60 ALASKA. 



regime, but it is now confined principally to the sea-otter trade ; 

 the Cook's Inlet and Katmai trade is mostly engrossed by 

 trading-schooners plying between these places and Puget 

 Sound; the yield of this district under the Eussian control 

 is given for twenty years, I8d2-1SG1, inclusive, as follows: 

 Sea-otters, 5,809 ; beaver, 85,381 ; marten, 14,295 ; minks, 1,175 ; 

 musk-rats, 14,313; wolverines, 1,276; marmots, 712; wolves, 58. 



In the Cook's Inlet disteict, the Mount Saint Elias and 

 SiTKAN districts, there are no well-established trading-posts, 

 the business being conducted on shipboard everywhere, the 

 natives coming oft" to the trading-schooners in their canoes. 

 At the time of the Russian occupation there was considerable 

 trading done at Sitka, but now it has fallen off entirely, the 

 natives of that place and vicinity going back into the inside 

 passages, where they can trade with ■whisky-schooners in per- 

 fect security, as affairs are now conducted in the Territory. 



A large variety of furs are brought in from the dense forests 

 and high mountains of this region — such as red, black, and sil- 

 ver foxes, brown and black bears, mink, marten, porcupines, 

 beaver, land and sea otter, fur seal, hair-seal, deer, rabbits, 

 squirrels, mountain-goats, ermines, and the hoary marmot or 

 whistler. 



The Ounalashka district: 



This embraces the whole of the Aleutian Archipelago, and is 

 given entirely to the sea-otters ; there is nothing else in this 

 section fit for trade save a few red and black foxes, and in it 

 are established six stations, viz : Oundlaska, the largest and 

 principal one, Akootan, Ghernovslde, Oomnah, Atlia, and Attou, 

 which are the homes of the sea-otter hunters, and where they 

 trade. 



The stations enumerated in the foregoing districts comprise 

 all that are established in the Alaskan Territory. 



THE TALTJE OF THE PUR-TEADB. 



With the exception of the Sitkan and Cook's Inlet districts, 

 the gross value of the annual fur-production of Ahiska can be 

 closely ascertained. I append to this head several tables from 

 Eussian authorities in reference to the subject, and call atten- 

 tion to the fact that for the last ninety years or more, up. to the 

 present date, the prices of the leading furs in our market to-day 

 are very much what they were then, with the exception of the 



