A. W. Elson & Co. Boston

WILLIAM PITT FESSENDEN

Charles Sumner; his complete works, volume 15 (of 20)

Copyright, 1875 and 1877,
BY
FRANCIS V. BALCH, Executor.

Copyright, 1900,
BY
LEE AND SHEPARD.

Statesman Edition.

Limited to One Thousand Copies.

Of which this is

Norwood Press:
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME XV.

THE CESSION OF RUSSIAN AMERICA TO THE UNITED STATES.

Speech in the Senate, on the Ratification of the Treaty between the United States and Russia, April 9, 1867.

Thirteen governments founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.—John Adams, Preface to his Defence of the American Constitutions, dated Grosvenor Square, London, January 1, 1787: Works, Vol. IV. p. 293.

Barbarous and stupid Xerxes, how vain was all thy toil to cover the Hellespont with a floating bridge! Thus rather wise and prudent princes join Asia to Europe; they join and fasten nations together, not with boards or planks or surging brigandines, not with inanimate and insensible bonds, but by the ties of legitimate love, chaste nuptials, and the infallible gage of progeny.—Plutarch, Morals, ed. Goodwin, Vol. I. p. 482.

Late in the evening of Friday, March 29, 1867, Mr. Sumner, on reaching home, found this note from Mr. Seward awaiting him: “Can you come to my house this evening? I have a matter of public business in regard to which it is desirable that I should confer with you at once.” Without delay he hurried to the house of the Secretary of State, only to find that the latter had left for the Department. His son, the Assistant Secretary, was at home, and he was soon joined by Mr. de Stoeckl, the Russian Minister. From the two Mr. Sumner learned for the first time that a treaty was about to be signed for the cession of Russian America to the United States. With a map in his hand, the Minister, who had just returned from St. Petersburg, explained the proposed boundary, according to verbal instructions from the Archduke Constantine. After a brief conversation, when Mr. Sumner inquired and listened without expressing any opinion, they left together, the Minister on his way to the Department, where the treaty was copying. The clock was striking midnight as they parted, the Minister saying with interest, “You will not fail us.” The treaty was signed about four o’clock in the morning of March 30th, being the last day of the current session of Congress, and on the same day transmitted to the Senate, and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

April 1st, the Senate was convened in Executive session by the proclamation of the President of the United States, and the Committee proceeded to the consideration of the treaty. The Committee at the time was Messrs. Sumner (Chairman), Fessenden, of Maine, Cameron, of Pennsylvania, Harlan, of Iowa, Morton, of Indiana, Patterson, of New Hampshire, and Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland. Carefully and anxiously they considered the question, and meanwhile it was discussed outside. Among friendly influences was a strong pressure from Hon. Thaddeus Stevens, the acknowledged leader of the other House, who, though without constitutional voice on the ratification of a treaty, could not restrain his earnest testimony. Mr. Sumner was controlled less by desire for more territory than by a sense of the amity of Russia, manifested especially during our recent troubles, and by an unwillingness to miss the opportunity of dismissing another European sovereign from our continent, predestined, as he believed, to become the broad, undivided home of the American people; and these he developed in his remarks before the Senate.

April 8th, the treaty was reported by Mr. Sumner without amendment, and with the recommendation that the Senate advise and consent thereto. The next day it was considered, when Mr. Sumner spoke on the negotiation, its origin, and the character of the ceded possessions. A motion by Mr. Fessenden to postpone its further consideration was voted down,—Yeas 12, Nays 29. After further debate, the final question of ratification was put and carried on the same day by a vote of Yeas 37, Nays 2,—the Nays being Mr. Fessenden, and Mr. Morrill, of Vermont. The ratifications were exchanged June 20th, and the same day the treaty was proclaimed.

The debate was in Executive session, and no reporters were present. Senators interested in the question invited Mr. Sumner to write out his remarks and give them to the public. For some time he hesitated, but, taking advantage of the vacation, he applied himself to the work, following precisely in order and subdivision the notes of a single page from which he spoke.

The speech was noticed at home and abroad. At home, the Boston Journal, which published it at length, remarked:—

“This speech, it will be remembered, coming from the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and abounding in a mass of pertinent information not otherwise accessible to Senators, exerted a most marked, if not decisive, effect in favor of the ratification of the treaty. Since then, the rumors of Mr. Sumner’s exhaustive treatment of the subject, together with the increasing popular interest in our new territory, have stimulated a general desire for the publication of the speech, which we are now enabled to supply. As might be expected, the speech is a monument of comprehensive research, and of skill in the collection and arrangement of facts. It probably comprises about all the information that is extant concerning our new Pacific possessions, and will prove equally interesting to the student of history, the politician, and the man of business.”

A Russian translation, by Mr. Buynitzky, appeared at St. Petersburg, with an introduction, whose complimentary character is manifest in its opening:—

“Senator Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, appears, since the election of Lincoln, as one of the most eloquent and conspicuous representatives of the Republican party. His name stands in the first rank of the zealous propagators of Abolitionism, and all his political activity is directed toward one object,—the completion of the glorious act of enfranchisement of five millions of citizens by a series of laws calculated to secure to freedmen the actual possession of civil and political rights. As Chairman of the Senate Committee upon Foreign Relations, Mr. Sumner attentively watches the march of affairs in Europe generally; but, in the course of the present decade, his particular attention was attracted by the reforms which took place in Russia. The emancipation of the peasants in our country was viewed with the liveliest sympathy by the American statesman, and this sympathy expressed itself eloquently in his speeches, delivered on various occasions, as well in Congress as in the State conventions of Massachusetts.”

A French writer, M. Cochin, whose work on Slavery is an important contribution to the literature of Emancipation, in a later work thus characterizes this speech:—

“All that is known on Russian America has just been presented in a speech, abundant, erudite, eloquent, poetic, pronounced before the Congress of the United States by the great orator, Charles Sumner.”[1]

On the appearance of the speech, May 24th, Professor Baird, the accomplished naturalist of the Smithsonian Institution, wrote, expressing the hope that some Boston or New York publisher would reprint what he called the “Essay” in a “book-form,” adding: “It deserves some more permanent dress than that of a speech from the Globe office.” This is done for the first time in the present publication.

These few notices, taken from many, are enough to show the contemporary reception of the speech.

SPEECH.

MR. PRESIDENT,—You have just listened to the reading of the treaty by which Russia cedes to the United States all her possessions on the North American continent and the adjacent islands in consideration of $7,200,000 to be paid by the United States. On the one side is the cession of a vast country, with its jurisdiction and resources of all kinds; on the other side is the purchase-money. Such is the transaction on its face.

BOUNDARIES AND CONFIGURATION.

In endeavoring to estimate its character, I am glad to begin with what is clear and beyond question. I refer to the boundaries fixed by the treaty. Commencing at the parallel of 54° 40´ north latitude, so famous in our history, the line ascends Portland Canal to the mountains, which it follows on their summits to the point of intersection with the meridian of 141° west longitude, which it ascends to the Frozen Ocean, or, if you please, to the north pole. This is the eastern boundary, separating the region from the British possessions, and it is borrowed from the treaty between Russia and Great Britain in 1825, establishing the relations between these two powers on this continent. It is seen that this boundary is old; the rest is new. Starting from the Frozen Ocean, the western boundary descends Behring Strait, midway between the two islands of Krusenstern and Ratmanoff, to the parallel of 65° 30´, just below where the continents of America and Asia approach each other the nearest; and from this point it proceeds in a course nearly southwest through Behring Strait, midway between the island of St. Lawrence and Cape Chukotski, to the meridian of 172° west longitude, and thence, in a southwesterly direction, traversing Behring Sea, midway between the island of Attoo on the east and Copper Island on the west, to the meridian of 193° west longitude, leaving the prolonged group of the Aleutian Islands in the possessions transferred to the United States, and making the western boundary of our country the dividing line which separates Asia from America.

Look at the map and observe the configuration of this extensive region, whose estimated area is more than five hundred and seventy thousand square miles. I speak by authority of our own Coast Survey. Including the Sitkan Archipelago at the south, it takes a margin of the main-land fronting on the ocean thirty miles broad and five hundred miles long to Mount St. Elias, the highest peak of the continent, when it turns with an elbow to the west, and along Behring Strait northerly, then rounding to the east along the Frozen Ocean. Here are upwards of four thousand statute miles of coast, indented by capacious bays and commodious harbors without number, embracing the peninsula of Alaska, one of the most remarkable in the world, twenty-five miles in breadth and three hundred miles in length; piled with mountains, many volcanic and some still smoking; penetrated by navigable rivers, one of which is among the largest of the world; studded with islands standing like sentinels on the coast, and flanked by that narrow Aleutian range which, starting from Alaska, stretches far away to Kamtchatka, as if America were extending a friendly hand to Asia. This is the most general aspect. There are details specially disclosing maritime advantages and approaches to the sea which properly belong to this preliminary sketch. According to accurate estimate, the coast line, including bays and islands, is not less than eleven thousand two hundred and seventy miles. In the Aleutian range, besides innumerable islets and rocks, there are not less than fifty-five islands exceeding three miles in length; there are seven exceeding forty miles, with Oonimak, which is the largest, exceeding seventy-three miles. In our part of Behring Sea there are five considerable islands, the largest of which is St. Lawrence, being more than ninety-six miles long. Add to all these the group south of the peninsula of Alaska, including the Shumagins and the magnificent island of Kadiak, and then the Sitkan group, being archipelago added to archipelago, and the whole together constituting the geographical complement to the West Indies, so that the northwest of the continent answers to the southeast, archipelago for archipelago.

DISCOVERY OF RUSSIAN AMERICA BY BEHRING, UNDER INSTRUCTIONS FROM PETER THE GREAT.

The title of Russia to all these possessions is derived from prior discovery, being the admitted title by which all European powers have held in North and South America, unless we except what England acquired by conquest from France; but here the title of France was derived from prior discovery. Russia, shut up in a distant interior and struggling with barbarism, was scarcely known to the other powers at the time they were lifting their flags in the western hemisphere. At a later day the same powerful genius which made her known as an empire set in motion the enterprise by which these possessions were opened to her dominion. Peter, called the Great, himself ship-builder and reformer, who had worked in the ship-yards of England and Holland, was curious to know if Asia and America were separated by the sea, or if they constituted one undivided body with different names, like Europe and Asia. To obtain this information, he wrote with his own hand the following instructions, and ordered his chief admiral to see them carried into execution:—

“One or two boats with decks to be built at Kamtchatka, or at any other convenient place, with which inquiry should be made in relation to the northerly coasts, to see whether they were not contiguous with America, since their end was not known. And this done, they should see whether they could not somewhere find an harbor belonging to Europeans or an European ship. They should likewise set apart some men who were to inquire after the name and situation of the coasts discovered. Of all this an exact journal should be kept, with which they should return to Petersburg.”[2]

The Czar died in the winter of 1725; but the Empress Catharine, faithful to the desires of her husband, did not allow this work to be neglected. Vitus Behring, Dane by birth, and navigator of experience, was made commander. The place of embarkation was on the other side of the Asiatic continent. Taking with him officers and ship-builders, the navigator left St. Petersburg by land, 5th February, 1725, and commenced the preliminary journey across Siberia, Northern Asia, and the Sea of Okhotsk, to the coast of Kamtchatka, which they reached only after infinite hardships and delays, sometimes with dogs for horses, and sometimes supporting life by eating leather bags, straps, and shoes. More than three years were consumed in this toilsome and perilous journey. At last, on the 20th of July, 1728, the party was able to set sail in a small vessel, called the Gabriel, and described as “like the packet-boats used in the Baltic.” Steering in a northeasterly direction, Behring passed a large island, which he called St. Lawrence, from the saint on whose day it was seen. This island, which is included in the present cession, may be considered as the first point in Russian discovery, as it is also the first outpost of the North American continent. Continuing northward, and hugging the Asiatic coast, Behring turned back only when he thought he had reached the northeastern extremity of Asia, and was satisfied that the two continents were separated from each other. He did not penetrate further north than 67° 30´.

In his voyage Behring was struck by the absence of such great and high waves as in other places are common to the open sea, and he observed fir-trees swimming in the water, although they were unknown on the Asiatic coast. Relations of inhabitants, in harmony with these indications, pointed to “a country at no great distance towards the east.” His work was still incomplete, and the navigator, before returning home, put forth again for this discovery, but without success. By another dreary land journey he made his way back to St. Petersburg in March, 1730, after an absence of five years. Something was accomplished for Russian discovery, and his own fame was engraved on the maps of the world. The strait through which he sailed now bears his name, as also does the expanse of sea he traversed on his way to the strait.

The spirit of discovery continued at St. Petersburg. A Cossack chief, undertaking to conquer the obstinate natives on the northeastern coast, proposed also “to discover the pretended country in the Frozen Sea.” He was killed by an arrow before his enterprise was completed. Little is known of the result; but it is stated that the navigator whom he had selected, by name Gwosdeff, in 1730 succeeded in reaching “a strange coast” between sixty-five and sixty-six degrees of north latitude, where he saw people, but could not speak with them for want of an interpreter. This must have been the coast of North America, and not far from the group of islands in Behring Strait, through which the present boundary passes, separating the United States from Russia, and America from Asia.

The Russian desire to get behind the curtain increased. Behring volunteered to undertake the discoveries yet remaining. He was created Commodore, and his old lieutenants were created captains. The Senate, the Admiralty, and the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg, all united in the enterprise. Several academicians were appointed to report on the natural history of the coasts visited, among whom was Steller, the naturalist, said to be “immortal” from this association. All of these, with a numerous body of officers, journeyed across Siberia, Northern Asia, and the Sea of Okhotsk, to Kamtchatka, as Behring had journeyed before. Though ordered in 1732, the expedition was not able to leave the eastern coast until 4th June, 1741, when two well-appointed ships set sail in company “to discover the continent of America.” One of these, called the St. Peter, was under Commodore Behring; the other, called the St. Paul, was under Captain Tschirikoff. For some time the two kept together, but in a violent storm and fog they were separated, when each continued the expedition alone.

Behring first saw the continent of North America 18th July, 1741, in latitude 58° 28´. Looking at it from a distance, “the country had terrible high mountains that were covered with snow.” Two days later, he anchored in a sheltered bay near a point, which he called, from the saint’s day on which he saw it, Cape St. Elias. He was in the shadow of Mount St. Elias. Landing, he found deserted huts, fireplaces, hewn wood, household furniture, arrows, “a whetstone on which it appeared that copper knives had been sharpened,” and “store of red salmon.” Here also birds unknown in Siberia were noticed by the faithful Steller, among which was the blue-jay, of a peculiar species, now called by his name. At this point, Behring found himself constrained by the elbow in the coast to turn westward, and then in a southerly direction. Hugging the shore, his voyage was constantly arrested by islands without number, among which he zigzagged to find his way. Several times he landed. Once he saw natives, who wore “upper garments of whales’ guts, breeches of seal-skins, and caps of the skins of sea-lions, adorned with various feathers, especially those of hawks.” These “Americans,” as they are called, were fishermen, without bows and arrows. They regaled the Russians with “whale’s flesh,” but declined strong drink. One of them, on receiving a cup of brandy, “spit the brandy out again as soon as he had tasted it, and cried aloud, as if he was complaining to his countrymen how ill he had been used.” This was on one of the Shumagin Islands, near the southern coast of the peninsula of Alaska.

Meanwhile the other solitary ship, proceeding on its way, had sighted the same coast 15th July, 1741, in the latitude of 56°. Anchoring at some distance from the steep and rocky cliffs before him, Tschirikoff sent his mate with the long-boat and ten of his best men, provided with small-arms and a brass cannon, to inquire into the nature of the country and to obtain fresh water. The long-boat disappeared behind a headland, and was never seen again. Thinking it might have been damaged in landing, the captain sent his boatswain with the small boat and carpenters, well armed, to furnish necessary assistance. The small boat disappeared also, and was never seen again. At the same time a great smoke was observed continually ascending from the shore. Shortly afterwards, two boats filled with natives sallied forth and lay at some distance from the vessel, when, crying, “Agai, Agai,” they put back to the shore. Sorrowfully the Russian navigator turned away, not knowing the fate of his comrades, and unable to help them. This was not far from Sitka.

Such was the first discovery of these northwestern coasts, and such are the first recorded glimpses of the aboriginal inhabitants. The two navigators had different fortunes. Tschirikoff, deprived of his boats, and therefore unable to land, hurried home. Adverse winds and storms interfered. He supplied himself with fresh water by distilling sea-water or pressing rain-water from the sails. But at last, on the 9th of October, he reached Kamtchatka, with his ship’s company of seventy diminished to forty-nine. During this time Behring was driven, like Ulysses, on the uncertain waves. A single tempest raged for seventeen days, so that Andrew Hasselberg, the ancient pilot, who had known the sea for fifty years, declared that he had seen nothing like it in his life. Scurvy came with disheartening horrors. The Commodore himself was a sufferer. Rigging broke; cables snapped; anchors were lost. At last the tempest-tossed vessel was cast upon a desert island, then without a name, where the Commodore, sheltered in a ditch, and half covered with sand as a protection against cold, died, 8th December, 1741. His body, after his decease, was “scraped out of the ground” and buried on this island, which is called by his name, and constitutes an outpost of the Asiatic continent. Thus the Russian navigator, after the discovery of America, died in Asia. Russia, by the recent demarcation, does not fail to retain his last resting-place among her possessions.

TITLE OF RUSSIA.

For some time after these expeditions, by which Russia achieved the palm of discovery, imperial enterprise in those seas slumbered. The knowledge already acquired was continued and confirmed only by private individuals, who were led there in quest of furs. In 1745 the Aleutian Islands were discovered by an adventurer in search of sea-otters. In successive voyages all these islands were visited for similar purposes. Among these was Oonalaska, the principal of the group of Fox Islands, constituting a continuation of the Aleutian Islands, whose inhabitants and productions were minutely described. In 1768 private enterprise was superseded by an expedition ordered by the Empress Catharine, which, leaving Kamtchatka, explored this whole archipelago and the peninsula of Alaska, which to the islanders stood for the whole continent. Shortly afterwards, all these discoveries, beginning with those of Behring and Tschirikoff, were verified by the great English navigator, Captain Cook. In 1778 he sailed along the northwestern coast, “near where Tschirikoff anchored in 1741”; then again in sight of mountains “wholly covered with snow from the highest summit down to the sea-coast,” with “the summit of an elevated mountain above the horizon,” which he supposed to be the Mount St. Elias of Behring; then by the very anchorage of Behring; then among the islands through which Behring zigzagged, and along the coast by the island of St. Lawrence, until arrested by ice. If any doubt existed with regard to Russian discoveries, it was removed by the authentic report of this navigator, who shed such a flood of light upon the geography of the whole region.

