Yet in person Baranof was far from a hero. He was wizened, sallow, small, a margin of red hair round a head bald as a bowl, grotesque under a black wig tied on with a handkerchief. And he had gone up in life much the way a monkey climbs, by shifts and scrambles and prehensile hoists with frequent falls. It was an ill turn of fortune that sent him to America in the first place. He had been managing a glass factory at Irkutsk, Siberia, where the endless caravans of fur traders passed. Born at Kargopol, East Russia, in 1747, he had drifted to Moscow, set up in a shop for himself at twenty-four, failed in business, and emigrated to Siberia at thirty-five. Tales of profit in the fur trade were current at Irkutsk. Tired of stagnating in what was an absolutely safe but unutterably monotonous life, Baranof left the factory and invested all his {318} savings in the fur trade to the Indians of northern Siberia and Kamchatka. For some years all went well. Baranof invested deeper, borrowing for his ventures. Then the Chukchee Indians swooped down on his caravans, stampeded the pack horses, scuttled the goods, and Baranof was a bankrupt. The rival fur companies on the west coast of America were now engaged in the merry game of cutting each other's throats—literally and without restraint. A strong hand was needed—a hand that could weld the warring elements into one, and push Russian trade far down from Alaska to New Spain, driving off the field those foreigners whose relentless methods—liquor, bludgeon, musket—were demoralizing the Indian sea-otter hunters.

Destitute and bankrupt, Baranof was offered one-sixth of the profits to become governor of the chief Russian company. On August 10, 1790, about the same time that John Jacob Astor also embarked in the fur trade that was to bring him in contact with the Russians, Baranof sailed to America.

Fifty-two men the ragamuffin crew numbered, exiles, convicts, branded criminals, raggedly clad and ill-fed, sleeping wherever they could on the littered and vermin-infested decks; for what did the lives of a convict crew matter? Below decks was crammed to the waterline with goods for trade. All thought for furs, small care for men; and a few days out from port, the water-casks were found to be leaking so badly that allowance {319} of drinking water was reduced; and before the equinoctial gales, scurvy had already disabled the crew. Baranof did not turn back, nor allow the strong hand of authority to relax over his men as poor Bering had. He ordered all press of sail, and with the winds whistling through the rigging and the little ship straining to the smashing seas, did his best to outspeed disease, sighting the long line of surf-washed Aleutian Islands in September, coasting from headland to headland, keeping well offshore for fear of reefs till the end of the month, when compelled to turn in to the mid-bay of Oonalaska for water. There was no ignoring the danger of the landing. A shore like the walls of a giant rampart with reefs in the teeth of a saw, lashed to a fury by beach combers, offered poor escape from death by scurvy. Nevertheless, Baranof effected anchorage at Koshigin Bay, sent the small boats ashore for water, watched his chance of a seaward breeze, and ran out to sea again in one desperate effort to reach Kadiak, the headquarters of the fur traders, before winter. Outside the shelter of the harbor, wind and seas met the ship. She was driven helpless as a chip in a whirlpool straight for the granite rocks of the shore, where she smashed to pieces like the broken staves of a dry water-barrel. Led by the indomitable Baranof, who seemed to meet the challenge of the very elements, the half-drowned crew crawled ashore only to be ordered to save the cargo now rolling up in the wave wash.

{320} When darkness settled over the sea on the last night of September, Baranof was in the same predicament as Bering—a castaway for the winter on a barren island. Instead of sinking under the redoubled blows of an adverse fate, the little Russian rebounded like a rubber ball. A messenger and some Indians were at once despatched in a skin boat to coast from island to island in an effort to get help from Kadiak. Meanwhile Baranof did not sit lamenting with folded hands; and well that he did not; for his messengers never reached Kadiak.

Holes were at once scooped out of the sand, and the caves roofed over with the remnants of the wreck. These underground huts on an island destitute of wood were warmer than surface cabins, and better withstood the terrible north winds that swept down from the Arctic with such force that for two months at a time the men could go outside only by crawling under shelter of the boulders. Ammunition was distributed to the fifty castaways; salmon bought from the Indians, whom Baranof's fair treatment won from the first; once a week, rye meal was given out for soup; and for the rest, the men had to depend on the eggs of sea-birds, that flocked over the precipitous shores in myriads, or on the sea-lions roaring till the surf shook on the rocky islets along the shore.

If there is one characteristic more than another that proves a man master of destiny, it is ability not only to meet misfortune but to turn it to advantage when it {321} comes. While waiting for the rescue that never came, Baranof studied the language of the Aleuts, sent his men among them to learn to hunt, rode out to sea in their frail skin boats lashed abreast to keep from swamping during storm, slept at night on the beach with no covering but the overturned canoes, and, sharing every hardship, set traps with his own hands. When the weather was too boisterous for hunting, he set his people boiling salt from sea-water to dry supplies of fish for the summer, or replenishing their ragged clothes by making coats of birds' skin. The last week before Easter, provisions were so low the whole crew were compelled to indulge in a Lenten fast; but on Easter Monday, behold a putrid whale thrown ashore by the storm! The fast was followed by a feast. The winds subsided, and hunters brought in sea-lions.

It was quite apparent now no help was coming from Kadiak. Baranof had three large boats made of skin and wreckage. One he left with the men, who were to guard the remnants of the cargo. A second he despatched with twenty-six men. In the third he himself embarked, now in a raging fever from the exposure of the winter. A year all but a month from the time he had left Asia, Baranof reached Three Saints, Kadiak, on June 27, 1791.

Things were black enough when Baranof landed at Kadiak. The settlement of Three Saints had been depending on the supplies of his wrecked ship; and {322} when he arrived, himself in need, discontent flared to open mutiny. Five different rival companies had demoralized the Indians by supplying them with liquor, and egging them on to raid other traders. Southward, toward Nootka, were hosts of foreign ships—Gray and Kendrick and Ingraham from Boston, Vancouver from England, Meares from East India, Quadra from New Spain, private ventures outfitted by Astor from New York. If Russia were to preserve her hunting-grounds, no time should be lost.

Baranof met the difficulties like a commander of guerilla warfare. Brigades were sent eastward to the fishing-ground of Cook's Inlet for supplies. Incipient mutiny was quelled by sending more hunters off with Ismyloff to explore new sea-otter fields in Prince William Sound. As for the foreign fur traders, he conceived the brilliant plan of buying food from them in exchange for Russian furs and of supplying them with brigades of Aleut Island hunters to scour the Pacific for sea-otter from Nootka and the Columbia to southern California. This would not only add to stores of Russian furs, but push Russian dominion southward, and keep other nations off the field.

That it was not all plain sailing on a summer day may be inferred from one incident. He had led out a brigade of several hundred canoes, Indians and Russians, to Nuchek Island, off Prince William Sound. Though he had tried to win the friendship of the coast Indians by gifts, it was necessary to steal from point {323} to point at night, and to hide at many places as he coasted the mainland. Throwing up some sort of rough barricade at Nuchek Island, he sent the most of his men off to fish and remained with only sixteen Aleuts and Russians. It was perfectly natural that the Alaskan Indians should resent the Aleuts intruding on the hunting-grounds of the main coast, one thousand miles from the Aleutian Islands. Besides, the mainland Indians had now learned unscrupulous brutality from foreign traders. Baranof knew his danger and never relaxed vigilance. Of the sixteen men, five always stood sentry at night.

