Fur-bearing Animals of the Pacific Slope. \ 79 



sterling. As the hunters extended their discoveries in the Alaskan 

 Archipelago new kinds of furs were found to be peculiar to certain 

 islands. Thus, besides the blue fox, there were discovered the 

 black, the silver, and the white or ice foxes. The first-named put 

 for a short time even the sea otter in the shade ; the discoverers 

 (1762), by a judicious present of a bale of this exquisite fur to the 

 splendour-loving Catherine of Russia, not only caused this speciality 

 to become the rage of the hour among the highest of the land, but 

 reaped for them gold medals and other honours from the grateful 

 Empress. 



At that time fur sealskins were worth only from 5 to 7 roubles 

 (a 2 s - 6*/.), while sea otter skins fetched in the chief fur market of 

 those days, namely, in China, from 15 to 22 sterling each. The 

 channels of the fur trade during the eighteenth century were 

 singularly round about. All Alaskan as well as all Kamchatka peltry 

 was sent overland to Kiakhta, an important trading place just 

 south of Lake Baikal on the Mongolian frontier. There the furs 

 were bartered at top prices for tea and silk, but chiefly the former, 

 which was sent to St. Petersburg by caravan, a name by which, as 

 everybody knows, the best tea in Russia is still designated. The 

 profits on a single chest, when it finally reached the capital, were 

 from 40 to 60 sterling. It must be remembered, however, 

 in view of these gigantic gains, that it always took six, and often 

 eight, years from the day the sea otter was caught or traded from 

 the natives in the Aleutian Archipelago until the tea caravan 

 passed the gates of the capital. Till Capt. Cook's famous second 

 and third expeditions, American fur traders appeared to be unaware 

 of the possibility of reaching the Chinese ports by sea, for as late 

 as 1775 the Hudson's Bay Company shipped some of their beaver 

 skins, obtained on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains, to the 

 number of 46,450, via London, St. Petersburg, and Siberia, to the 

 Mongolian and Chinese markets. 



As was to be expected, the enormous profits made by the fur 

 hunters in those early days attracted general attention in Russia, 

 and towards the end of last century various companies came to be 



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