464 
EXTRAVAGANT PRICE OF FURS. 
but feelingly, of the gi'eat losses and hardships which he 
had been forced to entail on the population by taking them 
away from their homes into a comparative wilderness, and 
gave us several interesting anecdotes of Siberian country- 
life. There was nothing in this prolonged conversation 
that surprised us more than a remark of Mr. Treigh- 
burg’s in regard to the high prices which the company 
realized for many of their furs. He told us, among 
other things, that their hunters were sometimes so for- 
tunate as to take a species of beaver — never more than 
two or three during the wliole season, however — whose 
skins sold in St. Petersburg for the enormous sum of one 
thousand rubles, (nearly eight hundred dollars,) and that 
the silver fox often sold as high as three hundred. 
We expressed our surprise that a bcavefs skin should 
sell for so large a sum, remarking that in the northwest- 
ern sections of the United States they were quite plenti- 
ful, and the fur comparatively cheap. 
“Ah! but, my dear sir,” he replied, “you have not 
this beaver of which I speak in your country. We have 
the inferior kind of beaver here, too, but it is a very 
difterent animal from the one I speak of. The skin of 
this one is just large enough to make a fine high collar 
for a winter cloak, and the Pussian noblemen who want 
such collars must j)ay their one thousand rubles or go 
wiihouW 
We had every reason to believe “old Frybark” to be 
a man of strict veracity, and his assertion was, moreover, 
sustained by the others present, who spoke of it as a 
matter of course ; still, I hesitate to publish such an un- 
heard-of price for a beaver’s skin, and must refer all 
