HUNTING THE SEA OTTER. 3 



to six hundred ; and since then not a tenth of this number 

 has been taken in any one year. At the first visit made by 

 the Russians to the Gulf of Yahkutat in 1 794, two thousand 

 sea otters were taken, but the numbers went down so 

 rapidly that within five years of this date less than three 

 hundred rewarded the hunter's toil. In 1798 a large 

 party of Russians and Aleuts secured in Sitka Sound and 

 neighbourhood twelve hundred skins ; besides these they 

 obtained by trading with the natives fully as many more ; 

 and in the spring of 1800 a few American and English vessels 

 came to the same spot, anchored off the small Russian settle- 

 ment, and traded with the natives for over two thousand skins. 

 The largest number, however, that was exported to the 

 Okhotsk was during the early days of the Company above 

 mentioned, when fifteen thousand skins were brought away 

 from the coast of Alaska. 



Owing to the more favourable conditions under which 

 hunting could be prosecuted elsewhere, the whole of the 

 American coast proper, that is from Lower California to 

 Alaska, the extremities of the sea otter's range, has long 

 been abandoned as a profitable hunting ground ; such few 

 skins as are still obtained would scarcely amount to one 

 hundred annually; although Sir George Simpson, writing in 

 1841, states that since 1814 the Russians had sent to market 

 the enormous number of eighty thousand sea otter skins 

 from California alone. 



So much for the state of affairs under Russian administra- 

 tion. Let us now see what the United States Government 

 have done for the preservation of the sea otter and the 

 protection of the natives who depend upon their barter as 

 the only means of ameliorating the conditions under which 

 they existed. 



Mr. W. H. Elliott, the special agent of the Treasury 

 Department, charged with the Government interests in 

 Alaska, writing in 1875 remarks : " Now, during the last 

 season, instead of less than seven hundred skins as obtained 

 by the Russians, our trade has secured not much less than 



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