Fur -bearing Animals of the Pacific Slope. 175 



would hardly be complete without some reference to a denizen of 

 the Pacific Slope as interesting as it is important. 



Curiously enough the international difficulties recently set at 

 rest by a peaceably assembled company of diplomatists and 

 scientific men in a Paris salon, were not the first that had been 

 caused by the pelt hunting industry on that far-off north-west 

 coast of America. 



Sixty odd years ago hot rivalry between the two great fur 

 monopolies of North America, one operating in Russian the other 

 in British territory, led to a dangerous crisis. As the Dryad, a 

 Hudson's Bay Company's ship bent on fur trading, was entering 

 the mouth of the Stikeen river, of which only the lower part was in 

 Russian, the upper part, on the contrary, in British territory, the 

 Tsar's ships opened fire on her. Fortunately bloodshed was 

 averted on that occasion, as it was in the recent difficulty, when 

 U.S. revenue cutters seized Canadian vessels bent upon the chase 

 of the fur seal. Friendly relations were finally restored by much 

 the same means as those lately employed. 



A preliminary glance at the origin and growth of the pelt 

 hunting industry in Alaska will be the best possible introduction to 

 the subject of these pages. 



From the very first pelt hunting methods in the Russian posses- 

 sions were quite different from those employed in the country 

 immediately to the south of it, over which the Canadian fur 

 companies held sway. The methods were as much at variance as 

 were the sober and disciplined '' Voyageurs " unlike the drunken, 

 semi-civilised " Promishleniki," or Cossack fur hunters; as different 

 as were the respective routes by which these trappers and traders 

 reached their hunting grounds in the unexplored north-westerly 

 corner of the continent. The one travelling from the Atlantic 

 westwards, followed the setting sun, carrying on his barter for 

 furs through the Canadian wilds in an orderly and systematic 

 manner, entirely in the interest of his masters, the company, and 

 treating the aborigines with just but kindly firmness. The Russian, 

 on the other hand, lured from his old trapping grounds round the 



