FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION. 29 



and thus acquaint her captain, Barber, of the outrage ; he contrived 

 to entice two of the leading Sitkan chiefs on board of his ship, 

 plied them with drink, and soon had them securely ironed, and 

 then, having quite a battery of guns, he was able to make his own 

 terms for their release; this was done after the surrender of eighteen 

 women (captured outside of the stockade) and 2,000 sea-otter skins 

 was made to Barber, who at once sailed for Kadiak. Here the 

 British seaman demanded from Baranov the salvage of 50,000 

 rubles for rescuing his men and women and property ; with this 

 demand the Kussian could not or would not comply ; but, after 

 many days in amicable argument, Captain Barber received and 

 accepted 10,000 rubles in full settlement. 



While the lurid light of the burning wreck of this first Sitkan post 

 was flashing over the sound, and the Koloshes were howling and 

 dancing around it in their fiendish exultation, nearly two hundred 

 Aleutian hunters were surprised and slaughtered at various points in 

 the vicinity, and a party of over one hundred of these simple natives 

 perished almost to a man, on the same day, from eating poisonous 

 mussels which they detached from the rocks in the strait that sep- 

 arates Baranov Island from Chichagov; that canal still bears the 

 name commemorative of this dreadful accident it is called "Po- 

 geebshie "* or " Destruction " Strait 



The enraged Russian manager was unable, by reason of a compli- 

 cated flood of troubles with his subordinates elsewhere, to revisit 

 Sitka until the spring of 1804 ; he then came down from Kadiak in 

 a squadron consisting of three small sloops, in all considerably less 

 than 100 tons burden ; these craft he had built and fitted out in 

 Prince William Sound and Yakootat Bay during the preceding 

 winter. He had with him forty Russians and three hundred Aleu- 

 tian sea-otter hunters. With this small force the indomitable man 

 resolved to attack and subjugate a body of not less than five or six 

 thousand fierce, untamed savages, who were flushed with their cruel 

 successes, and eager to shed more blood. He was unexpectedly 

 strengthened by the sudden appearance in the bay of the Neva, 

 400 tons, which had sailed from London to Kadiak, and arrived 

 just after Baranov's departure, but Captain Lissiansky, learning 

 of the object of his trip, determined to assist in rebuilding the 



* Not " Peril," as it is translated by American geographers and printed on 

 all of our Alaskan maps. 