Such from the beginning is the title of Russia, dating at least from 1741. I have not stopped to quote volume and page, but I beg to be understood as following approved authorities, and I refer especially to the Russian work of Müller, already cited, on the “Voyages from Asia to America,” the volume of Coxe on “Russian Discoveries,” with its supplement on the “Comparative View of the Russian Discoveries,” the volume of Sir John Barrow on “Voyages into the Arctic Regions,” Burney’s “Northeastern Voyages,” and the third voyage of Captain Cook, unhappily interrupted by his tragical death from the natives of the Sandwich Islands, but not until after the exploration of this coast.

There were at least four other Russian expeditions, by which this title was confirmed, if it needed any confirmation. The first was ordered by the Empress Catharine, in 1785. It was under the command of Commodore Billings, an Englishman in the service of Russia, and was narrated from the original papers by Martin Sauer, secretary of the expedition. In the instructions from the Admiralty at St. Petersburg the Commodore was directed to take possession of “such coasts and islands as he shall first discover, whether inhabited or not, that cannot be disputed, and are not yet subject to any European power, with consent of the inhabitants, if any”; and this was to be accomplished by setting up “posts marked with the arms of Russia, with letters indicating the time of discovery, a short account of the people, their voluntary submission to the Russian sovereignty, and that this was done under the glorious reign of the great Catharine the Second.”[3] The next was in 1803-6, in the interest of the Russian American Company, with two ships, one under the command of Captain Krusenstern, and the other of Captain Lisiansky, of the Russian navy. It was the first Russian voyage round the world, and lasted three years. During its progress, Lisiansky visited the northwest coast of America, and especially Sitka and the island of Kadiak. Still another enterprise, organized by the celebrated minister Count Romanzoff, and at his expense, left Russia in 1815, under the command of Lieutenant Kotzebue, an officer of the Russian navy, and son of the German dramatist, whose assassination darkened the return of the son from his long voyage. It is enough for the present to say of this expedition that it has left its honorable traces on the coast even as far as the Frozen Ocean. There remains the enterprise of Lütke, at the time captain, and afterward admiral in the Russian navy, which was a voyage of circumnavigation, embracing especially the Russian possessions, commenced in 1826, and described in French with instructive fulness. With him sailed the German naturalist Kittlitz, who has done so much to illustrate the natural history of this region.

A FRENCH ASPIRATION ON THIS COAST.

So little was the Russian title recognized for some time, that, when the unfortunate expedition of La Pérouse, with the frigates Boussole and Astrolabe, stopped on this coast in 1786, he did not hesitate to consider the friendly harbor, in latitude 58° 36´, where he was moored, as open to permanent occupation. Describing this harbor, which he named Port des Français, as sheltered behind a breakwater of rocks, with a calm sea and a mouth sufficiently large, he announces that Nature seemed to have created at the extremity of America a port like that of Toulon, but vaster in plan and accommodations; and then, considering that it had never been discovered before, that it was situated thirty-three leagues northwest of Los Remedios, the limit of Spanish navigation, about two hundred and twenty-four leagues from Nootka, and a hundred leagues from Prince William Sound, the mariner records his judgment, that, “if the French Government had any project of a factory on this part of the coast of America, no nation could pretend to have the slightest right to oppose it.”[4] Thus quietly was Russia dislodged. The frigates sailed further on their voyage, and never returned to France. Their fate was unknown, until, after fruitless search and the lapse of a generation, some relics from them were accidentally found on an obscure island of the Southern Pacific. The unfinished journal of La Pérouse, recording his visit to this coast, had been sent overland, by way of Kamtchatka and Siberia, to France, where it was published by a decree of the National Assembly, thus making known his supposed discovery and his aspiration.

EARLY SPANISH CLAIM.

Spain also has been a claimant. In 1775, Bodega, a Spanish navigator, seeking new opportunities to plant the Spanish flag, reached the parallel of 58° on this coast, not far from Sitka; but this supposed discovery was not followed by any immediate assertion of dominion. The universal aspiration of Spain had embraced this whole region even at an early day, and shortly after the return of Bodega another enterprise was equipped to verify the larger claim, being nothing less than the original title as discoverer of the strait between America and Asia, and of the conterminous continent, under the name of Anian. This curious episode is not out of place in the present brief history. It has two branches: one concerning early maps, on which straits are represented between America and Asia under the name of Anian; the other concerning a pretended attempt by a Spanish navigator at an early day to find these straits.

There can be no doubt that early maps exist with northwestern straits marked Anian. There are two in the Congressional Library, in atlases of the years 1680 and 1717; but these are of a date comparatively modern. Engel, in his “Mémoires Géographiques,” mentions several earlier, which he believes genuine. There is one purporting to be by Zaltieri, and bearing date 1566, an authentic pen-and-ink copy of which is now before me, from the collection of our own Coast Survey. On this very interesting map, which is without latitude or longitude, the western coast of the continent is delineated with a strait separating it from Asia not unlike Behring’s in outline, and with the name in Italian, Stretto di Anian. Southward the coast has a certain conformity with what is now known to exist. Below is an indentation corresponding to Bristol Bay; then a peninsula somewhat broader than that of Alaska; then the elbow of the coast; then, lower down, three islands, not unlike Sitka, Queen Charlotte, and Vancouver; and then, further south, is the peninsula of Lower California. Sometimes the story of Anian is explained by the voyage of the Portuguese navigator Gaspar de Cortereal, in 1500, when, on reaching Hudson Bay in quest of a passage round America, he imagined that he had found it, and proceeded to name his discovery “in honor of two brothers who accompanied him.” Very soon maps began to record the Strait of Anian; but this does not explain the substantial conformity of the early delineation with the reality, which seems truly remarkable.

The other branch of inquiry is more easily disposed of. This turns on a Spanish document entitled “A Relation of the Discovery of the Strait of Anian, made by me, Captain Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado, in the Year 1588.”[5] If this early account of a northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific were authentic, the whole question would be settled; but recent geographers indignantly discard it as a barefaced imposture. Clearly Spain once regarded it otherwise; for her Government in 1789 sent out an expedition “to discover the strait by which Laurent Ferrer Maldonado was supposed to have passed, in 1588, from the coast of Labrador to the Great Ocean.”[6] The expedition was unsuccessful, and nothing more has been heard of any claim from this pretended discovery. The story of Maldonado has taken its place in the same category with that of Munchausen.

REASONS FOR CESSION BY RUSSIA.

Turning from the question of title, which time and testimony have already settled, I meet the inquiry, Why does Russia part with possessions associated with the reign of her greatest ruler and filling an important chapter of geographical history? Here I am without information not open to others. But I do not forget that the first Napoleon, in parting with Louisiana, was controlled by three several considerations. First, he needed the purchase-money for his treasury; secondly, he was unwilling to leave this distant unguarded territory a prey to Great Britain, in the event of hostilities, which seemed at hand; and, thirdly, he was glad, according to his own remarkable language, “to establish forever the power of the United States, and give to England a maritime rival that would sooner or later humble her pride.”[7] Such is the record of history. Perhaps a similar record may be made hereafter with regard to the present cession. There is reason to imagine that Russia, with all her great empire, is financially poor; so that these few millions may not be unimportant to her. It is by foreign loans that her railroads have been built and her wars aided. All, too, must see that in those “coming events” which now more than ever “cast their shadows before” it will be for her advantage not to hold outlying possessions from which thus far she has obtained no income commensurate with the possible expense for their protection. Perhaps, like a wrestler, she strips for the contest, which I trust sincerely may be averted. Besides, I cannot doubt that her enlightened Emperor, who has given pledges to civilization by an unsurpassed act of Emancipation, would join the first Napoleon in a desire to enhance the maritime power of the United States.

These general considerations are reinforced, when we call to mind the little influence which Russia has been able thus far to exercise in this region. Though possessing dominion for more than a century, the gigantic power has not been more genial or productive there than the soil itself. Her government is little more than a name or a shadow. It is not even a skeleton. It is hardly visible. Its only representative is a fur company, to which has been added latterly an ice company. The immense country is without form and without light, without activity and without progress. Distant from the imperial capital, and separated from the huge bulk of Russian empire, it does not share the vitality of a common country. Its life is solitary and feeble. Its settlements are only encampments or lodges. Its fisheries are only a petty perquisite, belonging to local or personal adventurers rather than to the commerce of nations.

In these statements I follow the record. So little were these possessions regarded during the last century that they were scarcely recognized as a component part of the empire. I have now before me an authentic map, published by the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg in 1776, and reproduced at London in 1780, entitled “General Map of the Russian Empire,”[8] where you will look in vain for Russian America, unless we except the links of the Aleutian chain nearest to the two continents. Alexander Humboldt, whose geographical insight was unerring, in his great work on New Spain, published in 1811, after stating that he is able from an official document to give the position of the Russian factories on the American continent, says that they are “for the most part mere collections of sheds and cabins, but serving as store-houses for the fur-trade.” He remarks further that “the larger part of these small Russian colonies communicate with each other only by sea”; and then, putting us on our guard not to expect too much from a name, he proceeds to say that “the new denomination of ‘Russian America,’ or ‘Russian Possessions on the New Continent,’ must not lead us to think that the coasts of Behring’s Basin, the peninsula of Alaska, or the country of the Tchuktchi have become Russian provinces in the sense given to this word in speaking of the Spanish provinces of Sonora or New Biscay.”[9] Here is a distinction between the foothold of Spain in California and the foothold of Russia in North America which will at least illustrate the slender power of the latter in this region.

In ceding possessions so little within the sphere of her empire, embracing more than one hundred nations or tribes, Russia gives up no part of herself; and even if she did, the considerable price paid, the alarm of war which begins to fill our ears, and the sentiments of friendship declared for the United States would explain the transaction.

THE NEGOTIATION, IN ITS ORIGIN AND COMPLETION.

I am not able to say when the idea of this cession first took shape. I have heard that it was as long ago as the Administration of Mr. Polk. It is within my knowledge that the Russian Government was sounded on the subject during the Administration of Mr. Buchanan. This was done through Mr. Gwin, at the time Senator of California, and Mr. Appleton, Assistant Secretary of State. For this purpose the former had more than one interview with the Russian minister at Washington, some time in December, 1859, in which, while professing to speak for the President unofficially, he represented that “Russia was too far off to make the most of these possessions, and that, as we were near, we could derive more from them.” In reply to an inquiry of the Russian minister, Mr. Gwin said that “the United States could go as high as $5,000,000 for the purchase,” on which the former made no comment. Mr. Appleton, on another occasion, said to the minister that “the President thought the acquisition would be very profitable to the States on the Pacific; that he was ready to follow it up, but wished to know in advance if Russia was ready to cede; that, if she were, he would confer with his Cabinet and influential members of Congress.” All this was unofficial; but it was promptly communicated to the Russian Government, who seem to have taken it into careful consideration. Prince Gortchakoff, in a despatch which reached here early in the summer of 1860, said that “the offer was not what might have been expected, but that it merited mature reflection; that the Minister of Finance was about to inquire into the condition of these possessions, after which Russia would be in a condition to treat.” The Prince added for himself, that “he was by no means satisfied personally that it would be for the interest of Russia politically to alienate these possessions; that the only consideration which could make the scales incline that way would be the prospect of great financial advantages, but that the sum of $5,000,000 did not seem in any way to represent the real value of these possessions”; and he concluded by asking the minister to tell Mr. Appleton and Senator Gwin that the sum offered was not considered “an equitable equivalent.” The subject was submerged by the Presidential election which was approaching, and then by the Rebellion. It will be observed that this attempt was at a time when politicians who believed in the perpetuity of Slavery still had power. Mr. Buchanan was President, and he employed as his intermediary a known sympathizer with Slavery, who shortly afterwards became a Rebel. Had Russia been willing, it is doubtful if this controlling interest would have sanctioned any acquisition too far north for Slavery.

Meanwhile the Rebellion was brought to an end, and peaceful enterprise was renewed, which on the Pacific coast was directed toward the Russian possessions. Our people there, wishing new facilities to obtain fish, fur, and ice, sought the intervention of the National Government. The Legislature of Washington Territory, in the winter of 1866, adopted the following memorial to the President of the United States, entitled “In reference to the cod and other fisheries.”

“To his Excellency Andrew Johnson,
“President of the United States.

“Your memorialists, the Legislative Assembly of Washington Territory, beg leave to show that abundance of codfish, halibut, and salmon, of excellent quality, have been found along the shores of the Russian possessions. Your memorialists respectfully request your Excellency to obtain such rights and privileges of the Government of Russia as will enable our fishing vessels to visit the ports and harbors of its possessions, to the end that fuel, water, and provisions may be easily obtained, that our sick and disabled fishermen may obtain sanitary assistance, together with the privilege of curing fish and repairing vessels in need of repairs. Your memorialists further request that the Treasury Department be instructed to forward to the collector of customs of this Puget Sound district such fishing licenses, abstract journals, and log-books as will enable our hardy fishermen to obtain the bounties now provided and paid to the fishermen in the Atlantic States. Your memorialists finally pray your Excellency to employ such ships as may be spared from the Pacific naval fleet in exploring and surveying the fishing banks known to navigators to exist along the Pacific coast from the Cortés Bank to Behring Straits. And, as in duty bound, your memorialists will ever pray.

“Passed the House of Representatives January 10, 1866.

“Edward Eldridge,
“Speaker, House of Representatives.

“Passed the Council January 13, 1866.

“Harvey K. Hines,
“President of the Council.”

This memorial, on presentation to the President, in February, 1866, was referred to the Secretary of State, by whom it was communicated to Mr. de Stoeckl, the Russian minister, with remarks on the importance of some early and comprehensive arrangement between the two powers to prevent the growth of difficulties, especially from the fisheries in that region. At the same time reports began to prevail of extraordinary wealth in fisheries, especially the whale and cod, promising to become an important commerce on the Pacific coast.

Shortly afterwards another influence was felt. Mr. Cole, who had been recently elected to the Senate from California, acting in behalf of certain persons in that State, sought from the Russian Government a license or franchise to gather furs in a portion of its American possessions. The charter of the Russian American Company was about to expire. This company had already underlet to the Hudson’s Bay Company all its franchise on the main-land between 54° 40´ and Cape Spencer; and now it was proposed that an American company, holding directly from the Russian Government, should be substituted for the latter. The mighty Hudson’s Bay Company, with headquarters in London, was to give way to an American company, with headquarters in California. Among letters on this subject addressed to Mr. Cole, and now before me, is one dated San Francisco, April 10, 1866, in which the scheme is developed:—

“There is at the present time a good chance to organize a fur-trading company, to trade between the United States and the Russian possessions in America; and as the charter formerly granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company has expired, this would be the opportune moment to start in.… I should think that by a little management this charter could be obtained from the Russian Government for ourselves, as I do not think they are very willing to renew the charter of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and I think they would give the preference to an American company, especially if the company should pay to the Russian Government five per cent. on the gross proceeds of their transactions, and also aid in civilizing and ameliorating the condition of the Indians by employing missionaries, if required by the Russian Government. For the faithful performance of the above we ask a charter for the term of twenty-five years, to be renewed for the same length of time, if the Russian Government finds the company deserving,—the charter to invest us with the right of trading in all the country between the British American line and the Russian Archipelago.… Remember, we wish for the same charter as was formerly granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company, and we offer in return more than they did.”

Another correspondent of Mr. Cole, under date of San Francisco, September 17, 1866, wrote:—

“I have talked with a man who has been on the coast and in the trade for ten years past, and he says it is much more valuable than I have supposed, and I think it very important to obtain it, if possible.”

The Russian minister at Washington, whom Mr. Cole saw repeatedly upon the subject, was not authorized to act, and the latter, after conference with the Department of State, was induced to address Mr. Clay, minister of the United States at St. Petersburg, who laid the application before the Russian Government. This was an important step. A letter from Mr. Clay, dated at St. Petersburg as late as February 1, 1867, makes the following revelation.

“The Russian Government has already ceded away its rights in Russian America for a term of years, and the Russo-American Company has also ceded the same to the Hudson’s Bay Company. This lease expires in June next, and the president of the Russo-American Company tells me that they have been in correspondence with the Hudson’s Bay Company about a renewal of the lease for another term of twenty-five or thirty years. Until he receives a definite answer, he cannot enter into negotiations with us or your California company. My opinion is, that, if he can get off with the Hudson’s Bay Company, he will do so, when we can make some arrangements with the Russo-American Company.”

Some time had elapsed since the original attempt of Mr. Gwin, also a Senator from California, and it is probable that the Russian Government had obtained information which enabled it to see its way more clearly. It will be remembered that Prince Gortchakoff had promised an inquiry, and it is known that in 1861 Captain-Lieutenant Golowin, of the Russian navy, made a detailed report on these possessions. Mr. Cole had the advantage of his predecessor. There is reason to believe, also, that the administration of the fur company had not been entirely satisfactory, so that there were well-founded hesitations with regard to the renewal of its franchise. Meanwhile, in October, 1866, Mr. de Stoeckl, who had long been the Russian minister at Washington, and enjoyed in a high degree the confidence of our Government, returned home on leave of absence, promising his best exertions to promote good relations between the two countries. While he was at St. Petersburg, the applications from the United States were under consideration; but the Russian Government was disinclined to any minor arrangement of the character proposed. Obviously something like a crisis was at hand with regard to these possessions. The existing government was not adequate. The franchises granted there were about to terminate. Something must be done. As Mr. de Stoeckl was leaving for his post, in February, the Archduke Constantine, brother and chief adviser of the Emperor, handed him a map with the lines in our treaty marked upon it, and told him he might treat for cession with those boundaries. The minister arrived in Washington early in March. A negotiation was opened at once. Final instructions were received by the Atlantic cable, from St. Petersburg, on the 29th of March, and at four o’clock on the morning of the 30th of March this important treaty was signed by Mr. Seward on the part of the United States and by Mr. de Stoeckl on the part of Russia.

Few treaties have been conceived, initiated, prosecuted, and completed in so simple a manner, without protocol or despatch. The whole negotiation is seen in its result, unless we except two brief notes, which constitute all that passed between the negotiators. These have an interest general and special, and I conclude the history of this transaction by reading them.

