THE QUEST OF THE OTTEK. 129 



were they in their search and stimulated caj)ture of the coveted 

 animal, that, along by the period of 1772-74, the catch of this un- 

 happy beast had dwindled down from thousands and tens of thou- 

 sands at first, to hundreds and tens of hundreds at last. "When 

 the Russian traders opened up the Alev:tian Islands they found the 

 natives commonly wearing sea-otter cloaks, which they willingly 

 parted with at first for trifles, not placing any especial value upon 

 the otter, as the}- did upon the bodies of the hair-seal and sea-lion, 

 the flesh and skins of which were vastly more palatable to them 

 and serviceable. But the fierce competition and raised bidding of 

 the greedy traders soon fired the savages into hot and incessant 

 hunting. During the first decade or two of pursuit the numbers 

 of these animals taken all along the Aleutian chain and down the 

 entire northwest coast as far as Oregon, were so great that they 

 ajipear fabulous in comparison with the exhibit made now.* 



The result of this warfare upon sea-otters, with ten hunters 

 then where there is one to-day, was not long delayed. Everywhere 

 throughout the whole coast-line frequented by them, a rapid and 

 startling diminution set in ; so much so, that it soon became difii- 

 cult to get from places where a thousand were easily taken, as 

 many as twenty-five or thirty. When the region known as Alaska 

 came into our possession, the Russians were taking between four 

 and five hundred sea-otters annually from the Aleutian Islands and 

 South of the Peninsula and Kadiak, with perhaps one hundred and 

 fifty more from Cook's Inlet, Yakootat, and the Sitkau district, the 

 Hudson Bay traders and others getting some two hundred more 

 from the coasts of Queen Charlotte's and Vancouver's Islands, and 

 Gray's Harbor, Washington Territory. 



Now during the last year, instead of less than seven hundred 

 skins taken as above s^jecified, our traders have secured more than 

 four thousand. This immense difference is not due to the fact of 

 a proportionate increase of sea-otters — that is not evident — but it 

 is due to the keen competition of our j^eople, who have reanimated 

 the organization anew of old-fashioned hunting-parties, after the 



* In 1804 Baranov (the Colonial Governor) went from Sitka to the Okotsk 

 with fifteen thousand sea-otter skins, that were worth as much then as they are 

 now, viz., fully $1,000,000. Last year the returns from Alaska and the north- 

 west coast scarcely foot up four thousand skins; but they yielded at least 

 $200,000 directly to the native hunters, being ten times better pay than 

 they ever brought \inder Russian rule to these people. 

 9 



