Clubbing sounds brutal, but this
kind of hunting is, perhaps, the most merciful of all--to the animal,
not the man. The otter is asleep. The gale conceals the approaching
danger. One blow of the gaff, and the otter never awakes. In this way
have three hunters killed as many as a hundred otter {78} in two hours;
and in this way have the thousands of Aleutian otter hunters, who used
to throng the inlets of the northern islands, perished and dwindled to
a population of poverty stricken, scattered men.
What were the rewards for all this risk of life? A glance at the
records of the old fur companies tells why the Russian and American and
English traders preferred sea-otter to the gold mines of the Spaniards
in Mexico. Less than ten years after Cook's crew had sold their
sea-otter for ten thousand dollars, the East India Company sold six
hundred sea-otter for from sixty to one hundred dollars each. Two
years later, Portlock and Dixon sold their cargo for fifty-five
thousand dollars; and when it is remembered that two hundred
sea-otter--twelve thousand dollars' worth at the lowest average--were
sometimes got from the Nootka tribes for a few dollars' worth of old
chisel iron--the profit can be estimated.
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