agricultural settlement. Now he fixed his eye on the Columbia River. Sitting there in the dreary castle he was writing to the czar, little dreaming that in a hundred years his very inmost thought would be read in America.
Starvation at Sitka was imminent,—it was impossible to delay longer. Into the stormy sea Rezanof himself set the Juno's sail on his way to the Columbia.
While Lewis and Clark were writing out the muster roll to nail to the wall at Fort Clatsop for any passing ship, Rezanof was striving to cross the Columbia bar. None could see beyond the mists. Contrary winds blew, it rained, it hailed.
Rezanof sighted the Columbia March 14, 1806, but the current drove him back. Again on the 20th he tried to enter, and on the 21st, but the stormy river, like a thing of life, beat him back and beat him back, until the Russian gave it up, and four days later ran into the harbour of San Francisco.
In June he returned with wheat, oats, pease, beans, flour, tallow, and salt to the famished traders at Sitka.
But notwithstanding all these troubles, in 1805-6 Baranof dispatched to St. Petersburg furs valued at more than five hundred thousand roubles.
More and more the Boston traders came back to Alaskan waters. Baranof often found it easier to buy supplies from Boston than from Okhotsk.
"Furnish me with Aleutian hunters and bidarkas and I will hunt on shares for you," proposed a Boston Captain.
"Agreed," said Baranof, and for years fleets of bidarkas under Boston Captains hunted and trapped and traded for sea otter southward along Pacific shores.
"These Boston smugglers and robbers!" muttered the Spaniards of California. "Where do they hide themselves all winter? We know they are on our shores but never a glimpse can we get of their fleet." Meanwhile the Boston traders on the coasts of California raked in the skins and furs, and sailing around by Hawaii reached Sitka in time for Spring sealing in t
