io THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



workers, now opened to the public like a flower to spring. Thither 

 flocked buyers and sellers from America, from Persia, from China, 

 from Siberia, from Japan, from Tibet, from England, from South 

 America. Quaint costumes were seen in the streets. For two weeks 

 the fair lasted, a curious relic of bygone customs come down to 

 modern days. The broker was an expert at haggling, the seller 

 at holding off", so that as merry a game of bartering went on as with 

 the Ash-wife who comes to market at four in the morning that she 

 may have the pleasure of refusing customers till mid-day. 



Why should Germany, which is not one of the great fur producers, 

 be famed as a market for furs ? The secret was in the dyeing and 

 dressing. Whole hamlets and towns were given over to the dressing 

 of raw furs. Austria and Russia produce the best squirrel skins 

 for linings in the world ; but the skins from both must be sent to 

 Germany to be dressed. Sometimes the secret was in getting the 

 oil out of the pelts without tingeing the white fur yellow, as in the 

 case of ermine and white fox and Polar bear. Again, other dressers 

 polished the furs with inferior grease instead of butter ; or deodorized 

 them imperfectly instead of tramping with mahogany sawdust. 

 Other raw fur fairs were held in Germany, but they were for the local 

 product, not the world market. 



In Russia, fairs are also the method of selling raw furs : at 

 Irbit in February, at Ischim in December, at Nijni Novgorod in 

 August. And to Kiatka, on the border of China, blue-gowned 

 mandarins and merchant princes and Chinese nobles still come for 

 the ermine and the marten and the sable of Siberian wilds, as their 

 ancestors came two hundred years ago to barter with wild Cossacks 

 and Siberian bandits and Chuckchee traders and Alaskan sea otter 

 hunters. China produces very few furs and those of poor quality; 

 but the Chinese grandee has as great a passion for fine fur trimmings 

 as the London grand dame for Jager diamonds and Burmah rubies. 

 Long before the Western world had awakened to the beauty of 

 seal and sea otter, there was a high-priced market for both in China. 



But the great fur fair of the year in Russia — the one which 