“Department of State, Washington, March 23, 1867.

“Sir,—With reference to the proposed convention between our respective Governments for a cession by Russia of her American territory to the United States, I have the honor to acquaint you that I must insist upon that clause in the sixth article of the draft which declares the cession to be free and unincumbered by any reservations, privileges, franchises, grants, or possessions by any associated companies, whether corporate or incorporate, Russian or any other, &c., and must regard it as an ultimatum. With the President’s approval, however, I will add $200,000 to the consideration money on that account.

“I avail myself of this occasion to offer to you a renewed assurance of my most distinguished consideration.

“William H. Seward.

“Mr. Edward de Stoeckl, &c., &c., &c.”

[TRANSLATION.]

“Washington, March 17 [29], 1867.

“Mr. Secretary of State,—I have the honor to inform you, that, by a telegram, dated 16th [28th] of this month, from St. Petersburg, Prince Gortchakoff informs me that his Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias gives his consent to the cession of the Russian possessions on the American continent to the United States, for the stipulated sum of $7,200,000 in gold, and that his Majesty the Emperor invests me with full powers to negotiate and sign the treaty.

“Please accept, Mr. Secretary of State, the assurance of my very high consideration.

“Stoeckl.

“To Hon. William H. Seward,
“Secretary of State of the United States.”

THE TREATY.

The treaty begins with the declaration, that “the United States of America and his Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, being desirous of strengthening, if possible, the good understanding which exists between them,” have appointed plenipotentiaries, who have proceeded to sign articles, wherein it is stipulated on behalf of Russia that “his Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias agrees to cede to the United States by this convention, immediately upon the exchange of the ratifications thereof, all the territory and dominion now possessed by his said Majesty on the continent of America and in the adjacent islands, the same being contained within the geographical limits herein set forth”; and it is stipulated on behalf of the United States, that, “in consideration of the cession aforesaid, the United States agree to pay at the Treasury in Washington, within ten months after the exchange of the ratifications of this convention, to the diplomatic representative or other agent of his Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias duly authorized to receive the same, $7,200,000 in gold.” The ratifications are to be exchanged within three months from the date of the treaty, or sooner, if possible.[10]

Beyond the consideration founded on the desire of “strengthening the good understanding” between the two countries, there is the pecuniary consideration already mentioned, which underwent a change in the progress of the negotiation. The sum of seven millions was originally agreed upon; but when it appeared that there was a fur company and also an ice company enjoying monopolies under the existing government, it was thought best that these should be extinguished, in consideration of which our Government added two hundred thousand to the purchase-money, and the Russian Government in formal terms declared “the cession of territory and dominion to be free and unincumbered by any reservations, privileges, franchises, grants, or possessions, by any associated companies, whether corporate or incorporate, Russian or any other, or by any parties, except merely private individual property-holders.” Thus the United States receive the cession free of all incumbrances, so far at least as Russia is in a condition to make it. The treaty proceeds to say: “The cession hereby made conveys all the rights, franchises, and privileges now belonging to Russia in the said territory or dominion and appurtenances thereto.”[11] In other words, Russia conveys all she has to convey.

QUESTIONS ARISING UNDER THE TREATY.

There are questions, not unworthy of attention, which arise under the treaty between Russia and Great Britain, fixing the eastern limits of these possessions, and conceding certain privileges to the latter power. By this treaty, signed at St. Petersburg, 28th February, 1825, after fixing the boundaries between the Russian and British possessions, it is provided that “for the space of ten years from the signature of the present convention, the vessels of the two powers, or those belonging to their respective subjects, shall mutually be at liberty to frequent, without any hindrance whatever, all the inland seas, the gulfs, havens, and creeks on the coast, for the purposes of fishing and of trading with the natives”; and also that “the port of Sitka, or Novo Archangelsk, shall be open to the commerce and vessels of British subjects for the space of ten years from the date of the exchange of the ratifications of the present convention.”[12] In the same treaty it is also provided that “the subjects of his Britannic Majesty, from whatever quarter they may arrive, whether from the ocean or from the interior of the continent, shall forever enjoy the right of navigating freely and without any hindrance whatever all the rivers and streams which in their course towards the Pacific Ocean may cross the line of demarcation.”[13] Afterwards a treaty of commerce and navigation between Russia and Great Britain was signed at St. Petersburg, 11th January, 1843, subject to be terminated on notice from either party at the expiration of ten years, in which it is provided, that, “in regard to commerce and navigation in the Russian possessions on the northwest coast of America, the convention concluded at St. Petersburg on the 16/28th February, 1825, continues in force.”[14] Then ensued the Crimean War between Russia and Great Britain, effacing or suspending treaties. Afterwards another treaty of commerce and navigation was signed at St. Petersburg, 12th January, 1859, subject to be terminated on notice from either party at the expiration of ten years, which repeats the last provision.[15]

Thus we have three different stipulations on the part of Russia: one opening seas, gulfs, and havens on the Russian coast to British subjects for fishing and trading with the natives; the second making Sitka a free port to British subjects; and the third making British rivers which flow through the Russian possessions forever free to British navigation. Do the United States succeed to these stipulations?

Among these I make a distinction in favor of the last, which by its language is declared to be “forever,” and may have been in the nature of an equivalent at the settlement of boundaries between the two powers. But whatever its terms or its origin, it is obvious that it is nothing but a declaration of public law, as always expounded by the United States, and now recognized on the continent of Europe. While pleading with Great Britain, in 1826, for the free navigation of the St. Lawrence, Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State, said that “the American Government did not mean to contend for any principle the benefit of which in analogous circumstances it would deny to Great Britain.”[16] During the same year, Mr. Gallatin, our minister in London, when negotiating with Great Britain for the adjustment of boundaries on the Pacific, proposed, that, “if the line should cross any of the branches of the Columbia at points from which they are navigable by boats to the main stream, the navigation of such branches and of the main stream should be perpetually free and common to the people of both nations.”[17] At an earlier day the United States made the same claim with regard to the Mississippi, and asserted, as a general principle, that, “if the right of the upper inhabitants to descend the stream was in any case obstructed, it was an act of force by a stronger society against a weaker, condemned by the judgment of mankind.”[18] By these admissions our country is estopped, even if the public law of the European continent, first declared at Vienna with regard to the Rhine, did not offer an example which we cannot afford to reject. I rejoice to believe that on this occasion we apply to Great Britain the generous rule which from the beginning we have claimed for ourselves.

The two other stipulations are different in character. They are not declared to be “forever,” and do not stand on any principle of public law. Even if subsisting now, they cannot be onerous. I doubt much if they are subsisting now. In succeeding to the Russian possessions, it does not follow that the United States succeed to ancient obligations assumed by Russia, as if, according to a phrase of the Common Law, they were “covenants running with the land.” If these stipulations are in the nature of servitudes, they depend for their duration on the sovereignty of Russia, and are personal or national rather than territorial. So, at least, I am inclined to believe. But it is hardly profitable to speculate on a point of so little practical value. Even if “running with the land,” these servitudes can be terminated at the expiration of ten years from the last treaty by notice, which equitably the United States may give, so as to take effect on the 12th of January, 1869. Meanwhile, during this brief period, it will be easy by Act of Congress in advance to limit importations at Sitka, so that this “free port” shall not be made the channel or doorway by which British goods are introduced into the United States free of duty.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE TREATY.

From this survey of the treaty, as seen in its origin and the questions under it, I might pass at once to a survey of the possessions which have been conveyed; but there are other matters of a more general character which present themselves at this stage and challenge judgment. These concern nothing less than the unity, power, and grandeur of the Republic, with the extension of its dominion and its institutions. Such considerations, where not entirely inapplicable, are apt to be controlling. I do not doubt that they will in a great measure determine the fate of this treaty with the American people. They are patent, and do not depend on research or statistics. To state them is enough.

1. Advantages to the Pacific Coast.—Foremost in order, if not in importance, I put the desires of our fellow-citizens on the Pacific coast, and the special advantages they will derive from this enlargement of boundary. They were the first to ask for it, and will be the first to profit by it. While others knew the Russian possessions only on the map, they knew them practically in their resources. While others were indifferent, they were planning how to appropriate Russian peltries and fisheries. This is attested by the resolutions of the Legislature of Washington Territory; also by the exertions at different times of two Senators from California, who, differing in political sentiments and in party relations, took the initial steps which ended in this treaty.

These well-known desires were founded, of course, on supposed advantages; and here experience and neighborhood were prompters. Since 1854 the people of California have received their ice from the fresh-water lakes in the island of Kadiak, not far westward from Mount St. Elias. Later still, their fishermen have searched the waters about the Aleutians and the Shumagins, commencing a promising fishery. Others have proposed to substitute themselves for the Hudson’s Bay Company in their franchise on the coast. But all are looking to the Orient, as in the time of Columbus, although like him they sail to the west. To them China and Japan, those ancient realms of fabulous wealth, are the Indies. To draw this commerce to the Pacific coast is no new idea. It haunted the early navigators. Meares, the Englishman, whose voyage in the intervening seas was in 1788, recounts a meeting with Gray, the Boston navigator, whom he found “very sanguine in the superior advantages which his countrymen from New England might reap from this track of trade, and big with many mighty projects.”[19] He closes his volumes with an essay entitled “Some Account of the Trade between the Northwest Coast of America and China, &c.,” in the course of which[20] he dwells on the “great and very valuable source of commerce” offered by China as “forming a chain of trade between Hudson’s Bay, Canada, and the Northwest Coast”; and then he exhibits on the American side the costly furs of the sea-otter, still so much prized in China,—“mines which are known to lie between the latitudes of 40° and 60° north,”—and also ginseng “in inexhaustible plenty,” for which there is still such demand in China, that even Minnesota, at the head-waters of the Mississippi, supplies her contribution. His catalogue might be extended now.

As a practical illustration of this idea, it may be mentioned, that, for a long time, most, if not all, the sea-otter skins of this coast found their way to China. China was the best customer, and therefore Englishmen and Americans followed the Russian Company in carrying these furs to her market, so that Pennant, the English naturalist, impressed by the peculiar advantages of the coast, exclaimed, “What a profitable trade [with China] might not a colony carry on, was it possible to penetrate to these parts of North America by means of the rivers and lakes!”[21] Under the present treaty this coast is ours.

The absence of harbors belonging to the United States on the Pacific limits the outlets of the country. On that whole extent, from Panama to Puget Sound, the only harbor of any considerable value is San Francisco. Further north the harbors are abundant, and they are all nearer to the great marts of Japan and China. But San Francisco itself will be nearer by the way of the Aleutians than by Honolulu. The projection of maps is not always calculated to present an accurate idea of distances. From measurement on a globe it appears that a voyage from San Francisco to Hong Kong by the common way of the Sandwich Islands is 7,140 miles, but by way of the Aleutian Islands it is only 6,060 miles, being a saving of more than one thousand miles, with the enormous additional advantage of being obliged to carry much less coal. Of course a voyage from Sitka, or from Puget Sound, the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad, would be shorter still.

The advantages to the Pacific coast have two aspects,—one domestic, and the other foreign. Not only does the treaty extend the coasting trade of California, Oregon, and Washington Territory northward, but it also extends the base of commerce with China and Japan.

To unite the East of Asia with the West of America is the aspiration of commerce now as when the English navigator recorded his voyage. Of course, whatever helps this result is an advantage. The Pacific Railroad is such an advantage; for, though running westward, it will be, when completed, a new highway to the East. This treaty is another advantage; for nothing can be clearer than that the western coast must exercise an attraction which will be felt in China and Japan just in proportion as it is occupied by a commercial people communicating readily with the Atlantic and with Europe. This cannot be without consequences not less important politically than commercially. Owing so much to the Union, the people there will be bound to it anew, and the national unity will receive another confirmation. Thus the whole country will be a gainer. So are we knit together that the advantages to the Pacific coast will contribute to the general welfare.

2. Extension of Dominion.—The extension of dominion is another consideration calculated to captivate the public mind. Few are so cold or philosophical as to regard with insensibility a widening of the bounds of country. Wars have been regarded as successful, when they have given a new territory. The discoverer who had planted the flag of his sovereign on a distant coast has been received as a conqueror. The ingratitude exhibited to Columbus during his later days was compensated by the epitaph, that he had “found a new world for Castile and Leon.”[22] His discoveries were continued by other navigators, and Spain girdled the earth with her possessions. Portugal, France, Holland, England, each followed the example of Spain, and rejoiced in extended empire.

Territorial acquisitions are among the landmarks of our history. In 1803, Louisiana, embracing the valley of the Mississippi, was acquired from France for fifteen million dollars. In 1819, Florida was acquired from Spain for about three million dollars. In 1845, Texas was annexed without purchase, but subsequently, under the compromises of 1850, an allowance of twelve and three fourth million dollars was made to her. In 1848, California, New Mexico, and Utah were acquired from Mexico after war, and on payment of fifteen million dollars. In 1854, Arizona was acquired from Mexico for ten million dollars. And now it is proposed to acquire Russian America.

The passion for acquisition, so strong in the individual, is not less strong in the community. A nation seeks an outlying territory, as an individual seeks an outlying farm. The passion shows itself constantly. France, passing into Africa, has annexed Algeria. Spain set her face in the same direction, but without the same success. There are two great powers with which annexion has become a habit. One is Russia, which from the time of Peter has been moving her flag forward in every direction, so that on every side her limits have been extended. Even now the report comes that she is lifting her southern landmarks in Asia, so as to carry her boundary to India. The other annexionist is Great Britain, which from time to time adds another province to her Indian empire. If the United States have from time to time added to their dominion, they have only yielded to the universal passion, although I do not forget that the late Theodore Parker was accustomed to speak of Anglo-Saxons as among all people remarkable for “greed of land.” It was land, not gold, that aroused the Anglo-Saxon phlegm. I doubt, however, if this passion be stronger with us than with others, except, perhaps, that in a community where all participate in government the national sentiments are more active. It is common to the human family. There are few anywhere who could hear of a considerable accession of territory, obtained peacefully and honestly, without a pride of country, even if at certain moments the judgment hesitated. With increased size on the map there is increased consciousness of strength, and the heart of the citizen throbs anew as he traces the extending line.

3. Extension of Republican Institutions.—More than the extension of dominion is the extension of republican institutions, which is a traditional aspiration. It was in this spirit that Independence was achieved. In the name of Human Rights our fathers overthrew the kingly power, whose representative was George the Third. They set themselves openly against this form of government. They were against it for themselves, and offered their example to mankind. They were Roman in character, and turned to Roman lessons. With cynical austerity the early Cato said that kings were “carnivorous animals,” and probably at his instance it was decreed by the Roman Senate that no king should be allowed within the gates of the city. A kindred sentiment, with less austerity of form, has been received from our fathers; but our city can be nothing less than the North American continent, with its gates on all the surrounding seas.

John Adams, in the preface to his Defence of the American Constitutions, written in London, where he resided at the time as minister, and dated January 1, 1787, at Grosvenor Square, the central seat of aristocratic fashion, after exposing the fabulous origin of the kingly power in contrast with the simple origin of our republican constitutions, thus for a moment lifts the curtain: “Thirteen governments,” he says plainly, “thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.”[23] Thus, according to the prophetic minister, even at that early day was the destiny of the Republic manifest. It was to spread over the northern part of the American quarter of the globe, and it was to help the rights of mankind.

By the text of our Constitution, the United States are bound to guaranty “a republican form of government” to every State in the Union; but this obligation, which is applicable only at home, is an unquestionable indication of the national aspiration everywhere. The Republic is something more than a local policy; it is a general principle, not to be forgotten at any time, especially when the opportunity is presented of bringing an immense region within its influence. Elsewhere it has for the present failed; but on this account our example is more important. Who can forget the generous lament of Lord Byron, whose passion for Freedom was not mitigated by his rank as an hereditary legislator of England, when he exclaims, in memorable verse,—

“The name of Commonwealth is past and gone

O’er the three fractions of the groaning globe”?

Who can forget the salutation which the poet sends to the “one great clime,” which, nursed in Freedom, enjoys what he calls the “proud distinction” of not being confounded with other lands,—

“Whose sons must bow them at a monarch’s motion,

As if his senseless sceptre were a wand”?

The present treaty is a visible step in the occupation of the whole North American continent. As such it will be recognized by the world and accepted by the American people. But the treaty involves something more. We dismiss one other monarch from the continent. One by one they have retired,—first France, then Spain, then France again, and now Russia,—all giving way to the absorbing Unity declared in the national motto, E pluribus unum.

4. Anticipation of Great Britain.—Another motive to this acquisition may be found in the desire to anticipate imagined schemes or necessities of Great Britain. With regard to all these I confess doubt; and yet, if we credit report, it would seem as if there were already a British movement in this direction. Sometimes it is said that Great Britain desires to buy, if Russia will sell. Sir George Simpson, Governor-in-chief of the Hudson’s Bay Company, declared, that, without the strip on the coast underlet to them by the Russian Company, the interior would be “comparatively useless to England.”[24] Here, then, is provocation to buy. Sometimes report assumes a graver character. A German scientific journal, in an elaborate paper entitled “The Russian Colonies on the Northwest Coast of America,” after referring to the constant “pressure” upon Russia, proceeds to say that there are already crowds of adventurers from British Columbia and California now at the gold mines on the Stikine, which flows from British territory through the Russian possessions, who openly declare their purpose of driving the Russians out of this region. I refer to the “Archiv für Wissenschaftliche Kunde von Russland,”[25] edited at Berlin as late as 1863, by A. Erman, and undoubtedly the leading authority on Russian questions. At the same time it presents a curious passage bearing directly on British policy, purporting to be taken from the “British Colonist,” a newspaper of Victoria, on Vancouver’s Island. As this was regarded of sufficient importance to be translated into German for the instruction of scientific readers, I am justified in laying it before you, restored from German to English.

