were traversing the watery wastes of the Pacific and skirting the
northwest coast of America. The last voyage of that renowned but
unfortunate discoverer, Captain Cook, had made known the vast quantities
of the sea-otter to be found along that coast, and the immense prices to
be obtained for its fur in China. It was as if a new gold coast had
been discovered. Individuals from various countries dashed into this
lucrative traffic, so that in the year 1792, there were twenty-one
vessels under different flags, plying along the coast and trading with
the natives. The greater part of them were American, and owned by Boston
merchants. They generally remained on the coast and about the adjacent
seas, for two years, carrying on as wandering and adventurous a commerce
on the water as did the traders and trappers on land. Their trade
extended along the whole coast from California to the high northern
latitudes. They would run in near shore, anchor, and wait for the
natives to come off in their canoes with peltries. The trade exhausted
at one place, they would up anchor and off to another. In this way they
would consume the summer, and when autumn came on, would run down to the
Sandwich Islands and winter in some friendly and plentiful harbor. In
the following year they would resume their summer trade, commencing at
California and proceeding north: and, having in the course of the two
seasons collected a sufficient cargo of peltries, would make the best
of their way to China. Here they would sell their furs, take in teas,
nankeens, and other merchandise, and return to Boston, after an absence
of two or three years.

The people, however, who entered most extensively and effectively in the
fur trade of the Pacific, were the Russians. Instead of making casual
voyages, in transient ships, they established regular trading houses in
the high latitudes, along the northwest coast of America, and upon the
chain of the Aleutian Islands between Kamtschatka and the promontory of