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How was Ledyard to know that Ismyloff, the Russian fur trader, whom he had met in Oonalaska, had written letters stirring up the Russian government to jealous resentment against all comers to the Pacific? Ledyard was mad with impatience. Days slipped into weeks, weeks into months, and no passport came. He was out of clothes, out of money, out of food.
We may be permitted to meditate a little on the origin of mountains, after having seen the position of the Mexican volcanoes, and of trachyte summits on an elongated crevice; having found in the Andes of South America primitive and volcanic rocks in a straight line in the same chain; and when we recollect the island, three miles in circumference, and of a great height, which in modern times issued from the depths of the ocean near Oonalaska.
Oonalaska was the very centre of the sea-otter hunt. Here, eighteen thousand otter a year were taken. At once, Ledyard realized how he could pay the cost of exploring that unclaimed world between New Spain and Alaska: by turning fur trader as Radisson, and La Salle, and the other explorers had done.
A New England Ne'er-do-well, turned from the Door of Rich Relatives, joins Cook's Expedition to America Adventure among the Russians of Oonalaska Useless Endeavor to interest New England Merchants in Fur Trade A Soldier of Fortune in Paris, he meets Jefferson and Paul Jones and outlines Exploration of Western America Succeeds in crossing Siberia alone on the Way to America, but is thwarted by Russian Fur Traders
The Juno had touched at Kadiak, Oonalaska, and others of the more important settlements, and he had found his schools and libraries in good condition, seals and otters rapidly increasing, in their immunity from indiscriminate slaughter, new and stronger forts threatening the nefarious Bostonian and Briton.
There is another story of how the men hid in mountain caves all those weeks, kept alive by the warmth of hot springs, feeding on clams and shell-fish gathered at night. This, too, may be true; for the mountains inland of Oonalaska Harbor are honeycombed with caves, and there are well-known hot springs. By February they had succeeded in making a skin skiff of the leather sacks.
The vessel touched at Oomnak, after having met a sister ship, perhaps with an increase of aggressiveness toward the natives owing to the presence of these other Russians under Alixei Drusenin; and passed on eastward to the next otter resort, Oonalaska Island. Oonalaska is like a human hand spread out, with the fingers northeast, the arm end down seventy miles long toward Oomnak Island.
This explains why there used to be returns of five thousand in a single year at Kadiak or Oonalaska or Cook's Inlet; and the next year, less than a hundred from the same places.
Korovin had almost concluded it was a false alarm, when three Indian servants of Drusenin's ship came dashing breathless across country with news that the ship and all the Russians on the east end of Oonalaska had been destroyed. Including the three newcomers, Korovin had only nineteen men; and his hostages numbered almost as strong.
A few days after this the ships encountered a dense field of ice, extending across their course as far as the eye could reach. To proceed farther was impossible, and the ships' heads were therefore turned to the southward. Coasting the shores of Asia, Cook anchored off Oonalaska. Here the natives were most inoffensive.
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