[CHAPTER XI]
SEALS AND SEAL-SKINS
As it is as essential for those who wish to follow this story understandingly to know something of the fur-seal—its haunts, habits, and the methods of its capture—as it was to Phil Ryder, let us anticipate by a few hours the information that Serge is to give him, and learn a few of these things for ourselves.
Most of us have seen seals either in salt-water harbors or coast inlets, or at least in the tanks of zoölogical gardens; but the animals we have thus seen are hair-seals, which are so common as to be found in all the salt-waters of the world from poles to tropics. They are, however, most plentiful on the coasts of the north Atlantic, where they form an important food-supply for the Eskimos of Greenland and the natives of Labrador. Although the skin of the hair-seal is of little value, the oil extracted from its blubber forms so important an article of commerce that a large fleet of steam and sailing vessels leaves St. Johns, Newfoundland every year, for the sole purpose of capturing hair-seals, and the annual catch amounts to several hundreds of thousands of these animals.
The fur-seal is as different from its cousin the hair-seal as a sheep is from a goat. The most important point of difference between them is that while both are furnished with outer coats of stiff grayish hair, the former wears an under covering of soft velvetlike down or fur which the hair-seal is obliged to go without. It is this under-garment of the fur-seal that is so highly prized, and from which are made the seal-skin jackets, cloaks, muffs, and other articles that are so expensive and valuable.
An immense amount of the most skilled and careful labor is devoted to preparing these seal-skins, besides that required in procuring them in distant seas and shipping them to London, where it can be had most cheaply. When removed from the animal the skin is salted, bundled, and shipped. Arrived at its destination it must be repeatedly wet, dried, and heated, scraped, shaved down to a uniform thickness, and softened. Then its outer coating of coarse, unsightly hairs must be plucked out by the roots, and the yellowish-gray inner coat of soft fur must be given eight to twelve coatings of dye, applied by hand with a brush, in order to produce the rich “seal-brown” color that fashion demands. The amount of labor thus expended on a single skin is enormous, and as several of them are required for a garment, while a heavy duty must be paid before they can re-enter this country, it is no wonder that seal-skin jackets are expensive luxuries.
One hundred years or so ago vast rookeries of fur-seals existed in the far southern waters of the Antarctic Ocean. During a period of eighty years these were so ruthlessly destroyed by the sealing-fleets of all maritime nations that in those waters the fur-seal became practically extinct.