“The information which we daily publish from the Stikine River very naturally excites public attention in a high degree. Whether the territory through which the river flows be regarded from a political, commercial, or industrial point of view, it promises within a short time to awaken a still more general interest. Not only will the intervention of the royal jurisdiction be demanded in order to give it a complete form of government, but, if the land proves as rich as there is now reason to believe it to be, it is not improbable that it will result in negotiations between England and Russia for the cession of the sea-coast to the British Crown. It is not to be supposed that a stream like the Stikine, which is navigable for steamers from one hundred and seventy to one hundred and ninety miles, which waters a territory so rich in gold that it will attract myriads of men,—that the commerce upon such a road can always pass through a Russian gateway of thirty miles from the sea-coast to the interior. The English population which occupies the interior cannot be so easily managed by the Russians as the Stikine Indians of the coast manage the Indians of the interior. Our business must be in British hands. Our resources, our energies, our spirit of enterprise cannot be employed in building up a Russian emporium at the mouth of the Stikine. We must have for our merchandise a depot over which the British flag waves. By the treaty of 1825 the navigation of the river is secured to us. The navigation of the Mississippi was also open to the United States before the Louisiana purchase; but the growing strength of the North made the acquisition of that territory, either by purchase or by force of arms, an inevitable necessity. We look upon the sea-coast of the Stikine region in the same light. The strip of land which stretches along from Portland Canal to Mount St. Elias, with a breadth of thirty miles, and which, according to the treaty of 1825, forms a part of Russian America, must eventually become the property of Great Britain, either as the direct result of the gold discoveries, or from causes as yet not fully developed, but whose operation is certain. For can we reasonably suppose that the strip, three hundred miles long and thirty miles wide, which is used by the Russians solely for the collection of furs and walrus-teeth, will forever control the entrance to our immense northern territory? It is a principle of England to acquire territory only for purposes of defence. Canada, Nova Scotia, Malta, the Cape of Good Hope, and the greater part of our Indian possessions were all acquired for purposes of defence. In Africa, India, and China the same rule is followed by the Government to-day. With a power like Russia it would perhaps be more difficult to arrange matters; but if we need the sea-coast in order to protect and maintain our commerce with an interior rich in precious metals, then we must have it. The United States needed Florida and Louisiana, and took them. We need the coast of New Norfolk and New Cornwall.

“It is just as much the destiny of our Anglo-Norman race to possess the whole of Russian America, however desolate and inhospitable it may be, as it has been that of the Russian Northmen to possess themselves of Northern Europe and Asia. As the Wandering Jew and his phantom, so will the Anglo-Norman and the Russian yet gaze at each other from the opposite sides of Behring Strait. Between the two races the northern halves of the Old and New World must be divided. America must be ours.

“The recent discovery of the precious metals in our hyperborean Eldorado will most probably hasten the annexation of the territory in question. It can hardly be doubted that the gold region of the Stikine extends away to the western affluents of the Mackenzie. In this case the increase of the business and of the population will exceed our most sanguine expectations. Who shall reap the profit of this? The mouths of rivers, both before and since the time of railroads, have controlled the business of the interior. To our national pride the thought, however, is intolerable, that the Russian griffin should possess a point which is indebted to the British lion for its importance. The mouth of the Stikine must be ours,—or at least a harbor of export must be established on British soil from which our steamers can pass the Russian belt. Fort Simpson, Dundas Island, Portland Canal, or some other convenient point, might be selected for this purpose. The necessity of speedy measures, in order to secure the control of the Stikine, is manifest. If we let slip the opportunity, we shall live to see a Russian city arise at the gates of a British colony.”

Thus, if we credit this colonial ejaculation, caught up and preserved by German science, the Russian possessions were destined to round and complete the domain of Great Britain on this continent. The Russian “griffin” was to give way to the British “lion.” The Anglo-Norman was to be master as far as Behring Strait, across which he might survey his Russian neighbor. How this was to be accomplished is not precisely explained. The promises of gold on the Stikine failed, and it is not improbable that this colonial plan was as unsubstantial. Colonists become excited easily. This is not the first time that Russian America has been menaced in a similar way. During the Crimean War there seemed to be in Canada a spirit not unlike that of the Vancouver journalist, unless we are misled by the able pamphlet[26] of Mr. A. K. Roche, of Quebec, where, after describing Russian America as “richer in resources and capabilities than it has hitherto been allowed to be, either by the English, who shamefully gave it up, or by the Russians, who cunningly obtained it,” the author urges an expedition for its conquest and annexion. His proposition fell on the happy termination of the war, but it exists as a warning, with notice also of a former English title, “shamefully” abandoned.

This region is distant enough from Great Britain; but there is an incident of past history which shows that distance from the metropolitan government has not excluded the idea of war. Great Britain could hardly be more jealous of Russia on these coasts than was Spain in a former day, if we listen to the report of Humboldt. I refer again to his authoritative work, “Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle-Espagne,”[27] where it is recorded, that, as early as 1788, even while peace was still unbroken, the Spaniards could not bear the idea of Russians in this region, and when, in 1799, the Emperor Paul declared war on Spain, the hardy project was formed of an expedition from the Mexican ports of Monterey and San Blas against the Russian colonies; on which the philosophic traveller remarks, in words which are recalled by the Vancouver manifesto, that, “if this project had been executed, the world would have witnessed two nations in conflict, which, occupying the opposite extremities of Europe, found themselves neighbors in the other hemisphere on the eastern and western boundaries of their vast empires.” Thus, notwithstanding an intervening circuit of half the globe, two great powers were about to encounter each other on these coasts. But I hesitate to believe that the British of our day, in any considerable numbers, have adopted the early Spanish disquietude at the presence of Russia on this continent.

5. Amity of Russia.—There is still another consideration concerning this treaty not to be disregarded. It attests and assures the amity of Russia. Even if you doubt the value of these possessions, the treaty is a sign of friendship. It is a new expression of that entente cordiale between the two powers which is a phenomenon of history. Though unlike in institutions, they are not unlike in recent experience. Sharers of common glory in a great act of Emancipation, they also share together the opposition or antipathy of other nations. Perhaps this experience has not been without effect in bringing them together. At all events, no coldness or unkindness has interfered at any time with their good relations.

The archives of the State Department show an uninterrupted cordiality between the two Governments, dating far back in our history. More than once Russia has proffered her good offices between the United States and Great Britain; once also she was a recognized arbitrator. She offered her mediation to terminate the War of 1812; and under her arbitration questions with Great Britain arising under the Treaty of Ghent were amicably settled in 1822. But it was during our recent troubles that we felt more than ever her friendly sentiments, although it is not improbable that the accident of position and of distance had influence in preserving these undisturbed. The Rebellion, which tempted so many other powers into its embrace, could not draw Russia from her habitual good-will. Her solicitude for the Union was early declared. She made no unjustifiable concession of ocean belligerence, with all its immunities and powers, to Rebels in arms against the Union. She furnished no hospitality to Rebel cruisers, nor was any Rebel agent ever received, entertained, or encouraged at St. Petersburg,—while, on the other hand, there was an understanding that the United States should be at liberty to carry prizes into Russian ports. So natural and easy were the relations between the two Governments, that such complaints as incidentally arose on either side were amicably adjusted by verbal explanations without written controversy.

Positive acts occurred to strengthen these relations. As early as 1861, the two Governments agreed to act together for the establishment of a connection between San Francisco and St. Petersburg by an inter-oceanic telegraph across Behring Strait; and this agreement was subsequently sanctioned by Congress.[28] Meanwhile occurred the visit of the Russian fleet in the winter of 1863, intended by the Emperor, and accepted by the United States, as a friendly demonstration. This was followed by a communication of the Secretary of State, dated 26th December, 1864, inviting the Archduke Constantine to visit the United States, where it was suggested that such a visit “would be beneficial to us and by no means unprofitable to Russia,” but “forbearing to specify reasons,” and assuring him, that, coming as a national guest, he “would receive a cordial and most demonstrative welcome.”[29] Affairs in Russia prevented the acceptance of this invitation. Afterwards, in the spring of 1866, Congress by solemn resolution declared the sympathies of the United States with the Emperor on his escape from the madness of an assassin,[30] and Mr. Fox, at the time Assistant Secretary of the Navy, was appointed to take the resolution of Congress to the Emperor, and, in discharge of this trust, to declare the friendly sentiments of our country for Russia. He was conveyed to Cronstadt in the monitor Miantonomoh, the most formidable ship of our navy, and thus this agent of war became a messenger of peace. The monitor and the minister were received in Russia with unbounded hospitality.

In relations such as I have described, the cession of territory seems a natural transaction, entirely in harmony with the past. It remains to hope that it may be a new link in an amity which, without effort, has overcome differences of institutions and intervening space on the globe.

SHALL THE TREATY BE RATIFIED?

Such are obvious considerations of a general character. The interests of the Pacific States, the extension of the national domain, the extension of republican institutions, the foreclosure of adverse British possession, and the amity of Russia,—these are the points we have passed in review. Most of these, if not all, are calculated to impress the public mind; but I can readily understand a difference of opinion with regard to the urgency of negotiation at this hour. Some may think that the purchase-money and the annual outlay that must follow might have been postponed another decade, while Russia continued in possession as trustee for our benefit; and yet some of the reasons for the treaty do not seem to allow delay.

At all events, now that the treaty has been signed by plenipotentiaries on each side duly empowered, it is difficult to see how we can refuse to complete the purchase without putting to hazard the friendly relations which happily subsist between the United States and Russia. The overtures originally proceeded from us. After a delay of years, and other intervening propositions, the bargain was at length concluded. It is with nations as with individuals. A bargain once made must be kept. Even if still open to consideration, it must not be lightly abandoned. I am satisfied that the dishonoring of this treaty, after what has passed, would be a serious responsibility for our country. As an international question, it would be tried by the public opinion of the world; and there are many who, not appreciating the requirement of our Constitution by which a treaty must have “the advice and consent of the Senate,” would regard its rejection as bad faith. There would be jeers at us, and jeers at Russia also: at us for levity in making overtures, and at Russia for levity in yielding to them. Had the Senate been consulted in advance, before the treaty was signed or either power publicly committed, as is often done on important occasions, it would be under less constraint. On such a consultation there would have been opportunity for all possible objections, and a large latitude for reasonable discretion. Let me add, that, while forbearing objection now, I hope that this treaty may not be drawn into a precedent, at least in the independent manner of its negotiation. I would save to the Senate an important power justly belonging to it.

A CAVEAT.

There is one other point on which I file my caveat. This treaty must not be a precedent for a system of indiscriminate and costly annexion. Sincerely believing that republican institutions under the primacy of the United States must embrace this whole continent, I cannot adopt the sentiment of Jefferson, who, while confessing satisfaction in settlements on the Pacific coast, saw there in the future nothing but “free and independent Americans,” bound to the United States only by “ties of blood and interest,” without political unity,[31]—or of Webster, who in the same spirit said of settlers there, “They will raise a standard for themselves, and they ought to do it.”[32] Nor am I willing to restrict myself to the principle so tersely expressed by Andrew Jackson, in his letter to President Monroe: “Concentrate our population, confine our frontier to proper limits, until our country, to those limits, is filled with a dense population.”[33] But I cannot disguise my anxiety that every stage in our predestined future shall be by natural processes, without war, and I would add even without purchase. There is no territorial aggrandizement worth the price of blood. Only under peculiar circumstances can it become the subject of pecuniary contract. Our triumph should be by growth and organic expansion in obedience to “preëstablished harmony,” recognizing always the will of those who are to become our fellow-citizens. All this must be easy, if we are only true to ourselves. Our motto may be that of Goethe: “Without haste, without rest.” Let the Republic be assured in tranquil liberty, with all equal before the law, and it will conquer by its sublime example. More happy than Austria, who acquired possessions by marriage, we shall acquire them by the attraction of republican institutions.

“Bella gerant alii; tu, felix Austria, nube;

Nam quæ Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus.”[34]

The famous epigram will be just as applicable to us, inasmuch as our acquisitions will be under the sanction of wedlock to the Republic. There may be wedlock of a people as well as of a prince. Meanwhile our first care should be to improve and elevate the Republic, whose sway will be so comprehensive. Plant it with schools; cover it with churches; fill it with libraries; make it abundant with comfort, so that poverty shall disappear; keep it constant in the assertion of Human Rights. And here we may fitly recall those words of Antiquity, which Cicero quoted from the Greek, and Webster in our day quoted from Cicero: “You have a Sparta; adorn it.”[35]

SOURCES OF INFORMATION UPON RUSSIAN AMERICA.

I am now brought to consider the character of these possessions and their probable value. Here I am obliged to confess a dearth of authentic information easily accessible. Few among us read Russian, so that works in this language are locked up from us. One of these, in two large and showy volumes, is now before me, entitled “An Historical Survey of the Formation of the Russian-American Company, and its Progress to the Present Time, by P. Teshmeneff, St. Petersburg.” The first volume appeared in 1860, and the second in 1863. Here, among other things, is a tempting engraving of Sitka, wrapt in mists, with the sea before and the snow-capped mountains darkened with forest behind. Judging from the table of contents, which has been translated for me by a Russian, the book ought to be instructive. There is also another Russian work of an official character, which appeared in 1861 at St. Petersburg, in the “Morskoi Sbornik,” or Naval Review, and is entitled “Materials for the History of the Russian Colonies on the Coasts of the Pacific.” The report of Captain-Lieutenant Golowin, made to the Grand Duke Constantine in 1861, with which we have become acquainted through a scientific German journal, appeared originally in the same review. These are recent productions. After the early voyages of Behring, first ordered by Peter and supervised by the Imperial Academy, the spirit of geographical research seems to have subsided at St. Petersburg. Other enterprises absorbed attention. And yet I would not do injustice to the voyages of Billings, recounted by Sauer, or of Lisiansky, or of Kotzebue, all under the auspices of Russia, the last of which may compare with any as a contribution to science. I may add Lütke also; but Kotzebue was a worthy successor to Behring and Cook.

Beside these official contributions, most of them by no means fresh, are materials derived from casual navigators, who, scudding these seas, rested in the harbors as the water-fowl on its flight,—from whalemen, who were there merely as Nimrods of the ocean, or from adventurers in quest of the rich furs it furnished. There are also the gazetteers and geographies; but they are less instructive on this head than usual, being founded on information now many years old.

Perhaps no region of equal extent on the globe, unless we except the interior of Africa or possibly Greenland, is so little known. Here I do not speak for myself alone. A learned German, whom I have already quoted, after saying that the explorations have been limited to the coast, testifies that “the interior, not only of the continent, but even of the island of Sitka, is to this day unexplored, and is in every respect terra incognita.”[36] The same has been repeated of the other islands. Admiral Lütke, whose circumnavigation of the globe began in 1826, and whose work bears date 1835-36, says of the Aleutian Archipelago, that, although frequented for more than a century by Russian vessels and those of other nations, it is to-day almost as little known as in the time of Cook. Another writer of authority, the compiler of the official work on the People of Russia, published as late as 1862, speaks of the interior as “a mystery.” And yet another says that our ignorance with regard to this region would make it a proper scene for a chapter of Gulliver’s Travels.

Where so little was known, invention found scope. Imagination was made to supply the place of knowledge, and poetry pictured the savage desolation in much admired verse. Campbell, in the “Pleasures of Hope,” while exploring “Earth’s loneliest bounds and Ocean’s wildest shore,” reaches this region, which he portrays:—

“Lo! to the wintry winds the pilot yields

His bark careering o’er unfathomed fields.

…

Now far he sweeps, where scarce a summer smiles,

On Behring’s rocks or Greenland’s naked isles;

Cold on his midnight watch the breezes blow

From wastes that slumber in eternal snow,

And waft across the waves’ tumultuous roar

The wolf’s long howl from Oonalaska’s shore.”

All of which, so far at least as it describes this region, is inconsistent with truth. The poet ignores the isothermal line, which plays such a conspicuous part on the Pacific coast. Here the evidence is positive. Portlock, the navigator, who was there toward the close of the last century, after describing Cook’s Inlet, which is several degrees north of Oonalaska, records his belief “that the climate here is not so severe as has been generally supposed; for, in the course of our traffic with the natives, they frequently brought berries of several sorts, and in particular blackberries, equally fine with those met with in England.”[37] Kotzebue, who was here later, says that he found “the weather pretty warm at Oonalaska.”[38] South of the Aleutians the climate is warmer still. The poet ignores natural history also, as regards the distribution of animals. Curiously enough, it does not appear that “wolves” exist on any of the Fox Islands. Coxe, in his work on Russian Discoveries,[39] records that “reindeer, bears, wolves, ice-foxes, are not to be found on these islands.” But he was never there. Meares, who was in those seas, says, “The only animals on these islands are foxes, some of which are black.”[40] Cook, who visited Oonalaska twice, and once made a prolonged stay, expressly says, “Foxes and weasels were the only quadrupeds we saw; but they told us that they had hares also, and marmottas.”[41] But quadrupeds like these hardly sustain the exciting picture. The same experienced navigator furnishes a glimpse of the inhabitants, as they appeared to him, which would make us tremble, if the “wolves” of the poet were numerous. He says, “To all appearance, they are the most peaceable, inoffensive people I ever met with”; and Cook had been at Otaheite. “No such thing as an offensive or even defensive weapon was seen amongst the natives of Oonalaska.”[42] Then, at least, the inhabitants did not share the ferocity of the “wolves” and of the climate. Another navigator fascinates us by a description of the boats, which struck him “with amazement beyond expression”; and he explains: “If perfect symmetry, smoothness, and proportion constitute beauty, they are beautiful; to me they appeared so beyond anything that I ever beheld. I have seen some of them as transparent as oiled paper.”[43] But these are the very boats that buffet “the waves’ tumultuous roar,” while “the breezes” waft “the wolf’s long howl.” The same reporter introduces another feature. According to him, the sojourning Russians “seem to have no desire to leave this place, where they enjoy that indolence so pleasing to their minds.”[44] The lotus-eaters of Homer were no better off. The picture is completed by another touch from Lütke. Admitting the want of trees, the Admiral suggests that their place is supplied not only by luxuriant grass, but by wood thrown upon the coast, including trunks of camphor from Chinese and Japanese waters, and “a tree which gives forth the odor of the rose.”[45] Such is a small portion of the testimony, most of it in print before the poet sang.[46]

