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Shuyak is uninhabited, but some natives have hunting barabaras there. Formerly this island contained great numbers of silver gray foxes. A few years ago some white trappers visited it and put out poison. The result was the extermination of all the foxes upon the island, for not only the foxes that ate the poison died, but the others which ate the poisoned carcasses.
They live in dwellings kept very hot, and both men and women injure themselves by immoderate indulgence in the banya, a small Turkish bath, often attached to the barabaras, or native huts. It is made like a small barabara, except there is no smoke hole, has a similar frame, is thatched with straw, and can be made air-tight.
Several years ago there was a flourishing colony of natives at the entrance to Kaluda Bay, but now there are only two hunting barabaras, a broken down chapel, and a good-sized graveyard. The village prospered until one day a dead whale was reported not far from land. All the inhabitants gorged themselves on the putrid blubber, and they died almost to a man.
The fort was built of thick logs in the shape of an irregular square, with portholes on the side next the sea, and inside the breast works were 14 barabaras, or native houses. The walls were of such thickness that the cannon shot from the "Neva" made but little impression on the structure. Baranof was impatient and urged an attack.
While I was having tea in one of the barabaras I heard much shooting outside, which announced the return of a sea otter party that had been hunting for two months at Cape Douglas. It was a beautiful sight, this fleet of twenty odd baidarkas, the paddles all rising and falling in perfect time, and changing sides without a break.
The great tribal houses, or barabaras, as they are called in the Russian accounts, were spacious, some measuring 50 feet in width and 80 feet in length. This was the official name and generally recognized by the Russians, but the name Sitka was early used by them. Baranof frequently used the term Sitka in his letters, and in the letter of the Minister of Finance to the Minister of Marine, from St.
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