So passed a year--the most desolate year in the
annals of ocean voyaging, and when the castaways rafted back to Asia on
a skiff made of their wrecked ship, they were clad in the raw skins of
the sea-otter, which they had eaten. In all, nearly a thousand skins
were carried back; and for those skins, which the Russian sailors had
scarcely valued, Chinese merchants paid what in modern money would be
from {64} one hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars a pelt.[1]
After that, the Russians of Siberia needed no incentive to hunt the
sea-beaver. Its habitat was known, and all the riffraff adventurers of
Siberian exile, Tartars, Kamchatkans, Russians, criminals, and officers
of royal lineage, engaged in the fur trade of western America. Danger
made no difference. All that was needed was a boat; and the boat was
usually rough-hewn out of the green timbers of Kamchatka. If iron
bolts were lacking so far from Europe as the width of two continents,
the boat builders used deer sinew, or thongs of walrus hide. Tallow
took the place of tar, deerskin the place of hemp, and courage the
place of caution.
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