CHAPTEll VIL 



THE QUEST OF THE OTTER. 



Searching for the Otter. — Exposure and Danger in Hunting Sea-otters. — The 

 Fortitude, Patience, and Skill of the Captor. — Altasov and his Band of Cruel 

 Cossacks. — Feverish Energy of the Early Russian Sea-otter Traders. — Their 

 Shameful Excesses. — Greed for Sea-otter Skins Leads the Russians to Ex- 

 plore the Entire Alaskan Coast, 17G0-1780. — Great Numbers of Sea-otters 

 when they were First Discovered in Alaska. — Their Partial Extermina- 

 tion in 1836-40. — More Secured during the La.st Five Years than in all 

 the Twenty Years Preceding. — What is an Otter? — A Description of its 

 Strange Life. — Its Single Skin sometimes Worth $500. — The Typical Sea- 

 otter Hunter. — A Description of Him and his Family. — Hunting the Sea- 

 otter the Sole Remunerative Industry of the Aleutians. — Gloomy, Storm- 

 beaten Haunts of the Otter. — Saanak, the Grand Rendezvous of the 

 Hunters. — The "Surround'' of the Otter. — "Clubbing" the Otter.— 

 "Netting "' the Otter.—" Surf -shooting" Them. 



Little does my lady think, as slie contemplates the rich shimmer 

 of the ebony sea-otter trimming to her new sealskin sacque, that 

 the quest of the former has engaged thousands of men during the 

 last century in exhaustive deeds of hazardous peril and extreme dai'- 

 ing, and does to-day — that the possession of the the sea-otter's coat 

 calls for more venturesome labor and inclement exposure on the 

 part of the hunter than is put forth in the chase of any other fur- 

 bearing or economic animal known to savage or civilized man. No 

 wonder that it is costly ; what abundant reason that it should be 

 rare ! 



The rugged, storm-beaten resorts of the sea-otter, its wariness 

 and cunning, and the almost incredible fortitude and patience, skill 

 and bravery, of its semi-civilized ca2:)tor, have so impressed the 

 writer that he feels constrained to rearrange his notes and touch up 

 his field-sketches made upon the subject-matter of this chapter sev- 

 eral years ago, while cruising in Alaskan watei's, so that he may give 

 to the readers of this work the first full or fair idea of the to2)ic ever 

 put into type and engraving. 



