CONQUEST OF SIBERIA BY THE RUSSIANS. 



201 



Fourteen years later, Schalaurow, a merchant of Jakutsk, who sailed from 

 the Jaiia in a vessel bxiilt at his own expense, at length succeeded in doubling 

 the Baranow Rock, and proceeded eastward as far as Cape Schelagskoi, which 

 prevented his farther progress. After twice wintering on the dreary Kolyma, 

 he resolved, witli adnurable perseverance, to make a third attempt, but his crew 

 Avould no longei" follow him. From a second sea-journey, which he undertook 

 in 1764 to that cape, he did not return. " His unfortunate death is the more to 

 be lamented," says Wrangell, " as he sacrificed his property and life to a disin- 

 terested aim, and united intelligence and energy in a remarkable degree." On 

 his map, tlie wliole coast from the Jana to Cape Schelagskoi is marked, with 

 an accuracy which does him the greatest honor. In 1785 Billings and Sa- 

 rytchew were equally unsuccessful in the endeavor to sail round the cape 

 which had defeated all Schalaurow's endeavors ; nor has the voyage been ac- 

 complished to the present day. 



As the sable had graduallv led the Russian fur-hunters to Kamchatka, so 

 the still moi'e valuable sea-3tter gave the chief impulse to the di8(;ovcry of 

 the Aleutic chain and the opposite con- 

 tinent of America. When Atlassow 

 and his band arrived at Kamchatka by 

 the end of the seventeenth century, 

 they found the sea-otter abounding on 

 its coasts ; but the fur-hunters chased 

 it so eagerly that, before the middle ol" 

 the eighteenth century, they had entire- 

 ly extirpated it in that 'country. On 

 Bering's second voyage of discovery 

 (1741-42), it was again found in con- 

 siderable numbers. Tschirigowis said 

 to have brouglit back 900 skins, and 

 on Bering's Island 700 sea -otters — 

 whose skins, according to present pri- 

 ces, would be worth about £20,000— were killed almost without trouble. These 

 facts, of course, encouraged the merchants of Jakutsk and Irkutsk to undertake 

 new expeditions. 



Generally, several of them formed an association, Avhich fitted out some 

 hardly seaworthy vessel at Ochotsk, where also the captain and the crew, con- 

 sisting of fur-hunters and other adventurers, Avere hired. The expenses of such 

 an expedition amounted to the considerable sum of about ,30,000 roubles, as 

 pack-horses had to transport a great part of the necessary outfit all the dis- 

 tance from Jakutsk, and the vessel generally remained four or five years on the 

 voyage. Passing through one of the Kurile Straits, these exjieditions sailed at 

 first along the east coast of Kamchatka, bartering sables and sea-otters for rein- 

 deer skins and other articles ; and as the precious furs became more rare, ven- 

 tured out farther into the Eastern Ocean. Thus Micliael Xowodsikoff discovered 

 the Western Aleuts in 1745 ; Paikoff the Fox Islands in 1759 ; Adrian Tolstych 

 almost all the islands of the central group, which still bear his name, in 17C0; 



KAMCHATKA SABLES. 



