and privation than the whalemen, roving over the South Pacific
among the rock-bound islands unknown to the merchant navigator.
The men sailed wholly on shares, a seaman receiving one per cent
of the catch and the captain ten per cent, and they slaughtered
the seal by the million, driving them from the most favored
haunts within a few years. For instance, American ships first
visited Mas a Fuera in 1797, and Captain Delano estimated that
during the seven years following three million skins were taken
to China from this island alone. He found as many as fourteen
vessels there at one time, and he himself carried away one
hundred thousand skins. It was a gold mine for profit while it
lasted.

There were three Delano brothers afloat in two vessels, and of
their wanderings Amasa set down this epitome: "Almost the whole
of our connections who were left behind had need of our
assistance, and to look forward it was no more than a reasonable
calculation to make that our absence would not be less than three
years . . . together with the extraordinary uncertainty of the
issue of the voyage, as we had nothing but our hands to depend
upon to obtain a cargo which was only to be done through storms,
dangers, and breakers, and taken from barren rocks in distant
regions. But after a voyage of four years for one vessel and five
for the other, we were all permitted to return safe home to our
friends and not quite empty-handed. We had built both of the
vessels we were in and navigated them two and three times around
the globe." Each one of the brothers had been a master builder
and rigger and a navigator of ships in every part of the world.

By far the most important voyage undertaken by American