130 ALASKA INDUSTEIES. 



to the Chinese for sale were the first pelti-ies ever brought into their 

 markets by sea. The Chinese had hitherto gained everything of this 

 character from witliout their precincts, by overland trade with Sibe- 

 rian merchants, or from the Burmese frontier via Bhamo. 



When Captain Gore, the surviving senior oiftcer of Cook's last voy- 

 age, 1776-1780, returned to England, he found that war was existing 

 with the United States, France, and Spain. The British Government 

 determined to withhold fi'om the world all information of the voyage; 

 hence it was not until the winter of 1781-85 that it was published. 

 The statements contained in this work respecting tlve great abun- 

 dance of "animals yielding line furs on the northwest coast, and the 

 successfifl f)ecuniary bartering of the ships at Canton, stirred up a 

 great many active men who fitted out vessels for the traffic. The 

 first individual trader from the south on the northwest coast was 

 John llanna, an Englishman, who sailed from Canton, May, 1785, and 

 filled his little schooner with sea-otter skins at Nootka; then Portlock 

 and Dixon and Meares, in 1786; Gray and Kendrick, the first Ameri- 

 cans, in 1787, head a long list of traders who came successively after 

 them. In no record whatever of this i^elagic fur trade can I find any 

 mention made of the skin of the fur seal, nor the slightest hint what- 

 ever until the period of the Eraser River gold excitement, in 1862, 

 when the first quotation of a fur-seal skin is made, taken at sea off 

 the Straits of Fuca. 



What the Russians knew of the business. — Perhaps the best 

 and an entirely correct epitome of what the Russians at headquarters 

 of the company in Sitka reall}^ knew, biographically and commercially, 

 of the fur seal, is embodied in the following words of Governor Simpson, 

 of the Hudson Bay Company, who, in 1811-12, was the guest of Gov- 

 ernor Etholine. He had supreme control of Alaskan life and trade 

 then, and gave to his English official peer doubtless all the knowledge 

 which he possessed : 



Some twenty or thirty years ago there was a most wasteful destruction of the 

 seal, wlien youn,^ and old, male and female, were indiscriminately knocked on 

 the head. This imprudence, as any one mig^lit have expected, proved detrimental 

 in two ways. The race was almost extirpated, and the market was glutted to 

 such a degree, at the rate for some time of 200,000 skins a year, that the prices did 

 not-even pay the expenses of carriage. The Russians, however, have now adopted 

 nearly the same plan which the Hudson Bay Company piirsues in recruiting any 

 of its exhausted districts, killing only a limited number of .such males as have 

 attained their full growth, a plan peculiarly applicable to the fur seal, inasmuch 

 as its habits render the system of husbanding the stock as easy and certain as that 

 of destroying it. 



In the month of May, with something like the regularity of an almanac, the fur 

 seals make their appearance at the island of St. Paul, one of the AleiTtian group. 

 Each old male brings a herd of females under his protection, varying in number 

 according to his size and strength. The weaker brethren are obliged to content 

 themselves with half a dozen wives, while some of the sturdier and fiercer fellows 

 preside over harems that are 200 strong. From the date of their arrival in May 

 to that of their departure in October, the whole of them are principally ashore on 

 the beach. The females go down to the sea once or twice a day, wliile tlie male, 

 morning, noon, and night, watches his charge with the utmost jealousy, posti)on- 

 ing even the pleasures "of eating and drinking and sleeping to the duty of keeping 

 his favorites together. If any young gallant ventures by stealth among any senior 

 chief's bevy of beauties, he generally atones for his imprudence with his life, being 

 torn to pieces by the old fellow, and svich of the fair ones as may have aiven the 

 intruder any encouragement are pretty siire to catch it in the shape of some second- 

 ary punishment. The ladies are in the straw about a fortnight after they arrive 

 at St. Paul; about two or three weeks afterward they lay the single foundation, 

 being all that is necessary, of next season's proceeding, and the remainder of their 

 sojourn thev devote exclusively to the rearing of their young. At last the whole 

 band departs, no one knows whither. The mode of capture is this: At the proper 