Nothing has been written about this region, whether the coast or the islands, more authentic or interesting than the narrative of Captain Cook on his third and last voyage. He saw with intelligence, and his editor has imparted to the description a clearness almost elegant. The record of Captain Portlock’s voyage from London to the Northwest Coast, in 1785-8, seems honest, and is instructive. Captain Meares, whose voyage was contemporaneous, saw and exposed the importance of trade between the Northwest Coast and China. Vancouver, who came a little later, has described some parts of the coast. La Pérouse, the unfortunate French navigator, has afforded another picture of it, painted with French colors. Before him was Maurelle, an officer in the Spanish expedition of 1779, a portion of whose journal is preserved in the Introduction to the volumes of La Pérouse. After him was Marchand, who, during a circumnavigation of the globe, stopped here in 1791. The Voyage of the latter, published in three quartos, is accompanied by an Historical Introduction, which is a mine of information on all the voyages to this coast. Then came the successive Russian voyages already mentioned, and in 1804-6 the “Voyage to the North Pacific” of Captain John D’Wolf, one of our own enterprising countrymen. Later came the “Voyage round the World” by Captain Sir Edward Belcher, with a familiar sketch of life at Sitka, where he stopped in 1837, and an engraving of the arsenal and light-house there. Then followed the “Overland Journey round the World,” in 1841-2, by Sir George Simpson, Governor-in-chief of the Hudson’s Bay Company, with an account of a visit to Sitka and the hospitality of its governor. To these I add the “Nautical Magazine” for 1849, Volume XVIII., which contains some excellent pages about Sitka; the “Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London” for 1841, Volume XI., and for 1852, Volume XXII., where this region is treated under the heads of “Observations on the Indigenous Tribes of the Northwest Coast of America,” and “Notes on the Distribution of Animals available as Food in the Arctic Regions”; Burney’s “Northeastern Voyages”; the magnificent work entitled “Description Ethnographique des Peuples de la Russie,” which appeared at St. Petersburg in 1862, on the tenth centennial anniversary of the foundation of the Russian Empire; the very recent work of Murray on the “Geographical Distribution of Mammals”; the work of Sir John Richardson, “Fauna Boreali-Americana”; Latham on “The Nationalities of Europe,” in the chapters on the population of Russian America; the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” and the admirable “Physical Atlas” of Alexander Keith Johnston. I mention also an elaborate article by Holmberg, in the Transactions of the Finland Society of Sciences at Helsingfors, replete with information on the Ethnography of the Northwest Coast.[47]

Doubtless the most precise and valuable information has been contributed by Germany. The Germans are the best of geographers; besides, many Russian contributions are in German. Müller, who recorded the discoveries of Behring, was a German. Nothing more important on this subject has ever appeared than the German work of the Russian Admiral Von Wrangell, “Statistische und Ethnographische Nachrichten über die Russischen Besitzungen an der Nordwestküste von Amerika,” first published by Baer in his “Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Russischen Reiches,” in 1839. There is also the “Verhandlungen der Russisch-Kaiserlichen Mineralogischen Gesellschaft zu St. Petersburg,” 1848 and 1849, which contains an elaborate article, in itself a volume, on the Orography and Geology of the Northwest Coast and the adjoining islands, at the end of which is a bibliographical list of works and materials illustrating the discovery and history of the western half of North America and the neighboring seas. I also refer generally to the “Archiv für Wissenschaftliche Kunde von Russland,” edited by Erman, but especially the volume for 1863, containing the abstract of Golowin’s report on the Russian Colonies in North America, as it appeared originally in the “Morskoi Sbornik.” Besides these, there are Wappäus, “Handbuch der Geographie und Statistik von Nord-Amerika,” published at Leipsic in 1855; Petermann, in his “Mittheilungen über wichtige neue Erforschungen auf dem Gesammtgebiete der Geographie,” for 1856, p. 486, for 1859, p. 41, and for 1863, pp. 70, 237, 277; Kittlitz, “Denkwürdigkeiten einer Reise nach dem Russischen Amerika, nach Mikronesien und durch Kamtschatka,” published at Gotha in 1858; also, by the same author, “The Vegetation of the Coasts and Islands of the Pacific,” translated from the German, and published at London in 1861.

Much recent information has been derived from the great companies possessing the monopoly of trade. Latterly there has been an unexpected purveyor in the Russian American Telegraph Company, under the direction of Captain Charles S. Bulkley; and here our own countrymen help us. To this expedition we are indebted for authentic evidence with regard to the character of the region, and the great rivers which traverse it. The Smithsonian Institution and the Chicago Academy of Sciences coöperated with the Telegraph Company in the investigation of the natural history. Major Kennicott, a young naturalist, originally in the service of the Institution, and Director of the Museum of the Chicago Academy, was the enterprising chief of the Yukon division of the expedition. While in the midst of his valuable labors, he died suddenly, in the month of May last, at Nulato, on the banks of the great river, the Kwichpak, which may be called the Mississippi of the North, far away in the interior, and on the confines of the Arctic Circle, where the sun was visible all night. Even after death he was still an explorer. From this remote outpost, his remains, after descending the unknown river in an Esquimaux boat of seal-skins, steered by the faithful companion of his labors, were transported by way of Panama to his home at Chicago, where he now lies buried. Such an incident cannot be forgotten, and his name will always remind us of courageous enterprise, before which distance and difficulty disappeared. He was not a beginner, when he entered into the service of the Telegraph Company. Already he had visited the Yukon country by the way of the Mackenzie River, and contributed to the Smithsonian Institution important information with regard to its geography and natural history, some of which is found in their Reports. Nature in novel forms was open to him. The birds here maintained their kingdom. All about him was the mysterious breeding-place of the canvas-back duck, whose eggs, never before seen by naturalist, covered acres.

If we look to maps for information, here again we are disappointed. Latterly the coast is outlined and described with reasonable completeness; so also are the islands. This is the contribution of navigators and of recent Russian charts. But the interior is little more than a blank, calling to mind “the unhabitable downs,” where, according to Swift, the old geographers “place elephants for want of towns.” I have already referred to what purports to be a “General Map of the Russian Empire,” published by the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg in 1776, and republished at London in 1780, where Russian America does not appear. I might mention also that Captain Cook complained in his day of the Russian maps as “singularly erroneous.” On the return of the expedition, English maps recorded his explorations and the names he assigned to different parts of the coast. These were reproduced in St. Petersburg, and the Russian copy was then reproduced in London, so that geographical knowledge was very little advanced. Some of the best maps of this region are by Germans, who excel in maps. I mention an excellent one of the Aleutian Islands and the neighboring coasts, especially to illustrate their orography and geology, which will be found at the end of the volume of Transactions of the Imperial Mineralogical Society at St. Petersburg to which I have already referred.

Late maps attest the tardiness of information. Here, for instance, is an excellent map of North America, purporting to be published by the Geographical Institute of Weimar as late as 1859, on which we have the Yukon pictured, very much like the Niger in Africa, as a large river meandering in the interior with no outlet to the sea. Here also is a Russian map of this very region, as late as 1861, where the course of the Yukon is left in doubt. On other maps, as in the Physical Atlas of Keith Johnston, it is presented, under another name, entering into the Frozen Ocean. But the secret is penetrated at last. Recent discovery, by the enterprise of our citizens in the service of the Telegraph Company, fixes that this river is an affluent of the Kwichpak, as the Missouri is an affluent of the Mississippi, and enters into Behring Sea by many mouths, between the parallels of 62° and 63°. After the death of Major Kennicott, a division of his party, with nothing but a skin boat, ascended the river to Fort Yukon, where it bifurcates, and descended it again to Nulato, thus establishing the entire course from its sources in the Rocky Mountains for a distance exceeding a thousand miles. I have before me now an outline map just prepared by our Coast Survey, where this correction is made. But this is only a harbinger of the maturer labors of our accomplished bureau, when the coasts of this region are under the jurisdiction of the United States.

In closing this abstract of authorities, being the chief sources of original information, I cannot forbear expressing my satisfaction, that, with the exception of a single work, all these are found in the Congressional Library, now so happily enriched by the rare collection of the Smithsonian Institution. Sometimes individuals are like libraries; and this seems to be illustrated in the case of Professor Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution, who is thoroughly informed on all questions connected with the natural history of Russian America, and also of George Gibbs, Esq., now of Washington, who is the depositary of valuable knowledge, the result of his own personal studies and observations, with regard to the native races.

CHARACTER AND VALUE OF RUSSIAN AMERICA.

I pass now to a consideration of the character and value of these possessions, as seen under these different heads: first, Government; secondly, Population; thirdly, Climate; fourthly, Vegetable Products; fifthly, Mineral Products; sixthly, Furs; and, seventhly, Fisheries. Of these I shall speak briefly in their order. There are certain words of a general character, which I introduce by way of preface. I quote from Blodget on the “Climatology of the United States and of the Temperate Latitudes of the North American Continent.”

“It is most surprising that so little is known of the great islands and the long line of coast from Puget’s Sound to Sitka, ample as its resources must be even for recruiting the transient commerce of the Pacific, independent of its immense intrinsic value. To the region bordering the Northern Pacific the finest maritime positions belong throughout its entire extent; and no part of the West of Europe exceeds it in the advantages of equable climate, fertile soil, and commercial accessibility of the coast. The western slope of the Rocky Mountain system may be included as a part of this maritime region, embracing an immense area, from the forty-fifth to the sixtieth parallel and five degrees of longitude in width. The cultivable surface of this district cannot be much less than three hundred thousand square miles.”[48]

From this sketch, which is in the nature of a picture, I pass to the different heads.

1. Government.—The Russian settlements were for a long time without any regular government. They were little more than temporary lodgements for purposes of trade, where the will of the stronger prevailed. The natives, who had enslaved each other, became in turn the slaves of these mercenary adventurers. Captain Cook records “the great subjection”[49] of the natives at Oonalaska, when he was there in 1778; and a Russian navigator, fourteen years later, describes the islands generally as “under the sway of roving hunters more savage than any tribes he had hitherto met with.”[50] At Oonalaska the Russians for a long time employed all the men in the chase, “taking the fruits of their labor to themselves.”[51]

The first trace of government which I find was in 1790, at the important island of Kadiak, or the Great Island, as it was called, where a Russian company was established under direction of a Greek by the name of Delareff, who, according to the partial report of a Russian navigator, “governed with the strictest justice, as well natives as Russians, and established a school, where the young natives were taught the Russian language, reading and writing.”[52] Here were about fifty Russians, including officers of the company, and another person described as “there on the part of Government to collect tribute.”[53] The establishment consisted of five houses after the Russian fashion,—barracks laid out on either side, somewhat like the boxes at a coffee-house, with different offices, represented as follows: “An office of appeal, to settle disputes, levy fines, and punish offenders by a regular trial; here Delareff presides, and I believe that few courts of justice pass a sentence with more impartiality; an office of receival and delivery, both for the company and for tribute; the commissaries’ department, for the distribution of the regulated portions of provision; counting-house, &c.: all in this building, at one end of which is Delareff’s habitation.”[54] If this picture is not overdrawn,—and it surely is,—affairs here did not improve with time. But D’Wolf, who was there in 1805-6, reports “about forty houses of various descriptions, including a church, school-house, store-house, and barracks”; and he adds: “The school-house was quite a respectable establishment, well filled with pupils.”[55]

There were various small companies, of which that at Kadiak was the most considerable, all finally fused into one large trading company, known as the Russian American Company, organized in 1799, under a charter from the Emperor Paul, with the power of administration throughout the whole region, including coasts and islands. In this respect it was not unlike the East India Company, which has played such a part in English history; but it may be more properly compared to the Hudson’s Bay Company, of which it was a Russian counterpart. The charter was for a term of years, but it has been from time to time extended, and, as I understand, is now about to expire. The powers of the Company are sententiously described by the “Almanach de Gotha” for 1867, where, under the head of Russia, it says that “to the present time Russian America has been the property of a company.”

I know no limitation upon the Company, except that latterly it has been bound to appoint its chief functionary, called “Administrator General,” from the higher officers of the imperial navy, when he becomes invested with what are declared the prerogatives of a governor in Siberia. This requirement has doubtless secured the superior order of magistrates since enjoyed. Among these have been Baron Wrangell, an admiral, there at the time of the treaty with Great Britain in 1825; Captain Kuprianoff, who had commanded the Azof, a ship of the line, in the Black Sea, and spoke English well; Captain Etolin; Admiral Furuhelm, who, after being there five years, was made governor of the province of the Amoor; Admiral Woiwodsky; and Prince Maksutoff, an admiral also, who is the present Administrator General. The term of service is ordinarily five years.

The seat of government is the town of New Archangel, better known by its aboriginal name of Sitka, with a harbor as smooth and safe as a pond. Its present population cannot be far from one thousand, although even this is changeable. In spring, when sailors leave for the sea and trappers for the chase, it has been reduced to as few as one hundred and eighty. It was not without a question that Sitka at last prevailed as the metropolis. Lütke sets forth reasons elaborately urged in favor of St. Paul, on the island of Kadiak.[56]

The first settlement there was in 1800, by Baranoff, the superintendent of the Company, whose life was passed in this country, and whose name has been given to the island. But the settlement made slow progress. Lisiansky, who was there in 1804, records, that, “from his entrance into Sitka Sound, there was not to be seen on the shore the least vestige of habitation.”[57] The natives had set themselves against a settlement. Meanwhile the seat of government was at Kadiak, of which we have an early and friendly glimpse. I quote what Lisiansky says, as exhibiting in a favorable light the beginning of the government, now transferred to the United States.

“The island of Kadiak, with the rest of the Russian settlements along the northwest coast of America, are superintended by a kind of governor-general or commander-in-chief, who has agents under him, appointed, like himself, by the Company at Petersburg. The smaller settlements have each a Russian overseer. These overseers are chosen by the governor, and are selected for the office in consequence of their long services and orderly conduct. They have the power of punishing, to a certain extent, those whom they superintend; but are themselves amenable to the governor, if they abuse their power by acts of injustice. The seat of government is the Harbor of St. Paul, which has a barrack, different store-houses, several respectable wooden habitations, and a church, the only one to be found on the coast.”[58]

From this time the Company seems to have established itself on the coast. Lisiansky speaks of a single hunting party of nine hundred men, gathered from different places, as Alaska, Kadiak, Cook’s Inlet, Prince William Sound, and “commanded by thirty-six toyons, who are subordinate to the Russians in the service of the American Company, and receive from them their orders.”[59] From another source I learn that the inhabitants of Kadiak and of the Aleutian Islands were regarded as “immediate subjects of the Company,”—the males from eighteen to fifty being bound to serve it for the term of three years each. They were employed in the chase. The population of Alaska and of the two great bays, Cook’s Inlet and Prince William Sound, were also subject to the Company; but they were held to a yearly tax on furs, without regular service, and they could trade only with the Company; otherwise they were independent. This seems to have been before a division of the whole into districts, all under the Company, which, though primarily for the business of the Company, may be regarded as so many distinct jurisdictions, each with local powers of government.

Among these were two districts which I mention only to put aside, as not included in the present cession: (1.) the Kurile Islands, being the group nestling near the coast of Japan, on the Asiatic side of the dividing line between the two continents; (2.) the Ross settlement in California, now abandoned.

There remain five other districts: (1.) the District of Atcha, with the bureau at this island, embracing the two western groups of the Aleutians known as the Andreanoffsky Islands and the Rat Islands, and also the group about Behring’s Island, which is not embraced in the present cession;—(2.) the District of Oonalaska, with the bureau at this island, embracing the Fox Islands, the peninsula of Alaska to the meridian of the Shumagin Islands, including these, and also the Pribyloff Islands to the northwest of the peninsula;—(3.) the District of Kadiak, embracing the peninsula of Alaska east of the meridian of the Shumagin Islands, and the coast eastward to Mount St. Elias, with adjacent islands, including Kadiak, Cook’s Inlet, and Prince William Sound; then northward along the coast of Bristol Bay, and the country watered by the Nushagak and Kuskokwim rivers; all of which is governed from Kadiak, with redoubts or palisaded stations at Nushagak, Cook’s Inlet, and Prince William Sound;—(4.) the Northern District, embracing the country of the Kwichpak and of Norton Sound, under direction of the commander of the redoubt at St. Michael’s; leaving the country northward, with the islands St. Lawrence and St. Matthew, not included in this district, but visited directly from Sitka;—(5.) the District of Sitka, embracing the coast from Mount St. Elias, where the Kadiak district ends, southward to the latitude of 54° 40´, with adjacent islands. But this district has been curtailed by a lease of the Russian American Company in 1839 for the space of ten years, and subsequently renewed, where this Company, in consideration of the annual payment of two thousand otter skins of Columbia River, under-lets to the Hudson Bay Company all its franchise for the strip of continent between Cape Spencer at the north and the latitude of 54° 40´, excluding adjacent islands.

The central government of all these districts is at Sitka, from which emanate all orders and instructions. Here also is the chief factory, the fountain of supplies and the store-house of proceeds.

The operations of the Government are seen in receipts and expenditures, including salaries and allowances. In the absence of a complete series of such statistics to the present time, I mass together what I have been able to glean in different fields, relating to particular years, knowing well its unsatisfactory character. But each item has instruction for us.

The capital of the Company, in buildings, wares, vessels, &c., was reported in 1833 at 3,658,577 rubles. In 1838 it possessed twelve vessels, with an aggregate capacity of 1,556 tons, most of which were built at Sitka. According to Wappäus, who follows Wrangell, the pay of the officers and workmen in 1832 amounted to 442,877 rubles. At that time the persons in its service numbered 1,025, of whom 556 were Russians, 152 Creoles, and 317 Aleutians. In 1851 there were one staff officer, three officers of the imperial navy, one officer of engineers, four civil officers, thirty religious officers, and six hundred and eighty-six servants. The expenses from 1826 to 1833, a period of seven years, were 6,608,077 rubles. These become interesting, when it is considered, that, besides what was paid on account of furs and the support of persons in the service of the Company, were other items incident to government, such as ship-building, navigation, fortifications, hospitals, schools, and churches. From a later authority it appears that the receipts reported at St. Petersburg for the year 1855 were 832,749 rubles, against expenses, 683,892 rubles, incurred for “administration in Russia and the colonies,” insurance, transportation, and duties. The relative proportion of these different expenses does not appear.

These are explained by other statistics, which I am able to give from the Report of Golowin, who furnishes the receipts and expenditures from 1850 to 1859, inclusive. The silver ruble, which is the money employed in the table, is taken at our mint for seventy-five cents.

Receipts from 1850 to 1859, inclusive.

Expenditures from 1850 to 1859, inclusive.

Analyzing this table, we arrive at a clearer insight into the affairs of the Company. If its receipts have been considerable, they have been subject to serious deductions. From the expenditures we also learn something of the obligations we are about to assume.

Another table shows that during this same period 122,006 rubles were received for ice, mostly sent to California, 26,399 rubles for timber, and 6,250 for coal. I think it not improbable that these items are included in the list of “receipts” under the term “other traffics.”

