If you were to read some of the voyages of the intrepid explorers of Queen Elizabeth’s day, you would be charmed by their accounts of wonderful birds, marvellous beasts and fishes, which they met in that part of the new Western world discovered by John Cabot and his West of England crews: soles three yards long, huge sea-cows with long white tusks, seals, bears, and monstrous whales.

Among all these animals and fishes, none is more interesting than the hair-seal of the North Atlantic. The birth, habits, and migration of the seal are just as marvellous as any other branch of natural history. Centuries ago the seals could make their home near the coasts of Newfoundland, for there were no white men to molest their “ancient, solitary reign”; but during the last century they have fled before the gaff of the hunters to the waters far to the north of Labrador.

In the North Atlantic are to be found about six varieties of seals, the most valuable variety commercially being the harp-seal. The young harps begin to put on fat from the moment of their birth, so that in less than a month one of these baby seals will weigh from 25 to 40 pounds. They usually remain on the ice about twenty-five days before taking to the water, during which time they are fed by their mothers, who will sometimes travel ten miles in order to furnish their young with food. One of the most mysterious things, however, is that, even if the young are not fed by their mothers, they continue to put on fat. It may be that the old seals select a sheet of ice containing animalculÆ, for the young are often observed to be sucking the ice in the absence of their mothers.

The hoods, or bladder-nose seals, are also very abundant. They are much older than the harps when caught, and always congregate to the north-east of the latter species. The method of despatching the young hoods is with the gaff, but the old hoods are usually killed with the gun. The old dog-hood is a valiant fighter for the young. It sometimes happens that eight or ten men are engaged endeavouring to kill the old dog-hood with gaffs or clubs. When the bladder is filled, it will resist any amount of beating on the head, and frequently the hood will bite off the end of his assailant’s gaff.

With the advent of milder weather at the beginning of the year, great ice-fields are to be seen in the bays of Newfoundland, and also many miles out at sea. It is upon these “fields” that the seals bring forth their young, about the middle of February. And what pretty little children they are—such bright, pathetic eyes, lovely white coats, and graceful movements! Their cry resembles that of a new-born babe, and when a ship is in the midst of them at night, their childlike wailing is one of the weirdest sounds imaginable.

The sealing fleet which goes out from St. John’s usually comprises eighteen ships, and they leave port on the 10th or 12th of March. From start to finish they have to contend with very heavy ice, and frequently very cold and stormy weather. When the seals are sighted, which is usually on the east coast of Newfoundland, according to the direction in which the ice is driven by wind and current, the captain sends his hunters in various directions over the ice-floe. Sometimes the hunters will travel six or ten miles from the ship, but the “lookout” never loses sight of them unless a fog falls and obscures them from his view.

In the midst of thousands of these baby seals the hunters go forward with their gaffs, dealing death on every hand. A slight stroke on the nose is sufficient to despatch them, and in a short time the ice is one mass of lifeless bodies. The hunter then takes his sharp knife and “sculps” them, which is removing the pelt from the carcass. This pelt contains the fur and about two inches of fat. The carcass is left on the ice to be eaten by birds or fishes.

When the sculping is finished, the pelts are “laced” together, and towed by a rope to what is known to the hunters as a “pan,” which is marked by a flag of the ship to which the crew belong. When these are heaped together under the various flags, the ship steams around and takes them on board in the same manner that she would take on any cargo.

When the captain thinks that it is impossible to increase the catch, or when he has sufficient on board, he steams back to St. John’s, where the pelts are taken out to pass through certain processes before becoming marketable. The fat is removed from the skin and rendered into oil, which is very pure and white, and the skins are sent to all parts of the world to be manufactured into cloaks, capes, and leather. Sometimes a ship will return with as many as 40,000 pelts, and a good “harvest” usually reaches a grand total of 350,000. Many years ago, in the days of sailing-vessels, the catches were much greater, the largest being in the neighbourhood of 600,000.

The Newfoundland seal-hunter is famous for his daring achievements. He runs from pan to pan over the loose floating ice, and seems to be quite unconscious of any impending peril. What a perilous pursuit it is, too! The hunters never know when some terrible blizzard or blinding snowstorm may suddenly come driving in from the north, or when a thick fog may settle down and separate them from their ship. There are incidents on record where crews have become separated during a fog or blizzard, and have been driven on a sheet of floating ice, to perish in the biting cold far out at sea.

Probably the most appalling disaster on record is that which befell the ship Greenland many years ago. Forty-five of the men were out upon the ice killing the young seals one night, when a terrific blizzard suddenly sprang up and cut off their retreat to the ship. When the blizzard had spent its force, the poor hunters were found lifeless on the great stretch of snow-covered ice. They were taken by loving hands from the ice, wrapped in canvas, and placed on deck to be brought back for interment at St. John’s, the city from which they had set out only a few weeks before, with buoyant spirits and hopes of a “bumper” voyage. It was one of the gloomiest days in the history of St. John’s when the dead bodies of those daring hunters were lifted from the deck and taken to their last resting-place in the presence of sorrowing multitudes.