The night of June 20 was pitch dark. Terrific seas were running, and a tempest raged through the woods of the mainland. For safety, Ismyloff's ship had scudded to the offing. Baranof had undressed, thrown himself down in his cabin, and was in the deep sleep of outdoor exhaustion, when above the howling of the gale, not five steps away, so close it was impossible to distinguish friend from foe in the darkness, arose the shrill war-cry of hostiles. Leaping to his feet, Baranof rushed out undressed. His shirt was torn to shreds by a shower of flint and copper-head arrows. In the dark, the Russians could only fire blindly. The panic-stricken Aleuts dashed for their canoes to escape to Ismyloff's ship. Ismyloff sent armed Russians through the surf wash and storm to Baranof's aid. Baranof kept his small cannon pounding hot shot where the shouts sounded till daylight. Of the sixteen men, two {324} Russians and nine Aleuts were dead. Of the men who came to his aid, fifteen were wounded. The corpses of twelve hostiles lay on the beach; and as gray dawn came over the tempestuous sea, six large war canoes vanished into the morning mist, a long trail of blood over the waves showing that the hostiles were carrying off their wounded. Well might Baranof write, "I will vanquish a cruel fate; or fall under its repeated blows." The most of men would have thought they had sufficient excuse to justify backing out of their difficulties. Baranof locked grapples with the worst that destiny could do; and never once let go. Sometimes the absolute futility of so much striving, so much hardship, so much peril, all for the sake of the crust of bread that represents mere existence, sent him down to black depths of rayless despondency, when he asked himself, was life worth while? But he never let go his grip, his sense of resistance, his impulse to fight the worst, the unshunnable obligation of being alive and going on with the game, succeed or fail. Such fits of despair might end in wild carousals, when he drank every Russian under the table, outshouted the loudest singer, and perhaps wound up by throwing the roomful of revellers out of doors. But he rose from the depths of debauch and despair, and went on with the game. That was the main point.

The terrible position to which loss of supplies had reduced the traders of Kadiak when his own vessel {325} was wrecked at Oonalaska on the way out, demonstrated to Baranof the need of more ships; so when orders came from his company in 1793 to construct a sailing boat on the timberless island of Kadiak without iron, without axes, without saw, without tar, without canvas, he was eager to attempt the impossible. Shields, an Englishman, in the employment of Russia, was to act as shipbuilder; and Baranof sent the men assigned for the work up to Sunday Harbor on the west side of Prince William Sound, where heavy forests would supply timber and the tide-rush help to launch the vessel from the skids. There were no saws in the settlement. Planks had to be hewn out of logs. Iron, there was none. The rusty remnants of old wrecks were gathered together for bolts and joints and axes. Spruce gum mixed with blubber oil took the place of oakum and tar below the water-line. Moss and clay were used as calking above water. For sail cloth, there was nothing but shreds and rags and tatters of canvas patched together so that each mast-arm looked like Joseph's coat of many colors. Seventy-nine feet from stem to stern, the crazy craft measured, of twenty-three feet beam, thirteen draught, one hundred tons, two decks, and three masts. All the winter of 1792-1793, just a year after Robert Gray, the American, had built his sloop down at Fort Defence off Vancouver Island, the Russian shipbuilding went on. Then in April, lest the poverty of the Russians should become known to foreign traders, Baranof sent Shields, the English {326} shipbuilder, off out of the way, on an otter-hunting venture. It was August of the next summer before the clumsy craft slipped from the skids into the rising tide. She was so badly ballasted that she bobbled like cork; and her sails so frail they flew to tatters in the gentlest wind; but Russia had accomplished her first ship in America. Bells were set ringing when the Phoenix was towed into the harbor of Kadiak; and when she reached Okhotsk laden with furs to the water-line in April of 1794, enthusiasm knew no bounds. Salvos of artillery thundered over her sails, and mass was chanted, and a polish of paint given to her piebald, rickety sides that transformed her into what the fur company proudly regarded as a frigate. Before the year was out, Baranof had his men at work on two more vessels. There was to be no more crippling of trade for lack of ships.

But a more serious matter than shipbuilding demanded Baranof's attention. Rival fur companies were on the ground. Did one party of traders establish a fort on Cook's Inlet? Forthwith came another to a point higher up the inlet, where Indians could be intercepted. There followed warlike raids, the pillaging of each other's forts, the capture of each other's Indian hunters, the utter demoralization of the Indians by each fort forbidding the savages to trade at the other, the flogging and bludgeoning and butchering of those who disobeyed the order—and finally, the forcible abduction of whole villages of women and children to compel the alliance of the hunters. All Baranof's work to {327} pacify the hostiles of the mainland was being undone; and what complicated matters hopelessly for him was the fact that the shareholders of his own company were also shareholders in the rival ventures. Baranof wrote to Siberia for instructions, urging the amalgamation of all the companies in one; but instructions were so long in coming that the fur trade was being utterly bedevilled and the passions of the savages inflamed to a point of danger for every white man on the North Pacific. Affairs were at this pass when Konovalof, the dashing leader of the plunderers, planned to capture Baranof himself, and seize the shipyard at Sunday Harbor, on Prince William Sound. Baranof had one hundred and fifty fighting Russians in his brigades. Should he wait for the delayed instructions from Siberia? While he hesitated, some of the shipbuilders were ambushed in the woods, robbed, beaten, and left half dead. Baranof could not afford to wait. He had no more legal justification for his act than the plunderers had for theirs; but it was a case where a man must step outside law, or be exterminated. Rallying his men round him and taking no one into his confidence, the doughty little Russian sent a formal messenger to Konovalof, the bandit, at his redoubt on Cook's Inlet, pompously summoning him in the name of the governor of Siberia to appear and answer for his misdeeds. To the brigand, the summons was a bolt out of the blue. How was he to know not a word had come from the governor of Siberia, and the summons {328} was sheer bluff? He was so terrorized at the long hand of power reaching across the Pacific to clutch him back to perhaps branding or penal service in Siberia, that he did not even ask to see Baranof's documents. Coming post-haste, he offered explanations, excuses, frightened pleadings. Baranof would have none of him. He clapped the culprit and associates in irons, put them on Ismyloff's vessel, and despatched them for trial to Siberia. That he also seized the furs of his rivals for safe keeping, was a mere detail. The prisoners were, of course, discharged; for Baranof's conduct could no more bear scrutiny than their own; but it was one way to get rid of rivals; and the fur companies at war in the Canadian northwest practised the same method twenty years later.

The effect of the bandit outrages on the hostile Indians of the mainland was quickly evident. Baranof realized that if he was to hold the Pacific coast for his company, he must push his hunting brigades east and south toward New Spain. A convict colony, that was to be the nucleus of a second St. Petersburg, was planned to be built under the very shadow of Mount St. Elias. Shields, the Englishman employed by Russia, after bringing back two thousand sea-otter from Bering Bay in 1793, had pushed on down south-eastward to Norfolk Sound or the modern Sitka, where he loaded a second cargo of two thousand sea-otter. A dozen foreign traders had already coasted Alaskan shores, and southward of Norfolk Sound was a flotilla {329} of American fur traders, yearly encroaching closer and closer on the Russian field. All fear of rivalry among the Russians had been removed by the union of the different companies in 1799. Baranof pulled his forces together for the master stroke that was to establish Russian dominion on the Pacific. This was the removal of the capital of Russian America farther south.

