50 ALASKA. 



regime, but it is now confiued principally to the sea-otter trade ; 

 the Cook's Inlet and Katmai trade is mostly engrossed by 

 trading-schooners ])lyiug between these places and Paget 

 Sound; the yield of this district uuder the Eussiau control 

 is given for twenty years, 1842-lSGl, inclusive, as follows: 

 Sea-otters, 5,809 ; beaver, 85,381 ; marten, 14,295 ; miuUs, 1,175 ; 

 musk-rats, 14,313; wolverines, 1,276; marmots, 712; wolves, 58. 



In the Cook's Inlet district, the JIount Saint Elias and 

 SiTKAN DISTRICTS, there are no well-established trading-posts, . 

 the business being conducted on shipboard everywhere, the 

 natives coming ofi" to the trading-schooiK^rs in their canoes. 

 At the time of the Eussian occupation there was considerable 

 trading done at Sitka, but now it has fallen off entirely, the 

 natives of that place and vicinity going back into the inside 

 passages, where they can trade with whisky-schoouers in per- 

 fect security, as affairs are now conducted in the Territory. 



A large varietv of furs are brought in from the dense forests 

 and high mountains of this region — such as red, black, and sil- 

 ver foxes, brown and black bears, mink, marten, porcupines, 

 beaver, land and sea otter, fur seal, hair-seal, deer, rabbits, 

 squirrels, mountain-goats, ermines, and the hoary marmot or 

 "whistler. 



The Ounalashka district : 



This embraces the whole of the Aleutian Archipelago, and is 

 given entirely to the sea-otters; there is nothing else in this 

 section fit for trade save a few red and black foxes, and in it 

 are established six stations, viz : Ounalaslri, the largest aud 

 i:»rincipal one, Alcootan, Chcrnovslde, Oomnal\ Atlca, aud Attou, 

 Avhicli are the homes of the sea-otter hunters, and where they 

 trade. 



' The stations enumerated in the foregoing districts comprise 

 all that are established in the Alaskan Territory. 



the value of the fur-trade. 



With the exception of the Sitkan and Cook's Inlet districts, 

 the gross value of the anijual fur-production of Alaska can be 

 closely ascertained. I append to this head several tables from 

 Enssian authorities in reference to the subject, aud call atten- 

 tion to the fact that for the last uiuety years or more, up to the 

 present date, the prices of the leading furs in our market to-day 

 are very much what they were then, with the exception of the 



