For some trinkets of glass beads and iron, Ledyard obtained one
thousand five hundred skins for Cook. Among the Indians, too, he saw
brass trinkets, that must have come all the way from New Spain on the
south, or from the Hudson's Bay Fur Company on the east. What were the
merchants of New York and Philadelphia doing, that their ships were not
here reaping a harvest of wealth in furs? If this were the outermost
bound of Louisiana, Louisiana might some day be a part of the colonies
now struggling for their liberties; and Ledyard's imagination took one
of those leaps that win a man the reputation of a fool among his
contemporaries, a hero to future generations. "If it was necessary
that a European should discover the existence of the continent," he
afterward wrote, "in the name of Amor Patriae let a native explore its
resources and boundaries. . . It is my wish to be the man."
Cook's ships passed north to Oonalaska. Only {249} twenty-five years
before, the Indians of Oonalaska had massacred every white settlement
on the island. Cook wished to send a message to the Russian fur
traders.
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