On the second week of April, 1799, with two vessels, twenty-two Russians, and three hundred and fifty canoes of Aleut fur hunters, Baranof sailed from Prince William Sound for the southeast. Pause was made early in May opposite Kyak—Bering's old landfall—to hunt sea-otter. The sloops hung on the offing, the hunting brigades, led by Baranof in one of the big skin canoes, paddling for the surf wash and kelp fields of the boisterous, rocky coast, which sea-otter frequent in rough weather. Dangers of the hunt never deterred Baranof. The wilder the turmoil of spray and billows, the more sea-otter would be driven to refuge on the kelp fields. Cross tides like a whirlpool ran on this coast when whipped by the winds. Not a sound from the sea-otter hunters! Silently, like sea-birds glorying in the tempest, the canoes bounded from crest to crest of the rolling seas, always taking care not to be caught broadsides by the smashing combers, or swamped between waves in the churning seas. How it happened is not known, but somehow between wind and tide-rip, thirty of the canoes {330} that rode over a billow and swept down to the trough never came up. A flaw of wind had caught the mountain billows; the sixty hunters went under. From where he was, Baranof saw the disaster, saw the terror of the other two hundred men, saw the rising storm, and at a glance measured that it was farther back to the sloops than on towards the dangerous shore. The sea-otter hunt was forgotten in the impending catastrophe to the entire brigade. Signal and shout confused in the thunder of the surf ordered the men to paddle for their lives inshore. Night was coming on. The distance was longer than Baranof had thought, and it was dark before the brigades landed, and the men flung themselves down, totally exhausted, to sleep on the drenched sands.

Barely were the hunters asleep when the shout of Kolosh Indians from the forests behind told of ambush. The mainland hostiles resenting this invasion of their hunting-fields, had watched the storm drive the canoes to land. On one side was the tempest, on the other the forest thronged with warriors. The Aleuts lost their heads and dashed for hiding in the woods, only to find certain death. Baranof and the Russians with him fired off their muskets till all powder was used. Then they shouted in the Aleut dialect for the hunters to embark. The sea was the lesser danger. By morning the brigades had joined the sloops on the offing. Thirteen more canoes had been lost in the ambush.

{331} Such was the inauspicious introduction for Baranof to the founding of the new Russian fort at Sitka or Norfolk Sound. It was the end of May before the brigades glided into the sheltered, shadowy harbor, where Chirikoff's men had been lost fifty years before. A furious storm of snow and sleet raged over the harbor. When the storm cleared, impenetrable forests were seen to the water-line, and great trunks of trees swirled out to sea. On the ocean side to the west, Mount Edgecumbe towered up a dome of snow. Eastward were the bare heights of Verstovoi; and countless tiny islets gilded by the sun dotted the harbor. Baranof would have selected the site of the present Sitka, high, rocky and secure from attack, but the old Sitkan chief refused to sell it, bartering for glass beads and trinkets a site some miles north of the present town.

Half the men were set to hunting and fishing, half to chopping logs for the new fort built in the usual fashion, with high palisades, a main barracks a hundred feet long in the centre, three stories high, with trap-doors connecting each story, cabins and hutches all round the inside of the palisades. Lanterns hung at the masthead of the sloops to recall the brigades each night; for Captain Cleveland, a Boston trader anchored in the harbor, forewarned Baranof of the Indians' treacherous character, more dangerous now when demoralized by the rivalry of white traders, and in possession of the civilized man's weapons. Free distribution of liquor by unscrupulous sea-captains did not mend {332} matters. Cleveland reported that the savages had so often threatened to attack his ship that he no longer permitted them on board; concealing the small number of his crew by screens of hides round the decks, trading only at a wicket with cannon primed and muskets bristling through the hides above the taffrail. He warned Baranof's hunters not to be led off inland bear hunting, for the bear hunt might be a Sitkan Indian in decoy to trap the hunters into an ambush. Such a decoy had almost trapped Cleveland's crew, when other Indians were noticed in ambush. The new fort was christened Archangel.

All went well as long as Baranof was on the ground. Sea-otter were obtained for worthless trinkets. Sentries paraded the gateway; so Baranof sailed back to Kadiak. The Kolosh or Sitkan tribes had only bided their time. That sleepy summer day of June, 1802, when the slouchy Siberian convicts were off guard and Baranof two thousand miles away, the Indians fell on the fort and at one fell swoop wiped it out.[1] Up at Kadiak honors were showering on the little governor. Two decorations of nobility he had been given by 1804; but his grief over the loss of Sitka was inconsolable. "I will either die or restore the fort!" he vowed, and with the help of a Russian man-of-war sent round the world, he sailed that summer into Sitka Sound. The Indians scuttled their barricade erected on the site of the present Sitka. Here {333} the fort was rebuilt and renamed New Archangel—a fort worthy in its palmy days of Baranof's most daring ambitions. Sixty Russian officers and eight hundred white families lived within the walls, with a retinue of two or three thousand Indian otter hunters cabined along the beach. There was a shipyard. There was a foundry for the manufacture of the great brass bells sold for chapels in New Spain. There were archbishops, priests, deacons, schools. At the hot springs twenty miles away, hospitals and baths were built. A library and gallery of famous paintings were added to the fort, though Baranof complained it would have been wiser to have physicians for his men. For the rest of Baranof's rule, Sitka became the great rendezvous of vessels trading on the Pacific. Here Baranof held sway like a potentate, serving regal feasts to all visitors with the pomp of a little court, and the barbarity of a wassailing mediaeval lord.

But all this was not so much fireworks for display. Baranof had his motive. To the sea-captains who feasted with him and drank themselves torpid under his table, he proposed a plan—he would supply the Aleut hunters for them to hunt on shares as far south as southern California. Always, too, he was an eager buyer of their goods, giving them in exchange seal-skins from the Seal Islands. Boston vessels were the first to enter partnership with Baranof. Later came Astor's captains from New York, taking sealskins in trade for goods supplied to the Russians.

{334} How did Baranof, surrounded by hostile Indians, with no servants but Siberian convicts, hold his own single-handed in American wilds? Simply by the power of his fitness, by vigilance that never relaxed, by despotism that was by turns savage and gentle, but always paternal, by the fact that his brain and his brawn were always more than a match for the brain and brawn of all the men under him. To be sure, the liberal measure of seventy-nine lashes was laid on the back of any subordinate showing signs of mutiny, but that did not prevent many such attempts.

The most serious was in 1809. From the time that Benyowsky, the Polish adventurer, had sacked the garrison of Kamchatka, Siberian convicts serving in America dreamed of similar exploits. Peasants and officers, a score in number, all convicts from Siberia, had plotted to rise in New Archangel or Sitka, assassinate the governor, seize ships and provisions, and sailing to some of the South Sea Islands, set up an independent government. The signal was to be given when Naplavkof, an officer who was master plotter, happened to be on duty. On such good terms was the despot, Baranof, with his men, that the plot was betrayed to him from half a dozen sources. It did not trouble Baranof. He sent the betrayers a keg of brandy, bade one of them give a signal by breaking out in drunken song, and at the sound himself burst into the roomful of conspirators, sword in hand, {335} followed by half a hundred armed soldiers. The plotters were handcuffed and sent back to Siberia.

