Outside of the Seal Islands all trade in this territory of Alaska is entirely open to the public. There is no need of protecting the fur-bearing animals elsewhere, unless it may be by a few wholesome general restrictions in regard to the sea-otter chase. The country itself protects the animals on the mainland and other islands by its rugged, forbidding, and inhospitable exterior. The treasury officials on the Seal Islands are charged with the careful observance of every act of the company; a copy of the lease and its covenant is conspicuously posted in their office; is translated into Russian, and is familiar to all the natives. The company directs its own labor, in accordance with the law, as it sees fit; selects its time of working, etc. The natives themselves work under the direction of their own chosen foremen, or “toyones.” These chiefs call out the men at the break of every working-day, divide them into detachments according to the nature of the service, and order their working. All communications with the laborers on the sealing-ground and the company passes through their hands, those chiefs having every day an understanding with the agent of the company as to his wishes, and they govern themselves thereby. The company pays forty cents for the labor of taking each skin. The natives take the skins on the ground, each man tallying his work and giving the result at the close of the day to his chief or foreman. When the skins are brought up and counted into the salt-houses, where the agent of the company receives them from the hands of the natives, the two tallies usually correspond very closely, if they are not entirely alike. When the quota of skins is taken, at the close of two, three, or four weeks of labor, as the case may be, the total sum for the entire catch is paid over in a lump to the chiefs, and these men divide it among the laborers according to their standing as workmen, which they themselves have exhibited on their special tally-sticks. For instance, at the annual divisions or “catch” settlement, made by the natives on St. Paul Island among themselves, in 1872, when I was present, the proceeds of their work for that season in taking and skinning seventy-five thousand seals, at forty cents per skin, with extra work connected with it, making the sum of $30,637.37, was divided among them in this way: There were seventy-four shares made up, representing seventy-four men, though in fact only fifty-six men worked, but they wished to give a certain proportion to their church, a certain proportion to their priest, and a certain proportion to their widows; so they water their stock, commercially speaking.[106]