Were it not for the intense physical discomfort of the rapidly recurring fog, sleet, and rain-laden gales, Oonga would undoubtedly be a site well chosen for a neat New England fishing village. Many of those white men now employed up there in the cod-fishery declare that they would bring their wives and children into the country, to permanently settle, if they thought that they could be happy under the conditions of climate which prevail. But they argue that where they themselves cannot peacefully exist the year round, it would be idle to suppose that a civilized settlement could be well established. We will find, however, quite a number of genial, sociable fellows, men of our race, who are well educated, and who have had excellent opportunities, and who to-day are roaming here, there, and everywhere in Alaska, hunting, fishing, and trading, or prospecting. They appear to be entirely happy, not a bit cynical, and never express the slightest desire to return with us to the world which they have left behind them voluntarily. Alaska to them is a perfect Mecca of peace, and they have no desire to see it changed. They unite usually in saying that their wants are few, easily supplied, and they scarcely remember what care was—it does not trouble them now.
The cod-fishermen do not make their working headquarters in this village, but across, over the bay on Popov Islet, at a spot which is called Pirate Cove. They are not annoyed by idle villagers there, and are also somewhat nearer to the fishing-resorts which are just outside. They are most likely not far from that spot where Bering landed, August 30, 1741, to bury one of his seamen named Shoomagin, and to refill his water-casks. The exact locality, or even the precise islet of the many that form this Shoomagin group, on which the then sick and sadly demoralized explorer and his crew interred the remains of their dead comrade, will never be satisfactorily established; the cross of wood set up was immediately pulled down, after his departure, by the natives, who were then decidedly hostile, and who eyed him and his vessel with unaffected dislike and apprehension.[62] When the St. Peter, six days later, hauled off from those islands and turned her prow for Kamchatka, perhaps that gloomy, timid Dane commanding her may have had an astral premonition of the wreck of this vessel, which soon followed—and his own death too, in a self-made sand grave beneath the black shadows of the bluffs at “Kommandor”—this may have caused him to earn that reproach which has been so lavishly laid upon his conduct of a most remarkable and disastrous voyage.
The Shoomagins are all bold and bluffy, with high uplands and lofty ridges; on Oonga the most elevated summits are to be seen. Bare of timber, but covered with sphagnum and mosses and clumps of dwarfed crab-apples and willows, they stand as rock-ribbed break-waters against the full sweep of the mighty uninterrupted roll of a vast ocean. The surf that dashes foaming and booming upon their firm foundations is of unrivalled force, and fear-inspiring.
Oonga Island has also been the base of a very extended and thorough attempt to develop a large vein of coal which is found cropping out on the face of a bluff in a small inlet of its north shore. The oldest coal-mine in the region of Alaska is located in Cook’s Inlet near its mouth, at a spot still indicated on maps as Coal Harbor. Here the Russians, eager to be able to obtain fuel for the use of their steam-vessels, began, in 1852, a most active and systematic series of mining operations; they brought machinery and ran it by steam-power; experienced German miners were engaged to superintend and direct a large force of Muscovitic laborers sent up from Sitka. In 1857 the work had been so energetically pushed that shafts had been sunk, and a drift run into the vein for a distance of one thousand seven hundred feet; during this period, and three following years, two thousand seven hundred tons of coal were mined, the value of which was forty-six thousand rubles, but the result was a net loss. The thickness of the vein was found to vary from nine to twelve feet, and its extent was practically unlimited. But the Russians found out then, as our people at Oonga did afterward, that this Alaskan lignite was utterly unfit for use in the furnaces of the steamers—that it was so highly charged with sulphur as to burn like a flash and eat out, fuse and warp the grate-bars—even melting down the smoke-stacks! Steam-vessels now bring their own coal with them from San Francisco, Puget Sound or Nanaimo, or have it sent up from there by sailing-tenders to depots previously designated.[63]
As we leave the sheltering bluffs of Oonga, our course seems to be laid directly south; so much so, that for once we express our surprise to the skipper, who, feeling sure that he understands our dread of losing time in reaching Oonalashka, spreads out his chart and calls us to the table. A moment’s inspection shows the wisdom of the roundabout course, for a forest of rough, rocky islets studs the ocean directly to the west and many to the south. To sail through the intricate passages of the Chernaboors and the reefs of Saanak would be to invite certain destruction. Therefore, as we make a long detour to clear the path of our progress from all danger, we will give the reader some interesting facts relative to the chase of the sea-otter, which is the sole object of those natives who hunt in this district.
FOOTNOTES:
[47] With the exception of Prince of Wales Island in the Sitkan archipelago, Kadiak is the largest Alaskan island. There is not much difference between these two islands in landed area; the former, however, is the bigger.
[48] These “galiots” where characteristically named by Shellikov’s spiritual advisers, viz.: The Three Saints; The Archangel Michael and Simeon, the Friend of God; and Anna the Prophetess. Bad weather and poor navigation caused the vessels to separate, so that Shellikov was compelled to winter on Bering Island; but during the following year the little fleet was reorganized, and it reached Oonalashka, where repairs again were necessary.
[49] Shellikov says that this man returned the following day and refused to leave the Russian camp; that he not only accompanied and served him in all his voyages thereafter, but often warned the party of hostile ambuscades and hidden dangers by land and sea.
[50] Cleanliness and comfort, however, were but little regarded by the Russian fur-traders, who gave their surroundings of residence no sanitary attention whatever. Even Baranov himself was supremely indifferent, and when the Imperial Commissioner, Resanov, called on him at Sitka in 1805, the chief manager of the Russian American Company was living in a mere hut, “in which the bed was often afloat,” and a leak in the roof too small a matter to notice!