catch of sables. For nearly a month they spend all their time
in the woods and mountains, making and setting traps. To make a
sable-trap, a narrow perpendicular slot, fourteen inches by four in
length and breadth, and five inches in depth, is cut in the trunk of a
large tree, so that the bottom of the slot will be about at the height
of a sable's head when he stands erect. The stem of another smaller
tree is then trimmed, one of its ends raised to a height of three feet
by a forked stick set in the ground, and the other bevelled off so as
to slip up and down freely in the slot cut for its reception. This
end is raised to the top of the slot and supported there by a simple
figure-four catch, leaving a nearly square opening of about four
inches below for the admission of the sable's head. The figure-four is
then baited and the trap is ready. The sable rises upon his hind
legs, puts his head into the hole, and the heavy log, set free by the
dropping of the figure-four, falls and crushes the animal's skull,
without injuring in the slightest degree the valuable parts of his
skin. One native frequently makes and sets as many as a hundred of
these traps in the fall, and visits them at short intervals throughout
the winter. Not content, however, with this extensive and well
organised system of trapping sables, the natives hunt them upon
snow-shoes with trained dogs, drive them into holes which they
surround with nets, and then, forcing them out with fire or axe, they
kill them with clubs.

The number of sables caught in the Kamchatkan peninsula annually
varies from six to nine thousand, all of which are exported to Russia
and distributed from there over northern Europe. A large proportion of
the whole number of Russian sables in the European market are caught
by the natives of Kamchatka and transported by _American_ merchants
to Moscow. W.H. Bordman, of Boston, and an American house in
China--known, I believe, as Russell & Co.--practically control the fur
trade of Kamchatka and the Okhotsk seacoast. The price paid to the
Kamchadals for an average sable skin in 1867 was nominally fifteen
rubles silver, or about eleven dollars gold; but payment was made in
tea, sugar, tobacco, and sundry other articles of merchandise, at the
trader's own valuation, so that the natives actually realised only a
little more than half the nominal price. Nearly all the inhabitants of
central Kamchatka are engaged directly or indirectly during the win