SEAL SKINS FROM COMMANDER ISLANDS. 123 



appears that Shelikof was the first trader to deal extensively in fur seals, and his 

 name is not mentioned until 1776. It is stated that up to 1780, consequently in four 

 years, he had imported 70,000 fur-seal skins. It is furthermore stated that his vessel, 

 Sv. loann EylsTcoi, returned in 1786 with 18,000 fur seals. In the same year Protassof 

 returned with a "cargo consisting chiefly of fur seals." Panof's yessel, Sv. Qeorgi, 

 which also returned in 1786, had less luck, having secured only 1,000 seal skins. As 

 the Pribylof Islands were not discovered until that year (the first cargo from there did 

 not arrive in Okhotsk until 1789), the bulk of the fur-seal skins brought to Kamchatka 

 must have come from Commander Islands (see Bancroft, Works, xxxiii, pp. 185-191). 

 There is record of about 100,000 skins having been taken between 1760 and 1786, while 

 from 1746 to 1760 the skins brought to Kamchatka probably did not exceed 20,000. 



For the early times, between the return of the first cargo from the Pribilof Islands 

 to 1841, the year of the expiration of the second term of the Eussian- American 

 Company, there are absolutely no accessible records as to the number of seals taken at 

 or shipped from the Commander Islands. Elliott states (Monogr. Pribyl. Group, p. 

 70) that from 1797 to 1861 the statistics of skins taken from the Pribylof Islands 

 include "about 5,000 annually from the Commander Islands," but I have reasons for 

 believing that this statement is erroneous. As I have shown elsewhere, there was no 

 regular population on the Commander Islands until after 1826, and as vessels touched 

 at the islands at great intervals only, an annual catch of 5,000 skins from the Com- 

 mander Islands is out of the question. This is also plain from the figures given by 

 Yeniaminof and Von Wrangell. The former, according to the table presented by the 

 British Bering Sea commissioners (Eep., p. 132), gives the total number of seals killed 

 on the Pribylof Islands from 1826 to 1832, inclusive, as 137,503. This agrees fairly 

 well with the statement by Baron von Wrangell, the chief manager of the Eussiau- 

 American Company during that period, that the total number of skins exported from 

 the colonies from 1827 to 1833 amounted to 132,160. This number is clearly meant to 

 include all the skins exported from the whole colony, and would include any and all 

 from the Commander Islands, if skins were taken there, for he expressly remarks 

 that his statistical figures date from the incorporation of the Atkha district, which 

 included the Commander Islands, under the colonial management (Stat. Bthn. Nachr. 

 Euss. Besitz. 3»rordwe.stk. Amer., p. 24). 



The fact that the Commander Islands were not subject to the central management 

 located at Sitka until 1826 leads me to believe that the few Commander Islands skins 

 taken are not reported in the figures before that date, but that they were received 

 direct either at Petropaulski or Okhotsk.' 



1 To show how very unsatisfactory the statistical figures of the early clays as collated hy the 

 British Bering Sea Commission are, I may mention that they estimate the numher of fur seals killed 

 on the Pribylof Islands from 1786 to 1833, inclusive, as follows : 



1786 (according to Shelikof) 40,000 



1787-1806 (Eezanof's estimate) 1,000,000 



1807-1816 (approximated from Tikhmenief at 47,500 annually) 475, 000 



1817-1833 (Veniaminof) rt 543,239 



Total, 1786-1833 2,058,239 



This numher is 1,120,323 skins short, for Baron von Wrangell, who undoubtedly had pretty 

 reliable information to go by, states that "since the discovery of the islands St. Paul and St. George, 



