On the 16th day of August, 1775, came the Royal Standard of Spain, flung to the breeze from the little schooner "Sonora," only 36 feet in length, under command of Don Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra. Quadra was one of the greatest and best of the Spanish navigators in the North. His voyages are among the most successful of those of the mariners of his nation in the waters of the north Pacific ocean, and his name was once linked with that of the English Commander on the island now bearing the name of Vancouver. Quadra came from the Mexican port of San Blas, and after many thrilling adventures and grievous hardships he sailed into a broad bay and dropped anchor. There was a mountain, of which he says: "Of the most regular and beautiful form I had ever seen. It was also quite detached from the great ridge of mountains. Its top was covered with snow, under which appeared some gullies, which continue till about the middle of the mountain, and from thence to the bottom are trees of the same kind as those at Trinity." [Illustration: Mount Edgecumbe.] He named the mountain _San Jacinthus_, and the point of the island that extends out toward the sea, Cape _del Engano_. No one who has looked upon the slopes of the mountain which stands to the seaward from Sitka can mistake the description. He anchored in what is now known as Krestof Bay, about six miles northwest from Sitka, and he called it Port _Guadalupe_. Captain Cook, on his Third Voyage of Exploration, in 1778, with the ships "Resolution" and "Discovery," passed along the coast and noted the bay, of which he says: "An arm of this bay, in the northern part of it, seemed to extend in toward the north, behind a round elevated mountain I called Mount Edgecumbe, and the point of land that shoots out from it Cape Edgecumbe." This name supplanted the one given by the Spaniard and the beautiful cone is yet known by the title he bestowed. The early Russians called the mountain St. Lazaria, assuming that it was the peak seen by Chirikof on his ill fated voyage of discovery and so named by him. The small island at the south is still known as San Lazaria Island. Captain Dixon, of H. M. S. "Queen Charlotte," came during the summer of 1787, on a fur trading voyage. Dixon had just departed from the harbor when Captain Portlock, of the English ship "King George," which was lying in Portlock Harbor, to the northward in Chichagoff Island, sent his ship's boat through the passage behind Kruzof Island to about the present site of Sitka, and made the discovery for the civilized world that Mount Edgecumbe is on an island. CHAPTER II SETTLEMENT The sea-otter, a marine animal about four feet in length when fully grown, with soft, long black pelage of silky texture, is one of the most valued of the fur-bearers. It was found abundantly all the way along the Northwest Coast, and especially in the passages about Sitka. It is now nearly extinct.