There was something inexcusably cruel in the termination of Baranof's services with the fur company. He was now over seventy years of age. He was tortured by rheumatism from the long years of exposure in a damp climate. Because he was not of noble birth, though he had received title of nobility, he was subject to insults at the hands of any petty martinet who came out as officer on the Russian vessels. Against these Baranof usually held his own at Sitka, but they carried back to St. Petersburg slanderous charges against his honesty. Twice he had asked to be allowed to resign. Twice successors had been sent from Russia; but one died on the way, and the other was shipwrecked. It was easy for malignant tongues to rouse suspicion that Baranof's desire to resign sprang from interested motives, perhaps from a wish to conceal his own peculations. Though Baranof had annually handled millions of dollars' worth of furs for the Russian Company, at a distance from oversight that might have defied detection in wrong-doing, it was afterwards proved that he had not misused or misappropriated one dime's worth of property; but who was to believe his honesty in the face of false charges?

In the fall of 1817 Lieutenant Hagemeister arrived at Sitka to audit the books of the company. Concealing from Baranof the fact that he was to be deposed, {336} Hagemeister spent a year investigating the records. Not a discrepancy was discovered. Baranof, with the opportunity to have made millions, was a poor man. Without explanation, Hagemeister then announced the fact—Baranof was to be retired. Between voluntarily retiring and being retired was all the difference between honor and insult. The news was a blow that crushed Baranof almost to senility. He was found doddering and constantly in tears. Again and again he bade good-by to his old comrades, comrades of revel with noble blood in their veins, comrades of the hunt, pure-blooded Indians, who loved him as a brother, comrades of his idleness, Indian children with whom he had frolicked—but he could not bear to tear himself from the land that was the child of his lifelong efforts. The blow had fallen when he was least able to bear it. His nerve was gone. Of all the Russian wreckages in this cruel new land, surely this wreck was the most pitiable—the maker deposed by the thing he had made, cast out by his child, driven to seek some hidden place where he might die out of sight. An old sea-captain offered him passage round the world to Russia, where his knowledge might still be of service. Service? That was the word! The old war-horse pricked up his ears! Baranof sailed in the fall of 1818. By spring the ship homeward-bound stopped at Batavia. There was some delay. Delay was not good for Baranof. He was ill, deadly ill, of that most deadly of all ailments, heartbreak, {337} consciousness that he was of no more use, what the Indians call "the long sickness of too much thinking." When the vessel put out to sea again, Baranof, too, put to sea, but it was to the boundless sea of eternity. He died on April 16, 1819, and was laid to rest in the arms of the great ocean that had cradled his hopes from the time he left Siberia.

To pass judgment on Baranof's life would be a piece of futility. His life, like the lives of all those Pacific coast adventurers, stands or falls by what it was, not what it meant to be; by what it did, not what it left undone; and what Baranof left was an empire half the size of Russia. That his country afterward lost that empire was no fault of his. Like all those Vikings of the North Pacific, he was essentially a man who did things, not a theorizer on how things ought to be done, not a slug battening on the things other men have done.

They were not anaemic, these old "sea voyagers" of the Pacific, daring death or devil, with the red blood of courage in their veins, and the red blood of a lawless manhood, too. They were not men of milk and water type, with little good and less bad. Neither their virtues nor their vices were lukewarm; but they did things, these men; added to the sum total of human effort, human knowledge, human progress. Sordid their motives may have been, sordid as the blacksmith's when he smashes his sledge on the anvil; but from the anvil of their hardships, from the clash of the {338} primordial warfare between the Spirit of the Elements and the Spirit of Man, struck out some sparks of the Divine. There was the courage as dauntless in the teeth of the gale as in the face of death. There was the yearning to know More, to seek it, to follow it over earth's ends, though the quest led to the abyss of a watery grave. What did they want, these fool fellows, following the rushlight of their own desires? That is just it. They didn't know what they sought, but they knew there was something just beyond to be sought, something new to be known; and because Man is Man, they set out on the quest of the unknown, chancing life and death for the sake of a little gain to human progress. It is the spirit of the heroic ages, and to that era belongs the history of the Vikings on the North Pacific.



[1] See Chapter XI.



INDEX

A

Adakh Island, Chirikoff at, 51.

Admiralty Inlet, explored, 270-271.

Adventure, first American ship built on Pacific, 233, 234, 238, 325.

Alaska, Bering's expedition on coast of, 26 ff.; Chirikoff's arrival at, 50-51; Benyowsky's visit to, 125; Cook explores coast of, 189-194; Gray's trip to, 238; Vancouver's survey of southern coast of, 286-290; Baranof's career in, 318-337. See Sitka.

Aleutian Islands, Bering's voyage of discovery among, 26-41; sea-otter's habitat on, 42, 53, 56, 63, 66-67, 69-70, 82-83; fur hunters of the, 67-78, 81-84, 321-323, 328-330.

Aleut Indians, as otter-hunters, 69-78; harsh treatment of, by Russians, 79, 8l-88; Russian hunters massacred by, 91-95, 100-104; punishment of, 105; in Sitka massacre, 307-310, 332; accompany Baranof on voyage of vengeance, 311-314; with Baranof in Prince William Sound, 322 ff.

Alexander Archipelago, Chirikoff in the, 46-52.

Alexis, Aleut Indian boy hostage, 98, 99, 102.

Anderson, Dr., with Cook, 193.

Anian, Straits of, 9, 279 n.

Anton, Juan de, captain of Glory of the South Seas, 158 n.

Apraxin, Count, 8 n.

Archangel Michael, modern Sitka once named, 306; founding of, by Baranof, 306, 331-332; massacre at, 307-310, 332.

Arguello, Don Joseph, 241.

Aricara, Drake at, 155.

Astor, John Jacob, 65, 212, 303, 318, 322, 333.

Athabasca Lake, attempt to identify, with Northwest Passage, 174, 175.

Atka, otter grounds at, 69.

Atto, Hawaiian boy, 229, 233, 240.

Attoo, village in, destroyed by Russian fur hunters, 83.

Auteroche, Chappe d', cited, 295.

Avacha Bay, Bering at, 17, 19, 23; survivors of Bering expedition return to, 59-60; vessels of Cook's expedition at, 208.



B

Baker, lieutenant in Vancouver's expedition, 266, 270.

Baker, Mount, 270.

Balboa, 134, 144.

Baltimore, Benyowsky visits, 127.

Bancroft, Hubert Howe, cited, 241, 290, 295.

Baranof, Alexander, governor of Russian American Fur Company, 67, 167 n., 288, 301, 304, 306, 310; character of, 316-317; personal appearance of, 317; early career of, 317-318; sails to America (1790), 318; wrecked on Oonalaska, 319-320; builds boat and reaches Kadiak, 321; defeats hostile Indians at Nuchek Island, 323-324; establishes fort at Sitka, 331; loses fort by Sitka massacre, but rebuilds and founds New Archangel (modern Sitka), 332-333; in old age deposed from governorship, 335-336; death of, 337.

Baranof Castle, Sitka, 301.

Barber, Captain, at Sitka, 310.

Barclay, English sea-captain, 224, 227, 254, 264, 272.

Barnes, sailor with Gray, 230.

Barrell, Joseph, 211, 215, 229, 241.

Bassof, otter hunter, 82-83.

Begg, cited, 290 n.

Behm, Major, 196, 208.

Behm Canal, 286.

Benyowsky, Mauritius, Polish exile to Kamchatka, 108-110; career of, at Bolcheresk, 113-122; escapes to sea on pirate cruise, 122; meets Ochotyn at Bering Island, 123-124; visits Alaska, 125; adventures of, in Luzon, Formosa, and China, 126-127; holds French commission in Madagascar, 137; returns to Europe, goes to Baltimore, and is sent on filibustering expedition to Madagascar, 127; death of, 127-128; authorities for, 128 n.

