st; 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 an