212 THE PUR SEALS OF THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 



Very few are brought to Russia; almost all are taken to China, where the best 

 ones command a price of 70 and 80 rubles. In 1735 and 1736 they were quite ready to 

 offer 20 rolls of ^'Eitaika" for one skin, while the Russians on their return to Irkutsk 

 obtained for it 100 rubles. 



These skins, moreover, being rather heavy, are for that reason dearer to the 

 Chinese than the skins of sables and foxes, and they are better suited to increase the 

 weight of the too light silk gowns. In addition to their beauty they make the silk fit 

 more closely to the body and resist the wind better; and for those reasons the Chinese 

 make of this fur borders of a hand's breadth and put them around their robes on every 

 side; and this has become the fashion also with both sexes, not among the tribes of 

 Kalmuc and Siberia only, but also in Russia. In the land of Kamchatka nothing is 

 considered a finer adornment than a dress sewed up like a sack (a '^Parlca," they call it), 

 made out of the white skins of reindeer fawns (called '^PUseMlci") and having a border 

 of sea otter fur around it. Mittens and caps are also made of sea otter fur. 



In addition to their weight, these skins have also this disadvantage, that they 

 retain too little heat abo.ut the body and become moist, altliough, because of their 

 thickness, they do afford excellent protection against the violence of the wind. 



Up to a few years ago the people there also used to make their clothes out of 

 those skins, as they did long ago out of the skins of foxes and sables {Zobelae), but 

 that custom has gone out of date now that their value has increased so much; and 

 they are not very much aggrieved at that change of fashion, for the people there have 

 always looked on dog skins as warmer, more beautiful, and more lasting. 



The hides of the cubs have this advantage, that they heat the body less than fox 

 skins do. 



These animals are captured only on the shore of Kamchatka, from 50° ta 56° 

 north latitude. They are never seen in the Penshin Sea, nor are they observed to go 

 beyond the third Kuril Island. From this fact, and from the hunting of the animal, 

 the ocean from the neighborhood of Lopatka to the Promontory of Kronotski has 

 received the name of "Bobrovi Sea." For a long time back it has been believed by 

 the people, as well as by Russians, and asserted that this animal is not an Asiatic, 

 but a stranger in that region and a foreigner from other lands that lie quite near 

 Kamchatka, where they are taken every year. "When the east wind blows for two 

 days together in the winter time, they are iloated over with the ice on which they 

 have been lying, and so are caught. Those which escape death in the winter stay in 

 the summer about the rugged and rocky shores of Kamchatka and the Kuril 

 Islands, give birth to their young, and remain there; for they have not the strength 

 to swim away, and, on account of the foramen ovale of the heart, they can not while 

 swimming over the sea seek their food in its depths; neither can they hold out 

 against hunger for three or four days. 



The hunting of the otter is on this wise: if the winter has been cold and great 

 quantities of ice are repeatedly blown over, there will be an abundance of sea otter 

 not only in winter, but also, from those that survive, in the summer; and, on the 

 other hand, from the year 1740 to 1743 there was no cold weather in this locality, no 

 ice could be frozen about the shores and brought over there, and so the otter were 

 few and the hunting exceedingly limited. 



The region famous for the hunting of the otter twenty years ago extended from 

 the mouth of the Kamchatka to the Tchaschma, and was more renowned for that 



