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On the 9th June, after a week's delay for want of wind, the Seniavine entered Petropaulovsky, where it was retained taking in provisions until the 26th. A whole series of surveys were taken during this interval, of the coasts of Kamtchatka, and of the Kodiak and Tchouktchi districts, interrupted, however, by visits to Karaghinsk Island, the bay of St. Lawrence, and the gulf of Santa Cruz.
It seemed that for once the weather was going to be kind to them, and their spirits rose in consequence. They ate frequently, food being the great fuel of the North, and midday found them well out upon the heaving bosom of the Straits with the Kodiak shores plainly visible. Then, as if tired of toying with them, the wind rose.
Formerly, it has been supposed that the Numidian lion and the Bengal tiger were the largest carnivorous animals in existence, but more recent discoveries show that our Alaskan brown bear, found upon the peninsulas of lower Alaska and Kodiak Island, is easily the master of either, in size or strength.
In the spring of 1799, Baranof sent orders to the toyons, or chiefs, of the tribes on the islands around Kodiak to assemble the hunters. Five hundred and fifty bidarkas, each manned by from two to three Aleut paddlers, came in answer to his call, and with two convoying ships he set sail for Sitka Sound.
And after a farewell squint of curiosity, the fat man rolled out again in pursuit of his duties. "I've heard tell of these Shelikof Straits," Fraser remarked. "I bunked with a bear-hunter from Kodiak once, and he said they was certainly some hell in winter."
Except for the flattened nose, the high forehead and the fur-less hand with opposing thumb, he looked for all the world like a mammoth edition of the Kodiak bears Dal had seen displayed at the natural history museum in Hospital Philadelphia.
It had caressed many familiar things on its way, for the walls were embellished with trophies from the big spaces where winds are born. There were skins of polar and Kodiak bear; of silver and black fox; there were antlered heads set above the fireplace and on the rough, bark-seamed pillars that supported the unceiled roof.
The hostile Kolosh made hunting and fishing dangerous. In the autumn there was but flour enough for an allowance of a pound a week for one month for the 200 men in the fort. For other food supply they were dependent on the fish caught in the bay, the dried yukali and sealion meat from Kodiak, and the dried seal meat from the Seal Islands.
On July 7th he landed at a bay six miles north of the present town of Sitka, purchased a tract of land from Skayeutlelt, a local chief, and began the construction of a post which he named redoubt St. Michael. The building was done under great difficulties. Rain fell incessantly. There were but thirty Russian workmen as most of the Aleuts returned to Kodiak, hunting as they went.
He had been 28 years in the colonies, leaving Russia in 1790 for the post of Three Saints on Kodiak Island, which at that time constituted almost the only Russian establishment in America, the other stations being little more than outlying trading posts.
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