Sea-otter
were found and taken in thousands at Sitka Sound, in Yakutat Bay,
Prince William Sound, Cook's Inlet, and all {67} along the chain of
eleven hundred Aleutian Islands to the Commander Group, off Kamchatka.
Where they were found in thousands then, they are seen only in tens and
hundreds to-day. Where they are in hundreds one year, they may not
come at all the next, having been too hard hunted. This explains why
there used to be returns of five thousand in a single year at Kadiak or
Oonalaska or Cook's Inlet; and the next year, less than a hundred from
the same places. Japan long ago moved for laws to protect the
sea-otter as vigorously as the seal; but Japan was only snubbed by
England and the United States for her pains, and to-day the only
adequate protection afforded the diminishing sea-otter is in the tiny
remnant of Russia's once vast American possessions--on the Commander
Islands where by law only two hundred sea-otter may be taken a year,
and the sea-otter rookeries are more jealously guarded than diamond
mines. The decreasing hunt has brought back primitive methods.
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