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Ismyloff, with fur trader's jealousy of intrusion, had warned the Russian commander that the English ships were pirates like Benyowsky, the Polish exile, who had lately sacked the garrisons of Kamchatka, stolen the ships, and sailed to America. However, when Cook's letters were carried overland to Bolcheresk, to Major Behm, the commander, all went well.
Ismyloff took his final leave of the English navigators, our commander intrusted to his care a letter to the lords commissioners of the admiralty, in which was enclosed a chart of all the northern coasts the captain had visited.
"Friends and fellow-countrymen glorious," the English were to the smooth-tongued Russian, as they drank each other's health. Learning that Cook was to visit Avacha Bay, Ismyloff proffered a letter of introduction to Major Behm, Russian commander of Kamchatka. Cook thought the letter one of commendation. It turned out otherwise. Fur traders, world over, always resented the coming of the explorer.
Besides the intelligence which our commander derived from his conversations with Ismyloff, and which were carried on by signs, assisted by figures and other characters, he obtained from him the sight of two charts, and was permitted to copy them. Both of them were manuscripts, and bore every mark of authenticity.
In the morning Ledyard looked over the fur establishment; galliots, cannon-mounted in the harbor for refuge in case of attack; the huge lemon-yellow, red-roofed store-room that might serve as barracks or fort for a hundred men; the brigades of eight, of nine, of eleven hundred Indian hunters sailing the surfs under the leadership of Ismyloff, the chief factor.
On the 14th, a Russian landed at Oonalashka, whose name was Erasim Gregorioff Sin Ismyloff, and who was the principal person among his countrymen in this and the neighbouring islands.
His own account of his adventures is full of gross exaggerations; but even the Russians were so impressed with the prowess of his valor that a few years later, when Cook sailed to Alaska, Ismyloff could not be brought to mention his name; and when the English ships went on to Kamchatka, they found the inhabitants hidden in the cellars, for fear the Polish pirate had returned.
For two months they suffered hunger and thirst." Captain King of Cook's staff writes of Kamchatka: "We were informed that an exiled Polish officer named Beniowski had seized upon a galliott, lying at the entrance of the harbor, and had forced on board a number of Russian sailors, sufficient to navigate her; that he had put on shore a part of the crew . . . among the rest, Ismyloff."
It was expected, that there would be an opportunity of sending this letter, in the ensuing spring, to Kamtschatka or Okotsk, and that it would reach Petersburgh during the following winter. Mr. Ismyloff, who faithfully and successfully discharged the trust our commander had reposed in him, seemed to possess abilities, that might entitle him to a higher station in life than that which he occupied.
Later came Ismyloff, chief factor of the Russian fur posts in Oonalaska, attended by a retinue of thirty native canoes, very suave as to manners, very polished and pompous when he was not too convivial, but very chary of any information to the English, whose charts he examined with keenest interest, giving them to understand that the Empress of Russia had first claim to all those parts of the country, rising, quaffing a glass and bowing profoundly as he mentioned the august name.
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