1760.] VOYAGES OF RUSSIAN FUR TRADERS. 135 



chatka, where they were sold at such high prices, that several of 

 the seamen, as well as other persons, were induced immediately to 

 go to the island and procure further supplies. In the course of the 

 voyages made for this purpose, other islands, farther east, which had 

 been seen by Bering and Tchirikof, were explored, and found to 

 offer the same advantages ; and the number of persons employed in 

 seeking furs was constantly increasing. 



The trade thus commenced was, for some time, carried on by 

 individual adventurers, each of whom was alternately a seaman, a 

 hunter, and a merchant; at length, however, some capitalists in 

 Siberia employed their funds in the pursuit, and expeditions to the 

 islands were, in consequence, made on a more extensive scale, and 

 with greater regularity and efficiency.* Trading stations were estab- 

 lished at particular points, where the furs were collected by persons 

 left for that object ; and vessels were sent, at stated periods, from 

 the ports of Asiatic Russia, to carry the articles required for the use 

 of the agents and hunters, or for barter with the natives, and to 

 bring away the skins collected. 



The vessels employed in this commerce were, in all respects, 

 wretched and insecure, the planks being merely attached together, 

 without iron, by leathern thongs ; and, as no instruments were used 

 by the traders for determining latitudes or longitudes at sea, their 

 ideas of the relative positions of the places which they visited were 

 vague and incorrect. Their navigation was, indeed, performed in 

 the most simple and unscientific manner possible. A vessel sailing 

 from the Bay of Avatscha, or from Cape Lopatka, the southern ex- 

 tremity of Kamtchatka, could not have gone far eastward, without 

 falling in with one of the Aleutian Islands, which would serve as a 

 mark for her course to another ; and thus she might go on, from 

 point to point, throughout the whole chain. In like manner she 

 would return to Asia, and, if her course and rate of sailing were 

 observed with tolerable care, there could seldom be any uncertainty 

 as to whether she were north or south of the line of the islands. 

 Many vessels were, nevertheless, annually lost, in consequence of 



* The islands discovered and frequented by the Russian fur traders were those 

 called the Meyutsky, or Meutian, extending in a line nearly along the 53d parallel 

 of latitude, from the south-west extremity of the peninsula Aliaska, across the sea, 

 to the vicinity of Kamtchatka. Aliaska was, likewise, supposed to be an island, 

 until 1778, when its connection with the American continent was ascertained by 

 Cook. The inhabitants of these islands were a bold race, who, for some time, 

 resisted the Russians, but were finally subdued, after their numbers had been con- 

 siderably reduced. 



