SEALSKINS.
I have never been to the Seal Islands myself, and have no desire to
cross the twenty-six hundred miles of rough and foggy seas that lie
between San Francisco and the Pribyloff Islands, in Bering Sea.
Considering that there are so many good people who think that the Seal
Islands constitute Alaska, or that all Alaska is one Seal Island, it has
been urged that I must include something about the seal fisheries if I
mention Alaska at all. In deference to the prejudice which exists
against having people write of the regions they have never visited, all
apologies are offered for this reprint of a rambling letter about the
Seal Islands and sealskins, and containing a few facts for which I am
indebted to members of the Alaska Commercial Company of San Francisco,
and others who have been to the islands and are interested in the fur
trade.
For all that has been written concerning the Seal Islands, many very
intelligent people have the vaguest ideas of their position, size, and
condition, and few women who own sealskin garments even know that the
scientist’s name for the animal that first wears that fine pelt is
_Callorhinus ursinus_, or are acquainted with any of the other
remarkable facts and statistics concerning the sealskin of commerce.
Such an absurd misstatement as the following lately appeared in a
journal published at the national capital in an article entitled “Our
Northern Land,” and worse errors are frequently made:—
“The seal fisheries are situated near Sitka, and on the first of July
(1884) a railway will be begun between the two points.”
When we first started for Alaska we expected to find Sitka the centre of
information about everything in the rest of the Territory, but at that
ancient capital less was known about the seal fisheries than at San
Francisco. The Seal Islands, discovered by the skipper Gerassim
Pribyloff in 1788, lie to the north and west of the first of the
Aleutian chain of islands. St. Paul, the largest of these four little
rocky islets in Bering Sea, is fourteen hundred and ninety-one miles
west of Sitka, and between two and three hundred miles from the nearest
mainland. All communication with these islands is by way of San
Francisco, and the company leasing them permit none but government
vessels, outside of their own fleet, to touch at St. Paul and St.
George. The Alaska Commercial Company’s vessels make four trips a year,
their steamers going in ten days generally, but the _Jeannette_, when
starting on its Arctic expedition, fell behind all competitors in a slow
race by taking twenty-five days to steam from San Francisco to St. Paul.
At the time of the Alaska purchase, in 1867, the most ardent supporters
of the measure laid no stress upon the value of these Seal Islands, and
Senator Sumner made no reference to them in his great speech which
virtually decided the destiny of Alaska, and made it a possession of the
United States. Hayward Hutchinson was one of the first of our countrymen
to engage in the fur trade after the transfer, and, with a company of
San Francisco capitalists, bought the buildings and goodwill of the old
Russian-American Fur Company. He went from Sitka across to the Pribyloff
Islands in 1868, and there encountered Captain Morgan, of New London,
Conn., who, like himself, had gone up to look over the possibilities of
the new Territory in the interests of home capitalists. They joined
forces, and, returning to San Francisco, had long and quiet
consultations with their partners. Through their efforts, Congress
passed a law in 1869, declaring the Seal Islands a government
reservation, and prohibiting any one from killing fur seals, except
under certain restrictions. On the first of July, 1870, the islands of
St. Paul and St. George were leased for a term of twenty years to the
Alaska Commercial Company of San Francisco. The lease was delivered
August 31, 1870, and is signed on behalf of the company by its
president, John F. Miller, previous to that time collector of the port
of San Francisco, and, since his retirement from the presidency of the
company, a United States senator from California. Beginning with the
first day of May, 1870, they had sole right to the seal fisheries. The
annual rent of the islands was fixed at $55,000, the payment to be
secured by the deposit of United States bonds to that amount. They were
also required to pay a tax of two dollars sixty-two and one-half cents
upon each of the one hundred thousand skins of the fur seal permitted to
be taken each year. Fifty-five cents was to be paid for each gallon of
seal oil obtained, and the company was to furnish the inhabitants of the
islands with a certain amount of food and fuel, to maintain schools for
the children, and to prevent the use of fire-arms on or near the
sealing-grounds. A bond of $500,000 was required of them, and the
original firms of Hutchinson, Kohl, & Co., of San Francisco, and
Williams, Havens, & Co., of New London, were merged into this Alaska
Commercial Company.
