Mr. Fluger had been only two years in Kamchatka, and was doing a
miscellaneous business. Boardman's agent confined himself to the fur
trade, but Fluger was up to anything. He salted salmon for market,
sent a schooner every year into the Arctic Ocean for walrus teeth and
mammoth tusks, bought furs, sold goods, kept a dog team, was attentive
to the ladies, and would have run for Congress had it been possible.
He had in his store about half a cord of walrus teeth piled against a
back entrance like stove wood. Phillipeus was a roving blade. He kept
an agent at Petropavlovsk and came there in person once a year. In
February he left St. Petersburg for London, whence he took the Red Sea
route to Japan. There he chartered a brig to visit Kamchatka and land
him at Ayan, on the Ohotsk Sea. From Ayan he went to Yakutsk, and from
that place through Irkutsk to St. Petersburg, where he arrived about
three hundred and fifty days after his departure. I met him in the
Russian capital just as he had completed the sixth journey of this
kind and was about to commence the seventh. If he were a Jew he should
be called the wandering Jew.

Trade is conducted on the barter principle, furs being low and goods
high. The risks are great, transport is costly, and money is a long
time invested before it returns. The palmy days of the fur trade are
over; the product has greatly diminished, and competition has reduced
the percentage of profit on the little that remains.

There was a time in the memory of man when furs formed the currency of
Kamchatka. Their employment as cash is not unknown at present,
although Russian money is in general circulation.

[Illustration: CHANGE FOR A DOLLAR]