ery hour in proof that he was
not asleep. Westward toward the Aleutians, where driftwood was scarce,
the Russians built their forts in one of two places: either a sandy
spit where the sea protected them on three sides, as at Captain Harbor,
Oonalaska, and St. Paul, Kadiak, or on a high, rocky eminence only
approachable by a zigzag path at the top of which stood cannon and
sentry, as at Cook's Inlet. Chapel and barracks for the hunters might
be outside the palisade; but the main house was inside, a single story
with thatch roof, a door at one end, a rough table at the other.
Sleeping berths with fur bedding were on the side walls, and every
other available piece of wall space bristled with daggers and firearms
ready {301} for use. If the house was a double-decker, as Baranof
Castle at Sitka, powder was stored in the cellar. Counting-rooms, mess
room, and fur stores occupied the first floor. Sleeping quarters were
upstairs, and, above all, a powerful light hung in the cupola, to guide
ships into port at night.

But these arrangements concerned only the Cossack officers of the early
era, or the governors like Baranof, of a later day. The rank and file
of the crews were off on the hunting-grounds with the Indians; and the
hunting-grounds of the sea-otter were the storm-beaten kelp beds of the
rockiest coast in the world. Going out in parties of five or six, the
_promyshleniki_, as the hunters were called, promised implicit
obedience to their foreman. Store of venison would be taken in a
preliminary hunt. Indian women and children would be left at the
Russian fort as hostages of good conduct, and at the head of as many as
four, five hundred, a thousand Aleut Indian hunters who had been
bludgeoned, impressed, bribed by the promise of firearms to hunt for
the Cossacks, six Russians would set out to coast a tempestuous sea for
a thousand miles in frail boats made of parchment stretched on
whalebone. Sometimes a counter-tide would sweep a whole flotilla out
to sea, when never a man of the hunting crew would be heard of more.
Sometimes, when the hunters were daring a gale, riding in on the back
of a storm to catch the sea-otter driven ashore to the kelp beds for a
rest, the back-wash of a billow, or a sudden {302} hurricane of wind
raising mountain seas, would crash down on the brigade. When the spray
cleared, the few panic-stricken survivors were washing ashore too
exhausted to be conscious that half their comrades ha