ii 4 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



in its native habitat of Alaska will not help ; for Sea Otters in cap- 

 tivity like seals in captivity are subject to pneumonia ; and its 

 wide range from Southern Polar Seas to Northern Polar Seas renders 

 treaty protection such as saved the Alaska seal almost impossible. 

 It looks to-day as if five years would see the last Sea Otter taken 

 from the wild Northern ocean waves, where it cradled for so many 

 centuries. Two factors sealed the Sea Otter's doom. When Russia 

 decided to sell Alaska, which she did many years before the United 

 States bought the Territory — in fact, Sir George Simpson, Governor 

 of the Hudson's Bay Company, had considered such purchase away 

 back between 1826 and 1838 — she turned her Aleut hunters loose 

 to hunt to the point of leaving only an empty shell for the next own- 

 ers of the country. Then came the perfection of long-range fire- 

 arms ; and the Sea Otter herd quickly disappeared before the world 

 awakened to the loss. 



It is one of the great tragedies of the fur world ; and the finding 

 of the Sea Otter and the hunting of it are two of the most romantic 

 pages in American history. First, the Sea Otter, itself, as Hornaday 

 and Elliot say, is "a child of the ocean." It is born at sea in a sea- 

 weed bed called "kelp." It is rocked on the waves. It plays in 

 the sea. It sleeps in the sea. It floats or submerges, coming up 

 only at intervals to breathe. It was formerly found from Lower 

 California to Bering Sea. It is now found only as a rarity, or 

 freak. Hornaday gives the measurement as 3 \ to 4 feet with tail 

 11 inches long; but a full-grown Sea Otter was larger than a man is 

 tall. The coveted fur is dense with over hair and denser in pelage. 

 It is finer in texture than Land Otter, shimmering and lustrous as 

 light on water, black in color with a tinge of purplish silver like the 

 light on the sea. 



It was always the favorite fur of the Chinese mandarins and 

 speedily became the fashionable fur of the Russian nobility. The 

 story is romantic. 



When Vitus Bering's castaways looked about on the barren 

 islands, where they were marooned for the winter of 1741, they found 



