HABITS OF THE SEA OTTER. 343 



have reflection to comply with his doiriands. The collector 

 then being provided with the small revenue-steamer spoken of 

 in my c]ia|)ter upon the duty of the Government toward the 

 Territoi'y, can insure compliance with the instructions given 

 him, and punish violations. 



"This i)roposed action on the i)art of the Governmc^it is 

 urgent and humane, for upon tiie successful hunting of the 

 sea-otter some five thousand christianized natives are entirely 

 dependent for the means to live in a condition superior to bar- 

 barism. 



" TJie hahltti of the sca-ottcr. {Enhydra }narina.) 



"I have had a number of interesting interviews with sev^eral 

 very intelligent traders, and an l^^nglish hunter who had spent 

 an entire winter on Saanach Island, shooting sea-otters, and 

 enduring, while there, bitter privation and hardship; and 

 chiefly from their accounts, aided l)y my own observation, I 

 submit the following: 



^^ Saanach Inland, Islets, and Reefs, is the great sea-otter 

 ground of this country. The island itself is small, with a coast- 

 line circuit of about eighteen miles. S[)ots of sand bench are 

 found here and there, but the major portion of it is comi)osed 

 of enormous water-worn bowlders piled up by the surf. The 

 interior is low and rolling, with a ridge rising into three hills, 

 the middle one some 800 feet in height. There is no timber 

 on it, but' abundant grass, moss, &c., with a score of little 

 fresh-water lakes, in which multitudes of ducks and geese are 

 found every spring and fall. The natives do not live upon tiio 

 island, because the making of fires and scattering of food- 

 refuse alarms the otters, driving them off to sea; so that it is 

 only camped upon, and lires are never built unless the wind is 

 from the southward, for no sea-otters are ever found to be 

 north of the island. The sufferings to which the native hunt- 

 ers subject themselves every winter on this island, going for 

 many weeks without fires, even for cooking, with the ther- 

 mometer down to zero, in a northerly gale of wind, is better 

 imagined than described. 



" To the southward and westward, and stretching directly out 

 to sea, some live to eight miles from Saanach Island, is a suc- 

 cession of small islets, bare, most of them, at low water, but 

 with numerous reefs and rocky shoals, beds of kelp, cK:c. This 

 is the great sea-otter ground of Alaska, together with the 



