THE GREAT ISLAND OF KADiAK. 101 



hausted every art of pacification that his ready wit could suggest 

 without making the slightest favorable impression upon these men, 

 who treasured up in the liveliest recollection those outrages and in- 

 dignities which they had hitherto suffered from the arms and vices 

 of Shellikov's Muscovitic predecessors. The only answer that they 

 made to the trader now was that he at once embark and leave the 

 island, and a few arrows and bird-spears were discharged and 

 thrown at him by way of clinching the argument. The Russians 

 retired to their camp, and wisely erected over day a rude stockade 

 none too quick, for these Kaniags approached the harbor in the 

 middle of the night, unobserved, and threw themselves with fren- 

 zied fury upon the slightly fortified Russians. The battle lasted 

 until daylight. The necessity and instincf of self-preservation 

 caused the whites to fight with desperate coolness and intrepidity. 

 The slaughter was great among the natives, and, considering the 

 vastly inferior numbers of the Russians, their loss, too, was heavy. 

 In spite of the bravery of the whites in this terrible midnight strug- 

 gle, they would have been overpowered and exterminated ere the 

 dawning, had it not been for the consternation which the reports 

 of their small iron two-pounders created in the assailing ranks of 

 those dusky hosts. 



Recognizing the fact that now the only hope of peace and com- 

 mercial intercourse with these natives lay in their complete subju- 

 gation, Shellikov, immediately after the sullen retreat of the hostiles, 

 armed one of his vessels and followed them up to their rocky for- 

 tresses in Oogak, where they had taken up a position that was well- 

 nigh impregnable, and to which savage reinforcements were rapidly 

 flocking from the main islands. Unable to reach the entrenched 

 camp of those defiant natives with the small ship's-cannon, Shel- 

 likov picked a party of sixty men out of his company, went ashore 

 with them, and, with his little iron two-pounders, he stormed the 

 enemy with such impetuosity that the rapid discharges of these guns 

 and small fire-arms of the charging Russians utterly demoralized 

 an immensely superior force of the savages, who became panic- 

 stricken, and actually jumped by scores off the high bluffs of 

 Oogak into the sea, hundreds of feet below ; the rest of them, 

 more than a thousand souls, surrendered to the Russians, who took 

 and located them on a rocky islet, several miles from the harbor of 

 Three Saints, and temporarily provided them with provisions ; and 

 then, with hunting-gear, they were set to work and liberally paid for 