Although 269,400 sealskins are said to have been exported from the
islands from 1868 to 1869, it is claimed that the company had up-hill
work for three years in getting themselves established and introducing
their goods to the market. Since that time they have ridden on fortune’s
topmost wave, and been the envy of all the short-sighted rivals who
might have done the same thing had they been shrewd enough. None of the
original members have left the company, save by death, and, it being a
close corporation, they keep their financial statements, their books,
their profits, and affairs to themselves; and the outer world, compelled
to guess at things, puts a fabulous estimate upon the sum annually
divided among the stockholders. The officers of the company only smile
with annoyance, and shrug their shoulders, if one repeats to them the
common gossip of San Francisco, about each of the twelve shares of the
stock paying an annual dividend of $90,000, and they laugh aloud if one
appeals to them for the confirmation of it. There will be a great
scramble and competition among rival traders in 1890, when the present
lease of the islands terminates, and by the bids and statements made
then, more light may be cast upon the value of the franchise, unless
fickle woman puts sealskin out of fashion by that time, and the tanners,
instead of the furriers, apply for the lease.
By a contract with the Russian government, dating some years later, this
same Alaska Commercial Company, in the name of two of its members, has a
monopoly of the fur trade on Bering and Copper Islands, and at points on
the Kamschatka coast. By the terms of this contract one of the members
had to be a Russian, and the ships engaged in this trade on the Asiatic
side have to carry the Russian flag. Out of the company’s fleet of a
dozen vessels, two steamers fly the Muscovite colors, and, on their
regular trips up, carry large cargoes of flour and provisions to
Petropaulovski, as well as to their own stations.
Besides the Seal Islands, the Alaska Commercial Company has thirty-five
other trading posts in the Territory, and its agents are established
along the Yukon, and at many points in the interior. The trade in seal
skins from the Pribyloff Islands amounts to about one half of the
general business transacted by this corporation. At their offices on
Sansome Street, in San Francisco, the company has a museum, crowded with
specimens and curios. Seal life is represented at all ages, and all the
birds and fishes and minerals of the country are shown. There are
mummies and petrifactions, reindeer horns, canoes, albino otter skins,
stone-age instruments, costumes and household utensils of the natives,
and needles, books, pipes, toys, and oddities carved out of bone and
ivory, and decorated in black outlines with sketches of men and animals
in profile. A ponderous old silver watch is supposed to have belonged to
some one of the early Russian governors, and there is a curious bronze
cannon, with an inscription in ancient Slavonic lettering that no one
has yet read. The company has been very generous in giving specimens and
collections to different museums and societies, and its agents are
instructed to gather such things and send them to the company’s
headquarters. In an upper room, where there were sixty thousand fox
skins, hanging tail downwards from the rafters, thousands of mink and
marten skins, and piles of bear, beaver, lynx, and deer skins, we were
shown the skeleton of the extinct sea-cow. The exact number of bones in
the sea-cow’s body has been a matter of contention and uncertainty to
scientists, and there was once a wordy war over it. Prof. Elliott, who
made a long and careful study of seal life for the Smithsonian
Institution, and whose monograph on that subject has been included in
the census reports of 1880, was a leading combatant in the battle over
the sea-cow’s bones. This fossil skeleton, sent down by one of the
company’s agents, was presented to the California Academy of Sciences,
and the palæontologists’ war is over. Captain Niebaum, one of the
vice-presidents of the company, is a great authority in matters
pertaining to Arctic and polar navigation, and he was consulted about
the details of the cruise by Captain De Long of the _Jeannette_
expedition, and the Alaska company freely supplied that ship with
provisions, clothing, dogs, and other necessaries when it reached St.
Michael’s Island. For his own use, Captain Niebaum has had made a large
map of the polar regions, which is the most complete and unique chart in
the country. On it are traced the courses of all the exploring ships,
and the dates of their reaching important positions, and the artist, who
worked at this circumpolar chart for more than one hundred days, is
obliged, for a certain number of years, to add to it each discovery or
incident of exploration in the arctic world.
