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Baronof immediately seized so excellent an opportunity for revenging himself on the Kalushes. He armed three vessels, and sailed in company with the Neva to Sitka.
Baronof himself resided from this time in New Archangel, and the chase of the sea-otters proved very advantageous to the Company; but so scarce are these animals now become, even here, that the numbers caught only suffice to cover the expenses of maintaining a force sufficient for protection against the savages.
A bold enterprising man of the name of Baronof, long superintended the Company's establishments. Peculiarly adapted by nature for the task of contending with a wild people, he seemed to find a pleasure in the occupation. Although the conquest of the Sitkaens, or Kalushes, was not so easily achieved as that of the more timid Aleutians and Kodiacks, he finally accomplished it.
From this time Baronof remained nominally in possession of the island, and actually of a hill upon it forming a natural fortification, and formerly inhabited by a chief of the Kalushes called Katelan.
For a short time matters went on prosperously, when suddenly, the garrison left by Baronof, believing itself in perfect safety, was attacked one night by great numbers of Kalushes, who entered the entrenchments without opposition, and murdered all they met there with circumstances of atrocious cruelty.
When the Kalushes heard that the warrior Nonok, as they called Baronof, had returned, terror prevented their attempting to oppose his landing; and they retired in great haste to their fortification, consisting of a great quadrangle closely set round with thick, high beams, broken only by one very small and strong door.
A warlike, courageous, and cruel race, provided with fire-arms by the ships of the North American United States, in exchange for otters' skins, maintained an obstinate struggle against the invaders. But Baronof at length obtained a decisive superiority over them.
Baronof re-founded the settlement, and having strengthened by scientific defences the high hill, which falls on every side in abrupt precipices, has rendered it perfectly safe from every attack.
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