ould risk on such crazy craft, two thousand miles
from a home port on an outrageous sea.

England and the United States became involved in the exploitation of
the Pacific coast in almost the same way. When Captain Cook was at
Nootka Sound thirty years after Bering's death, his crews traded {65}
trinkets over the taffrail netting for any kind of furs the natives of
the west coast chose to exchange. In the long voyaging to Arctic
waters afterward, these furs went to waste with rain-rot. More than
two-thirds were thrown or given away. The remaining third sold in
China on the home voyage of the ships for what would be more than ten
thousand dollars of modern money. News of that fact was enough.
Boston, New York, London, rubbed their eyes to possibilities of fur
trade on the Pacific coast. As the world knows, Boston's efforts
resulted in the chance discovery of the Columbia; New York's efforts,
in the foundation of the Astor fortunes. East India, France, England,
Spain, the United States, vied with each other for the prize of
America's west coast.

Just as the beaver led French voyagers westward from Quebec to the
Rocky Mountains, south to Texas, north to the Athabasca, so the hunt of
the sea-beaver led to the exploration of the North Pacific coast.

"Sea-beaver" the Russians called the owner of the rare pelt.
"Sea-otter" it was known to the English and American hunters. But it
is like neither the otter nor beaver, though its habits are akin to
both. Its nearest relative is probably the fur seal. Like the seal,
its pelt has an ebony shimmer, showing silver when blown open, soft
black tipped with white, when examined hair by hair. Six feet, the
full-grown sea-otter measures from nose to stumpy tail, with a {66}
beaver-shaped face, teeth like a cat, and short webbed feet. Some
hunters say the sea-otter is literally born on the tumbling waves--a
single pup at a time; others, that the sea-otter retire to some
solitary rocky islet to bring forth their young. Certain it is they
are rocked on the deep from their birth, "cradled" in the sea, sleeping
on their backs in the water, clasping the young in their arms like a
human being, tossing up seaweed in play by the hour like mischievous
monkeys, or crawling out on some safe, sea-girt rocklet, where they
shake the water from their fur and make their toilet, stretching and
arranging and rearranging hair like a cat. Only the fiercest gales
drive the sea-otter ashore,