The company’s ships usually stop at Unalashka Island on their way to St.
Paul, and that chief trading post of the old Russian-American company
has become an even more important place under the new régime. Unalashka
is one of the largest of the seventy Aleutian islands that stretch out
in line towards Japan, and on it was made the earliest Russian
settlement on the northwest coast. All of the Aleutian islands are
volcanic, and occasionally another peak thrusts its head up out of the
water, flames and cinders come from the mountain tops, and earthquakes
and tidal waves create disturbances in honor of a new island added to
the chain. The climate is rather mild, and the temperature varies little
from the average at Sitka. There is almost constant fog and rain during
the summer months, and the islands, though treeless, are covered with
luxuriant grasses. Cattle were successfully kept by the Russians, and
lately there have been several plans laid for raising cattle and sheep
on these grassy islands on a large scale; Lieut. Schwatka, the hero of
Arctic and Yukon adventures, being a promoter of one of these schemes.
At this time, instead of cattle ranches, there are fox ranches on
several of the Aleutian Islands; and even from far-away Attu, the most
western point in the United States, a shipment of two hundred or more
blue-fox skins is regularly made each year, and care taken to protect
and increase the numbers of the foxes. Sea otters are hunted all along
the Aleutian shores; and in the group of Shumagin Islands, northeast of
Unalashka, the cod fisheries have become an important industry. A small
fleet of schooners from San Francisco make one or two trips every year
to the headquarters on Popoff Island, where from 500,000 to 600,000 fish
are dried and salted each season. The Alaska Commercial Company has also
a trading station and a salmon cannery on Kadiak Island, beyond the
Shumagins, and the sea otter is also hunted around Kadiak, by native
hunters in their tight skin canoes or _bidarkas_. Two men from Kadiak
acquired a certain fame in 1884 by journeying from that place to San
Francisco in one of these canoes, nineteen feet long. They were
Danes,—Peter Müller and Nils Petersen by name,—and, following the
general line of the shore, they made the sixteen hundred miles to
Victoria in one hundred and five days. It is considered quite a feat in
these times, but, a century ago, the natives thought nothing of such a
journey.
Although Unalashka has a custom house and is a port of delivery, the
collector at Sitka only hears from his Unalashka deputy by way of San
Francisco, and a prisoner arrested at Unalashka has to be taken first to
San Francisco in order to reach the authorities at the capital of the
Territory. The culprit travels three thousand nine hundred and ten miles
to reach the Sitka jail, while the distance straight across is but
twelve hundred and seventy-eight miles. Unalashka is a headquarters for
the whaling fleet of the North Pacific, which now numbers thirty-eight
vessels. The whalers call there for mail, water, and supplies, and stop
on their way up each season to learn how the ice is beyond Bering
Straits. They leave word as to the condition of the bergs and floes, the
positions of the remaining ships and their catches, as they come down
each fall.
At the Pribyloff Islands, two hundred and twenty and two hundred and
seventy miles further north, neither whalers nor other trading ships are
ever seen. The heaviest fogs rest upon them in summer, and ice floes
beleaguer them in winter, stilling the heavy roar of the surf, and
putting one and two miles of broken ice between the shores and the open
water. The shallow waters, and the upward current through Bering
Straits, prevent icebergs from floating down from the Arctic Ocean, and
that element of danger does not threaten the navigators in those foggy
waters. During the breeding season each summer, United States officers
are stationed on the two smaller islands, Copper and Walrus, to prevent
any seal pirates from unlawfully killing the animals, and on St. Paul
and St. George islands special treasury and revenue agents watch closely
that none of the regulations are disregarded.
The three hundred and ninety-eight natives who inhabit the two islands
are mostly half breeds of the Aleut tribe. They live now after a certain
civilized way, in neat and comfortable houses provided for them by the
company, but it was at first difficult to get them to leave their filthy
underground hovels. They are nearly all members of the Greek Church,
and, with the help of the company, support a chapel on either island.
