FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OF THE COMMANDER ISLANDS 
293 
The fog continued to hang so low over the island that it was impossible to 
make further observations on the rookeries, and on August 8 we departed on the 
Coast Guard cutter Mojavc. Robben Island, in the Okhotsk Sea, was visited on 
August 11, and on August 20 we arrived at Hakodate, where the firm that had 
entered into a contract with the Vladivostok government for the handling of the 
Commander Islands furs for the next three years and the provisioning of the 
inhabitants was interviewed. 
On August 30 a brief interview was had at Tokyo with the fur expert who 
visited the Commander Islands in 1915 and 1916 and inspected the seal rookeries 
there, and in Yokohama much valuable informati6n was obtained from a former 
administrator of the Commander Islands, who served from 1907 to 1917. 
THE RUSSIAN FUR-SEAL ISLANDS 
In 1898 the fur-seal islands still belonging to the Russian Crown consisted of 
the Commander Islands, located off Kamchatka between the Pacific Ocean and 
Bering Sea, and Robben Island in the Okhotsk Sea. The latter island was ceded to 
Japan in the treaty of peace following the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. There 
remain, therefore, in Russian possession, at the present date only the Commander 
Islands. 
CONDITION OF THE COMMANDER ISLANDS IN 1922 
The Commander or Komandorski Islands, so named after Commander Bering, 
who discovered the group in 1741, comprise two main islands — Bering and Copper 
(Miedni) — situated off the east coast of Kamchatka between 54° 33' and 55° 22' 
north latitude and 165° 40' and 168° 9' east longitude, about 750 miles west of the 
Pribilof Islands. Bering Island is about 50 miles long by an average of 10 miles 
wide, and Copper Island 30 miles long by 2 miles wide on the average. Both 
islands are Yevj mountainous, the altitude of the highest peak on Bering Island, 
Mount Steller, being given as 670 meters ^ (2,198 feet), and that on Copper Island, 
Mount Stejneger, as 637 meters^ (2,090 feet). 
BERING ISLAND 
During my former visits the seals on Bering Island were distributed between 
two rookeries — great North Rookery, situated on the northernmost prolongation 
of the island (Severni Mys or Cape Yushin), and South Rookery, situated about 
midway on the western coast of the island — but the latter rookery is now extinct. 
Reef, North Rookery, in 1922. — This rookery was formerly the largest and most 
important on the Commander Islands and has, perhaps, received the greatest at- 
tention. The inspection in 1922 took place on July 28. 
Upon arrival at the rookery great changes from former days were noticed. 
Several of the old buildings were missing, among them the small house of the sealer 
near the salt house, as w^ell as the house marked on the 1895 map as the "cossack's 
house." Nearly cA^ery trace of the "abandoned village" of the same map had dis- 
' Fedtschenko, Boris: Flore des lies du Commandeur, 1906, p. 1. Cracovie. 
' Morozewicz, J.: MSmoires du ComitS Gfiologique (N. S.), Ft. 72, 1912, p. 45. 
