ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 181 



and the neighboring Copper Island; those are the animals from which 

 is obtained the brown, silky, soft seal skin which of late has become 

 so fashionable. In order to watch over the interest of the Russian 

 Govern.iient and to maintain order there are also a few Russian ofl&cers 

 stationed here. 



Sketch of the village. — A half dozen convenient wooden houses 

 are here erected, used for warehouses and stores, also for the use of 

 servants of the Russian Government and of the company. The 

 natives live partly in adobe houses, quite roomy and not unpleasant 

 inside; partly in small wooden houses which the company are grad- 

 ually endeavoring to introduce, instead of turf houses, by yearly 

 importing and giving awaj^ a few such houses to the most deserving 

 ones of the inhabitants. A church for Greek- Catholic service is also 

 there, and a roomy schoolhouse intended for children of the Aleutians. 

 Unfortunately, the school was now closed, but to judge from the copy- 

 books which were lying around in the schoolroom, the teaching liere 

 is not to be despised. At least the writing proofs were conspicuous 

 for their cleanliness, absence of school blots, and an exceedingly even 

 and beautiful handwriting. At the "colony " the houses are collected 

 in one place in a village, which, from the sea, has the appearance 

 somewhat of a small Norwegian fisherman village. Besides these, a 

 few scattered houses are to be found here and there on other parts of 

 the island, as, for instance, on the northeast side, where cultivation 

 of potatoes is carried on on a small scale, at the hunting place on the 

 north side, where a couj)le of large warehouses and a number of very 



Bering, in 1741-42. Steller's account and the stories of the survivors drew a large 

 concourse of rapacious hunters to the Commander Islands. They appear, as near 

 as I can arrive at truths from the scanty record, to have quickly exterminated 

 the sea otters, and to have killed many and harassed the other fur seals entirely 

 away from the island, so that there was an interregnum between 1760 and 1786, 

 during which time the Russian promyshleniks took no fur seals and were utterly 

 at loss to know whither these creatures had fled from the islands of Bering and 

 Copper. When they (the seals) began to revisit their haunts on the Commander 

 Islands I can find no specific date, but I am inclined to believe that they did not 

 reappear on Bering and Copper islands, to anything like the number seen by Stel- 

 ler, until 18o7-38; perhaps have not done so until quite recently. At least, in 1867 

 the Russians did not think more than 30,000 skins could be secured there annually, 

 while they declared 100,000 could be taken readily at the Pribilofs. Again, since 

 1867 the capacity of the Commander group has gradually increased from 15,000 to 

 :30,000, then to 40,000 and 50,000 " holluschickie " per annum. Now, this striking 

 improvement is due, doubtless, to the superior treatment of the whole business by 

 the Alaska Commercial Company, which had also leased these interests from the 

 Russian Government in 1871 for a term of twenty years. I think, therefore, that 

 when the fur seals on the Commander Islands became so ruthlessly hunted and 

 harassed shortly after Steller's observations in 1742, then they soon repaired, or 

 rather most of the survivors did, to the shelter and isolation of the Pribilof group, 

 which was wholly unknown to man; and it remained so until 1786-87. Then suc- 

 ceeded a period between, up to 1842-1845, when the unhappy seals had but little 

 rest or choice between the Commander and the Pribilof islands, and must have 

 sadly diminished, as the record shows, in numbers. The unfortunate overland 

 journey of Steller, which alternately starved and froze him into a low fever that 

 ended his young and promising life in a yourt on the Siberian steppes, November 

 12, 1745, six years prior to the first publication of his celebrated notes on the "sea 

 bears" of Bering Island, often occurs sadly to my mind in this connection; for, 

 undoubtedly, had he lived then to have reached St. Petersburg, whither he was 

 bound, he would have enlarged and polished these items, which now appear in the 

 Proceedings of the Imperial Academy, 1751 , just as he had roughly drafted them in 

 the field May and June, 1742. This revision of his field jottings would have 

 undoubtedly supplied many links now missing to the disconnected history of the 

 seal life on the Commander Islands, as it presents itself to us at this late day.— 

 H. W. E. 



