REPORT OF BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. 147 



or yearlii)g:s whicli sonietiines form a considerable portion of the catch), 

 the gross vahie of the catch amounts to iiO,UOO doUars annually. This 

 amount constitutes a very important part of the whole revenue of these 

 natives, with whom also the fur-seal forms a staple article of food at 

 certain seasons. 



570. The less direct, but financially more important, interest of the 

 same native peoples in tiie pelagic sealing proper, in which they are 

 now largely engaged, is of course not included in the above estimate. 



III. — Pelagic Sealingt. 

 (A.) — Origin and Development. 



571. The interest of the natives of the west coast of America in the 

 ca])ture of the fur-seal is an immemorial one, but in the earlier years of 

 trade upon the coast the skin of the fur-seal occupied a subordinate 

 position to that of the sea-otter, and in still earlier and prehistoric times 

 the fur-seal seems scarcely to havabeen pursued excei)t for food. The 

 sea-otter yielded an ample supply of superior skins for clothing, while 

 sea-lions, hair-seals, and other animals aftbrded skins better suited to 

 the manufocture of skin boats by the northern tribes, and for the south- 

 ern, that of other articles requiring strength of hide rather than thick- 

 ness of fur. 



572. The principal areas in which the fur-seal was more or less hunted 

 in such early times, were doubtless those extending on the west coast 

 from the vicinity of Cape Flattery to about the latitude of Sitka. To 

 the south of Cape Flattery the natives were not seafaring in their habits, 

 and the same may be said of most of the native peojiles of the Asiatic 

 coast, along the Kurile Islands to Kamtschatka. 



573. So long as the skins of the sea otter could be obtained in abun- 

 dance for Chinese markets (where at the time they were most valued), 

 the White traders then beginning to frequent the coast made little 

 inquiry for the comparatively inferior skin of the fur-seal, but these, with 

 other skins of minor value, were purchased from time to time by the 

 traders, and have occasionally been thought worthy of mention in the 

 narratives of their voyages. The observations on this particular sub- 

 ject which it is now possible to glean from these narratives are naturally 

 rather meagre, but even an imperfect examination of some of them, is 

 sufficient to show that from the first the skins of the fur-seal were counted 

 among articles of trade with the natives along various parts of the coast 

 to which these animals did not habitually resort for the purpose of 

 breeding, and where, conseipiently, they must have been taken by the 

 natives at sea. 



574. It was primarily the search for, and trade in, the skins of the sea- 

 otter which, in the last century, iuqtelled the Russian adventurers to 

 extend their operations from the coasts of Asia along the Aleutian 

 Islands and to the American coast. When the Commander and Pribyloff 

 Islands were successively discovered, the skins of the fur-seal began to 

 be added in large numbers to the lists of articles of conuuerce, but even 

 from the first, and before these princii)al breeding places had been 



found, fur-seal skins also were procured from the Aleut natives. 



98 From iiundental references nuide in the summiiries of early Kus- 



sian voyages, such as those given in liancrotVs History of Alaska, 



