iiLASKA INDUSTRIES. 271 



provisions brought into tliis country by English and American traders 

 and paying for tbe same in this way. In otlier words, the seal islands 

 were the exche(|uer where the llussian authorities could with certainty 

 turn and lay their liands upon the necessary currency. These Ameri- 

 can, English, and other foreign sea captains, having' disposed of their 

 supplies at Sitka or Kadiak in tbis manner, took their fur-seal skins to 

 China and disposed of them at a handsome advance for tea, rice, etc., 

 in exchange. The profits made by these foreigners having reached the 

 ears of the Eussian home management of the fur company controlling 

 Alaska, it was ordered theu that i)ayments in fur-seal skins for these 

 foreign supplies should cease, and that the Russians themselves would 

 ship their skins to Cliina and enjoy the emolument thereof. Tlie result 

 of this action was that the Chinese market did not prove as valuable to 

 them as it was to the foreigners; it became overstocked, and a general 

 stagnation and depression of the seal business took place and continued 

 until a change of base in this respect was again made, and the skins of 

 the fur seal were shipped, together with the beaver, in bulk to the great 

 Chinese depot of Kiachta, where the Eussians exchanged these peltries 

 for the desired supplies of tea, the trade thereof assuming such immense 

 ]n'oportions that the record is made where in a single year the Eussian 

 Fur Company paid to their Government the enormous duty upon impor- 

 tations of tea alone of 2,000,000 silver rubles, or $1,500,000. This was 

 the i)eriod in the history of the seal islands when, for a second time and 

 within the writing of Veniaminov, the seal life thereon Avas well-nigh 

 exterminated. The first decimation of these interests took place in the 

 last decade of the eighteenth century^and shortly after the discovery 

 of the islands, when, it is stated, 2,000,000 skins of these animals were 

 rotting on the ground at one time. Eezanov applied the correction 

 very promptly in the first instance of threatened extermination of these 

 valuable interests, and when the second epoch of decimation occurred, 

 in 1834 to 1830, Baron Wrangell, admirably seconded by Father Veni- 

 aminov, checked its consumption. These are instances of care and far- 

 sightedness which are refreshing to contemplate." (Ivan Petrov : Eept. 

 on Pop. and Eesources of Alaska; Ex. Doc. No. 40, Forty-sixth Con- 

 gress, third session, 1881.) 



Irregularity of the appearance of pelagic fur seals. — 

 While investigating the subject of the actual numbers of fur seals 

 secured at sea outside of the Pribilof Islands, I learned from Captain 

 Lewis (Hudson Bay Company's Otter) that these animals never appear 

 from season to season along the northwest coasts in the same general 

 aggregate. For illustration, he cited the fact that in 1872 "immense 

 numbers of fur-seal pnps and yearlings" were observed in the ocean oft" 

 Vancouver's Island and the entrance to Fuca Straits, "but last year 

 (1873) very few of them again were seen." He thought that, in the 

 case of the unwonted abundance of fur seals there during 1872, it was 

 due to the fact "that these young seals must have lost their bearings 

 somewhat in going north, and ran into the coast for a better point of 

 departure.'' He declared also that fur seals had never, during his 

 thirty years' service on the northwestern coast, been known to appear 

 in such great numbers before, nor did any other Hudson Bay man know 

 to the contrary. In 1872 he thought that "8,000 to 9,000 skins, chiefly 

 pups and yearlings," would be a fsiir estimate for the entire quantity 

 taken ; for 1873 his figures showed only "600 or 700 skins; these were 

 all older ones." 



