said, "but I think any woman who 
goes into that country is entitled to 
anything she can get away with." 
I told him confidentially that there 
was a woman on board who had a 
sealskin coat worth about four hun- 
dred dollars. She left it at Whitehorse 
with some friends and she surely 
would like to get it. 
"All right," he replied. "Keep this 
under your hat or I lose my job." 
I then introduced him to the lady. 
He took her name and address and 
said he would see that she got it. 
We arrived in Seattle a few days 
later. There we all separated and took 
our departure for our respective 
homes. I had been gone just four 
months. 
Said Service: "There's a land, oh, it 
beckons and beckons, and I want to 
go back-and I will." 
Next time it will not be a "scow 
ride" but a "sky ride" with the best 
pilot in the land! 
Children of the Sea 
(Continued from page 9) 
238,700 rubles. In 1779 the Promish- 
leniks reached the mouth of the 
Copper River, on the mainland. For 
fifteen hundred miles along the is- 
lands and the shores of the Alaska 
Peninsula the waters were nearly de- 
nuded of the fur. 
Gregory Ivanovich Shelekof was a 
merchant of Siberia who had been 
sending trading ships along the is- 
lands for years. He saw the declining 
state of the business, and the neces- 
sity to find new hunting waters. In 
1787 he fitted out three ships for the 
purpose of establishing a permanent 
trading post. 
Shelekof landed at a bay on Kodiak 
Island, built a post, a factory from 
which to work, and named both the 
rettlement and the bay after one of 
his ships, the Three Saints. Then he 
returned to Siberia to carry out his 
plans for a combination of all the 
companies in one big organization. He 
was the Rockefeller of the Russian 
Fur Trade and he wanted no opposi- 
tion. He left the Greek trader Delarof 
in charge of the factory. 
When Shelekof reached Siberia he 
sent a shrewd, experienced trader 
named Alexander Baranof to the Col- 
ony as manager. Then he proceeded 
with his plan of centralizing the fur 
trade on the whole of the Northwest 
Coast of America, even projecting 
posts as far south as California, which 
was then occupied by only a few 
priests at the missions. 
C APTAIN COOK on his third voyage 
round the world, in 1778 visited 
Prince William Sound on his way to 
the Arctic. His crew traded trinkets 
and iron for sea otter skins. One man, 
for a handful of iron nails, got a skin 
that he afterward sold in China for 
sixty dollars. Cook estimates the sale 
of the skins on board his ship when he 
reached Canton the next year at not 
less than two thousand pounds ster- 
ling. There was almost a mutiny be- 
cause of the desire of the sailors to 
July, 1938. 
 
return to the land where furs were so 
cheap and plentiful. 
When Cook reached England the 
news of the riches to be obtained ir 
trading for furs in America spread 
abroad. Companies were formed and 
ships outfitted to sail to the new 
lands. Meares with the Nootka and 
the Sea Otter and Captain Barclay or 
the Imperial Eagle were among the 
first in 1786. 
The Prince of Wales, the Iphigenia 
and a fleet of other "King George' 
ships, sailed up and down the channels 
of the coast. The Frenchman, LE 
Perouse, took a thousand skins on his 
exploring voyage at the time he en- 
tered Lituya Bay. The ships of the 
"Boston Men," Gray, Ingraham, Cleve- 
land and others were also searching 
for the fur of the sea otter. 
All this was irksome to the Rus- 
sians, especially to Baranof who was 
there to make the business pay for 
his company, and these "intruders' 
were depleting the supply of furs at 
a discouraging rate. He organized a 
corps of hunters, more than a thou- 
sand Aleuts. In their skin bidarkas 
they literally combed the seas. If 
those hunters got their eye on a sea 
otter its skin was almost inevitably 
gathered into the warehouses of the 
Company. 
Baranof moved his chief factory to 
Kodiak, to get closer to the best hunt- 
ing grounds. He went to Cook Inlet 
and to Prince William Sound to sur- 
vey the resources of those regions. 
The otter was declining even in those 
favored spots. Delarof, in his first 
year, took 3000 skins in Cook Inlet. 
Baranof got but 800 in his first year's 
hunt. Later the catch dropped to 100. 
BARANOF sent his brigade east- 
ward to Yakutat to sweep those 
waters, and the hunters took more 
than a thousand skins on the venture. 
The next season the brigade was sent 
as far as Sitka, and in 1797 took two 
thousand skins. In some of the bays 
and inlets the sea otter were so plen- 
tiful as to resemble a flock of birds 
on the surface of the water. On one 
ship he sent to Okhotsk 17,000 sea 
otter skins. 
The Kolosh, as the Russians called 
the Thlingets, saw their fur animals 
diminishing. They were not able to 
compete with the Aleuts, with their 
perfect organization and their effec- 
tive methods. They were enraged. 
They burned the post at Sitka and 
murdered the garrison. They destroy- 
ed a fleet of ninety bidarkas, with 
nearly all of the crews, in Chatham 
Strait. A detachment of 170 bidarkas, 
each carrying two Aleut hunters, was 
engulfed in the sea between Yakutat 
and Prince William Sound. The out- 
look for the industry was discourag- 
ing. 
Baranof redoubled his efforts. He 
collected his forces, recaptured Sitka 
and rebuilt the fort. He brought more 
ships with which to convoy and pro- 
tect his bidarka men from the sav- 
age Thlingets. Then he sought new 
hunting fields. 
O'Keen, a "Boston" skipper, came 
 
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