Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1887 — The Russian Fur Trade. [ARTICLE]

The Russian Fur Trade.

During winter, says the London Times, the peasants of the northern provinces of Russia are transformed into hunters, aud supply the two capitals with enormous quantities of feathered and fur game, captured chiefly by means of nets and snares. Simultaneously with this supply of food, St. Petersburg and Moscow receive the furs of Siberia, furnished by the squirrel. The Zyrians, a wild people dwelling along the banks of the Petchora, are peculiarly expert in capturing these little animals. In certain years they appear in such vast quantities that the village roofs throughout Y iatka are seen to swarm with them, and even in ordinary years the single district of Slobodsk sends to market 300,000 skins. At the first appearance of snow the Syrian hunters repair to the deepest recesses of the Petchora forests. They are grouped in companies and equipped in a strange costume handed down from generations and well adapted to the chase. They build huts at a suitable spot, in which they live, but hardly breathe, so closely are they packed, and the whole forms a sort of camp. The koulaks, or village speculators, buy at very low prices the product of the hunt and convey it to the fair of Irbit, which opens on the Ist of I'ebruary, and whither the great fur merchants of the empire send their agents. The squirrel skins are sold there for 15 copecs each, and from three to six millions of them change hands at every fair. The zibeline fur is sold in groups of 40 skins. In 1885 there were exhib-. ited for sale at Irbit 150 groups at the rate of 200 rubles a group. The quantity of other furs was still more con-siderable—-200,000 fox, a like number of hare, and 1,500 bear skins, etc. The cost of the transport from Irbit to St. Petersburg is high, aud varies from 4 to 12 rubles the pood. The purchases at a fair for the capital amount to 500,000 rubles every winter. All these furs are deposited in a rough state at the Gostinnof-Dvor; they are there cut, cleansed, and divided into five categories, each according to quality. A multitude of women are employed in sewing the small pieces together. For a pelisse of zibeline, from forty to eighty of the little animals art) cenerally required, but a pelisse composed only of the paws takes four hundred pieces to make it. The pri.e of a garment of this -precious fur varies between 300 and 7,000 rubles —i. e., between £3O and £7OO. Large quantities of fur pass through St. Petersburg on the way to foreign marts, especially to the fair at Leipsic.