SK 

 5.41 

 543 A 4. 



PREFACE. 



IN the following pages I have endeavoured, from a sporting 

 point of view, to give the reader some account of a hunting 

 cruise among the Kurile Islands in quest of one of the 

 most interesting and, as regards commerce, valuable of all 

 the fur-bearing animals, the sea otter, and to furnish details 

 also as to the method of hunting employed, which will 

 hardly fail to attract attention, as, up to the present time,; 

 scarcely a record exists from the pen of an eye-witness. 

 To these will be added such particulars of the haunts and 

 habits of the animal as time and circumstances allowed me 

 to observe. 



Born on the surface of the heaving ocean and cradled 

 in the tempest, the sea otter only makes its home on such 

 storm-swept waters and inhospitable coasts as almost 

 preclude its pursuit by any but the hardy natives, whose 

 lives have been spent amidst the surroundings of those 

 gloomy regions and who are inured to peril and privation. 



The great distance from a base of supplies, expensive 

 outfit, and the impossibility of effecting an insurance on 

 the vessel in the event of shipwreck ; the total absence, in 

 many cases, of harbours, or, indeed, shelter of any kind, 

 all add to the difficulty of the undertaking, nothing 

 lessened by the shortness of the hunting season and 

 rigorous climate. 



During the two or three months that constitute the 

 summer of the North Pacific Islands, four-and-twenty 



