is asleep. The gale conceals the approaching
danger. One blow of the gaff, and the otter never awakes. In this way
have three hunters killed as many as a hundred otter {78} in two hours;
and in this way have the thousands of Aleutian otter hunters, who used
to throng the inlets of the northern islands, perished and dwindled to
a population of poverty stricken, scattered men.

What were the rewards for all this risk of life? A glance at the
records of the old fur companies tells why the Russian and American and
English traders preferred sea-otter to the gold mines of the Spaniards
in Mexico. Less than ten years after Cook's crew had sold their
sea-otter for ten thousand dollars, the East India Company sold six
hundred sea-otter for from sixty to one hundred dollars each. Two
years later, Portlock and Dixon sold their cargo for fifty-five
thousand dollars; and when it is remembered that two hundred
sea-otter--twelve thousand dollars' worth at the lowest average--were
sometimes got from the Nootka tribes for a few dollars' worth of old
chisel iron--the profit can be estimated.

In 1785 five thousand sea-otter were sold in China for one hundred and
sixty thousand dollars. A capital of fifty thousand usually yielded
three hundred thousand dollars; that is--if the ships escaped the
dangers of hostile Indians and treacherous seas. What the Russians
made from sea-otter will probably never be known; for so many different
companies were engaged in the trade; and a hundred years ago, as many
as fifteen thousand Indian hunters went out for the Russians yearly.
One ship, the year after Bering's wreck, {79} is known to have made
half a million dollars from its cargo. By definite figures--not
including returns not tabulated in the fur companies--two hundred
thousand sea-otter were taken for the Russians in half a century. Just
before the United States took over Alaska, Russia was content with four
hundred sea-otter a year; but by 1875 the Americans were getting three
thousand a year. Those gathered at Kadiak have totalled as many as six
thousand in a year during the heyday of the hunt, at Oonalaska three
thousand, on the Prybilofs now noted for their seal, five thousand. In
1785 Cook's Inlet yielded three thousand; in 1812, only one hundred.
Yakutat gave two thousand in 1794, only three hundred, six years later.
Fifteen thousand were gathered at Sitka in 1804, only one hundred and
fifty thirty years later. Of course t