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Southward, toward Nootka, were hosts of foreign ships Gray and Kendrick and Ingraham from Boston, Vancouver from England, Meares from East India, Quadra from New Spain, private ventures outfitted by Astor from New York. If Russia were to preserve her hunting-grounds, no time should be lost. Baranof met the difficulties like a commander of guerilla warfare.
Not a signal, not a sound, not the faintest betrayal of their strength or weakness till in the dusk Baranof was within gunshot of the logs, when his men were met with a solid wall of fire. The Aleuts stopped, turned, stampeded. Out sallied the Sitkans pursuing Russians and Aleuts to the water's edge, where the body of one dead Russian was brandished on spear ends.
Baranof haggled the Englishman tired, and compromised for one-fifth the demand. Two years passed, and the fur company was powerless to strike an avenging blow. Wherever the Russians led Aleuts into the Kolosh hunting-grounds, there had been ambush and massacre; but Baranof bided his time.
To the natives the English who came to these waters became known as "King George Men," and the Americans were called "Boston Men," the latter being from the great number of ships that sailed from the great shipping port of New England. From these traders goods were purchased by Baranof at lower rates than those cost which were brought from Russia.
The terrible position to which loss of supplies had reduced the traders of Kadiak when his own vessel was wrecked at Oonalaska on the way out, demonstrated to Baranof the need of more ships; so when orders came from his company in 1793 to construct a sailing boat on the timberless island of Kadiak without iron, without axes, without saw, without tar, without canvas, he was eager to attempt the impossible.
With the influx of the Americans prospecting began, for in the vast wild mountains of Baranof and Chicagof Islands there is a wealth of mineral stored in the ledges. The Russians had attempted to find the mineral of the mountains, and in 1848 a Mr. Doroshin, a mining engineer, had been sent out from St. Petersburg to search for mineral wealth in the colonies.
At the top of the kekoor, or the Baranof Hill as it was called in recent years, there stood a building occupied during Russian days as a residence by the chief managers of the Russian American Company. The one known to the residents and visitors of the earlier days of the American occupation was known as the Baranof Castle, although Baranof himself never lived in it.
The most of men would have thought they had sufficient excuse to justify backing out of their difficulties. Baranof locked grapples with the worst that destiny could do; and never once let go.
Raging with impatience, Baranof went ashore supported by one hundred and fifty men, and with a wild halloo led the way to rush the fort. The hostile Sitkans husbanded their strength with a coolness equal to the famous thin red line of British fame.
To the sea-captains who feasted with him and drank themselves torpid under his table, he proposed a plan he would supply the Aleut hunters for them to hunt on shares as far south as southern California. Always, too, he was an eager buyer of their goods, giving them in exchange seal-skins from the Seal Islands. Boston vessels were the first to enter partnership with Baranof.
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