In Russia the churches belong to the Government, and this rule prevails in these districts, where are four Greek churches and five Greek chapels. There is also a Protestant church at Sitka. I am glad to add that at the latter place there is a public library, which some years ago contained seventeen hundred volumes, together with journals, charts, atlases, mathematical and astronomical instruments. In Atcha, Oonalaska, Kadiak, and Sitka schools are reported at the expense of the Company, though not on a very comprehensive scale; for Admiral Wrangell mentions only ninety boys as enjoying these advantages in 1839. In Oonalaska and Kadiak there were at the same time orphan asylums for girls, where there were in all about thirty; but the Admiral adds, that “these useful institutions will, without doubt, be improved to the utmost.” Besides these, which are confined to particular localities, there is said to be a hospital near every factory in all the districts.

I have no means of knowing if these territorial subdivisions have undergone recent modification. They will be found in the “Russischen Besitzungen” of Wrangell, published in 1839, in the “Geographie” of Wappäus in 1856, and in the “Archiv von Russland” of 1863, containing the article on the Report of Golowin. I am thus particular with regard to them from a double motive. Besides helping us to understand the government, they afford suggestions of practical importance in any future organization.

The Company has not been without criticism. Pictures of it are by no means rose color. These, too, furnish instruction. Early in the century its administration was the occasion of open and repeated complaint. It was pronounced harsh and despotic. Langsdorff is indignant that “a free trading company should exist independent, as it were, of the Government, not confined within any definite regulations, but who can exercise their authority free and uncontrolled, nay, even unpunished, over so vast an extent of country.” In stating the case, he adds, that “the Russian subject here enjoys no protection of his property, lives in no security, and, if oppressed, has no one to whom he can apply for justice. The agents of the factories, and their subordinate officers, influenced by humor or interest, decide everything arbitrarily.” And this arbitrary power seems to have prevailed wherever a factory was established. “The stewardship in each single establishment is entirely despotic; though nominally depending upon the principal factory at Kadiak, these stewards do just what they please, without the possibility of their being called to account.” If such was the condition of Russians, what must have been that of natives? Here the witness answers: “I have seen the Russian fur-hunters dispose of the lives of the natives solely according to their own arbitrary will, and put these defenceless creatures to death in the most horrible manner.”[60] Our own D’Wolf records Langsdorff’s remonstrance in behalf of “the poor Russians,” and adds that it was “but to little purpose.”[61] Krusenstern concurs in this testimony, and, if possible, darkens the colors. According to him, “Every one must obey the iron rule of the agent of the American Company; nor can there be either personal property or individual security, where there are no laws. The chief agent of the American Company is the boundless despot over an extent of country which, comprising the Aleutian Islands, stretches from 57° to 61° of latitude and from 130° to 190° of east longitude”; and he adds, in a note, “There are no courts of justice in Kadiak, nor any of the Company’s possessions.”[62] Chamisso, the naturalist of Kotzebue’s expedition, while confessing incompetency to speak on the treatment of the natives by the Company, declares “his wounded feelings and his commiseration.”[63] It is too probable that the melancholy story of our own aborigines has been repeated. As these criticisms were by Russian officers, they must have had a certain effect. I cannot believe that the recent government, administered by the enlightened magistrates of whom we have heard, has been obnoxious to such terrible accusations; nor must it be forgotten that the report of Lisiansky, contemporaneous with those of Langsdorff and Krusenstern, is much less painful.

Baranoff, who had been so long superintendent, retired in 1818. He is much praised by Langsdorff, who saw him in 1805-6, and by Lütke, who was at Sitka in 1828. Both attribute to him a genius for his place, and a disinterested devotion to the interests of the Company, whose confidence he enjoyed to the end. D’Wolf says, “He possessed a strong mind, easy manners and deportment,” and “commanded the greatest respect from the Indians.”[64] Although administering affairs for more than a generation without rendering accounts, he died poor. He was succeeded by Captain Hagemeister. Since then, according to Lütke, an infinity of reforms has taken place, by which order and system have been introduced.

The Russian officer, Captain Golowin, who visited these possessions in 1860, has recommended certain institutional reforms, which are not without interest at this time. His recommendations concern the governor and the people. According to him, the governor should be appointed by the Crown with the concurrence of the Company, removable only when his continuance is plainly injurious to the colony; he should be subject only to the Crown, and his powers should be limited, especially in regard to the natives; he should provide protection for the colonists by means of cruisers, and should personally visit every district annually; the colonists, Creoles, and subject natives, such as the Aleutians, should be governed by magistrates of their own selection; the name of “free Creole” should cease; all disputes should be settled by the local magistrates, unless the parties desire an appeal to the governor; schools should be encouraged, and, if necessary, provided at the public expense. These suggestions, in the nature of a reform bill, foreshadow a condition of self-government in harmony with republican institutions.

It is evident that these Russian settlements, distributed through an immense region and far from any civilized neighborhood, have little in common with those of European nations elsewhere, unless we except the Danish on the west coast of Greenland. Nearly all are on the coast or the islands. They are nothing but “villages” or “factories” under protection of palisades. Sitka is an exception, due unquestionably to its selection as headquarters of the Government, and also to the eminent character of the governors who have made it their home. The executive mansion and the social life there have been described by recent visitors, who acknowledged the charms of politeness on this distant northwestern coast. Lütke portrays life among its fogs, and especially the attractions of the governor’s house. This was in the time of Admiral Wrangell, whose wife, possessing a high education, embellished the wilderness by her presence, and furnished an example of a refined and happy household. His account of Sitkan hospitality differs in some respects from that of English writers who succeeded. He records that fish was the staple dish at the tables of functionaries as well as of the poor, and that the chief functionary himself was rarely able to have meat for dinner. During the winter, a species of wild sheep, the Musmon or Argali, also known in Siberia, and hunted in the forests, furnished an occasional supply. But a fish diet did not prevent his house from being delightful,—as was that of Baranoff, at an earlier day, according to D’Wolf, who speaks of “an abundance of good cheer.”[65]

Sir Edward Belcher, the English circumnavigator, while on his voyage round the world, stopped there. From him we have an account of the executive mansion and fortifications, which will not be out of place in this attempt to portray the existing Government. The house is of wood, described as “solid,” one hundred and forty feet in length by seventy feet wide, of two stories, with lofts, capped by a light-house in the centre of the roof, which is covered with sheet-iron. It is about sixty feet above the sea-level, and completely commands all the anchorage in the neighborhood. Behind is a line of picketed logs twenty-five feet in height, flanked at the angles by block-houses, loopholed and furnished with small guns and swivels. The fortifications, when complete, “will comprise five sides, upon which forty pieces of cannon will be mounted, principally old ship-guns, varying from twelve to twenty-four pounders.” The arsenal is praised for the best of cordage in ample store, and for the best of artificers in every department. The interior of the Greek church was found to be “splendid, quite beyond conception in such a place as this.” The school and hospital had a “comparative cleanliness and comfort, and much to admire,—although a man-of-war’s man’s ideas of cleanliness are perhaps occasionally acute.” But it is the social life which seems to have most surprised the gallant captain. After telling us that “on their Sunday all the officers of the establishment, civil as well as military, dine at the governor’s,” he introduces us to an evening party and dance, which the latter gave to show his English guest “the female society of Sitka,” and records that everything “passed most delightfully,” especially, that, “although the ladies were almost self-taught, they acquitted themselves with all the ease and elegance communicated by European instruction.” Sir Edward adds, that “the society is indebted principally to the governor’s elegant and accomplished lady—who is of one of the first Russian families—for much of this polish”; and he describes sympathetically her long journey through Siberia with her husband, “on horse-back or mules, enduring great hardships, in a most critical moment, in order to share with him the privations of this barbarous region.” But, according to him, barbarism is disappearing; and he concludes by declaring that “the whole establishment appears to be rapidly on the advance, and at no distant period we may hear of a trip to Norfolk Sound through America as little more than a summer excursion.”[66] Is not this time near at hand?

Four years afterward, Sir George Simpson, governor-in-chief of the Hudson’s Bay Company, on his overland journey round the world, stopped at Sitka. He had just crossed the continent by way of the Red River settlements to Vancouver. He, too, seems to have been pleased. He shows us in the harbor “five sailing vessels, ranging between two hundred and three hundred and fifty tons, besides a large bark in the offing in tow of a steamer”; and he carries us to the executive mansion, already described, which reappears as “a suite of apartments, communicating, according to the Russian fashion, with each other, all the public rooms being handsomely decorated and richly furnished, commanding a view of the whole establishment, which was in fact a little village, while about half-way down the rock two batteries on terraces frowned respectively over the land and the water.” There was another Administrator-General since the visit of Sir Edward Belcher; but again the wife plays her charming part. After portraying her as a native of Helsingfors, in Finland, the visitor adds: “So that this pretty and ladylike woman had come to this, her secluded home, from the farthest extremity of the Empire.” Evidently in a mood beyond contentment, he says: “We sat down to a good dinner in the French style, the party, in addition to our host and hostess and ourselves, comprising twelve of the Company’s officers”; and his final judgment seems to be given, when he says: “The good folks of New Archangel appear to live well. The surrounding country abounds in the chevreuil, the finest meat that I ever ate, with the single exception of moose,” while “in a little stream which is within a mile of the fort salmon are so plentiful at the proper season, that, when ascending the river, they have been known literally to embarrass the movements of a canoe.”[67] Such is the testimony.

With these concluding pictures I turn from the Government.

2. Population.—I come now to the Population, which may be considered in its numbers and in its character. In neither respect, perhaps, can it add much to the value of the country, except so far as native hunters and trappers are needed for the supply of furs. Professor Agassiz touches this point in a letter which I have just received from him, where he says: “To me the fact that there is as yet hardly any population would have great weight, as this secures the settlement to our race.” But we ought to know something, at least, of the people about to become the subjects of our jurisdiction, if not our fellow-citizens.

First. In trying to arrive at an idea of their numbers, I begin with Lippincott’s Gazetteer, as it is the most accessible, according to which the whole population in 1851, aboriginal, Russian, and Creole, was 61,000. The same estimate appears also in the London “Imperial Gazetteer” and in the “Geographie” of Wappäus. Keith Johnston, in his “Physical Atlas,” calls the population, in 1852, 66,000. McCulloch, in the last edition of his “Geographical Dictionary,” puts it as high as 72,375. On the other hand, the “Almanach de Gotha” for the present year calls it 54,000. This estimate seems to have been adopted substantially from the great work, “Les Peuples de la Russie,” which I am disposed to consider as the best authority.

Exaggerations are common with regard to the inhabitants of newly acquired possessions, and this distant region is no exception. An enthusiastic estimate once placed its population as high as 400,000. Long ago, Schelekoff, an early Russian adventurer, reported that he had subjected to the Crown of Russia 50,000 persons in the island of Kadiak alone.[68] But Lisiansky, who followed him there in 1804-5, says: “The population of this island, when compared with its size, is very small.” After “the minutest research,” he found that it amounted only to 4,000 souls.[69] It is much less now,—probably not more than 1,500.

It is easy to know the number of those within the immediate jurisdiction of the Company. This is determined by a census. Even here the aborigines are the most numerous. Then come the Creoles, and last the Russians. But here you must bear in mind a distinction with regard to the former. In Spanish America all of European parentage born there are “Creoles”; in Russian America this term is applicable only to those whose parents are European and native,—in other words, “half-breeds.” According to Wrangell, in 1833, the census of dependants of the Company in all its districts was 652 Russians, 991 Creoles, and 9,016 Aleutians and Kadiaks, being in all 10,659. Of these, 5,509 were men and 5,150 were women. In 1851, according to the report of the Company, there was an increase of Creoles, with a corresponding diminution of Russians and aborigines, being 505 Russians, 1,703 Creoles, and 7,055 aborigines, in all 9,263. In 1857 there were 644 Russians, 1,903 Creoles, and 7,245 aborigines, in all 9,792, of whom 5,133 were men and 4,659 were women. The increase from 1851 to 1857 was only 529, or about one per cent. annually. In 1860 there were “some hundreds” of Russians, 2,000 Creoles, and 8,000 aborigines, amounting in all to 10,540, of whom 5,382 were men and 5,158 were women. I am thus particular, that you may see how stationary population has been even within the sphere of the Company.

The number of Russians and Creoles at the present time in the whole colony cannot be more than 2,500. The number of aborigines under the direct government of the Company may be 8,000. There remain also the mass of aborigines outside the jurisdiction of the Company, and having only a temporary or casual contact with it for purposes of trade. In this respect they are not unlike the aborigines of the United States while in their tribal condition, described so often as “Indians not taxed.” For the number of these outside aborigines I prefer to follow the authority of the recent work already quoted, “Les Peuples de la Russie,” according to which they are estimated at between forty and fifty thousand.

Secondly. In speaking of character, I turn to a different class of materials. The early Russians here were not Pilgrims. They were mostly runaways, fleeing from justice. Langsdorff says, “The greater part of the Promüschleniks and inferior officers of the different settlements are Siberian criminals, malefactors, and adventurers of various kinds.”[70] The single and exclusive business of the Promüschleniks was the collection of furs. But the name very early acquired a bad odor. Here again we have the same Russian authority, who, after saying that the inhabitants of the distant islands are under the superintendence of a Promüschlenik, adds,—“which is, in other words, under that of a rascal, by whom they are oppressed, tormented, and plundered in every possible way.”[71] It must be remembered that this authentic portrait is not of our day.

The aborigines are all, in common language, Esquimaux; but they differ essentially from the Esquimaux of Greenland, and they also differ among themselves. Though popularly known by this family name, they have as many divisions and subdivisions, with as many languages and idioms, as France once had. There are large groups, each with its own nationality and language; and there are smaller groups, each with its tribal idiom. In short, the great problem of Language is repeated here. Its forms seem to be infinite. Scientific inquiry traces many to a single root, but practically they are different. Here is that confusion of tongues which yields only to the presence of civilization; and it becomes more remarkable, as the idiom is often confined to so small a circle.

Looking at them ethnographically, we find two principal groups or races,—the first scientifically known as Esquimaux, and the second as Indians. By another nomenclature, having the sanction of authority and usage, they are divided into Esquimaux, Aleutians, Kenaians, and Koloschians, being four distinct groups. The Esquimaux and Aleutians are reported Mongolian in origin. According to doubtful theory, they passed from Asia to America by the succession of islands beginning on the coast of Japan and extending to Alaska, which for this purpose became a bridge between the two continents. The Kenaians and Koloschians are Indians, belonging to known American races. So that these four groups are ethnographically resolved into two, and the two are resolved popularly into one.

There are general influences more or less applicable to all these races. The climate is peculiar, and the natural features of the country are commanding. Cool summers and mild winters are favorable to the huntsman and fisherman. Lofty mountains, volcanic forms, large rivers, numerous islands, and an extensive sea-coast constitute the great Book of Nature for all to read. None are dull. Generally they are quick, intelligent, and ingenious, excelling in the chase and in navigation, managing a boat as the rider his horse, until man and boat seem to be one. Some are very skilful with tools, and exhibit remarkable taste. The sea is bountiful, and the land has its supplies. From these they are satisfied. Better still, there is something in their nature which does not altogether reject the improvements of civilization. Unlike our Indians, they are willing to learn. By a strange superstition, which still continues, these races derive descent from different animals. Some are gentle and pacific; others are warlike. All, I fear, are slaveholders; some are cruel task-masters; others, in the interior, are reputed cannibals. But the country back from the sea-coast is still an undiscovered secret.

(1.) Looking at them in ethnographical groups, I begin with the Esquimaux, who popularly give the name to the whole. They number about 17,000, and stretch along the indented coast from its eastern limit on the Frozen Ocean to the mouth of the Copper River, in 60° north latitude, excluding the peninsula of Alaska, occupied by Aleutians, and the peninsula of Kenai, occupied by Kenaians. More powerful races, of Indian origin, following the courses of the great rivers northward and westward, have gradually crowded the Esquimaux from the interior, until they constitute a belt on the salt water, including the islands of the coast, and especially Kadiak. Their various dialects are traced to a common root, while the prevailing language betrays an affinity with the Esquimaux of Greenland, and the intervening country watered by the Mackenzie. They share the characteristics of that extensive family, which, besides spreading across the continent, occupies an extent of sea-coast greater than any other people of the globe, from which their simple navigation has sallied forth so as to give them the name of Phœnicians of the North. Words exclusively belonging to the Esquimaux are found in the dialects of other races completely strangers, as Phœnician sounds are observed in the Celtic speech of Ireland.

The most known of the Russian Esquimaux is the small tribe now remaining on the island of Kadiak, which from the beginning has been a centre of trade. Although by various intermixture they already approach the Indians of the coast, losing the Asiatic type, their speech remains a distinctive sign of race. They are Esquimaux, and I describe them in order to present an idea of this people.

The men are tall, with copper skins, small black eyes, flat faces, and teeth of dazzling whiteness. Once the women pierced the nostrils, the lower lip, and the ears, for ornaments; but now only the nostrils suffer. The aboriginal costume is still preserved, especially out of doors. Their food is mostly from the sea, without the roots or berries which the island supplies. The flesh and oil of the whale are a special luxury. The oil is drunk pure, or used to season other food. Accustomed to prolonged abstinence, they exhibit at times an appetite amounting to prodigy. In one night six men were able to devour the whole of a large bear. A strong drink made from the strawberry and myrtle, producing the effect of opium, has yielded to brandy. Sugar and tea are highly esteemed; but snuff is a delight. Lisiansky records that they would go out of the way twenty miles merely for a pinch.[72] They have tools of their own, which they use with skill. Their baidars, or canoes, are distinguished for completeness of finish and beauty of form. Unlike those of the Koloschians, lower down on the coast, which are hollowed from trunks of trees, they are of seal-skins stretched on frames, with a single aperture in the covering to receive the person of the master. The same skill appears in the carving of wood, whalebone, and walrus-ivory. Their general mode of life is said to be like that of other tribes on the coast. To all else they add knowledge of the healing art and passion for gaming.

