[Illustration:  LAYSAN ALBATROSSES, BEFORE THE GREAT SLAUGHTER By the Courtesy of Hon. Walter Rothschild.]

[Illustration:  LAYSAN ALBATROSS ROOKERY, AFTER THE GREAT SLAUGHTER The Same Ground as Shown in the Preceding Picture, Photographed in 1911 by Prof.  Homer R. Dill]

Schlemmer the Slaughterer bought a cheap vessel, hired twenty-three phlegmatic and cold-blooded Japanese laborers, and organized a raid on Laysan.  With the utmost secrecy he sailed from Honolulu, landed his bird-killers upon the sea-bird wonderland, and turned them loose upon the birds.

For several months they slaughtered diligently and without mercy.  Apparently it was the ambition of Schlemmer to kill every bird on the island.

By the time the bird-butchers had accumulated between three and four car-loads of wings, and the carnage was half finished, William A. Bryan, Professor of Zoology in the College of Honolulu, heard of it and promptly wired the United States Government.

Without the loss of a moment the Secretary of the Navy despatched the revenue cutter Thetis to the shambles of Laysan.  When Captain Jacobs arrived he found that in round numbers about three hundred thousand birds had been destroyed, and all that remained of them were several acres of bones and dead bodies, and about three carloads of wings, feathers and skins.  It was evident that Schlemmer’s intention was to kill all the birds on the island, and only the timely arrival of the Thetis frustrated that bloody plan.

The twenty-three Japanese poachers were arrested and taken to Honolulu for trial, and the Thetis also brought away all the stolen wings and plumage with the exception of one shedful of wings that had to be left behind on account of lack of carrying space.  That old shed, with one end torn out, and supposed to contain nearly fifty thousand pairs of wings, was photographed by Prof.  Dill in 1911, as shown herewith.

[Illustration:  ACRES OF GULL AND ALBATROSS BONES Photographed on Laysan Island by H.R.  Dill, 1911]

Three hundred thousand albatrosses, gulls, terns and other birds were butchered to make a Schlemmer holiday!  Had the arrival of the Thetis been delayed, it is reasonably certain that every bird on Laysan would have been killed to satisfy the wolfish rapacity of one money-grubbing white man.

In 1911, the Iowa State University despatched to Laysan a scientific expedition in charge of Prof.  Homer R. Dill.  The party landed on the island on April 24 and remained until June 5, and the report of Professor Dill (U.S.  Department of Agriculture) is consumedly interesting to the friends of birds.  Here is what he has said regarding the evidences of bird-slaughter: 

“Our first impression of Laysan was that the poachers had stripped the place of bird life.  An area of over 300 acres on each side of the buildings was apparently abandoned.  Only the shearwaters moaning in their burrows, the little wingless rail skulking from one grass tussock to another, and the saucy finch remained.  It is an excellent example of what Prof.  Nutting calls the survival of the inconspicuous.