Charles Ellms, The Tragedy of the Seas; or Sorrow on the Ocean, Lake, and River, from Shipwreck, Plague, Fire and Famine [Chapter] [1]. OUR ship was bound for the coast of New Albion. We followed the coast during several days, for the purpose of sketching it.
The natives came out in great numbers, and sometimes we were surrounded by more than one hundred of their boats, which, although small, generally held from three or four to ten people.
We never allowed more than three at a time to come on board โ a caution which seemed the more necessary, as they were all armed. Several of them had muskets; others had arrows pointed with stags' antlers, iron lances without handles, and bone forks fixed on long poles; moreover, they had a species of arms made of whale-ribs, of the shape of a Turkish sabre, two inches and a half long, a quarter of an inch thick, and blunt on both edges: this weapon, we understood, they used in their night attacks, so common among these savages, killing their foes while asleep.
They offered to us sea-otters, reindeer-skins, and fish, for sale, For a large fish we paid them a string of blue beads, a quarter of an arshin long, and from five to six wershok of glass beads; but for beaver-skins they would take nothing less valuable than broadcloth. A few days after this, we had a violent storm, which lasted for three days, the wind blowing from the south; at length, a sudden calm ensued, but the motion of the waves continued very high.
At daybreak, the fog, which had till then surrounded us, disappeared, and we saw the shore at the distance of about ten or twelve miles. The calm rendered the sails useless, and the high waves would not allow us to have recourse to the oars; the current, therefore, carried us rapidly towards the shore. We thought ourselves lost, when happily a north-westerly breeze sprang up, by the help of which we got out of our perilous situation.