Opposite Kadiak, on the main-land east, are the Tchugatchi, a kindred tribe, speaking the same language, but a different dialect. Northward is a succession of kindred tribes, differing in speech, and each with local peculiarities, but all are represented as kind, courteous, hospitable, and merry. It is a good sign, that merriment should prevail. Their tribal names are derived from a neighboring river, or some climatic circumstance. Thus, for instance, those on the mighty Kwichpak have the name of Kwichpakmutes, or “inhabitants of the great river.” Those on Bristol Bay are called by their cousins of Norton Sound Achkugmutes, or “inhabitants of the warm country”; and the same designation is applied to the Kadiaks. Warmth, like other things in this world, is comparative; and to an Esquimaux at 64° north latitude another five degrees further south is in a “warm country.” These northern tribes have been visited lately by our Telegraphic Exploring Expedition, which reports especially their geographical knowledge and good disposition. As the remains of Major Kennicott descended the Kwichpak, they were not without sympathy from the natives. Curiosity also had its part. At a village where the boat rested for the night, the chief announced that it was the first time white men had ever been seen there.

(2.) The Aleutians, sometimes called Western Esquimaux, number about 3,000. By a plain exaggeration, Knight, in his Cyclopædia of Geography, makes them 20,000. Their home is the archipelago of volcanic islands whose name they bear, and also a portion of the contiguous peninsula of Alaska. The well-defined type has already disappeared; but the national dress continues. This is a long shirt with tight sleeves, made from the skins of birds, either the sea-parrot or the diver. This dress, called the parka, is indispensable as clothing, blanket, and even as habitation, during a voyage, being a complete shelter against wind and cold. They, too, are fishermen and huntsmen; but they seem to excel as artificers. The instruments and utensils of the Oonalaskans have been noted for beauty. Their baidars were pronounced by Sauer “infinitely superior to those of any other island,”[73] and another navigator declares them “the best means yet discovered to go from place to place, either upon the deepest or the shallowest water, in the quickest, easiest, and safest manner possible.”[74] These illustrate their nature, which is finer than that of their neighbors. They are at home on the water, and excite admiration by the skill with which they manage their elegant craft, so that Admiral Lütke recognized them as Cossacks of the Sea.

Oonalaska is the principal of these islands, and from the time they were first visited seems to have excited a peculiar interest. Captain Cook painted it kindly; so have succeeding navigators. And here have lived the islanders who have given to navigators a new experience. Alluding especially to them, the reporter of Billings’s voyage says: “The capacity of the natives of these islands infinitely surpasses every idea that I had formed of the abilities of savages.”[75] There is another remark of this authority which shows how they had yielded, even in their favorite dress, to the demands of commerce. After saying that formerly they had worn garments of sea-otter, he pathetically adds, “but not since the Russians have had any intercourse with them.”[76] Poor islanders! Exchanging choice furs, once their daily wear, for meaner skins!

(3.) The Kenaians, numbering as many as 25,000, take their common name from the peninsula of Kenai, with Cook’s Inlet on the west and Prince William Sound on the east. Numerous beyond any other family in Russian America, they belong to a widespread and teeming Indian race, which occupies all the northern interior of the continent, stretching from Hudson’s Bay in the east to the Esquimaux in the west. This is the great nation called sometimes Athabascan, or, from the native name of the Rocky Mountains, on whose flanks they live, Chippewyan, but more properly designated as Tinneh, with branches in Southern Oregon and Northern California, and then again with other offshoots, known as the Apaches and Navajoes, in Arizona, New Mexico, and Chihuahua, thirty degrees of latitude from the parent stem. Of this extended race, the northwestern branch, known to travellers as Loucheux, and in their own tongue as Kutchin, after occupying the inner portion of Russian America on the Yukon and the Porcupine, reached the sea-coast at Cook’s Inlet, where they appear under the name of Kenaians. The latter are said to bear about the same relation, in language and intellectual development, to the entire group, as the islanders of Kadiak bear to the Esquimaux.

The Kenaians call themselves in their own dialect by yet another name, Thnainas, meaning Men; thus, by a somewhat boastful designation, asserting manhood. Their features and complexion associate them with the red men of America, as does their speech. The first to visit them was Cook, and he was struck by the largeness of their heads, which seemed to him disproportioned to the rest of the body. They were strong-chested also, with thick, short necks, spreading faces, eyes inclined to be small, white teeth, black hair, and thin beard,—their persons clean and decent, without grease or dirt. In dress they were thought to resemble the people of Greenland. Their boats had a similar affinity. But in these particulars they were not unlike the other races already described. They were clothed in skins of animals, with the fur outward, or sometimes in skins of birds, over which, for protection against rain, was a frock made from the intestines of the whale, “prepared so skilfully as almost to resemble our gold-beater leaf.”[77] Their boats were of seal-skin stretched on frames, and of different sizes. In one of these Cook counted twenty women and one man, besides children. At that time, though thievish in propensity, they were not unamiable. Shortly afterwards they were reported by Russian traders, who had much to do with them, as “good people,” who behaved “in the most friendly manner.”[78] I do not know that they have lost this character since.

Here, too, is the accustomed multiplicity of tribes, each with its idiom, and sometimes differing in religious superstition, especially on the grave question of descent from the dog or the crow. There is also a prevailing usage for the men of one tribe to choose wives from another tribe, when the tribal character of the mother attaches to the offspring, which is another illustration of the Law of Slavery, Partus sequitur ventrem. The late departure from this usage is quoted by the old men as a sufficient reason for the mortality which has afflicted the Kenaians, although a better reason is found in the ravages of the small-pox, unhappily introduced by the Russians. In 1838, ten thousand persons on the coast are reported victims to this disease.

(4.) Last of the four races are the Koloschians, numbering about 4,000, who occupy the coast and islands from the mouth of the Copper River to the southern boundary of Russian America, making about sixteen settlements. They belong to an Indian group extending as far south as the Straits of Fuca, and estimated to contain 25,000 souls. La Pérouse, after considerable experience of the aborigines on the Atlantic coast, asserts that those he saw here are not Esquimaux.[79] The name seems to be of Russian origin, and is equivalent to Indian. Here again is another variety of language, and as many separate nations. Near Mount St. Elias are the Yakutats, who are the least known; then come the Thlinkits, occupying the islands and coast near Sitka, and known in Oregon under the name of Stikines; and then again we have the Kygans, who, beginning on Russian territory, overlap Queen Charlotte’s Island, beneath the British flag. All these, with their subdivisions, are Koloschians; but every tribe or nation has four different divisions, derived from four different animals, the whale, the eagle, the crow, and the wolf, which are so many heraldic devices, marking distinct groups.

Points already noticed in the more northern groups are repeated here. As among the Kenaians, husband and wife are of different animal devices. A crow cannot marry a crow. There is the same skill in the construction of canoes; but the stretched seal-skin gives place to the trunk of a tree shaped and hollowed, so that it sometimes holds forty persons. There are good qualities among Aleutians which the Koloschians do not possess; but the latter have, perhaps, stronger sense. They are of constant courage. As daring navigators they are unsurpassed, sailing six or seven hundred miles in open canoes. Some are thrifty, and show a sense of property. Some have developed an aptitude for trade unknown to their northern neighbors, or to the Indians of the United States, and will work for wages, whether in tilling the ground or other employment. Their superior nature discards corporal punishment, even for boys, as an ignominy not to be endured. They believe in a Creator, and in the immortality of the soul. But here a mystic fable is woven into their faith. The spirits of heroes dead in battle are placed in the sky, and appear in the Aurora Borealis. Long ago a deluge occurred, when the human family was saved in a floating vessel, which, after the subsidence of the waters, struck on a rock and broke in halves. The Koloschians represent one half of the vessel, and the rest of the world the other half. Such is that pride of race which civilization does not always efface.

For generations they have been warriors, prompt to take offence, and vindictive, as is the nature of the Indian race,—always ready to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This character has not changed. As was the case once in Italy, the dagger is an inseparable companion. Private quarrels are common. The duel is an institution. So is slavery still,—having a triple origin in war, purchase, or birth. The slave is only a dog, and must obey his master in all things, even to taking the life of another. He is without civil rights; he cannot marry or possess anything; he can eat only offal; and his body, when released by death, is thrown into the sea. A chief sometimes sacrifices his slaves, and then another chief seeks to outdo his inhumanity. All this is indignantly described by Sir Edward Belcher and Sir George Simpson. But a slave once a freedman has all the rights of a Koloschian. Here, too, are the distinctions of wealth. The rich paint their faces daily; the poor renew the paint only when the colors begin to disappear.

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.

This law has been known only of late years. Even so ingenious an inquirer as Captain Cook notices the mildness of the climate, without attempting to account for it. He records, that, in his opinion, “cattle might subsist in Oonalaska all the year round without being housed”;[85] and this was in latitude 53° 52´, on the same parallel with Labrador, and several degrees north of Quebec; but he stops with a simple statement of the suggestive fact. This, however, was inconsistent with the received idea at the time. A geographer, who wrote a few years before Cook sailed, has a chapter in which, assuming that the climate of Quebec continues across the continent, he argues that America is colder than Asia. I refer to the “Mémoires Géographiques” of Engel.[86] He would have been astonished, had he seen the revelations of an isothermal map, showing precisely the reverse: that the climate of Quebec does not continue across the continent; that the Pacific coast of our continent is warmer than the corresponding Atlantic coast; and that America is warmer than Asia, so far at least as can be determined by the two opposite coasts. Such is the truth, of which there are plentiful signs. The Flora on the American side, even in Behring Strait, is more vigorous than that on the Asiatic side, and the American mountains have less snow in summer than their Asiatic neighbors. Among many illustrations of the temperature, I know none more direct than that furnished by the late Hon. William Sturgis, of Boston,—who was familiar with the Northwest Coast at the beginning of the century,—in a lecture on the Oregon question in 1845. After remarking that the climate there is “altogether milder and the winter less severe than in corresponding latitudes on this side the continent,” he proceeds to testify, that, as a proof of its mildness, he had “passed seven winters between the latitudes of 51° and 57°, frequently lying so near the shore as to have a small cable fast to the trees upon it, and only once was his ship surrounded by ice sufficiently firm to bear the weight of a man.”[87] But this intelligent navigator assigns no reason. To the common observer it seemed as if the temperature grew milder, travelling with the sun until it dipped in the ocean.

Among authorities open before me I quote two, which show that this difference of temperature between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts was imagined, if not actually recognized, during the last century. Portlock, the Englishman, who was on the coast in 1786, after saying that during stormy and unsettled weather the air had been mild and temperate, remarks that he is “inclined to think that the climate here is not so severe as has been generally supposed.”[88] La Pérouse, the Frenchman, whose visit was the same year, having been before in Hudson’s Bay, on the other side of the continent, says still more explicitly, “The climate of this coast seemed to me infinitely milder than that of Hudson’s Bay, in the same latitude. We measured pines six feet in diameter and a hundred and forty feet high; those of the same species at Fort Prince of Wales and Fort York are of a dimension scarcely sufficient for studding-sail booms.”[89] Langsdorff, when at Sitka in 1805-6, was much with D’Wolf, the American navigator, and records the surprise of the latter “at finding the cold less severe in Norfolk Sound than at Boston, Rhode Island, and other provinces of the United States, which lie more to the south.”[90] D’Wolf, in his own work, says: “January brought cold, but not severe weather”; and in February, the weather, though “rather more severe than the previous month,” was “by no means so cold as in the United States, latitude 42°.”[91]

All this is now explained by known forces in Nature. Of these the most important is a thermal current in the Pacific, corresponding to the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic. The latter, having its origin in the heated waters of the Gulf of Mexico, flows as a river through the ocean northward, encircling England, bathing Norway, and warming all within its influence. A similar stream in the Pacific, sometimes called the Japanese Current, having its origin under the equator near the Philippines and the Moluccas, amid no common heats, after washing the ancient empire of Japan, sweeps north, until, forming two branches, one moves onward to Behring Strait, and the other bends east, along the Aleutian Islands, and then south, along the coast of Sitka, Oregon, and California. Geographers have described this “heater,” which in the lower latitudes is as high as 81° of Fahrenheit, and even far to the north as high as 50°. A chart in Findlay’s “Pacific Ocean Directory” portrays its course, as it warms so many islands and such an extent of coast. An officer of the United States Navy, Lieutenant Bent, in a paper before the Geographical Society of New York, while exhibiting the influence of this current in mitigating the climate of the Northwest Coast, mentions that vessels on the Asiatic side, becoming unwieldy with accumulations of ice on the hull and rigging, run over to the higher latitude on the American side and “thaw out.” But the tepid waters which melt the ice on a vessel must change the atmosphere, wherever they flow.

I hope you will not regard the illustration as too familiar, if I remind you that in the economy of a household pipes of hot water are sometimes employed in tempering the atmosphere by heat carried from below to rooms above. In the economy of Nature these thermal currents are only pipes of hot water, modifying the climate of continents by carrying heat from the warm cisterns of the South into the most distant places of the North. So also there are sometimes pipes of hot air, having a similar purpose; and these, too, are found in this region. Every ocean wind, from every quarter, traversing the stream of heat, takes up the warmth and carries it to the coast, so that the oceanic current is reinforced by an aërial current of constant influence.

These forces are aided essentially by the configuration of the Northwest Coast, with a lofty and impenetrable barricade of mountains, by which its islands and harbors are protected from the cold of the North. Occupying the Aleutian Islands, traversing the peninsula of Alaska, and running along the margin of the ocean to the latitude of 54° 40´, this mountain-ridge is a climatic division, or, according to a German geographer, a “climatic shed,” such as perhaps exists nowhere else in the world. Here are Alps, some of them volcanic, with Mount St. Elias higher than Mont Blanc, standing guard against the Arctic Circle. So it seems even without the aid of science. Here is a dike between the icy waters of Behring Sea and the milder Southern Ocean. Here is a partition between the treeless northern coast and the wooded shores of the Kenaians and Koloschians. Here is a fence which separates the animal kingdom, having on one side the walrus and ice-fox from the Frozen Ocean, and on the other side the humming-bird from the tropics. I simply report the testimony of geography. And now you will not fail to observe how by this configuration the thermal currents of ocean and air are left to exercise their climatic power.

One other climatic incident here is now easily explained. Early navigators record the prevailing moisture. All are enveloped in fog. Behring names an island Foggy. Another gives the same designation to a cape at the southern extremity of Russian America. Cook records fog. La Pérouse speaks of rain and continued fog in the month of August. And now visitors, whether for science or business, make the same report. The forests testify also. According to physical geography, it could not be otherwise. The warm air from the ocean, encountering the snow-capped mountains, would naturally produce this result. Rain is nothing but atmosphere condensed and falling in drops to the earth. Fog is atmosphere held in solution, but so far condensed as to become visible. This condensation occurs, when the air is chilled by contact with a colder atmosphere. These very conditions occur on the Northwest Coast. The ocean air, coming in contact with the elevated range, is chilled, until its moisture is set free.

Add to these influences, especially at Sitka, the presence of mountain masses and of dense forests, all tending to make the coast warmer in winter and colder in summer than it would otherwise be.

Practical observation verifies these conclusions of science. Any isothermal map is enough for our purpose; but there are others which show the relative conditions generally of different portions of the globe. I ask attention to those of Keith Johnston, in his admirable Atlas. But I am glad to present a climatic table of the Pacific coast in comparison with the Atlantic coast, recently compiled, at my request, from the archives of the Smithsonian Institution, with permission of its learned secretary, by a collaborator of the Institution, who visited Russian America under the auspices of the Telegraph Company. By this table we are able to comprehend the relative position of this region in the physical geography of the world.

It is seen here that the winters of Sitka are relatively warm, not differing much from those of Washington; but the summers are colder. The mean temperature of winter is 32.30°, while that of summer is 53.37°. The Washington winter is 33.57°; the Washington summer is 73.07°. These points exhibit the peculiarities of this coast,—warm winters and cool summers.

The winter of Sitka is milder than that of many European capitals. It is much milder than that of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, or Bern. It is milder even than that of Mannheim, Stuttgart, Vienna, Sebastopol in the Crimea, or Turin. It is not much colder than that of Padua. According to observations at Sitka in 1831, it froze only two days in December and seven days in January. In February, the longest frost lasted five days; in March, it did not freeze during the day at all, and rarely in the night. During the next winter, the thermometer did not fall below 21° Fahrenheit; in January, 1834, it reached 11°. On the other hand, a temperature of 50° has been noted in January. The roadstead is open throughout the year, and only a few landlocked bays are frozen.

The prevailing dampness at Sitka renders a residence there far from agreeable, although it does not appear injurious to health. England is also damp; but Englishmen boast that theirs is the best climate of the world. At Sitka the annual fall of rain is about ninety inches. The mean annual fall in all England is forty inches, although in mountainous districts of Cumberland and Westmoreland the fall amounts to ninety and even one hundred and forty inches. In Washington it is forty-one inches. The forests at Sitka are so wet that they will not burn, although frequent attempts have been made to set them on fire. The houses, which are of wood, suffer from constant moisture. In 1828 there were twenty days when it rained or snowed continuously; one hundred and twenty when it rained or snowed part of the day, and only sixty-six days of clear weather. Some years, only forty bright days have been counted. Hinds, the naturalist, records only thirty-seven “really clear and fine days.”[92] A scientific observer who was there last year counted sixty. A visitor for fourteen days found only two when nautical observations could be made; but these were as fine as he had ever known in any country.

The whole coast from Sitka to the peninsula of Alaska seems to have the same continuous climate, whether in temperature or moisture. The island of Kadiak and the recess of Cook’s Inlet are outside this climatic curve, so as to be comparatively dry. Langsdorff reports winters “frequently so mild in the low parts of Kadiak that the snow does not lie upon the ground for any length of time, nor is anything like severe cold felt.”[93] Belcher, on his passage between Montague and Hinchinbrook Islands, found an “oppressively hot sun.”[94] The Aleutian Islands, further west, are somewhat colder than Sitka, although the difference is not great. The summer temperature is seldom above 66°; the winter temperature is more seldom as low as 2° below zero. The snow falls about the beginning of October, and is seen sometimes as late as the end of April; but it does not remain long on the surface. The mean temperature of Oonalaska is about 40°. Chamisso found the temperature of spring-water at the beginning of the year 38.50°. There are years when it rains on this island the whole winter. The fogs prevail from April till the middle of July, when for the time they are driven further north. The islands northward toward Behring Strait are proportionately colder; but I remind you that the American coast is milder than the opposite coast of Asia.

From Mr. Bannister I have an authentic statement with regard to the temperature north of the Aleutians, as observed by himself in the autumn of 1865 and the months following. Even here the winter does not seem so terrible as is sometimes imagined. During most of the time, work could be done with comfort in the open air. Only when it stormed the men were kept within doors. In transporting supplies from St. Michael’s to Nulato, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles, they found no hardship, even when obliged to bivouac in the open air.

