Just as the beaver led French voyagers westward from Quebec to the Rocky Mountains, south to Texas, north to the Athabasca, so the hunt of the sea-beaver led to the exploration of the North Pacific coast. "Sea-beaver" the Russians called the owner of the rare pelt. "Sea-otter" it was known to the English and American hunters. But it is like neither the otter nor beaver, though its habits are akin to both. Its nearest relative is probably the fur seal. Like the seal, its pelt has an ebony shimmer, showing silver when blown open, soft black tipped with white, when examined hair by hair. Six feet, the full-grown sea-otter measures from nose to stumpy tail, with a {66} beaver-shaped face, teeth like a cat, and short webbed feet. Some hunters say the sea-otter is literally born on the tumbling waves--a single pup at a time; others, that the sea-otter retire to some solitary rocky islet to bring forth their young. Certain it is they are rocked on the deep from their birth, "cradled" in the sea, sleeping on their backs in the water, clasping the young in their arms like a human being, tossing up seaweed in play by the hour like mischievous monkeys, or crawling out on some safe, sea-girt rocklet, where they shake the water from their fur and make their toilet, stretching and arranging and rearranging hair like a cat. Only the fiercest gales drive the sea-otter ashore, for it must come above water to breathe; and it must come ashore to sleep where it _can_ breathe; for the ocean wash in a storm would smother the sleeper. And its favorite sleeping grounds are in the forests of kelp and seaweed, where it can bury its head, and like the ostrich think itself hidden. A sound, a whiff--the faintest tinge--of smoke from miles away is enough to frighten the sleeper, who leaps up with a fierce courage unequalled in the animal world, and makes for sea in lightning-flash bounds.