Berg, cited, 11 n., 22 n., 129, 295.

Bering, Anna, 8 n.

Bering, Jonas, 8 n.

Bering, Thomas, 22 n.

Bering, Unos, 22.

Bering, Vitus Ivanovich, birth and early history of, 8; commissioned by Peter the Great to explore waters between Russia and America, 8-10; first expedition of (1725-1730), 10-12; second expedition undertaken by, 12; difficulties of, with scientists about "Gamaland," 13-15, 19, 22, 24; arrival of expedition of, at Okhotsk, 16; start of, from Avacha Bay, Kamchatka (1741), 17; cruise of, in St. Peter, 22-45; landfall at Kyak Island, 26-27, 47 n.; Mt. St. Elias discovered by, 26; exploration of coast of Alaskan peninsula by, 28-36; forced to winter at Commander Islands, 35-36; death of, 54; summary of work of, 55-56, 61; conclusions of, rejected by scientists, 172-173; mentioned in connection with other explorers, 183, 184 n., 239, 263, 264; Cook verifies conclusions of, 189-194.

Bering Bay, 288.

Bering Island, 37-45, 97, 123-124, 300, 315.

Betshevin, Siberian merchant, 84, 87.

Bidarkas, fur hunters' boats, 67.

Billings, Joseph, 254, 258, 259-261.

Boit, John, 230.

Bolcheresk, capital of Kamchatka, 113-114; description of, 114; Benyowsky's career at, 114-122.

Boston, interest at, in Gray's expeditions, 215-216, 229-230, 240-241.

"Bostons" (Bostonnais), Indians call all Americans, 210.

Brazil, Drake's lost sailors in, 152.

Bristol Bay, 193.

Broughton, Lieutenant, 266, 271, 279, 280, 281; Voyage by, cited, 295 n.

Brown, Samuel, of Boston, 211, 229.

Brown, Dr. William, Ledyard travels with, 258-259.

Bulfinch, Charles, 211, 212; daughter of, named "Columbia," 240.

Bulfinch, Dr., of Boston, 211, 241.

Burney, Voyages by, 295 n.

Burrard Inlet, 273.

Burroughs, John, cited, 72 n.

Bute Inlet, 274.



C

California, Drake's visit to, 160-165, 169-171; Vancouver's visit to, 281-282; Russian American Fur Company in, 315.

California, vessel for exploration, 174.

Callao, Drake sacks, 155-156.

Campbell, Dr., quoted, 172-173.

Cannibals, Cook's stay among, 187; on Portland Canal, 230.

Cape Adams, 280.

Cape Addington, 46.

Cape Disappointment, 224, 235, 267, 269, 279, 280.

Cape Douglas, 191.

Cape Elizabeth, 191.

Cape Flattery, 185, 223, 224, 235, 270.

Cape Foulweather, 184.

Cape Gregory, 184.

Cape Horn, Drake discovers, 153; Gray expedition rounds, 216-217.

Cape Khitroff, 41.

Cape Lookout, 219.

Cape Meares, 224.

Cape Perpetua, 184.

Cape Prince of Wales, 193, 208.

Captain Harbor, 300; Drusenin at, 89; Ledyard's arrival at, 250.

Carder, Peter, 152 n.

Cartier, Jacques, 272.

Caswell, Joshua, 230.

Catherine, Empress, 7.

Chaplin, Peter, 11 n.

Chatham, Lieutenant Broughton commands, in Vancouver cruise, 266.

Chesterfield Inlet, 174-175.

Chinook, Indian village, 281.

Chirikoff, Alexei, Bering's second in command, 11, 13, 18, 19, 20, 60; cruise of, in the St. Paul, 45-53.

Christopher, Captain, 175.

Christopher, Drake's vessel, 147.

Christy, Silver Map of, 168.

Chukchee Indians, 5, 9, 193, 194, 318.

Clayoquot, Gray at, 227, 232-234.

Clerke, Captain, 181, 203, 206, 207, 208; death of, 209.

Cleveland, Captain, Boston trader, 295, 331-332.

Collectors of tribute, Cossack, 5, 107, 294-296, 299.

Columbia, vessel commanded by Captain Kendrick, on cruise to Pacific, 212-213, 215; Gray in command of, 228, 268-269.

Columbia River, Meares searches for, 224; Vancouver misses, 235, 267-268; Heceta quoted regarding, 235-236; Gray discovers and names, 236-238, 241, 268, 269; Broughton's trip up, 280.

Commander Islands, Bering expedition at, 37-45, 61; sea-otter found on, 67, 76.

Cook, Captain James, 19, 64 n., 78, 127, 128 n., 161, 168, 222, 226, 263, 264, 265; boyhood and youth of, 176-177; seaman on Newcastle coaler, 177; enters Royal Navy, 178-180; before Quebec with Wolfe, 180; sent by Royal Society on voyage to South Seas (1768-1771), 180-181; makes voyage round the world, 181; starts on historic voyage of discovery and exploration, 181; John Ledyard's connection with expedition of, 181-182, 247; terms of secret commission of, 182-183; Drake's "New Albion" sighted by, 184; misses Straits of Fuca, 184-185; anchors at Nootka, 186; visits Kyak Island, 189; in Prince William Sound, 190-191; explores Cook's Inlet, 191-192; sails along coast of Alaska to Cape Prince of Wales, and crosses Bering Strait to Siberia, 193; verifies Bering's conclusions, 193-194; explores Norton Sound, 195; stops at Oonalaska, 195-196; returns to Sandwich Islands to winter, 196-197; friendly reception of, by Hawaiians, 197-199; sailors of, abuse hospitality of natives, 199-200; difficulties of, over boat stolen by natives, 203; brave stand taken by, and death of, 203-205; authorities for, 209 n.; account of voyage of, leads to sending out of Robert Gray, 211; Gray's work and its results compared with those of, 239-240.

Cook's Inlet, sea-otter in, 66-67, 68, 69, 79; explored by Cook, 189-192; Vancouver's survey of, 287-288; Russian fur traders' doings in, 326-327.

Coolidge, Davis, 214, 230.

Copper Island, 44, 97, 315.

Coquimbo, Drake at, 154.

Cortes, 133-134.

Coxe, William, cited, 61, 82, 105, 295.

Crowning of Drake by Indians, 164.



D

Daedalus, Vancouver's supply ship, 266, 282; seized by Sandwich Islanders and two officers murdered, 284.

Da Gama, Vasco, 134.

Dall, cited, 11 n., 295.

Dartmouth College, courses for missionaries at, 244-245.

Davidson, Dr. George, x, 47 n., 162 n., 168, 290 n.

Davidson, George, member of Gray's second expedition, 230, 240, 241.

Dawson, cited, 290 n.

Dementieff, Abraham, 47-48.

Derby, John, 211, 229.

Derby Sound, 228.

Deshneff, explorer, vii, 296.

Deshon, Captain, 253-254.

Discovery, Vancouver's ship, 266; on rocks in Straits of Fuca, 275; Hawaiian girls onboard of, 284-285.

Discovery, vessel commanded by Captain Clerke, in Cook's voyage, 181.

D'Isles, the, geographers, 19, 20, 52.

Distress Cove, 228.

Dixon, George, 78, 209, 227, 254, 290 n.

