The result of this warfare upon sea-otters, with ten hunters then where there is one to-day, was not long delayed. Everywhere throughout the whole coast-line frequented by them, a rapid and startling diminution set in; so much so, that it soon became difficult to get from places where a thousand were easily taken, as many as twenty-five or thirty. When the region known as Alaska came into our possession, the Russians were taking between four and five hundred sea-otters annually from the Aleutian Islands and South of the Peninsula and Kadiak, with perhaps one hundred and fifty more from Cook’s Inlet, Yakootat, and the Sitkan district, the Hudson Bay traders and others getting some two hundred more from the coasts of Queen Charlotte’s and Vancouver’s Islands, and Gray’s Harbor, Washington Territory. Now during the last year, instead of less than seven hundred skins taken as above specified, our traders have secured more than four thousand. This immense difference is not due to the fact of a proportionate increase of sea-otters—that is not evident—but it is due to the keen competition of our people, who have reanimated the organization anew of old-fashioned hunting-parties, after the style of Baranov’s bateaux. As matters are now conducted, the hunting-parties do not let the sea-otter have a day’s rest during the whole year: parties relieve each other in orderly, steady succession, and a continual warfare is maintained. Stimulated by our people, this persistence is rendered still more deadly to the kahlan by the use of rifles of our best make, which, in the hands of the young and ambitious natives, in spite of the warnings of their old sires, must result in the virtual extermination of that marine beast.[66] This is the more important because all the world’s supply comes from the North Pacific and Bering Sea, and upon its continuance between four thousand and five thousand semi-civilized natives of Alaska depend absolutely and wholly for the means by which they are enabled to live beyond simple barbarism; its chase and the proceeds of its capture furnish the only employment offered by their country, and the revenue by which they can feed and clothe themselves as they do, and, by so doing, appear to all intents and purposes much superior to their Indian neighbors of Southeastern Alaska, or their Eskimo cousins of Bering Sea.