100 CALIFORNIA FISH AND GAME. 



From 1812 to 1840 the Russians kept up an establishment at the 

 Farallones as well as at Ross. The chief object was to secure fur seals, 

 1,200 or 1,500 skins being taken annually for five or six years. 



After 1818 seals diminished rapidly mitil only 200 or 300 per year 

 could be caught and the business was no longer profitable. About 200 

 sea lions were killed at the same time, the skins and sinews being used 

 in making boats. No fur seals were taken on the Farallones after 1834. 

 (Bancroft, 1885 6, p. 633.) 



Soon after the year 1825 trappers began making their appearance in 

 the great valleys of California. In 1826 "Jedidiah Smith crossed the 

 IMojave Desert to San Gabriel jMission and trapped the length of the 

 San Joaciuin Valley. Repeating the daring adventure in 1828 he was 

 forced by suspicious authorities to leave the country. * * * Smith's 

 heavy catch of furs revealed to Dr. McLoughlin the rich possibilities of 

 the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys and opened the way for the 

 exploration of the district by the Hudson's Bay Company. In the 

 autumn of 1828. IMcLeod was sent south along Smith's trail for that 

 season's hunt. He trapped the mountain streams with excellent success 

 and was returning to Fort Vancouver with pack horses loaded with 

 beaver and land otter skins when he was caught in the ascent of Pitt 

 River by an unexpected fall of snow and obliged to cache his furs and 

 hurry on in order to save his men and animals. McLeod was severely 

 censured for this misfortune, and the following year the California 

 district was intrusted to McKay. He ventured even to the Bay of San 

 Francisco and took 4.000 beaver along its reedy shores, but the fur was 

 inferior in quality to that of the mountain l)eaver and brought only $2 

 a pound. The next season Peter Skeene Ogdon was transferred to this 

 field, and under his energetic management the Great Valley was thor- 

 oughly explored and developed. For ten years (1829-1838) a Hudson's 

 Bay Company brigade made its annual traverse, south in the autumn 

 and north in the spring, between Fort Vancouver and French Camp — 

 the post on the San Joaquin. The cavalcade was a picturesque one, 

 formed in Indian file and led by the chief trader. Next him rode his 

 wife, a native woman, astride — as is common with the females — upon 

 her pony, quite picturesquely clad. * * * Next the clerk and his 

 wife, much in the same manner ; and so on to the officers of less impor- 

 tance, and the men ; and finally the boys, driving the pack horses, with 

 bales of fur, one hundred and eighty pounds to each animal. The 

 trampling of the fast-walking horses, the silvery tinkling of the small 

 bells, rich handsome dresses, and fine appearance of the riders, Avhose 

 number amounted to sixty or seventy, made a really patriarchal array. 

 (White, Ten Years in Oregon.)" 



"American trappers were not slow to avail themselves of the new 

 hunting grounds revealed by Smith, Pattie, and Walker, and year by 

 year larger parties appeared in the Great Valley. They no longer 

 attempted to pack their furs over the mountains, but sold them to 

 traders at the coast ports, and the traffic grew to considerable propor- 

 tion, from $15,000 to $20,000 a year. [In 1841, according to Wilkes, 

 the export of beaver was two thousand skins at $2 each; sea otter, five 

 hundred skins at $30 each ; elk and deer, three thousand skins at from 

 50 cents to $1 apiece.] Every trapping party was required to have 