Dobbs, patron of exploration, 174.

Dobbs, vessel for exploration, 174.

Doughty, Thomas, 147; trial and execution of, 148-149, 168.

Douglas, Captain, 223-226.

Dragon, Drake's vessel, 140.

Drake, Francis, family and boyhood of, 139; with Hawkins in West Indies, 139; cruises Spanish Main (1570-1573), 140-141; seizes one million pounds in silver from Spanish at Nombre de Dios, 141-142; first views Pacific Ocean, 143-144; attacks gold train at Venta Cruz, 144-145; returns to England, 146; Queen Elizabeth and, 146; starts on historic cruise (1577), 147; Doughty's trial and execution, 148-149, 168; enters Pacific through Straits of Magellan, 150; driven south by storm, 151-153; discovers Cape Horn, 153; piratical voyage of, up South American coast, 153-155; captures Glory of the South Seas, 158; plans to return home by Northeast Passage, 158-159; landfall north of California, 159-161, 168; gives up idea of Northeast Passage, 161; visits California, 161-162, 169; welcomed by Indians, 162-163, 169-170; crowning of, 164; calls region "New Albion," 164; returns to England around Cape of Good Hope (1580), 165; subsequent career of, 166; death and burial of, 166-167, 171; authorities for, 167 n.

Drake, John, 141, 142, 157.

Drake's Bay, 162, 281.

Drusenin, Alexei, otter hunter, 81, 84; winters at Oonalaska, 88-91; murdered by natives, 91-92.



E

East Cape, 195, 208-209.

Elizabeth, Drake's vessel, 147, 148; returns to England, 152.

Elizabeth, Queen, and Drake, 146.

Elliott, cited, 72 n., 295.

Ellis, explorer, 174-175.

Equator, rites on crossing, 182, 216.

Eskimo Indians, Russian explorers hear about, 6. See Aleut and Kolosh Indians.



F

Fages, Don Pedro, cited, 241.

Fairweather Mountains, 189.

Fletcher, Francis, Drake's chaplain, 149, 154 n., 167; chronicle of, quoted, 161, 165, 167 n.-171 n.

Foggy Island (Ukamok), 29, 192.

Folger, sailor with Gray, 230.

Formosa, Benyowsky in, 127.

Fort Defence, 233, 325.

Franklin, Benjamin, Benyowsky's meeting with, 128 n.

Fraser River, Vancouver misses discovering, 272-273.

Friendly Cove, 276, 278.

Frobisher, Martin, 159.

Fuca, Juan de, 173, 174, 184, 264, 272; account of legend of, concerning Northeast Passage, 275 n.

Fuca Straits. See Straits of Fuca.



G

Galiano, Don, 272-273.

Gama, John de, 6 n.

Gamaland, mythical continent, 6, 9, 168, 173; Bering's conclusion concerning non-existence of, 12, 18; on D'Isles' map, 19; Bering's second voyage in search of, 22-23; search for, relinquished, 24-25; Cook demolishes myth of, 181.

Garret, John, 141.

Glory of the South Seas, Spanish galleon, 155, 156, 157; captured by Drake, 158.

Glottoff, Stephen, 88, 96; Korovin rescued by, 104.

Gmelin, scientist, 14 n., 295 n.

Golden Hind, Drake renames the Pelican the, 150; cruise on the Pacific in, 151-165; end of, 166.

Gore, Cook's lieutenant, 190.

Gorelin, Russian sailor, 87, 91 n.

Gray, Robert, character of, 213; sent by Boston merchants on fur-trading voyage to the Pacific coast, 213-214; departure of, from Boston (October, 1787), 215-216; rounds Cape Horn and reaches Drake's "New Albion," 216-218; adventures of, in Tillamook Bay, 219-222; sails to Nootka, 222-223; meets Captains Meares and Douglas, 223-225; in spring explores Straits of Fuca, 227, 235; takes cargo of furs to China and returns to Boston (August, 1790), 228-229; leaves Boston on second voyage (September, 1790), 230; winters at Clayoquot (1791-1792), 232-234; builds sloop Adventure, 233, 234, 325; meets Vancouver expedition, 235, 268-270; discovers and names Columbia River (May, 1792), 236-238, 241, 268, 269; goes to China and returns to Boston (July, 1793), 238; death of, 238; place of, among discoverers, 238-240; authorities for, 240 n.; later mention of, 264, 272, 286, 322; Lieutenant Broughton's view of explorations of, 280.

Gray's Harbor, 236, 241.

Greenhow, cited, 241, 290, 295.

Guatalco, Drake stops at, 159.

Gulf of Georgia, 271.

Gvozdef, discoverer, 12 n.



H

Hagemeister, Lieutenant, 335-336.

Hall, Sir James, and Ledyard, 256.

Hancock, Clayoquot renamed, 227.

Hancock, Governor, 229.

Harriman Expedition, the, 72 n.

Haskins, member of Gray's second expedition, 230.

Haswell, Robert, in Gray's expeditions, 214, 216, 220-222, 228, 230, 234, 240, 241.

Hatch, Captain Crowell, 211.

Hawkins, Sir John, 135-139, 166.

Hearne, Samuel, 174, 175, 181.

Heceta, Captain Bruno, 219, 241; quoted regarding Columbia River, 235-236.

Henriquez, Don Martin, 136.

Hoffman, German exile, 108-111.

Hood Canal, explored, 270-271.

Howe, Richard, accountant in Gray's expedition, 214.

Howe's Sound, 274.



I

Icy Cape, Cook names, 195.

Inalook Island, 90.

Indians, Californian, and Drake, 162-165, 169-171.

Ingraham, Joseph, 214, 230, 240, 322.

Isle, Louis la Croyere de l', 19, 20, 209; death of, 52.

Isle of Pinos, 141.

Ismyloff, Russian trader-spy, 118, 119, 122, 123, 124, 127, 128 n.; Cook meets, 196; treacherous letters of, 208; Ledyard's encounters with, 251, 253, 258, 260-261; in service of Russian American Fur Company, under Baranof, 322, 323.



J

Japan, charted by Martin Spanberg, 18; laws to protect the sea-otter moved by, 67; Benyowsky's adventures in, 126-127.

Jefferson, Thomas, Ledyard and, 255, 261-262.

Jervis Canal, 274.

Johnstone, with Vancouver, 266, 271, 273, 275.

Jokai, Maurus, Benyowsky's life told by, 127.

Jones, Paul, and Ledyard, 255.

Juan Fernandez, Columbia repaired at, 217.



K

Kadiak Indians in California, 315.

Kadiak Island, otter-hunting headquarters, 69, 79; Ochotyn at, 124; Benyowsky visits, 125; Baranof at, 321-329.

Kakooa, Sandwich Islands, 203, 206.

Kalekhta, Aleutian village, 90, 94.

Kamchatka, Bering sails from, 11; Benyowsky in, 113-122.

Karakakooa Bay, Cook at, 197-205.

Kendrick, Captain John, 213, 214, 216, 217, 225, 226, 228, 229, 264, 272, 322; adventures of, on Queen Charlotte Island, 230-232; death of, 238.

Kendrick, Solomon, murdered, 232.

Khitroff, in Bering expedition, 26-27, 30-31, 36.

King, Captain, with Cook, 128 n., 186, 192, 198, 200, 203, 206.

Koah, Hawaiian priest, 198, 206, 207.

Kohl, J. G., cited, 168, 295.

