Note 92 — Chapter IX · WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS.

Blue foxes were also, and are, natives of the Commander Islands. Steller describes their fearlessness when the shipwrecked crew of the St. Peter landed there, November 6, 1741.

In regard to these foxes the Pribylov natives declare that when the islands were first occupied by their ancestors, 1786-87, the fur was invariably blue; that the present smoky blue, or ashy indigo color, is due to the coming of white foxes across on the ice from the mainland to the eastward. The white-furred vulpes is quite numerous on the islands to-day. I should judge that perhaps one-fifth of the whole number were of this color; they do not live apart from the blue ones, but evidently breed “in and in.” I notice that Veniaminov, also, makes substantially the same statement; only differing by charging this deterioration of the blue foxes’ fur to a deportation from outside of red foxes, on ice-floes, and adds that the natives always hunted down these “krassnie peeschee” as soon as their presence was known; hence my inability, perhaps, to see any sign of their posterity in 1872-76.

The presence of these animals on the Pribylov Islands is a real source of happiness to the natives, especially so to the younger ones. The little pup-foxes make pets and playfellows for the children, while hunting the adults during the winter gives wholesome employment to the mind and body of the native who does so. They are trapped in common dead-falls, steel spring-clips, or beaver traps, and shot. A very large portion of the gossip on the islands is in relation to this business.