THE -FUR-SEAL ISLANDS OF ALASKA. 79 



all ages, and at all stages of the season, from June to December; consequently, the number of really prime skins 

 was small compared with the whole aggregate sold; the best pelts brought from "10 to 15 roubles "=$8 to $12.50; 

 the average sales were made, however, as low as from $4 to $5 per skin. Techmainov gives the most information 

 touching the value of Russian American furs in those times, that I can find ; but, in regard to specific figures for the 

 fur-seal quotations, he is only vague and general, the reason doubtless being that the whole volume of trade at 

 Kiachta was and is exclusively one of barter, without the intervention of coin on either side. 



SEASON OF KIACHTA COMMERCE. The business life of Kiachta is never fully aroused until winter has well set 

 in, continuing until spring. There is no written regulation to this effect, but it has the force of law through habit. 

 In disposing of their commodities, the Chinese have considerable local advantage, because their teas never remain 

 a single season unsold at Maiinatschin, while the Eussian goods, partly through a diminution of the demand, and 

 partly through the artifices of the Celestials, are often so depreciated in value as to have to wait two and three 

 years for a market. 



DEMAND OF CHINESE FOR FURS. The Chinese have from time immemorial been solicitous purchasers of furs. 

 The northern provinces of their dominions are not only subjected to an extremely rigorous winter climate, but are 

 those where the most wealthy reside, because the best teas of the Celestial Empire grow there; hence the desire 

 for fur robes and garments as measures of comfort during cold weather is universal among the inhabitants ; they 

 constitute an important part of the wardrobe of every important Chinaman throughout all "Kathay". A Russian 

 authority, Paul von Krusenstern, says: "With the least change of air the Chinese immediately alter their dress; 

 and even at Canton, which is within the confines of the tropics, they wear furs in the winter." 



FIRST TRAFFIC i.\ FURS BETWEEN AMERICA AKD CHINA. It is a curious fact, that until Captain John Gore 

 anchored, December 18, 1779, near Canton with the ships of Cook's last voyage, fioni Kamtchatka and the 

 northward, the furs which these English seamen then offered to the Chinese forsale were the first peltries ever 

 brought into their markets by sea. The Chinese had hitherto gained everything of this character from without 

 their precincts, by overland trade with Siberian merchants, or from the Burmese frontier via Bhamo. 



When Captain Gore, the surviving senior officer of Cook's last voyage, 1776-'80, returned to England, he found 

 that war was existing with the United States, France, and Spain; the British government determined to withhold 

 from the world all information of the voyage; hence it was not until the winter of 17S4-'8o that it was published. 

 The statements contained in this work respecting the great abundance of animals yielding fine furs on the northwest 

 coast, and the successful pecuniary bartering of the ships at Canton, stirred up a great many active men who fitted 

 out vessels for the traffic. The first individual trader from the south on the northwest coast, "was John Banna, 

 an Englishman, who sailed from Canton, May, 1785, and tilled his little schooner with sea-otter skins at Nootka; 

 then Portlock and Dixon, and Meares, in 1786 ; Gray and Kendrick, the first Americans, in 1787, head a long list of 

 traders who came successively after them. In no record whatever of this pelagic fur trade can I find any mention 

 made of the skin of the fur-seal, nor the slightest hint whatever until the period of the Fraser river gold excitement, 

 in 1802, when the first quotation of a fur seal skin is made, taken at sea off the straits of Fuca. 



WHAT THE RUSSIANS KNEW OF THE BUSINESS. Perhaps the best, and an entirely correct, epitome of what 

 the Russians at headquarters of the company in Sitka really knew, biographically and commercially, of the fur-seal, 

 is embodied in the following words of Governor Simpson, of the Hudson Bay Company, who, in 1841-'42, was the 

 guest of Governor Etholine. He had supreme control of Alaskan life and trade then, and gave to his English 

 official peer, doubtless, all the knowledge which he possessed: 



Some twenty or thirty years ago there was a most -wasteful destruction of the seal, when yonng and old, rrale and female, were 

 indiscriminately knocked on the head. This imprudence, as any one might have expected, proved detrimental in two ways. The race 

 was almost extirpated ; aud the market was glutted to such a degree, at the rate for some time of two hundred thousand skins a year, 

 that the prices did not even pay the expenses of carriage. The Eussians, however, have now adopted nearly the same plan which the 

 Hudson Bay Company pursues, in recruiting any of its exhausted districts, killing only a limited number of such males as have attained 

 their full growth, a plan peculiarly applicable to the fur-seal, inasmuch as its habits render the system of husbanding the stock as easy 

 and certain as that of destroying it. 



In the month of May, with something like the regularity of an almanac, the fur-seals make their appearance at the island of St. Paul, 

 one of the Aleutian group. Each old male brings a herd of females under his protection, varying in number according to his size and 

 strength. The weaker brethren are obliged to content themselves with half a dozen wives, while some of the sturdier and fiercer fellows 

 preside over harems that are two hundred strong. From the date of their arrival in May to that of their departure in October, the whole 

 of them are principally ashore on the beach. The females go down to the sea once or twice a day, while the male, morning, noon, and 

 night, watches his charge -with the utmost jealousy, postponing even the pleasures of eating and drinking and sleeping to the duty of 

 keeping his favorites together. If any young gallant ventures by stealth among any senior chief's bevy of beauties, he generally atones 

 for his imprudence with his life, being torn to pieces by the old fellow, and such of the fair ones as may have given the intruder any 

 encouragement are pretty sure to catch it in the shape of some secondary punishment. The ladies are in (he straw about a fortnight after 

 they arrive at St. Paul; about two or three weeks afterward they lay the single foundation, being all that is necessary, of next season's 

 proceeding, and the remainder of their sojourn they devote exclusively to the rearing of their young. At last the whole band departs, no 

 one knows whither. The mode of capture is this: at the proper time tic whole are driven, like a flock of sheep, to the establishment, 

 which is a mile distant from the si/a, and there the males of four years, with the exception of the few that are left to keep up the breed, 

 are separated from the rest and killed. In the days of promiscuous massacre such of the mothers as had lost their pups would ever and 

 anon return to the establishment, absolutely harrowing up the sympathies of the wives and the daughters of the hunters, accustomed as 

 they were to such scenes, with their doleful lamentations. 