Kolosh Indians, massacre by, 307-310, 332; Baranof's encounter with, 330.

Konovalof, bandit, 327-328.

Korelin, companion of Drusenin, 90-91, 92, 94.

Korovin, Ivan, 88, 96; experiences of, at Oonalaska, 97-105.

Koshigin Bay, 319.

Kotches, Russian boats, 295-296, 297.

Kotzebue, dramatist, takes Benyowsky for a subject, 127.

Kotzebue, Otto von, works by, 295.

Kowrowa, Sandwich Islands, 197, 203.

Kracheninnikof, cited, 295.

Krusenstern, Lieutenant, 295, 311.

Kyacks, Eskimo boats, 68.

Kyak Island, Bering's landfall, 26-27, 47 n.; Cook at, 189; Baranof at, 329-330.



L

Lady Washington, the, Gray sails on, to Pacific coast, 213-219; Captain Kendrick in command of, 228; last mention of, 238.

Langsdorff, cited, 295.

La Salle, vii, 60.

Lauridsen, Peter, authority on Bering, 12 n., 61 n.

La Verendrye, vii, 7, 19, 60, 177.

Ledyard, Dr., 243 n.

Ledyard, John, corporal of marines with Cook, 181-182, 195-196, 200, 203, 205, 247-252; authority for Cook's voyage, 209 n.; early career of, 242-244; authorities for life of, 243 n., 262 n.; student at Dartmouth College, 245; works his way to England, 245-246; experiences of, in London, 246-247; on return of Cook expedition sent to fight against United States, 252; returns to Groton and deserts from British navy, 252-253; borrows money, goes to Paris, and meets Paul Jones and Thomas Jefferson, 254-255; in England, 256; walks fourteen hundred miles from Stockholm around Baltic Sea to St. Petersburg, 257-258; accompanies Dr. Brown three thousand miles into Siberia, 258-259; joins Joseph Billings' expedition and reaches Lena River, 260; arrested as a French spy, carried back to St. Petersburg, and expelled from the country, 260-261; reaches London and is sent to discover source of Nile, 261-262; dies at Cairo, 262.

Lewis and Clark expedition, 60-61; John Ledyard's influence on, 242, 255, 262.

Lincoln, General, of Boston, 229.

Lisiansky, Captain, 295, 311, 313.

Lok, Michael, 275 n.

Lopez, Marcus, 216, 220; murder of, by Indians, 221.

Lynn Canal, Vancouver's survey of, 288.



M

Macao, Benyowsky in, 127, 128.

Macfie, Vancouver Island by, 295 n.

Mackenzie, Alexander, 219.

Madagascar, Benyowsky's adventures and death in, 127.

Magellan, explorer, 134-135.

Magellan, Hyacinth de, 128 n.

Makushin Volcano, 86, 96-97, 105 n.

Maquinna, Indian chief, 276, 277-278.

Marquette, Pere, vii, 7.

Martin, Hudson's Bay Territories by, 295 n.

Martinez, Don Joseph, 227.

Marygold, Drake's vessel, 147, 148; loss of, 151-152.

Massacre, of Russians at Oonalaska and Oomnak, 100-105; the Sitka, 307-310, 332.

Mayne, cited, 290 n.

Meares, English sea-captain, 223-226, 227, 235, 254, 264, 267, 272, 273, 322.

Meares' Voyages, cited, 290 n.

Medals, the Drake, 168; of Gray expedition, 215, 241.

Medvedeff, Denis, 88, 96, 97-98; murder of, 104.

Medvednikoff, commander at Sitka, 308.

Menzies, 235, 266, 269, 271.

Mercury, Cook on the, 180.

Michael, Kolosh chief, 308, 310.

Middleton, Captain, 174.

Morai, the, Hawaiian burying-place, 198, 201, 202.

Morris, Robert, and Ledyard, 254.

Motley, John Lothrop, cited, 4 n.

Mottley, John, cited, 4 n.

Mount Baker, 270.

Mount Edgecumbe, 46-47, 189, 331.

Mount Hood, 280.

Mount Olympus, 235.

Mount St. Elias, 26, 189.

Mueller, S., scientist, 12 n., 14 n.; cited, 32, 61, 295.

Murderers' Harbor, 222.



N

Naplavkof, conspirator, 334-335.

New Albion, Drake's, 164, 173, 182, 183, 184; Gray expedition off, 218; Vancouver's expedition sights, 267; Vancouver takes possession of, 271.

New Archangel, modern Sitka, 314, 333.

New Zealand, explored by Cook, 181.

Nicholson, William, edits Benyowsky's memoirs, 128 n.

Nilow, governor of Kamchatka, 116-120.

Nombre de Dios, storehouse of New Spain, 140; Drake's raid, 141-142.

Nootka, Cook's vessels at, 186-189, 248; Gray at, 223-227, 232, 238; Vancouver's conference with Spanish at, 276-279.

Nootka Indians, Cook visits, 185-189.

Nordenskjoeld, explorer, 209 n., 295 n.

Norfolk Sound. See Sitka Sound.

Northeast Passage, the, 158-159, 172; Drake's conclusions regarding, 161; Parliament offers reward for discovery of, 174; English agitation over, 174-175, 181; Cook's efforts to discover, 182-196; Captain Clerke decides there is no, 209; Vancouver's attitude on question of, 265-266; Vancouver proves the non-existence of, 275, 286-290; the Fuca legend concerning, 275 n.

Northwest-America, launching of, 223; seized by Spanish, 228.

Norton, Moses, 175.

Norton Sound, Cook explores, 195.

Nuchek Island, Baranof at, 322-324.

Nutting, Gray's astronomer, 214.



O

Ochotyn, Saxon exile, 123-124.

Ofzyn, Bering's lieutenant, 36, 38, 40.

Okhotsk, Bering's expedition at, 16.

Olympus, Mount, 235.

Olympus Range, 222-223, 268.

Oomnak Island, 84-85; sulphur at, 92; sea-otter on, 98; Korovin's adventures at, 102-103; Medvedeff and crew massacred at, 104.

Oonalaska, otter-hunting headquarters, 69, 79, 82, 98; sulphur at, 92, 103; Korovin's experiences at, 98-101; Cook at, 195-196; Ledyard's visit to, with Cook, 250-253.

Oregon and California, Greenhow's, 241.

Oregon and Eldorado, Bulfinch's, 241.

Oxenham, with Drake, 142.



P

Pacha, Drake's vessel, 141.

Pacific Company, 212. See Astor.

Pallas, Northern Settlements by, 295 n.

Palliser, Sir Hugh, 179.

Pareea, Hawaiian chief, 198, 203.

Pelican, Drake's vessel, 147, 148; renamed Golden Hind, 150.

Perpheela, Ledyard's guide, 249.

"Peso," defined, 154 n.

Peter the Great, 4-10; analogy between Cook and, 176.

Petroff, Ivan, cited, 105 n., 295.

Philippine Islands, Benyowsky's visit to, 126; Drake passes by, 165.

Phillips, marine with Cook, 204-205.

Phoenix, Baranof builds, 326.

Pickersgill, explorer, 175.

Pilcher, sailor with Drake, 152 n.

Pintard, John Marden, 211, 229.

Pissarjeff, Major-General, 16.

Pizarro, Francisco, 134.

Pleneser, artist, 41.

Point Breakers, 185.

Point Possession, 271.

Point Turn-Again, 192.

Porter, Rev. E. G., lecture by, 241.

