322 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



rush was made to them by the representatives of every Russian trading 

 organization then in Alaska: by everyone then able to fit out a vessel 

 and hire a number of men. These eager, greedy parties located on and 

 near all of the large rookeries and hauling grounds, and killed as many 

 as they could handle. In those days all the skins were air-dried, and 

 not salted, and that made the work of sealing then far slower and 

 much more difficult than it is now, since the present system of salting 

 skins practically offers no delay whatever to the work of killing and 

 skinning. In my mind there is no doubt but what this inability to cure 

 rapidly the skins for shipment m 1786-1805, as fast as they could then 

 be killed and skinned — not one-tenth as fast as they can be to-day — that 

 this delay alone saved the Pribilov rookeries from utter extermination 

 in those early days. Certainly it was and must have been the cause: 

 for, at least thirteen different trading organizations had their vessels 

 and their men around and on these two islands of St. Paul and St. 

 George, engaged to their utmost ability throughout full seventeen years 

 of unbroken succession m taking fur-seal skins. 



Had those early Russian fur hunters then possessed the knowledge 

 and means of curing skins in salt that we now have, together with 

 these appliances in use to-day on the seal islands of Alaska, I am well 

 satisfied in my own mind that they would have killed every fur seal 

 that remained to show itself in less than three years after they began 

 operations; that they would have swept every animal from these 

 grounds long, long before the old Russian American Company assumed 

 autocratic control of these interests in 1799, and extended it in 1805 

 over all Alaska as well. 



But, fortunately for us and the world as well, they did not know any- 

 thing about curing skins in salt; they had but one method, and that 

 was to stretch out the green skins and air-dry them upon frames in 

 long, low drying houses : or in bright weather, during August, Septem- 

 ber, and October, to peg them out ui)on the ground, or stretch them on 

 hooxjs and frames. 



Thus this tedious process, in a climate as damj), foggy, and stormy 

 as IS that peculiar to the seal islands of Alaska, made these Slavonian 

 sealers spend ten times as much time in the act of curing their fur-seal 

 pelts as it took them to drive out and kill. Then, too, in those early 

 days they were remote from a market ; had no prompt, economical means 

 of transportation to London ; and, dei^ended wholly upon the idiosyncra- 

 sies of the Chinese trade, via Kiachta ; but even with this extraordinary 

 hindrance, it seems that they took in that laborious and risky manner 

 at least 100,000 fur-seal skins every year.' 



They took so many that by 1803, several hundred thousand of these 

 air-dried jielts had accumulated over the ability of the old Russian com- 

 pany to profitably sell and dispose of, in time to prevent their decay — 

 molding and damp, then abruptly decaying — rotting in large jjiles as 

 they were stacked up in the warehouses at Kodiak; so "it became nec- 

 essary to cut or throw into the sea 700,000 pelts" during that year. 

 Naturally this loss of labor, time, and money cooled the ardor of the 

 sealing gangs which were working the Pribilof Islands; they worked 

 slower, when they did work, and most likely never worked at all in 



1 In the first years on St. Paul Island from 50,000 to 60,000 were taken annually 

 and on St. George Iroui 40,000 to 50,000 every year. Sucli horrible killing was 

 neither necessary nor demanded. The skins Avero frequently taken without any 

 list or count. In 1803, 800,000 seal skins had accuinulated, and it was impossible to 

 make advantageous sale of so many skins; for in this great number so many were 

 spoiled that it became necessary to cut or throw into the sea 700,000 pelts. (Bishop 

 Veniaminov, "Zapieskie," etc., 1848, vol. 1, chap. 12.) 



