4 HUNTING THE SEA OTTER. 



four thousand. This immense difference is not due to the 

 fact of there being a proportionate increase of sea otters, 

 but to organisation. Yet the keen competition of our 

 traders will ruin the business in a comparatively short time 

 if some action is not taken by the Government. This can 

 easily be done, and in such a manner as to perpetuate the 

 sea otter and to benefit the natives, who are dependent on 

 its hunting for a living. As matters are now conducted by 

 the hunting parties, the sea otters at Saanach and the 

 Chernobours do not have a day's rest during the whole 

 year. Parties relieve each other in succession, and a 

 continuous warfare is maintained. This persistence is 

 stimulated by the traders, and is rendered still more deadly 

 to the sea otters by the use of, rifles of the best make, 

 which, in the hands of the young and ambitious natives, in 

 spite of the warnings of the old men, must result in the 

 extermination of these animals, as no authority exists in 

 the land to prevent it ; for these same old men, in order to 

 compete with the riflemen successfully, have to drop their 

 bows, spears, and arrows, and take up fire-arms in self- 

 defence. So the bad work goes on rapidly, though a 

 majority of the natives and the traders deprecate it." 



As the above remarks are embodied in Mr. Elliott's 

 interesting work on Alaska, published in 1886, it is to be 

 presumed that no steps have been taken in the matter; 

 and the work of extermination goes on unheeded and 

 unchecked. 



Such is a brief history of the long-continued course of 

 pursuit, varied occasionally by wholesale slaughter, which 

 has reduced the numbers and diminished the haunts of the 

 sea otter till, at the present time, it is only amidst 

 the stormy waters that gird with barriers of foam the 

 most inaccessible coasts and islands of the North 

 Pacific that it is now to be found, but in such trifling 

 numbers as have relegated its pursuit from one of the 

 most profitable of trades to the region of speculative 

 enterprise. 