Portland Canal, 228; Gray sails up, 230; Vancouver's exploration of, 286.

Portlock, J. E., 78, 209 n., 254, 290 n.

Port St. Julian, Doughty executed at, 147-149.

Prince of Wales, Cape, 193, 208.

Prince of Wales Island, 228.

Prince William Sound, sea-otter in, 66; named by Cook, 191; Russian settlements on, 287, 306, 322-329.

Prybiloff Islands, otter and seal found on, 79.

Puget, Peter, 235, 266, 269, 271, 273, 277, 282.

Puget Sound, explored, 270-271, 273.

Purchas' Pilgrims, cited, 152, 167, 275.

Pushkareff, Sergeant, 84-88.



Q

Quadra, Don, 238, 240, 273, 322; Vancouver's conference with, 277-279.

Quebec, Cook with Wolfe at, 180.

Queen Charlotte Island, discovered, 227; Captain Kendrick at, 230-232.



R

Radisson, vii, 7, 239.

Resolution, Cook's ship, 181-209.

Reward offered by Parliament for discovery of Northeast Passage, 174.

Rezanoff, Nikolai, 306, 311, 314-315.

Robert Anne, Benyowsky's vessel, 127.

Roberts, Gray's surgeon, 214, 216.

Ross, Russian California colony, 315.

Russian American Fur Company, 67, 128 n.; chartered, 306; early vicissitudes of, 307-314; at New Archangel (Sitka), 314; in California, 315. See Baranof.

Ryumin, Ivan, Russian account of Benyowsky by, 129.



S

Saanach coast, sea-otter on, 69.

St. Lawrence Island, 11, 12.

St. Paul, Bering's vessel, 17; Chirikoff in command of, 20, 22, 24 ff., 60; voyage of, 45-53.

St. Peter, Bering's vessel, 17, 20, 23 ff.; wreck of, 44-45.

St. Peter, the second, 58-59.

St. Peter and Paul, the, 113, 117; Benyowsky's cruise in, 122-126.

Sands, Mr., of New York, 254.

Sandwich Islands, Cook's visit to and death at, 196-205; Gray stops at, 228-229; conduct of fur traders who visited, 283-284; Vancouver's actions at, 284-285.

San Francisco, Vancouver at, 281-282.

Sauer, cited, 27, 260, 295.

Savelief, Sidor, 48.

Sea cows, 41, 53.

Seals, 42, 56-57, 67.

Sea-otter, 42, 53, 56; habitat of, on Aleutian Islands, 63, 66-67, 82-83; Bering's men reap a fortune from, 63-64, 79; influence of, on exploration of North Pacific, 65; description of, 65-66; methods of hunting the, 67-78; prices commanded for fur of, 76; figures of numbers killed, 79; the early hunters of, 80-105; Cook's trade in, 187; Gray's bargain, 228.

Selkirk, Lord, 303.

Serdze Kamen, 12 n., 195.

Seymour, Henry, 243.

Shelikoff, Gregory Ivanovich, 303-306, 315.

Shelikoff, Natalie, 304.

Shevyrin, with Drusenin, 92-97.

Shields, English shipbuilder with Baranof, 325-326, 328.

Shumagin Islands, 30, 192.

Silva, Nuno, Drake's pilot, 159, 167 n.

Silver Map of the World, 168.

Simpson, Voyage Round World by, 295 n.

Sitka, Indians massacre Russians at, 50 n., 307-310, 332; as capital of Russian America, called Archangel Michael, 306; Russian American Fur Company founds New Archangel on site of, 314, 333; Baranof's career at, 330-336.

Sitka Sound, Chirikoff in, 46-52; sea-otter in, 66, 79; Vancouver ends his explorations at, 289.

Snug Cove, 186, 276.

Society Islands, Cook's first visit to, 180-181; second visit, 182.

Solovieff, Cossack hunter, 105.

South Seas, Cook's voyage to, 180-181.

Spanberg, Martin, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 21.

Sparks, Jared, Life of Ledyard by, 243 n., 262 n.

Staduchin, explorer, 296.

Stejneger, Dr. Leo, x, 41 n., 72 n., 295 n.

Steller, George William, 14 n., 20, 23, 25, 26-27, 30, 33, 38-40, 41, 42, 53-55, 60.

Steller's Arch, 39.

Stephanow, Hippolite, 108, 110, 125, 127.

Straits of Fuca, Cook's conclusion as to non-existence of, 185, 222, 264; Gray sails near, 223; Gray explores, 227, 235, 269; Vancouver's arrival at and exploration of, 268-270, 273-275.

Straits of Magellan, 135; Drake's passage of, 150.

Sulphur at Oonalaska, 92, 103.

Sunday Harbor, 325.

Swan, Drake's vessel, 140, 141, 147.



T

Taboo, the, 198.

Tarapaca, Drake calls at, 154-155.

Terreeoboo, King, 197-206.

Texeira, map-maker, 6 n.

Three Saints, Kadiak, Baranof's arrival at, 321-322.

Tillamook Bay, Lady Washington in, 219-222.

Toledo, Don Francisco de, 155-156.

Treat, fur trader in Gray's expedition, 214.

Tribute collectors, Cossack, 5, 107, 114, 294-296, 299.



U

Ukamok (Foggy Island), 29.



V

Valdes, Don, 272-273.

Valparaiso, Drake's raid on, 153-154.

Vancouver, George, vii, 105, 161; midshipman with Cook, 181, 198; authority on Cook's voyage, 209 n.; meeting with Gray, 235, 268-270; Gray contrasted with, 239-240; as captain in British navy, sent to explore Pacific coast of America, 265; ideas on Northeast Passage question, 265-266; sights Drake's "New Albion," 267; misses Columbia River, 267-268, 235; explores Puget Sound, 270-272; misses Fraser River, 272; explores Straits of Fuca, 272-275; arrives at Nootka, 276; confers with Spanish representative, 277-279; sails to Columbia River, 279-280; visits California, 281-282; winters at Sandwich Islands (1792-1793), 283-285; acts of injustice and justice at, 284-285; returns to American coast and surveys Portland Canal, 286-287; in 1794 surveys Cook's Inlet, 287-289; work of, results in explosion of theory of Northeast Passage, 289-290; authorities for, 290 n.

Vancouver Island, 228, 278.

Vega, the, 209 n., 295 n.

Veniaminof, Letters on Aleutians by, 295 n.

Venta Cruz, Drake at, 141-145.

Vera Cruz, Hawkins and Drake vs. the Spanish at, 135-138.

Verendrye. See La Verendrye.

Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, Cook's, 209 n.



W

Walrus, the Pacific, 73; Cook's men hunt, 194-195.

Waters, Abraham, 230.

Waxel, Lieutenant, 20, 24-25, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35-36, 37-38, 41, 42, 57-58, 60.

Williams, Orlando, cited, 4 n.

Woodruff, mate in Gray's expedition, 214, 216.

World Encompassed, The, by Francis Fletcher, 167 n.-171 n.



Y

Yakutat Bay, sea-otter in, 66, 79.

Yakutsk, Bering's second expedition winters at, 15; fur traders' rendezvous near, 107, 259; Ledyard's arrival at, 259.

Yelagin, Chirikoff's pilot, 52.

Yendell, Samuel, 230.

Yermac, Cossack robber, 294.

Yukon, Russian traders on the, 314, 315.



Z

Zarate, Don Francisco de, quoted regarding Drake, 150 n.

THE END