Nature has drawn across Kadiak in a firm line, the ultimate limit of timber growth to the westward. It seems to be as arbitrary and capricious as if traced there by the humor of a human ruler. Only one-third of the island itself, its northern extremity, is covered with spruce-forest; the invisible barrier to the west seems to be a perfectly straight line over from the heads of Orlova Bay on the south side to that of Ooganok on the north coast. Here the change from a vigorous growth of spruce-forest to bare hills and grassy tundra is most abrupt and astonishingly sharp in definition; you pass from the jungle of the woods, at a single step, into heather of the moor. This line, with a slight curve to the westward only, strikes the same definition over on the mainland of the peninsula opposite, and runs right up north to Bering’s Straits’ latitude, avoiding the coast everywhere except at Cape Denbigh, Norton’s Sound. There is scarcely any lowland, indeed none at all, on the large island itself; it is everywhere mountainous and abruptly rolling, with spaces here and there in which the grasses flourish to a great extent. A legion of small streams rush down to the bays from their mountain sources, but none of them are navigable—they are mere rapids and cascades in their entire length. A growth of the characteristic circumpolar annuals and biennials on the slopes of these hills of Kadiak is of exotic luxuriance, and of the most varied beauty of floral display in June, July, and August. Willows and alders fringe the borders of the streams in their range throughout the woodless area, while stunted birch and green grasses reach to the very summits of the hilly ridges of the interior. Although Shellikov had established the headquarters of his Russian Company on Three Saints Bay with good reason at the time, yet when the entire Alaskan region went into the control of a single organization, it became necessary to have a grand central depot of supplies. Therefore Baranov promptly removed to the site of the present village of Kadiak. Upon that wooded island in the offing he procured the lumber and timbers necessary for the erection of those huge warehouses and numerous dwellings of many sizes required to house the merchandise, furs, and his employés. The harbor, too, is ample, and so situated that sailing-craft can come and go in all winds. Sadly, indeed, did the Russians, a few years later, abandon Kadiak for Sitka, as the numerous letters and protests still on file show; but the menacing encroachments of foreign traders in the far-distant Alexander archipelago were too grave in their portents of loss and usurpation of vested rights to allow of any other action.