Bishop Nestor used to include these little parishes on his annual
visits, and celebrated the mass in his richest vestments before their
altars. To prevent the evils of intemperance, the company is careful
that no intoxicants are sent up with their stores, and sugar and
molasses are sold to the natives, only in the smallest quantities, for
fear that they might distil the same _hoochinoo_ as the Thlinkets.
Failing these luxuries, the poor Aleut satisfies his sweet tooth with
other substitutes. The greatest quantities of condensed milk are sold
them each year, the seal hunters drinking a can of milk at a time, or
spreading it thickly on their daily bread. The large sums they receive
during the few weeks of the sealing season enable them to live in
idleness and plenty for the rest of the year. They are inveterate
gamblers, as well as feasters and idlers, and after the long hibernation
and pleasuring of the winter they are anxious and ready for the summer’s
work.
It has not been learned yet where _Callorhinus ursinus_ stays for the
rest of the year; but early in June the desolate shores of the Pribyloff
Islands become vocal with the hoarse voices of the seal, which have made
this their gathering-place during the breeding season for unnumbered
years. It is estimated that three million seals congregate on the
rookeries of St. Paul Island each summer, and those who have looked down
upon these rookeries at the height of the season report it as a most
astounding spectacle. Acres of the rocky shore are alive with seals of
all sizes and kinds, and the very ground seems to be writhing and
squirming as the ungainly creatures drag themselves over the rocks, or
pause to fan themselves with their flippers. Great battles are waged
between the heads of seal families from June to August, and the harsh
chorus of their voices is heard at sea above the roar of the breakers,
and is the sailors’ guide in making the islands during the heavy summer
fogs. Only the male seals from two to four years of age are killed, and
the skins of the three-year-olds have the finest and closest fur. The
method of killing them has nothing heroic or huntsmanlike about it. The
natives start out before dawn, and, running down the shore, get between
the sleeping seals and the water, and then drive them, as they would so
many sheep, to the killing-ground, a half mile inland. They drive them
slowly, giving them frequent rests for cooling, and gradually turning
aside and leaving behind all seals that are not up to the requisite age
and condition. When the poor, tame things have reached their
death-ground, the natives go round with heavy clubs and kill them with
one blow on the head. The skins are quickly stripped from them and taken
to the salting-house, where they are covered with salt and laid in great
piles. The natives receive forty cents for each skin taken in this way.
After a few weeks in the salting-house the company’s steamer brings them
down to San Francisco. The special agent of the United States Treasury
at the islands counts the skins before they are shipped, and,
accompanying them to San Francisco, they are again counted in his
presence by the inspectors at that port. The tax of $2.62-1/2 is paid on
each skin, the dirty yellow pelts treated to more salt, rolled into
bundles, and packed in tight casks ready to ship to London. Of these one
hundred thousand sealskins, eighty thousand come from the island of St.
Paul, which is sixteen miles long and from three to six miles wide, and
twenty thousand skins come from the island of St. George, which is not
even as large. On one trip in 1883, the steamer _St. Paul_ brought down
sixty-three thousand sealskins, valued at $630,000, and the tax paid to
the government on them amounted to $165,375.
When _Callorhinus ursinus_ has thus delivered up his skin, and been
salted and packed into barrels, he is sent on by railroad and steamship
to London, where the Alaska Commercial Company controls the sealskin
market of the world. Over seven firms in London are now engaged in the
dyeing and dressing of sealskins, although there is a fiction still
passed around about the secret of dyeing being held by one family of
London furriers. Smiths, Oppenheimers, and other great firms buy the
sealskins, dress them, pluck them, and give them the deep velvety brown
and black dye that constitutes them such articles of luxury and fashion.
A firm of Paris furriers has been setting the fashion of dyes for
several years, and in accordance with their behests the color has been
made darker and darker, until it is now nearly black. The old London
furriers shake their heads at this change, as the strong nut gall and
acids used to obtain this rich dark tone are liable to eat and destroy
the leather. Cheap labor is the only answer to the question why this
dressing and dyeing is done in Europe instead of America. The long,
coarse hairs that overlay the fine fur have all to be removed by hand,
and is best accomplished by that “pauper labor” at which emigrated
demagogues rail. In New York there is one furrier who attempts to rival
the London and Paris houses, but the results have so far proved his
inability to outdo them in price and quality of work. If well dyed, a
sealskin will never fade, spot with rain, nor mat together with dust,
and it is even told that one London dyer put one of his sealskins in a
tub and washed it with soap as a proof that they would lose neither
lustre nor color by such treatment. It takes many handlings to turn the
coarse long hair of these skins into a short, velvety, and glossy fur.
