128 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



Feodor Altasov, with a band of Russian Cossacks * and Tartar 

 " promishlyniks," were the pioneers of civilized exploration in East- 

 ern Siberia, and finally arrived at the head of the great Kamchatkan 

 Peninsula, toward the end of the seventeenth century. Here they 

 found, first of all their race, the rare, and to them the exceedingly 

 valuable, fur of the sea-otter. The animal bearing this pelage then 

 was abundant on that coast, and not prized above the seals and sea- 

 lions by the natives who displayed their peltries to the ardent Rus- 

 sians, and who in barter asked little or nothing extra from the white 

 men in return. The feverish eagerness of the Slavonians, quickly 

 displayed, to secure these choice skins, so excited the natives as to 

 result very soon in the practical extirpation of the "kahlan," as they 

 termed it, from the entire region of the Kamschadales. The greedy 

 fur-hunters then rifled graves and stripped the living of every scrap 

 of the precious object of their search, and, for the time being, 

 searched in vain for other haunts of the otter. 



Along by the close of 1743, the survivors of Bering's second voy- 

 age of exploration and Tscherikov brought back to Petropaulovsk an 

 enormous number of skins which they had secured on the Aleutian 

 and Commander Islands, until then unknown to the Kamchatkans 

 or the Russians. In spite of the rude appliances and scanty re- 

 sources at the command of these eager men, they fitted out rude 

 wooden shallops and boldly pushed themselves over dark and tem- 

 pestuous seas to the unknown and rumored resorts of the sea-otter. 

 In this manner and by this impulse the discovery of the Aleutian 

 Islands and the mainland of Alaska was fully determined, between 

 1745 and 1763. In this enterprise some twenty-five or thirty differ- 

 ent individuals and companies, with quite a fleet of small vessels and 

 hundreds of men, were engaged ; and so thorough and energetic 



* The Cossacks who came with Altasov were rough-looking fellows of 

 small size, lean and wiry, with large, thin-lipped mouths and very dark skins. 

 Most of them were the offspring of Creole Russian Tartars and women from 

 the native tribes of Siberia. They were filthy in their habits. Naturally 

 cruel, they placed no restraint upon their actions when facing the docile 

 Aleutes, and indulged in beastly excesses at frequent intervals. The custom 

 of the Cossack hunters after establishing on an island, was to divide the 

 command into small parties, each of which was stationed in or close by a 

 native settlement. The chief or head Aleut was induced by presents to assist 

 in compelling and urging his people to hunt. When they returned, their 

 catch was taken and a few trifling presents made, such as beads and tobacco- 

 leaf. 



