HUNTING AND THE FUR INDUSTRY. 141 



months to a year and four months, their appliances, catch and vessels used in the industry 

 with cargo and everything on board being confiscated. To make the protection still more 

 effective, the number of special cruisers occupied with enforcing them will soon be increased 

 by two new vessels. 



The beaver and arctic fox industries continue to remain in the same unfavourable con- 

 ditions in which the seal industry was till the promulgation of the last law. Beavers appear 

 not only on the Commander Islands but also on the coast of Kamchatka, especially near 

 Yellow Cape where they have their dams. However the predaceous persecution to which they 

 are subjected is forcing the animals to constantly seek new sites for their dams, more remote 

 from man. Latterly beavers have begun to come out on the land between Capes Kamchatka 

 and Stolbovy. The fur of the Kamchatka beaver is peculiarly highly esteemed, fetching 

 from 300 to 400 roubles per skin, while the Commander beaver is sold at a third of that price. 

 Thanks to the high value of the fur, beaver are hunted very energetically, in consequence of 

 which their destruction is taking place very fast and they are becoming more and more rare. 



The morse industry, like the last, is gradually declining, this circumstance being a 

 direct consequence of the development of the piratical catching of sea mammals by English 

 and American filibusters who shoot them with guns. The flesh of the morse is used as food, 

 the skin for making the covering of the y u r t a s of the aborigenes in the Far East, The 

 tusks form the subject of a lively trade. The filibusters further clandestinely distribute to 

 the Chukches guns and powder for hunting the morse, and then barter the tusks for rum, 

 brandy and tobacco. 



The whale trade, as is already mentioned above, never possessed a regular organi- 

 zation and large commercial development in the Russian territories of Behring Sea and the 

 Sea of Okhotsk. The whale, proceeding from the Pacific to the Arctic Ocean, collect in con- 

 siderable numbers near the Chukotsk peninsula, especially between the Providence Bay and 

 East Cape. This industry annually attracts here a crowd of American and English whalers, 

 who partly are themselves employed in killing thera,and partlyin obtaining the whalebone from 

 the Chukches. Judging from the accounts in the American papers, specially devoted to this 

 industry, it may be assumed that foreign whalers annually carry away from the Pacific coast 

 of Siberia from 100,000 to 150,000 pounds of whalebone, valued at about 6 roubles a pound, 

 not less than 100,000 pounds of morse tusks at about one rouble and fifty kopecks a pound, and 

 a quantity of blubber and other products. Thus the whole industry in the Russian waters of 

 the Pacific yields various products to the amount of one and a half million roubles per 

 annum; but this trade escapes Government control being always carried on in a contraband 

 manner. 



There have been several attempts to organize the whale industry in the Ear East of Russia, 

 but not one has met with success. The credit of the last attempt of the kind belongs to the retired 

 Captain of the second rank A. G. Dydymov, to whom the Ministry of Finance granted in 

 1887 a loan of 50,000 roubles for three years, for the equipment of a steam whaler, but 

 this officer having made an excellent beginning to his enterprise in the Sea of Japan perished 

 somewhere on the coast ot Korea at the very commencement, leaving the killing of whales 

 in the Russian waters of the Pacific still an open question. The said industry requiring the 



