a human hand spread out, with the fingers northeast,
the arm end down seventy miles long toward Oomnak Island. The entire
broken coast probably reaches a circuit of over two hundred miles.
Down the centre and out each spur are high volcanic mountains, two of
them smoking volcanoes, all pitted with caves and hot springs whose
course can be traced in winter by the runnels of steam {85} down the
mountain side. On the south side, reefs line all approach. North,
east, and west are countless abrupt inlets opening directly into the
heart of the mountains down whose black cliffs shatter plumes of spray
and cataract. Not a tree grows on the island. From base to summit the
hills are a velvet sward, willow shrubs the size of one's finger, grass
waist high, and such a wealth of flowers--poppy fields, anemones,
snowdrops, rhododendrons--that one might be in a southern climate
instead of close proximity to frozen zones. Fogs wreathe the island
three-quarters of the time; and though snow lies five feet deep in
winter, and such blizzards riot in from the north as would tear trees
up by the roots, and drive all human beings to their underground
dwellings, it is never cold, never below zero, and the harbors are
always open. Whaling, fishing, fur hunting--those were the occupations
of the islanders then, as now.

Here, then, came Pushkareff in 1762 after two years' cruising about the
Aleutian Islands. The natives are friendly, thinking to obtain iron,
and knives, and firearms like the other islanders who have traded with
the Russians. Children are given as hostages of good conduct for the
Oonalaskan men, who lead the Russians off to the hunt, coasting from
point to point. Pushkareff, the Cossack, himself goes off with twenty
men to explore; but somehow things go wrong at the native villages on
this trip. The hostages find they are not guests, but slaves. Anyway,
Betshevin's {86} agent is set upon and murdered. Two more Russians are
speared to death under Pushkareff's eyes, two wounded, and the Cossack
himself, with his fourteen men, forced to beat a hasty retreat back to
ships and huts on the coast. Here, strange enough, things have gone
wrong, too! More women and children objecting to their masters'
pleasure--slavery, the knout, the branding iron, death by starvation
and abuse. Two Russians have been slain bathing in the hot springs
near Makushin Volcano, four murdered at the huts, four wounded; and the
barrack is burned