Fur-bearing Animals of the Pacific Slope. 181 



The list here given represents only pelts sent by the company 

 to Asia, and does not include the very large number obtained by 

 poaching vessels of all nationalities who frequented the Behring 

 Sea, nor the pelts used by the company's officials to barter for 

 food supplies to relieve the distress of their hunters and servants, 

 who, at their isolated posts on the storm-beaten Aleutian Islands, 

 were often placed in the direst straits by the non-arrival of their 

 year's supplies from Russia. The directors in their palace at 

 St. Petersburg usually showed, as there is ample evidence to prove, 

 far greater solicitude respecting the precious sea otter than con- 

 cerning their very much forgotten employes. That large quantities 

 of peltry were used for this barter is shown from one transaction of 

 Baronoff, the most noted of the governors, who traded 20,000 fur 

 sealskins at the Sandwich Islands for an old trading vessel worth, 

 we may be sure, not a tenth of that number. 



Two events to which brief reference must be made occurred 

 when the company's charter was renewed for the second and third 

 terms. With one the history of the early times in Oregon makes 

 us acquainted. When the first renewal was granted, in 1821, 

 the Tsar's protectorate was suddenly extended to the southward 

 for 4 degrees i.e., to the 5ist N. lat., or, in other words, to the 

 northernmost extremity of Vancouver Island, and all foreign vessels 

 were prohibited not only from landing on the mainland coast and 

 islands, but also from approaching them within less than 100 Italian 

 miles. In view of the somewhat comprehensive claim which the 

 United States lately raised, as Russia's successor, to the whole of the 

 North American portion of Behring Sea, it is noteworthy that it 

 was the Government of that country who first remonstrated with 

 the Russian Government against any such extension of its maritime 

 and territorial rights. The dispute was finally settled, as one 

 knows, by the Anglo-Russian and Russo- American treaties of 1824 

 and 1825, in which the Tsar surrendered his maritime claim, and 

 the 54.40 N. lat. as southern boundary was agreed upon. 



When the third extension was granted the following occurred : 

 A new industry, that of whale fishing, had, it seems, been started in 



