e California coast. At the stern was a place prepared for the
trading. Forward on the deck were planted cannon, shotted with shrapnel,
trained so as to rake the afterdeck, and beside each was a gunner's
match.

On the first day, for two hundred yards of broadcloth, he purchased a
hundred prime sea-otter skins, worth $50 each in Canton. Barter was
going merrily on, when a scream from amidships startled the crew. The
Thlingits sprang to their boats. The squaws backed the canoes away from
the ship's sides. Arrows were fitted to bowstrings, spears were poised
and muskets primed. On the ships the sailors lighted the cannon matches
and stood by ready to fire. A fight was hovering in the air when the
cause of the disturbance was discovered. An inquisitive Thlingit pried
between the bull hides opposite the cook's galley, and the cook had
saluted him with a ladle of hot water. In his surprise he upset his
canoe and his family were struggling in the sea. His baby was rescued by
a seaman, amends were made to his injured feelings, and the barter
proceeded as before.

The waters were filled with ships. In a stay of a month the "Caroline"
spoke the ship "Hancock," the ship "Despatch," the ship "Ulysses," and
the ship "Eliza," all of Boston; and the English ship "Cheerful," all
trading for furs among the Sitkan Islands.

The Russians, in their colony on Kodiak Island, were jealous of the
intruders on what they considered as their domain. Gregory Shelikof, a
Siberian merchant, one of the wealthiest and most far seeing of the
leaders among the Aleutian Islands, conceived the plan of combining the
whole of the fur trade in one great monopoly. In pursuance of this
policy he secured a charter from Emperor Paul in 1799, under the name of
the Russian American Company, which gave the exclusive right to all
profits to be derived from every form of resource in the Russian
possessions in America for a period of twenty years. To the management
of his business in the Colony he established on Kodiak Island he
appointed Alexander Andreevich Baranof, a Siberian trader of great
ability and experience. Baranof, the wise and far-seeing Russian ruler
of the Russian American Company, at his factory in St. Paul's Harbor on
Kodiak Island, had long planned the extension of his settlements to the
southeast. The sea-otter catch of the Russians was made by brigades of
Aleuts from the western islands, who went along the shores and to sea as
far as 20 miles, i