If Russia were to preserve her hunting-grounds, no time
should be lost.
Baranof met the difficulties like a commander of guerilla warfare.
Brigades were sent eastward to the fishing-ground of Cook's Inlet for
supplies. Incipient mutiny was quelled by sending more hunters off
with Ismyloff to explore new sea-otter fields in Prince William Sound.
As for the foreign fur traders, he conceived the brilliant plan of
buying food from them in exchange for Russian furs and of supplying
them with brigades of Aleut Island hunters to scour the Pacific for
sea-otter from Nootka and the Columbia to southern California. This
would not only add to stores of Russian furs, but push Russian dominion
southward, and keep other nations off the field.
That it was not all plain sailing on a summer day may be inferred from
one incident. He had led out a brigade of several hundred canoes,
Indians and Russians, to Nuchek Island, off Prince William Sound.
Though he had tried to win the friendship of the coast Indians by
gifts, it was necessary to steal from point {323} to point at night,
and to hide at many places as he coasted the mainland.
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