Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1874 — Driving the Seal. [ARTICLE]

Driving the Seal.

The seals are easily captured; their captors, the natives, reminding one of butchers as they go into a stock-yard to select and drive out a batch of bullocks, for the method of procedure is precisely similar. To the right and left of the breeding grounds stretch sand-beaches or some convenient landing, upon which the “Holluschickie” or the bachelor seals lie by tens of thousands, extended in every attitude assumed by them in fitful sleep or animated sport, and down from the village to these “ hauling grounds” come the natives, who, after making a survey of the swarming myriads, step in among them and turn aside from the masses two or three thousand of the most eligible animals, usually males of not over four years old and not under two. This drove which they have selected is driven to the village as a flock of sheifp would be, the animals moving in a succession of sudden starts, .with frequent resting spells, at the rate of about half a mile an hour, providing the weather is cool and foggy and the ground hard. Seals can be driven at the rate of a mile an hour under peculiarly favorable conditions of road and weather; but the loss of life is great in a large drove, so many falling senseless, gasping and some to rise again within a few hours and others dying at once. Only four or five men are required to capture in this way a drove of from one to even fifty thousand, did they ever want so many; and the labor of driving them overland to the salt-houses near the village is light, as the seals move without resistance and require but little urging, only it should be constant and gentle. They string themselves out in long files as they travel, and a drove of four or five thousand will stretch over a path mortf than a mile in length.— Henry W. Elliott, in Harper's Magazine.