These north Atlantic seals, having no fine fur like the Pacific seals, are chiefly valuable for their fat.  The pelts are, however, of considerable value to the natives.  The women tan them and make them into watertight boots or other clothing.  Of course a good many of them find their way to civilization, where they are made into pocketbooks and bags, and they make a very fine tough leather indeed.  The flesh is utilized for dog food, though, as in the case of young seals particularly, it is often eaten by the people, particularly when other sorts of meat is scarce.  Most of the people, and particularly the Eskimos, are fond of the flippers and liver.

Sometimes the seals come out of their holes to lie on the ice and bask in the sun.  Then the hunter, simulating the movements of a seal, crawls toward his game until he is within rifle shot.

Should a gale of wind arise suddenly, the ice may be separated into pans and drift abroad before the seal hunters can make their escape to land.  In that case a hunter may be driven to sea on an ice pan, and he is fortunate if his neighbors discover him and rescue him in boats.

After the ice goes out, those who own seal nets set them, and a great many seals are caught in this way.  At this season the seals frequently are seen sunning 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.