FRUITLESS NEGOTIATIONS 
141 
where he was at once joined by his two accomplices, 
when another grabbing match took plane for final 
possession. 
On the occasion of the visit of the Emperor to 
Hakodate, a crow, when flying over the imperial 
carriage, so far forgot himself as to commit an in- 
dignity on His Imperial Majesty. The people of 
Hakodate were very angry, and a price was set, not 
upon the head of Mr. Crow, but upon his feet, the 
authorities paying four cents per pair for all crows’ 
feet brought to the police. I was in Hakodate 
during the winter when this regulation was in force. 
It soon had the effect of reducing the number of 
crows. A Japanese told me in all seriousness that 
on very cold nights the crows, when roosting in the 
pine-trees, got frozen to the branches, and could 
not release their hold until the sun rose and thawed 
their feet out. He thought it would be good busi¬ 
ness to go to the places where they roosted, very 
early in the morning, before they could get away, 
and so capture numbers of them. I never heard 
whether he tried it. 
In this chapter I appear to have drifted some¬ 
what away from the chief subject of my book—■ 
namely, the sea-otter—so to finish up I will return 
to it with another of Werner’s yarns, which gives a 
graphic description of an incident the like of which 
I have on several occasions experienced: 
cc The following incident occurred during an 
otter-hunting expedition off the island of Yetorup : 
Our schooner had been for two days anchored be¬ 
tween Otter Island and the Pinnacles, and, as the 
otters were very tame, we had had pretty good 
sport, with but very little work attached to it. It 
