Animals available as Food in the Arctic Regions. 299 



1803, 800,000 skins of the Ursine seal alone were accumu- 

 lated in Unalaska, one of the depots of the Russian Fur Com- 

 pany ; 700,000 of these skins were thrown into the sea, 

 partly because they were badly prepared, partly in order to 

 keep up the prices. In the Polar Sea to the north of Behring 

 Strait, as is well known, the number of whales found is pro- 

 digious ; during the last three years American whalers, at 

 the rate of 150 every year, having been employed in that 

 small portion of the ocean. But in no other part of the 

 Arctic zoological region is animal life so abundant as in the 

 north-eastern portion of Siberia, especially between the 

 rivers Kolyma and Lena. A description of the Kolyma dis- 

 trict has already been given in the preceding remarks, to 

 which the following particulars may now be added. The 

 first animals that make their appearance after the dreary 

 winter are large flights of swans, geese, ducks, and snipes : 

 these are killed by old and young ; fish also begin to be 

 taken in nets and baskets placed under the ice. In June, 

 however, when the rivers open, the fish pour in in immense 

 numbers. At the beginning of the present century several 

 thousand geese were sometimes killed in one day at the 

 mouth of the Kolyma ; about twenty years later, when Ad- 

 miral Wrangell visited that place, the numbers had some- 

 what decreased, and it was then called a good season when 

 1000 geese, 5000 ducks, and 200 swans were killed. Rein- 

 deer hunting forms the next occupation of the inhabitants. 

 About the same time the shoals of herrings begin to ascend 

 the rivers, and the multitudes of these fish are often such, 

 that in three or four days 40,000 may be taken with a single 

 net. On the banks of the river Indigirka the number of 

 swans and geese resorting there in the moulting season is 

 said to be much greater even than on the Kolyma. "West 

 of the Lena, and along the whole of the Siberian shores as 

 far as Nova Zembla, and including that island, animal life 

 presents a great contrast to the preceding portion, as it is 

 nowhere found in such abundance as in the districts already 



[described, and in many parts it is extremely scarce. Spitz- 

 bergen, although possessing considerable numbers of animals, 



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