent seals are more difficult to kill, however, especially the Hoods. Upon the cowl the hunter may rain blows unavailingly, while the fierce old creatures menace him with teeth and claw-tipped flippers, and it often happens that the assailant has to beat a retreat. The male seals, or 66 dogs," are the most ferocious, and no one man will attack them unless he carries a rifle. Two comrades sometimes tackle one, but usually a third is called on, who takes the brute in rear, while the others wait their chance

to get in a stunning blow, after which the task is an easy one. The dog" will, however, desert his offspring if he sees a prospect of escaping, but the female will never leave the side of her pup," but

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will die with it. She is the animal most dreaded by the sealmen, for her maternal instinct goads her to desperation, and she displays marvellous quickness in dodging about the floe, avoiding the strokes of the hunters and seeking to draw them away from her offspring. Sometimes a reckless assailant approaches too near and gets a blow from her flipper which strips him of half his clothing, or a bite from her sharp, strong teeth which will mark him to his dying day.

The Hoods are less valuable than the Harps, which yield a finer oil. A man can range amongst the Harps and kill from fifty to seventy in a day without unusual exertion, but in hunting the Hoods he may not get more than twenty in the same period, and to secure these puts his life in peril time and again. It is no pleasant pastime to traverse these ice plains and chase the wary seals. The tracts which the Harps frequent are seamed and broken by the waves and cross-currents, and into one of these an incautious hunter frequently plunges up to his neck. The "blow holes" of the seals, by which they reach the water, invite a like mishap, and the "young ice," the result of a night's frost and a slight covering of snow, is even more dangerous, because when it gives way it is next to impossible for a victim to reach a part substantial enough to bear his weight. Therefore the hunters travel in pairs, one assisting the other in time of danger, and if a man falls in he strips himself naked behind a hummock, which will shelter him from the breeze, and then wrings out his garments and dons them again. Only men of splendid

closely connected enough to serve as a roadway home to his ship.

The seals are usually taken in the latitude of Belleisle Strait, and the hunt lasts about six weeks, though most ships, if the conditions are propitious, return fully laden within a month. The "catch" or load of a ship varies with her size and that of the seals themselves. The young ones cannot be taken before March 12th, and the fishery closes on April 20th. The whitecoats usually weigh about fifty pounds, when at their prime; if under forty pounds they

for our largest ships would be about 38,000, and each pelt would at least bring $1.50, so a cargo obtained within two or three weeks nets almost $60,000.

This is divided into three shares -one for the ship, a second for the outfitter, and the third for the crew, according to their different ratings. The ordinary hunters make about $40 each, riflemen get an extra $5, masters-of-watch something more, and the captain a percentage on the entire catch. With a full ship he will sometimes make $2,000, the

investment frequently yielding 30 to 40 per cent. for the owner and outfitter. On the other hand, if the season be unsuccessful, the owner has to bear all the loss, for the sealing laws forbid him to carry over the charges against the men from one year to another, a pernicious practice which, while it prevailed, had the effect of making the hunters veritable serfs of the merchants. A bad year now means nothing worse to the men than the loss of a month's labour, for they are fed by the ship, and if they remained at home could find nothing to do.

The uninitiated can form no idea of the vastness of the floes which are expelled from the northern regions each year, or of the size of the seal herds. Thousands of the seals make their way into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, through Belleisle Strait, and some of the steamers pursue them there, but the main "catch" drifts down along the eastern seaboard of Newfoundland. To locate the herds is a task demanding a keen combination of judgment and experience. Some years the ships overrun the herds altogether and fail to secure even an average catch. At other seasons the weather is so stormy that the floes are broken and scattered, and the seals take to the water, with the same result. One spring the ships were scouring the ocean near Belleisle Strait, while the passengers upon transatlantic liners were treated to the novel spectacle of thousands of seals gamboling on the ice islets as the greyhounds raced along the ocean lane south of the Grand Banks. Generally, however, the seal-boats strike the herds at the first trial, spread over a floe many miles in extent, and in such multitudes that a battue of 350,000 is made within a fortnight, while as many more seals escape to help swell the numbers for another year. The post of captain of a sealing

steamer is one of great importance in the colony, and is usually the stepping-stone to legislative honours. It calls for no ordinary courage to start off at daybreak in quest of seals on a floe extending over many miles. The ship may steam out of sight and the men be scattered all over the ice. The pelts have then to be "panned," and the hunter drags his "tow," consisting of five or six pelts, to the pan. chosen and displays the ship's flags. Sometimes he has to "haul his tow" for miles, repeating the operation as frequently as he can. sealing laws prohibit any killing on Sundays in deference to a sentiment among a large section of our people against violating the Sabbath, but it is not to be supposed from this that the men enjoy a day of rest.

The

The

following literal extract from the log of one skipper, written in all innocence, and published in the St. Johns papers, sheds luminous reflection upon sealing methods:

"Sunday, March 25th. This being the Lord's day no seals were taken. Crew busy hoisting seals aboard and trimming coal in bunkers.'

A contrast to him was the skipper who, being charged with sailing before the proper hour, and killing seals before and after the prescribed dates, and also on Sundays, remarked to his lawyer, "I've broken all the laws; do your best for me!"

Two skippers were in a very convivial mood one evening after their return from the ice, and one, in a burst of bibulous over-confidence, observed: "I've often intended to own up to you, J-, that I took 3.000 of your seals last year off Cape Fogo!" "That's all right, B-," returned the other, "I took 4,000 of yours the year before off the Grey Islands!" All sorts of devices are tried by the captains to gain a march on their adversaries. One of the youngest skippers, childlike and bland, played an ungener

ous trick upon two others who, with him, were lying by a small "patch of seals one Sunday night, awaiting for the midnight hour. Skipper

No. 1 put the hands of his clock fifteen minutes ahead, called his assistants into his cabin for their last, instructions, then, when the clock struck, rushed his whole crew over the side and gobbled up the whole "patch" ere his rivals realized how they had been jockeyed.

A naive story is told of the religious simplicity of some of these sealmen. One captain had taken a

nals of the sealing trade is the wreck of the "Greenland," in 1898, when forty-eight men lost their lives and sixty-five more were fearfully frost-bitten, but this is only one of the disasters of the icefields, and the sealmen are always harried by the horror of the long and melancholy list of past tragedies. Misadventures often occur, when the floes are driven in on the shore, as they are some years, giving a chance to the settlers on the northern coast to reap a portion of the harvest. Its advent is gleefully hailed by them,

crew composed almost wholly of Catholics. A few "black sheep" were, however, included, and one of the former, after the ship's return, was telling that it was the first time he had ever been shipmates with Protestants. "But," he observed, "they were first-rate fellows. didn't see any great difference in them from ourselves. They used to come down every night and say the rosary with us." Then, as an afterthought, he remarked, "But it was mighty lucky for them that they did!"

I

The most awful story in the an

for a seal taken in this way is as good as three taken at sea, there being no shipowner to claim two shares. And yet it has the element of danger more fearful perhaps than the other. No position could be more perilous than that of the men who go forth on these dazzling, treacherous floes, to seek the spoil they bear. If the wind change, the ice is driven to sea as suddenly as it appears, and there are no steamers among the fleet, to which the men can make for rescue. Usually they go several miles from the shore, where the ice is not packed tightly,