It will therefore at once be seen, by examining the state of affairs on the islands, and the conditions upon which the lease is granted, that the most scrupulous care in fulfilling the terms of the contract is compassed, and that this strict fulfilment is the most profitable course for the lessees to pursue; and that it would be downright folly in them to deviate from the letter of the law, and thus lay themselves open at any day to discovery, the loss of their contract, and forfeiture of their bonds. Their action can be investigated at any time, any moment, by Congress; of which they are fully aware. They cannot bribe these three hundred and ninety-eight people on the islands to secrecy, any more successfully than they could conceal their action from them on the sealing fields; and any man of average ability could go, and can go, among these natives and inform himself as to the most minute details of the catch, from the time the lease was granted up to the present hour, should he have reason to suspect the honesty of the Treasury agents. The road to and from the islands is not a difficult one, though it is travelled only once a year. FOOTNOTES: [85] It was with peculiar pleasure that the writer undertook, at the suggestion of Professor Baird, who is the honored and beloved secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the task of examining into and reporting upon this subject; and it is also gratifying to add, that the statements of fact and the hypotheses evolved therefrom by him in 1874 have, up to the present time, been verified by an inflexible sequence of events on the ground itself. The concurrent testimony of the numerous agents of the Treasury Department and the Government generally, who have trodden in his footsteps, amply testifies to their stability. [86] Pribylov, the discoverer of the Seal Islands, was a native of “old Russia.” His father was one of the surviving sailors of the _St. Peter_, which was wrecked, with Bering in command, November 4, 1741, on Bering Island. The only reference which I can find to him is the vague incidental expressions, used here and there throughout an extended series of lengthy Russian letters published by Techmainov, as illustrative of the condition of affairs in regard to the Russian American Company. Pribylov was, when cruising in 1783-86 for the rumored seal-grounds, merely the first mate of the sloop _St. George_. The captain and part owner was one M. Subov, who was a member of a trading association then well organized in Alaska, and widely known as the “_Laybaidev Lastochin_” Company. It does not appear that Pribylov took any part in the business of sealing other than that of remaining in charge of the company’s vessels. He died while in discharge of these duties at Sitka, March, 1796, on his ship _The Three Saints_.