Concealing this novel cash under his coat, the traveler sauntered into a neighboring store.
"Is it true," he asked carelessly, "that a beaver skin is legal tender for a dollar ?" "Yes, sir," said the merchant; "anybody will take it." "Will you be so kind, then," was the traveler's request, "as to give me change for a dollar bill ?" "Certainly," answered the merchant, taking the beaver skin and returning four muskrat skins, current at twenty-five cents each.
The sable is the principal fur sought by the merchants in Kamchatka, or trapped by the natives.

The animal is caught in a variety of ways, man's ingenuity being taxed to capture him.

The 'yessak,' or 'poll-tax' of the natives is payable in sable fur, at the rate of a skin for every four persons.

The governor makes a yearly journey through the peninsula to collect the tax, and is supposed to visit all the villages.

The merchants go and do likewise for trading purposes.
Mr.George S.Cushing, who was long the agent of Mr.Boardman in Kamchatka, estimated the product of sable fur at about six thousand skins annually.