n their wonderful skin boats called bidarkas, to hunt.
When a sea-otter lifted its head from the water to breathe, within sight
of a detachment of Aleut hunters, its fate was sealed, for it seldom
escaped.

The passages between the islands about Sitka were called the "Straits"
by the Russians, and in them the sea-otter skins were taken by the
thousands. It was not unusual for a Russian hunting party consisting of
a hundred bidarkas to take on one expedition 2,000 skins of the
_Morski bobrov_, as they called the sea-otter.

The animals were becoming scarce in the seas about the western islands
and Baranof was compelled to replenish his trade by the catch of the
southeastern waters. In 1795 he sent one of his ships as far south as
the Queen Charlotte Islands and it visited Sitka on the way. Two
thousand skins were secured by the hunters while on this voyage. In the
same year Baranof himself paid Sitka a visit, coming through the strait
from the north in his little schooner "Olga," a 40-foot boat, and he
named the passage for his craft as Olga Strait. On the shore near his
anchorage he erected a cross; the bay he named Krestof Bay, and he then
selected the locality of his future settlement.

In the spring of 1799, Baranof sent orders to the toyons, or chiefs, of
the tribes on the islands around Kodiak to assemble the hunters. Five
hundred and fifty bidarkas, each manned by from two to three Aleut
paddlers, came in answer to his call, and with two convoying ships he
set sail for Sitka Sound. On July 7th he landed at a bay six miles north
of the present town of Sitka, purchased a tract of land from
Skayeutlelt, a local chief, and began the construction of a post which
he named redoubt St. Michael. The building was done under great
difficulties. Rain fell incessantly. There were but thirty Russian
workmen as most of the Aleuts returned to Kodiak, hunting as they went.
Of the men who remained ten had to stand guard constantly, for the
Thlingits were not to be trusted. Barracks, storehouses, quarters for
the commanding officer, were constructed; a bath house also, for the
Russian must have his bath, and the whole was surrounded by a stockade
and strengthened by blockhouses. Their troubles were not all with the
elements, for during the winter the scarcity of provision and other
causes brought scurvy to add to their discomfort. Their food was mostly
yuhali (dried salmon), but during the winter the hunters took 40
sea-lions, an