WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS. 231 



called " Starry Arteel," or " Old Settlement"; a village was also lo- 

 cated at Zapadnie, and a succession of barraboras planted at Garden 

 Cove. Then, during the following season, more men were brought 

 up from Atkha and taken over to St. Paul, where five or six rival 

 traders posted themselves on the north shore, near and at " Ma- 

 roonitch," and at the head of the Big Lake, among the sand-dunes 

 there. They were then, as they are now, somewhat given to riotous 

 living if they only had the chance, and the ruins of the Big Lake 

 settlement are pleasantly remembered by the descendants of those 

 pioneers to-day, on St. Paul, who take off their hats as they pass 

 by to affectionately salute, and call the place " Vesolia Mista," or 

 " Jolly Spot " the aged men telling me, in a low whisper, that " in 

 those good old days they had plenty of rum." But, when the pres- 

 sure of competition became great, another village was located at 

 Polavina, and still another at Zapadnie, until the activity and un- 

 scrupulous energy of all these rival settlements well-nigh drove out 

 and eliminated the seals in 1796. Three years later the whole ter- 

 ritory of Alaska passed into the hands of the absolute power vested 

 in the Russian American Company. These islands were in the bill 

 of sale, and early in 1799 the competing traders were turned oft 

 neck and heels from them, and the Pribylov group passed under 

 the control of a single man, the iron-willed Baranov. The people 

 on St. Paul were then all drawn together, for economy and warmth, 

 into a single settlement at Polavina. Their life in those days must 

 have been miserable. They were mere slaves, without the slightest 

 redress from any insolence or injury which their masters might see 

 fit, in petulance or brutal orgies, to inflict upon them. Here they 

 lived and died, unnoticed and uncared for, in large barracoons half 

 under ground and dirt-roofed, cold and filthy. Along toward the 

 beginning or end of 1825, in order that they might reap the advan- 

 tage of being located best to load and unload ships, the Polavina 

 settlement was removed to the present village site, as indicated on 

 the map, and the natives have lived there ever since. 



On St. George the several scattered villages were abandoned, 

 and consolidated at the existing location some years later, but for 

 a different reason. The labor of bringing the seal-skins over to 

 Garden Cove, which is the best and surest landing, was so great, 

 and that of carrying them from the north shore to Zapadnie still 

 greater, that it was decided to place the consolidated settlement at 

 such a point between them, on the north shore, that the least trou- 



