78 THE FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



coat with TvhicL our ladies of fashion so delight to cover their tender forms during inclement winter. This is a very 

 great mistake ; few skins are less attractive than is the seal-skin when it is taken from the creature. The fur is not 

 visible; it is concealed entirely by a coat of stiii" overhair, dull, gray-brown, and grizzled. It takes three of them 

 to make a lady's sacque and boa ; and in order that the reason for their costliness may be apparent, I tal;e great 

 pleasure in submitting a description of the tedious and skillful labor necessary to their dressing ere they are fit for 

 sale, which will be found in the appendix. 



Sketch of the Eussio-China trade in fue-seal peltries. — During the whole of the extended period, 

 from 1799 to 1807, inclusive, the Russians shipped and sold nearly all of the fur-seal skins that were taken from the 

 Pribylov islands, in that great international mart of Kiachta, on the Chinese frontier. Since the Americans have 

 taken control, the sales have all been practically made in London. The Alaska Commercial Company sells every 

 one of its skins from the Piibylov and Commander groups there, in the same wareroom where the Hudson Bay 

 Company, when it had a thrifty existence and was a power, used to auction its furs annually. As millions of the 

 air-dried pelts taken from the seal-islands of Alaska have been bartered in the China-Eussian station, a brief 

 description of Kiachta may be interesting. 



Prior to 1722, the Eussians enjoyed a treaty with China which sanctioned the individual traveling of Muscovitic 

 traders direct from the frontier to Pekin ; after a period of three and thirty years, the Eussians were abruptly 

 and entirely deprived of those coveted commercial i)rivileges. After all intercourse between the two countries 

 Lad ceased for five years, the Eussians obtained a new treaty in 1728, by which, in order to prevent future 

 misunderstandings, the international trade, as far at least as private individuals were concerned, should be 

 conducted on the boundary line, exactly upon the same spot where this new treaty was negotiated. Here 

 Kiachta was built, though she still had a rival in Pekin; for, by the provisions of the new treaty, government 

 trading caravans were allowed to penetrate to the capital of the Chinese empire. But, in 17G2, Catharine the Second 

 relinquished this imperial monopoly, and that action at once rendered this little town the grand and sole emporium 

 of commerce between Eussia and China. 



Description of Kiachta. — Kiachta, then, as now, stands on a rivulet of the same name, which, rising in 

 in Siberia and crossing the frontier line, washes the foundations of Maimatschin, a China town only a few miles 

 away. Taken by itself, it is beset on all sides by rugged mountains; and the streamlet which forms a bond of 

 union between these large empires of Asia is so tiny that, even by the aid of damming, it often fails to aftbrd an 

 adequate supply of water to the four or live thousand dwellers on its banks. These two small settlements, Kiachta 

 and Maimatschin, are situated as nearly as possible on the fiftieth parallel of latitude, being about 1,000 miles from 

 Pekin and 4,000 from Moscow. Though the Chinese route is much the shortest on the map, it is practically as 

 hard a journej'; for at a distance of about a week's march from Pekin, the Chinese have a forty days' tramp, and 

 upward, over a dismal desert of table-land. It is parched with heat during one-half of the year, and covered 

 with snow during the other. The Eussians, however, whether they come froai the west with manufactured goods, 

 or from the north and east with furs, enjoy the advantages of a peopled country and of navigable waters nearly all 

 the way to Irkutsk, and when they have met at this, the common center of all the lines of communication, they 

 may, and often do, prosecute the rest of their journey to the very neighborhood of Kiachta by crossing lake Baikal 

 and ascetiding its principal tributary, the Selenga river. 



Character of the trade. — The Eussian traders bring chiefly furs, woolens, cottons, and linens, while the 

 Chinese bring teas principally, also silks, and sugar-candy; thus the seal-skins of Alaska were wont to go first 

 from the seal-islands to Sitka ; there they were assorted and put up into square bales, about 3 feet by 2, pressing 

 the bundles in an old fashioned hand-lever press, and cording them while under this pressure; then envelopes of 

 green walrus hide were sewed over them, and the packages, duly numbered, went to the Okotsk by ship, then to 

 Kiachta by pack-horses, where the buyers of Pekin finally inspected and ijurchased them, giving in exchange the 

 celebrated black teas of Maimatschin, the Arrest brands in all Mongolia, and produced only in the north of China, 

 and which can be more cheaply transported from thence to Siberia than to Canton. 



Chinese disposition of fur-seal peltries. — The Chinese buyers sent their Pribylov peltries down to 

 their home-markets on camels, and in carts drawn by oxen, to Kalgan, where the seal-skins were again sold to 

 other dealers, who carried thenr to the ultimate retail trade. 



Volume of kiachta trade in 1837. — What the fur-trade of Kiachta to-day is, even though the rare skin of 

 Callorhinns is seldom seen, I can find rro data; birt in 1837 the native land furs were represented by a value of 

 7,4:00,188 roubles, and the peltries from Eussian America, including the fur-seals, sea-otter, and all the Alaskan 

 land catch, was 1,000,000 roubles. How many fur-seals were sold in this aggregate, I cannot ascertain, but the 

 scanty yield daring the two and three years preceding would not warrant any considerable showing. 



Chinese traders. — The Chinese at Kiachta were at first much more shr-ewd in their bargains than were 

 their Eussian neighbors; but the Slavonic instincts did not need much brushing up ere they were fully equal 

 to all emergencies ; the methods of the Chinese in selecting seal-skirrs were elaborate and lengthy — each pelt was 

 handled and measrrred, then a little metal tag attached on which the result was recorded. 1 find a great deal of 

 confusion in the data at my command as to what the average price was in this market, because the Eussians took 



