484 HISTORY AXD METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



will arise, coupled with the life and chase of the sea-otter, which may strike the reader's iniud as 

 the evolution of romantic thought. 



THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SEA-OTTER TO THE PROGRESS OF GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLOR- 

 ATION. To the sea-otter geographers owe their early knowledge of Russian- America; had it uot 

 been for the greed and covetousuess excited iu the minds of fur-dealers by the beauty and costli- 

 ness of its peltries which Altasov and his Tartars first secured, towards the close of the seventeenth 

 century, on the Kamtchatkan coast, had it not been for this incentive the exciting, pushing, aggres- 

 sive, indomitable search made by the Russian " Proinishlyneks " would never have been undertaken. 

 Indeed, for that matter, much of the glory which old Titus Bering is enveloped with, as a discov- 

 erer, was not due to his love for geography or hydrography, but it was the direct stimulation of 

 fur hunters for a rich return. They backed him; they fitted out his small, miserable vessels, which, 

 in the light of the present hour, make his voyages fairly fabulous, when the rickety, "ram shackley '' 

 construction of his rough Amoor-built shallops is understood. 



THE SEA OTTER KNOWN TO THE JAPANESE. The Japanesehad, however, from time immemo 

 rial, perhaps as far back as a thousand years or so before the discovery of America by Columbus, 

 been entirely aware of the existence and the value or this animal. Its shining coat was the fur of 

 their mighty tycoons, valued as ingots of gold or precious stones. But true to their conservative 

 nature, what they had within their border sufficed, and what they knew slept in the recesses of an 

 unknown language to the rest of the civilized world, and sleeps there to-day, for all I know. 



RUSSIAN SEARCHINGS FOR THE SEA-OTTER. It was not, therefore, until the Russians opened 

 up the trade, swiftly supplemented by the third voyage of Captain Cook and the aroused atten- 

 tion of the Hudson Bay Company, which speedily began to search the coasts of British Columbia 

 and Oregon in those early days it was not until this action was taken, towards the close of the 

 seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, that the sea-otter became known, first 

 to the courts and then to the nobility of the civilized world. It is as favorably recognized to-day 

 and valued just as highly in the markets, being, in this respect, as fixed in its intrinsic value as 

 the demand on any of the precious metals.* 



When the Russians first opened up the Aleutian Islands, and the Hudson Bay traders scoured 

 the coasts of Puget's Sound and Oregon, they found the natives commonly wearing sea-otter cloaks, 

 with which they parted in the beginning for a trifle, not placing a special value on the animal, as 

 they did upon the hair-seal or the sea-lion, the flesh and skins of the latter being vastly more 

 palatable and serviceable. 



But the offers of the greedy traders soon set the natives after them in hot haste, and the kalan 

 became the first in importance and the objective point of every hunting expedition throughout 

 Russian America, and the northwest coast as far down as San Francisco. It was the prime factor 

 to the success of every fur-hunting expedition, in which over ten thousand hunters were annually 

 engaged, from 1741 until its practical extermination in 1845. 



EARLY ABUNDANCE. During the first few years after discovery the numbers of sea-otters 

 taken all along the Aleutian chain, and down along the whole northwest coast as far as the 

 southern boundary of Oregon, were very great, and, compared with what are now captured, seem 

 perfectly fabulous. For instance, we are told when the Pribylov Islands were first discovered, two 

 sailors, Lukannov and Kiekov, killed at Saint Paul's Island during -the first year's occupation, 5,000, 

 but the next year they secured less than 1,000 and six years after not a single sea-otter reappeared, 

 and none have been there since. 



* A prime sea-otter skin is worth to-day 150. An average good skiu f 1UO. Exceptionally fine skins have been 

 sold aa high as $350 each, but these instances are not common. 



