urface, soft seal-colour and grey below, and deep as sable.
Quite unconscious of the worth of the fur, the castaway sailors fell on
these visitors to the kelp-beds and clubbed right and left, for skins
to protect their nakedness from the biting winter winds.

It was the news of the sea wealth brought to Kamchatka by Bering's men
that sent traders scurrying to the Aleutian Islands and Alaskan shores.
Henceforth Siberian merchants were to vie with each other in outfitting
hunters--criminals, political exiles, refugees, destitute sailors--to
scour the coasts of America for sea-otter. Throughout the long line of
the Aleutian Islands and the neighbouring coasts of North America, for
over a century, hunters' boats--little cockle-shell skiffs made of
oiled walrus-skin stretched on whalebone frames, narrow as a canoe,
light as cork--rode the wildest seas in the wildest storms in pursuit
of the sea-otter. Sea-otter became to the Pacific coast what beaver
was to the Atlantic--the magnet that drew traders to the north-west
seas, and ultimately led to the settlement of the north-west coast.

It was, to be sure, dangerous work hunting {34} in wild northern gales
on rocks slippery with ice and through spray that wiped out every
outline of precipice edge or reef; but it offered variety to exiles in
Siberia; and it offered more--a chance of wealth if they survived.
Iron for bolts of boats must be brought all the way from Europe; so the
outlaw hunters did without iron, and fastened planks together as best
they could with deer thongs in place of nails, and moss and tallow in
place of tar. In the crazy vessels so constructed they ventured out
from Kamchatka two thousand miles across unknown boisterous seas. Once
they had reached the Aleutians, natives were engaged to do the actual
hunting under their direction. Exiles and criminals could not be
expected to use gentle methods to attain their ends. '_God is high in
the heavens and the Czar is far away_,' they said. The object was
quick profit, and plundering was the easiest way to attain it. How
were the Aleutian Indians paid? At first they were not paid at all.
They were drugged into service with vodka, a liquor that put them in a
frenzy; and bayoneted and bludgeoned into obedience. These methods
failing, wives and children were seized by the Russians and held in
camp as hostages to guarantee a big hunt. The {35} Aleuts' one object
in meeting the Russian hunter at all was to get