THE BALANCE-SHEET 
267 
The loss of life amongst these was between 250 
and 300, inclusive of those who died from exposure 
when wrecked, those who were lost overboard, and 
those who were drowned by the capsizing of boats. 
Of the white men—some forty odd—who at 
various times shipped with me on my sea-otter 
hunting ventures as masters, shipkeepers, hunters, 
or mates, I know of only eight who are now alive, 
whilst four others have been lost sight of. Nine 
died in their beds, and the remaining twenty died 
violent deaths, such as by drowning, shooting, and 
suicide. Of the men who formed the crews—about 
150, mostly Japanese—during the same period, the 
greater number have left their bones on the hunting- 
grounds of the North-West Pacific. These naked 
facts never struck me in their true significance until 
I came to collect and record them on paper. It will 
be seen that the pursuit of sea-otter hunting was a 
very precarious one, the prospective gain being 
altogether inadequate as compensation for the risks 
run. As in all undertakings of a similar nature, it 
was only the successful ventures that were talked 
about—the failures were never heard of—and the 
gains from the former were soon swallowed up in 
the losses of the latter. 
Whatever was made out of the industry was 
gained by those who built the vessels and supplied 
the outfits, by those through whose hands the skins 
passed before reaching the final purchasers, and by 
those amongst whom the sailors and hunters—an 
improvident lot of men as a rule—spent their money 
between seasons. A great fuss was made at one 
time by the Japanese, chiefly through a foreign 
subsidized newspaper published in Yokohama, about 
