The large size of those spruce-trees on the southern slopes of Kenai Peninsula, Montague, and Noochek Islands of Prince William’s Sound, so impressed the Russians that they established a shipyard at Resurrection Bay as early as 1794; by the close of that year they actually built and launched a double-decker, 73 feet long by 23 feet beam, of 180 tons burden—the first three-masted, full-rigged ship ever constructed on the west coast of the North American continent; she was named the _Phœnix_, and as she slid from her ways into the unruffled waters of this far-away place the exultation and delighted plaudits[40] of her builders echoed in strange discord with the wild surrounding. Baranov had no paint or even tar, so that this pioneer ship was covered with a coat of spruce-gum, ochre, and whale-oil. A few small vessels only were built after this, inasmuch as the company found it much more economical to purchase in European yards the sailing-craft and steamers which it was obliged to employ: but, to-day the traces of the Russian ship-carpenter’s axe can be still plainly recognized at many points of the western coast of the sound, and on Montague Island huge logs, as roughed out nearly a full century ago, are lying now, as they lay then, slightly decayed in many instances; the anticipation which felled them was never realized, and they have never been disturbed consequently. In these early colonial Alaskan days, Fort St. Constantine, or Noochek Island, was a very important trading-centre; it was visited by all the tribes living on the Mount St. Elias sea-wall to the eastward as far as Yakootat, and also by the Copper Indians. Then the sea-otter was abundant, and in its ardent chase those Choogatch savages captured, incidentally, large numbers of black and brown bears, marten, and mink. Now, with the practical extermination of the sea-otter, we find a very poor lot of natives at this once flourishing post; but, for the means of a simple physical existence, they have no lack of an abundant supply of salmon, seal-blubber and flesh—meat of the marmot, porcupine, and bear, varied by the frequent killing of mountain sheep, which are found all over this alpine range; fine foxes are plentiful too. These Indians live in houses partly underground, which we shall describe as we visit Kadiak, and in purely race-characteristics those people also closely resemble the Kadiak Eskimo. From the north of the Copper River, however, toward the Sitkan archipelago, the Koloshian or Thlinket is dominant in the form and features of those savages which we find in a few small and widely separated villages that exist on the narrow table-land between the high mountains and the unbroken swell of the ocean. These natives all, however, agree in describing their country as an excellent hunting-ground, well timbered, and traversed by numerous small streams which take their rise in the glaciers and eternal snows of the St. Elias Alps.