420 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



W. Elliott (1875), "the Russians were taking between four 

 and five hundred sea-otters from the Aleutian Islands and 

 south of the peninsula of Alaska, with perhaps a hundred and 

 fifty more from Kenai, Yahkutat, and the Sitkan district; the 

 Hudson's Bay Company and other traders getting about two 

 hundred more from the coast of Queen Charlotte's and Van- 

 couver's Islands, and off Gray's Harbor, Washington Territory. 

 Now, during the last season, 1873, instead of less than seven 

 hundred skins, as obtained by the Russians, our traders secured 

 not much less than four thousand skins. This immense differ- 

 ence is not due to the fact of there being a proportionate in- 

 crease of sea-otters, but to the organization of hunting parties 

 in the same spirit and fashion, as in the early days . . . 

 The keen competition of our traders will ruin the business in 

 a comparatively short time if some action is not taken by the 

 Government. 



"Over two-thirds of all the sea-otters taken in Alaska are 

 secured in two small areas of water, little rocky islets and reefs 

 around the island of Saanach and the Chernobours, which 

 proves that these animals, in spite of the incessant hunting 

 all the year round on this ground, seem to have some particular 

 preference for it to the practical exclusion of nearly all the rest 

 of the coast in the Territory. This may be due to its better 

 adaptation as a breeding ground. It is also noteworthy that 

 all the sea-otters taken below the Straits of Fuca are shot by 

 the Indians and white hunters off the beach in the surf at 

 Gray's Harbor, a stretch of less than twenty miles; here some 

 fifty to a hundred are taken every year, while not half that 

 number can be obtained from all the rest of the Washington 

 and Oregon coast-line; there is nothing in the external appear- 

 ance of this reach to cause its selection by the sea-otters, except 

 perhaps that it may be a little less rocky. 



"As matters are now conducted by the hunting-parties, the 

 sea-otters at Saanach and Chernobours do not have a day's 

 rest during the whole year. Parties relieve each other in 

 succession, and a continuous warfare is maintained. . . So 

 the bad work goes on rapidly, though a majority of the natives 

 and traders deprecate it." The optimum region mentioned by 

 Elliott is described as a chain of small islets, most of them bare 

 at low tide but with numerous reefs and rocky shoals with beds 

 of kelp. "As the natives have never caught the mothers 



