Irving's Astoria; in the records of the Hudson's Bay Company; and in the annals of the fairs held at Nijni-Novgorod and Leipsic. Here it may suffice to give some account of the present condition of the trade in fancy furs. The collection of skins is now chiefly a matter of private enterprise. Few, if any, monopolies exist. The Alaska Commercial Company, now about ten years old, enjoys some special privilege for the taking of seal skins on the Pribiloff Islands, and some peculiar restrictions exist in Russia in relation to certain peltries, but beyond this, the trade in furs is a free one the world over. Individual enterprise, skill, forecast, and capital, have an open field. The Hudson's Bay Company, with its chief office in London, still maintains its organization, but conducts its affairs in North America under no special or royal grant, and competes in the open market with individual traders throughout Canada, Labrador, Manitoba, and Columbia. Its collection of peltries is offered to the highest bidder at public auction in London, in January, March, and September of each year.
Private collectors and dealers throughout Canada and the United States forward their furs to the seaboard, chiefly to New York, for sale there, or for consignment principally to London and to Leipsic. The latter town still maintains the custom of spring and autumn fairs, at which most kinds of wares are sold or exchanged with dealers from Turkey, Austria, and Russia. Nijni-Novgorod is the chief fair for European Russia, though very important fairs are also held in Kasan and in Irbit among the Ural Mountains. The most important fair for eastern Siberia is held at Kiachta, on the borders of China, where an extensive exchange of furs is carried on with the Celestials. Japan has added but little to the activity or extension of the fur trade, though her northern shores have furnished many a fine fur seal and sea otter to the hardy navigator. Staple furs, or those used chiefly in the manufacture of hats, are those of the hare and the rabbit, collected mainly in Russia, Germany, France, and England, dressed, carroted, and cut from the skin in western Germany, France, Belgium, and England, and thence distributed to the manufacturing centres of the world; and here it may be added that the clippings and
