These are the same people who for more than a century have been a terror on this coast. It was Koloschians who received the two boats’ crews of the Russian discoverer in 1741, as they landed in one of its wooded coves, and no survivor returned to tell their fate. They were actors in another tragedy at the beginning of the century, when the Russian fort at Sitka was stormed and its defenders put to death, some with excruciating torture. Lisiansky, whose visit was shortly afterward, found them “a shrewd and bold, though a perfidious people,” whose chiefs used “very sublime expressions,” and swore oaths, like that of Demosthenes, “by their ancestors, by relatives living and dead, and called heaven, earth, the sun, moon, and stars to witness for them, particularly when they meant to deceive.”[80] According to D’Wolf, “both sexes are expert in the use of fire-arms,” and he saw them bathing in the sea with the thermometer below freezing, running over the ice, and “performing all manner of antics with the same apparent enjoyment as if it had been a warm spring.”[81] The fort has been repeatedly threatened by these warriors, who multiply by reinforcements from the interior, so that the governor in 1837 reported, that, “although seven hundred only were now in the neighborhood, seven thousand might arrive in a few hours.”[82] A little later their character was recognized by Sir George Simpson, when he pronounced them “numerous, treacherous, and fierce,” in contrast with Aleutians, whom he describes as “peaceful even to cowardice.”[83] And yet this fighting race is not entirely indocile, if we may credit recent report, that its warriors are changing to traders. * * * * * 3. _Climate._--From Population I pass to Climate, which is more important, as it is a constant force. Climate is the key to this whole region. It is the governing power which rules production and life, for Nature and man must each conform to its laws. Here at last the observations of science give to inquiry a solid support. Montesquieu has some famous chapters on the influence of climate over customs and institutions.[84] Conclusions regarded in his day as visionary or far-fetched are now unquestioned truth. Climate is a universal master. But nowhere, perhaps, does it appear more eccentric than in the southern portion of Russian America. Without a knowledge of climatic laws, the weather here would seem like a freak of Nature. But a brief explanation shows how all its peculiarities are the result of natural causes which operate with a force as unerring as gravitation. Heat and cold, rain and fog, to say nothing of snow and ice, which play such a part, are not abnormal, but according to law.