Hot sand baths and chemicals are used to get the grease and oil out of
the skins, and if this process is not thoroughly done at the time, the
dull and matted furs have to be put through hot sand again after they
have been made up into garments and worn. Six and more coats of dye are
necessary, and it is applied to the surface only, so as to leave the
roots of the fine hairs a golden yellow. Like the manufacture of
gunpowder and so many other things, the art of dyeing sealskin
originated with the Chinese, to whom the Russians used to sell nearly
all of their furs. It is most probable that it was their intention to
imitate the costly, purplish brown fur of the sea otter, which in
Russia, as well as China, was formerly a badge of rank, and is still the
most expensive fur sold, single skins being shown at the San Francisco
warehouse, worth $100 and $300. The otter skins are brought down dried,
and require only to be dressed and plucked of the coarser hairs before
being ready to use.
After being dressed and dyed, the sealskins pay a duty of 20 per cent
when they return to this country, and the cost of sealskin garments may
be wondered at when one counts the items. The raw and unsightly skins in
their salt are worth from $10 to $18 each, according to quality. There
is to be added to this a tax of $2.62-1/2 each to the government; a
charge of $6 or $8 for the dyeing and dressing; a duty of 20 per cent
when they are returned to this country; and a fair charge for all the
transportation the skins undergo, and the insurance on them during this
time. This gives a dressed sealskin ready for the furrier to make up
into garments, at an average value of from $15 to $30. It takes three
skins to make a sacque of medium size, and the furriers always charge
well for the making, as the greatest skill and nicety are required in
sewing the skins. That furriers reap a profit of one hundred per cent on
each sealskin garment is quite evident.
By the wise action of the government in reserving the seal islands and
leasing them to a responsible company, the seal fisheries have become
more and more valuable. The seals are increasing in number yearly, and
more than the regular 100,000 could be killed each season without
diminishing them to any extent, although to regulate prices the company
has often taken less than the maximum number allowed in a season. Alaska
seal is now the only seal in the market, since the rookeries of the
Antarctic Sea have been so persistently hunted that the seals have
become extinct. The Shetland seals, found on the islands of that name
off Cape Horn, for a long time furnished the finest skins in the market,
and commanded almost double the price of the Alaska sealskins. Not being
protected by any government, the islands were free hunting grounds for
every ship that went “round the Horn,” and no skipper could resist a
venture at such costly pelts. From the Island of South Georgia and the
Island of Desolation 2,400,000 sealskins were taken annually from the
time of their discovery, in 1771, until within the last twenty years,
when the seals gradually became extinct. A San Francisco furrier sent a
schooner down to those Antarctic islands a few years ago, and sixty
skins were all that were obtained, and in another season only three
skins were taken. All along the northwest coast, from Vancouver’s Island
to Unalashka, where the authority and monopoly of the Alaska Commercial
Company begins, a general warfare is waged on the fur seal by
independent hunters and traders; but their catch has seemingly no effect
upon the millions of seal that annually gather on the Pribyloff shores,
and the pelt grows coarser and poorer the further south of those islands
it is obtained. The seal’s skin is in its best condition during the
summer months, when the animals frequent the Pribyloff rookeries, and by
wise protection the government has an inexhaustible source of wealth in
these two small islands, that have already paid into the Treasury, in
rent and taxes, nearly the whole amount that was paid to Russia for the
immense territory of Alaska. From the date of the lease in 1870 up to
March, 1884, the Alaska Commercial Company has paid into the United
States Treasury $4,662,026. Having invested $7,200,000 in the purchase
of the Territory, comprising an area of 580,107 square miles, the
government has derived an annual income ranging from $262,500 to
$317,000 from two of the smallest islands off its coast.