CHAPTER V. 



THE SEA OTTER AND ITS HUNTING. 



The sea-otter, like the fur-seal, is another illustration of an 

 animal long known and highly prized in the commercial world, 

 yet respecting the habits and life of which nothing definite 

 has been ascertained or published. The reason for this is obvi- 

 ous, for, save the natives who hunt them, no one properly quali- 

 fied has ever had an opportunity of seeing the sea-otter so as 

 to study it in a state of nature, for, of all the shy, sensitive 

 beasts, upon the capture of which man sets any value, this 

 creature is the most keenly on the alert and difficult to obtain ; 

 and, like the fur-seal in this Territory, it possesses the enhanc- 

 ing value of being princii)ally confined to our country. A truth- 

 ful account of the strange, vigilant life of the sea- otter, and of 

 the hardships and perils encountered by its hunters, would sur- 

 pass in novelty and interest the most attractive work of fiction. 

 AYhen the Russian traders opened up the Aleutian Islands 

 they found the natives commonly wearing sea-otter cloaks, 

 which they parted with at first for a trifie, not placing any es- 

 pecial value on the animal, as they did the hair-seal and the 

 sea-lion, the flesh and skins of which were vastly more palata- 

 ble and serviceable to them; but the offers of the greedy 

 traders soon set the natives after them. During the first few 

 years the numbers of these animals talvcn all along the Aleu- 

 tian Chain, and down the whole northwest coast as far as Ore- 

 gon, were very great, and compared with what are now captured 

 seem perfectly fabulous ; for instance, when the Prybilov Isl- 

 ands were first discovered, two sailors, Lukannon and Kaiekov, 

 killed at Saint Paul's Island, in the first year of occupation, 

 Jive thonmnd ; the next year they got less than a thousand, and 

 in six years after not a single sea-otter appeared, and none have 

 appeared since. When Shellikov's party first visited (3ook's 

 Inlet, they secured three thousand ; during the second year, 

 two thousand; in the third, only eight hundred; the season 

 following they obtained six hundred; and finally, in 1812, less 

 than a hundred, and since then not a tenth of that number. 

 The first visit made bv the Kussians to the Gulf of Yahkutat, 