On Norton Sound and the Kwichpak River winter may be said to commence at the end of September, although the weather is not severe till the end of October. The first snow falls about the 20th or 25th of September. All the small ponds and lakes were frozen early in October. The Kwichpak was frozen solid about the 20th or 25th of this month. On the 1st of November the harbor at St. Michael’s was still open, but on the morning of the 4th it was frozen solid enough for sledges to cross on the ice. In December there were two thaws, one accompanied by rain for a day. The snow was about two feet deep at the end of the month. January was uniformly cold, and it was said that at a place sixty-five miles northeast of St. Michael’s the thermometer descended to 58° below zero. February was usually mild all over the country. In the middle of the month there was an extensive thaw, with showers of rain. About half the snow disappeared, leaving much of the ground bare. March was pleasant, without very cold weather. Its mean temperature was 20°; its minimum was 3° below zero. Spring commences on the Kwichpak the 1st of May, or a few days later, when the birds return and vegetation begins. The ice did not entirely disappear from the river till after the 20th of May. The sea-ice continued in the bay of St. Michael’s as late as 1st June. The summer temperature is much higher in the interior than on the coast. Parties travelling on the Kwichpak in June complained sometimes of heat.

The river Yukon, which, flowing into the Kwichpak, helps to swell that stream, is navigable for at least four, if not five, months in the year. The thermometer at Fort Yukon is sometimes at 65° below zero of Fahrenheit, and for three months of a recent winter it stood at 50° below zero without variation. In summer it rises above 80° in the shade; but a hard frost occurs at times in August. The southwest wind brings warmth; the northeast wind brings cold. Some years, there is no rain for months; and then, again, showers alternate with sunshine. The snow packs hard at an average of two and a half feet deep. The ice is four or five feet thick; in a severe winter it is six feet thick. Life at Fort Yukon, under these rigors of Nature, although far from inviting, is not intolerable.

Such is the climate of this extensive region, so far as known, along its coast, among its islands, and on its great rivers, from its southern limit to its most northern ice, with contrasts and varieties such as Milton describes:—

“For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce,

Strive here for mastery.”

4. Vegetable Products.—Vegetable products depend upon climate. They are determined by its laws. Therefore what has been already said upon the one prepares the way for the consideration of the other; and here we have the reports of navigators and the suggestions of science.

From the time this coast was first visited, navigators reported the aspects which Nature assumed. But their opportunities were casual, and they necessarily confined themselves to what was most obvious. As civilization did not exist, the only vegetable products were indigenous to the soil. At the first landing, on the discovery of the coast by Behring, Steller found among the provisions in one of the Indian cabins “a sweet herb dressed for food in the same manner as in Kamtchatka.” That “sweet herb” is the first vegetable production of which we have record on this coast. At the same time, although ashore only six hours, this naturalist “gathered herbs, and brought such a quantity to the ship that the describing of them took him a considerable time.” This description was afterwards adopted by Gmelin in his “Flora Sibirica.”[95]

Trees were noticed even before landing. They enter into descriptions, and are often introduced to increase the savage wildness of the scene. La Pérouse doubts “if the deep valleys of the Alps and the Pyrenees present a scene so frightful, but at the same time so picturesque that it would deserve to be visited by the curious, if it were not at one of the extremities of the earth.”[96] Lisiansky, as he approached the coast of Sitka, records that “nothing presented itself to the view but impenetrable woods, reaching from the water-side to the very tops of the highest mountains”; that he “never saw a country so wild and gloomy; it appeared more adapted for the residence of wild beasts than of men.”[97] Lütke portrays the “savage and picturesque aspect” of the whole Northwest Coast.[98]

As navigators landed, they saw Nature in detail; and here they were impressed by the size of the trees. Cook finds at Prince William Sound “Canadian and spruce pine, and some of them tolerably large.”[99] La Pérouse describes pines measuring six feet in diameter and one hundred and forty feet in height, and then again introduces us to “those superb pines fit for the masts of our largest vessels.”[100] Portlock notices in Cook’s Inlet “wood of different kinds in great abundance, such as pine, black-birch, witch-hazel, and poplar; many of the pines large enough for lower masts for a ship of four hundred tons burden”; and then again at Prince William Sound “trees of the pine kind, some very large; a good quantity of alder; a kind of hazel, but not larger than will do for making handspikes.”[101] Meares reports “woods thick,” also “the black-pine in great plenty, capable of making excellent spars.”[102] Sauer, who was there a little later, in the expedition of Billings, reports that they “took in a number of fine spars”; and he proceeds to say: “The timber comprised a variety of pines of an immense thickness and height, some extremely tough and fibrous, and of these we made our best oars.”[103] Vancouver mentions, in latitude 60°, a “woodland country.”[104] Langsdorff describes trees in the neighborhood of Sitka, many of them measuring six feet in diameter and one hundred and fifty feet in height, “excellent wood for ship-building and masts.”[105] Lisiansky says, that, at Kadiak, “for want of fir, we made a new bowsprit of one of the pine-trees, which answered admirably.”[106] Lütke testifies to the “magnificent pine and fir” at Sitka, adding what seems an inconsistent judgment with regard to its durability.[107] Belcher notices Garden Island, in latitude 60° 21´, as “covered with pine-trees”; and then again, at Sitka, speaks of “a very fine-grained, bright yellow cypress” as the most valuable wood, which, besides being used in boats, was exported to the Sandwich Islands, in return especially for Chinese goods.[108]

Turning westward from Cook’s Inlet, the forests on the sea-line are rarer, until they entirely disappear. The first settlement on the island of Kadiak was on the southwestern coast; but the want of timber caused its transfer to the northeastern coast, where are “considerable forests of fine tall trees.”[109] But where trees are wanting, grass seems to abound. This is the case with Kadiak, the peninsula of Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands generally. Of these, Oonalaska, libelled in the immortal verse of Campbell, has been the most described. This well-known island is without trees; but it seems singularly adapted to the growth of grass, which is often so high as to impede the traveller and to overtop even the willows. The mountains themselves are for a considerable distance clothed with rich turf. One of these scenes is represented in a print you will find among the views of the vegetation of the Pacific in the London reproduction of the work of Kittlitz. This peculiarity was first noticed by Cook, who says, with a sailor’s sententiousness, that he did not see there “a single stick of wood of any size,” but “plenty of grass, which grows very thick and to a great length.”[110] Lütke records, that, after leaving Brazil, he met nothing so agreeable as the grass of this island.

North of the peninsula of Alaska, on Behring Sea, the forests do not approach the coast, except at the heads of bays and sounds, although they abound in the interior, and extend even to within a short distance of the Frozen Ocean. Such is the personal testimony of a scientific observer recently returned from this region. In Norton Sound, Cook, who was the first to visit it, reports “a coast covered with wood, an agreeable sight,” and, on walking into the country, small spruce-trees, “none of them above six or eight inches in diameter.” A few days afterward “a party of men were sent on shore to cut brooms, and the branches of spruce-trees for brewing beer.”[111] On the Kwichpak, and its affluent, the Yukon, trees are sometimes as high as a hundred feet. The supply of timber at St. Michael’s is from the drift-wood of the river. Near Fort Yukon, at the junction of the Porcupine and Yukon, are forests of pine, poplar, willow, and birch. The pine is the most plentiful; but the small islands in the great river are covered with poplar and willow. Immense trunks rolling under the fort show that there must be large trees nearer the head-waters.

But even in northern latitudes the American coast is not without vegetation. Grass takes the place of trees. At Fort Yukon, in latitude 67°, there is “a thin, wiry grass.” Navigators notice the contrast between the opposite coasts of the two continents. Kotzebue, while in Behring Strait, where the two approach each other, was struck by black, mossy rocks frowning with snow and icicles on the Asiatic side, while on the American side “even the summits of the highest mountains were free from snow,” and “the coast was covered with a green carpet.”[112] But the contrast with the Atlantic coast of the continent is hardly less. The northern limit of trees is full seven degrees higher in Russian America than in Labrador. In point of fact, on the Atlantic coast, in latitude 57° 58´, which is nearly that of Sitka, there are no trees. All this is most suggestive.

Next after trees, early navigators speak oftenest of berries, which they found in profusion. Not a sailor lands who does not find them. Cook reports “a variety of berries” at Norton Sound, and “great quantities” at Oonalaska.[113] Portlock finds at Prince William Sound “fruit-bushes in great abundance, such as bilberry-bushes, raspberry-bushes, strawberries, elder-berry-bushes, and currant-bushes, red and black,” and “any quantity of the berries might be gathered for a winter’s stock.”[114] Meares saw there “a few black-currant-bushes.”[115] Billings finds at Kadiak “several species of berries, with currants and raspberries in abundance, the latter white, but extremely large, being bigger than any mulberry he had ever seen.”[116] Langsdorff notes most of these at Oonalaska, with cranberries and whortleberries besides.[117] Belcher reports at Garden Island “strawberries, whortleberries, blaeberries, pigeon-berries, and a small cranberry, in tolerable profusion, without going in search of them.”[118] These I quote precisely, and in the order of time.

Next to berries were plants for food; and these were in constant abundance. Behring, on landing at the Shumagin Islands, observed the natives “to eat roots which they dug out of the ground, and scarce shaked off the earth before they eat them.”[119] Cook reports at Oonalaska “a great variety of plants, several of them such as we find in Europe and in other parts of America, particularly in Newfoundland: … all these we found very palatable, dressed either in soups or in salads.”[120] La Pérouse, who landed in latitude 58° 37´, finds a French bill of fare, including celery, chicory, sorrel, and “almost all the pot-herbs of the meadows and mountains of France,” besides “several kinds of grass suitable for forage.” Every day and each meal the ship’s kettle was filled with these supplies, and all ate them in soups, ragouts, and salads, much to the benefit of their health.[121] Portlock mentions at Port Etches, besides “fine water-cresses,” “just above the beach, between the bay and the lake, a piece of wild wheat, about two hundred yards long and five yards wide, growing at least two feet high,” which, “with proper care, might certainly be made an useful article of food”; and at Cook’s Inlet he reports “ginseng and snakeroot.”[122] Meares reports at the latter place “inexhaustible plenty” of ginseng, and at Prince William Sound “snakeroot and ginseng, some of which the natives have always with them as a medicine.” He adds: “The ginseng of this part of America is far preferable to that of the eastern side.”[123] Billings finds at Kadiak “ginseng, wild onions, and the edible roots of Kamtchatka,” and then again at Prince William Sound “plenty of ginseng and some snakeroot.”[124] Vancouver finds at Port Mulgrave “wild vegetables in great abundance.”[125] Langsdorff adds to the list, at Oonalaska, “that sweet plant, the Siberian parsnip.”[126] These, too, I quote precisely, and in the order of time.

Since the establishment of Europeans on this coast, an attempt has been made to introduce the nutritious grains and vegetables known to the civilized world, but without very brilliant success. Against wheat and rye and against orchard fruits are obstacles of climate, perhaps insuperable. These require summer heat; but here the summer is comparatively cold. The northern limit of wheat is several degrees below the southern limit of these possessions, so that this friendly grain is out of the question. Rye flourishes further north, as do oats also. The supposed northern boundary of these grains embraces Sitka and grazes the Aleutian Islands. But other climatic conditions are wanting, at least for rye. One of these is dry weather, which is required at the time of its bloom. Possibly the clearing of the forest may produce a modification of the weather. At present barley grows better, and there is reason to believe that it may be cultivated successfully very far to the north. It has ripened at Kadiak. Many garden vegetables have become domesticated. Lütke reports potatoes at Sitka, so that all have enough.[127] Langsdorff reports the same of Kadiak and Oonalaska.[128] There are also at Sitka radishes, cabbages, cauliflowers, peas, and carrots,—making a very respectable list. At Norton Sound I hear of radishes, beets, and cabbages. Even as far north as Fort Yukon, on the parallel of 67°, potatoes, peas, turnips, and even barley, have been grown; but the turnips were unfit for the table, being rotten at the heart. A recent resident reports that there are no fruit-trees, and not even a raspberry-bush, and that he lost all his potatoes during one season by a frost in the latter days of July; but do not forget that these potatoes were the wall-flowers of the Arctic Circle.

Thus it appears that the vegetable productions of the country are represented practically by trees. The forests, overshadowing the coast from Sitka to Cook’s Inlet, are all that can be shown under this head out of which a revenue can be derived, unless we add ginseng, so much prized by the Chinese, and perhaps also snakeroot. Other things may contribute to the scanty support of a household; but timber will, in all probability, be an article of commerce. It has been so already. Ships from the Sandwich Islands have come for it, and there is reason to believe that this trade may be extended indefinitely, so that Russian America will be on the Pacific like Maine on the Atlantic, and the lumbermen of Sitka vie with their hardy brethren of the East.

These forests, as described, seem to afford all that can be desired. The trees are abundant, and they are perfect in size, not unlike

“the tallest pine

Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast

Of some great ammiral.”

But a doubt has been raised as to their commercial value. Here we have the inconsistent testimony of Lütke. According to him, the pines and firs, which he calls “magnificent,” constitute an untried source of commercial wealth. Not only California, but other countries, poor in trees, like Mexico, the Sandwich Islands, and even Chili, will need them. And yet he does not conceal an unfavorable judgment of the timber, which, as seen in the houses of Sitka, suffering from constant moisture, did not seem durable.[129] Sir Edward Belcher differs from the Russian admiral, for he praises especially “the timber of the higher latitudes, either for spars or plank.”[130] Perhaps its durability may depend upon the climate where it is used; so that, though failing amidst the damps of Sitka, it may be lasting enough, when transported to another climate. In the rarity of trees on the islands and main-land of the Pacific, the natural supply is in Russian America. One of the early navigators even imagined that China must look this way, and he expected that “the woods would yield a handsome revenue, when the Russian commerce with China should be established.”[131] American commerce with China is established. Perhaps timber may become one of its staples.

A profitable commerce in timber has already begun at Puget Sound. By official returns of 1866 it appears that it was exported to a long list of foreign countries and places, in which I find Victoria, Honolulu, Callao, Tahiti, Canton, Valparaiso, Adelaide, Hong Kong, Sydney, Montevideo, London, Melbourne, Shanghae, Peru, Coquimbo, Calcutta, Hilo, Cape Town, Cork, Guaymas, and Siam; and in this commerce were employed no less than eighteen ships, thirty barks, four brigs, twenty-eight schooners, and ten steamers. The value of the lumber and spars exported abroad was over half a million dollars, while more than four times that amount was shipped coastwise. But the coasts of Russian America are darker with trees than those further south. Pines, in which they abound, do not flourish as low down as Puget Sound. Northward, they are numerous and easily accessible.

In our day the Flora of the coast has been explored with care. Kittlitz, who saw it as a naturalist, portrays it with the enthusiasm of an early navigator; but he speaks with knowledge. He, too, dwells on the “surprising power and luxuriance” of the pine forests, describing them with critical skill. The trees which he identifies are the Pinus Canadensis, distinguished for its delicate foliage; the Pinus Mertensiana, a new species, rival of the other in height; and the Pinus Palustris, growing on swampy declivities, and not attaining height. In the clearings or on the outskirts of thickets are shrubs, being chiefly a species of Rubus, with flowers of carmine and aromatic fruit. About and over all are mosses and lichens, invigorated by the constant moisture, while colossal trees, undermined or uprooted, crowd the surface, reminding the scientific observer of the accumulations of the coal measures. Two different prints in the London reproduction of the work of Kittlitz present pictures of these vegetable productions grouped for beauty and instruction. I refer to these, and also to the Essay of Hinds on “The Regions of Vegetation,” the latter to be found at the end of the volumes containing Belcher’s Voyage.

In turning from the vegetable products of this region, it will not be out of place, if I refer for one moment to its domestic animals, for these are necessarily associated with such products. Some time ago it was stated that cattle had not flourished at Sitka, owing to the want of proper pasturage, and the difficulty of making hay in a climate of such moisture. Hogs are more easily sustained, but, feeding on fish, instead of vegetable products, their flesh acquires a fishy taste, which does not recommend it. Nor has there been great success with poultry, for this becomes the prey of the crow, whose voracity here is absolutely fabulous. A Koloschian tribe traces its origin to this bird, which in this neighborhood might be a fit progenitor. Not content with swooping upon hens and chickens, it descends upon swine to nibble at their tails, and so successfully “that the hogs here are without tails,” and then it scours the streets so well that it is called the Scavenger of Sitka. But there are other places more favored. The grass at Kadiak is well suited to cattle, and it is supposed that sheep would thrive there. The grass at Oonalaska is famous, and Cook thought the climate good for cattle, of which we have at least one illustration. Langsdorff reports that a cow grazed here luxuriously for several years, and then was lost in the mountains. That grazing animal is a good witness. Perhaps also it is typical of the peaceful inhabitants.

5. Mineral Products.—In considering the Mineral Products, I ask attention first to the indications afforded by the early navigators. They were not geologists. They saw only what was exposed. And yet, during the long interval that elapsed, not very much has been added to their conclusions. The existence of iron is hardly less uncertain now than then. The existence of copper is hardly more certain now than then. Gold, which is so often a dangerous ignis-fatuus, did not appear to deceive them. But coal, which is much more desirable than gold, was reported by several, and once at least with reasonable certainty.

The boat that landed from Behring, when he discovered the coast, found among other things “a whetstone on which it appeared that copper knives had been sharpened.” This was the first sign of the mineral wealth which already excites such interest. At another point where Behring landed, “one of the Americans had a knife hanging by his side, of which his people took particular notice on account of its unusual make.”[132] It has been supposed that this was of iron. Next came Cook, who, when in Prince William Sound, saw “copper and iron.” In his judgment, the iron came, “through the intervention of the more inland tribes, from Hudson’s Bay, or the settlements on the Canadian lakes,” and his editor refers in a note to the knife seen by Behring as from the same quarter; but Cook thought that the copper was obtained near at home, as the natives, when engaged in barter, gave the idea, “that, having so much of this metal of their own, they wanted no more.”[133] Naturally enough, for they were not far from the Copper River. Maurelle, in 1779, landed in sight of Mount St. Elias, and he reports Indians with arrow-heads of copper, which “made the Spaniards suspect mines of this metal there.”[134] La Pérouse, who was also in this neighborhood, after mentioning that the naturalists of the expedition allowed no stone or pebble to escape observation, reports ochre, copper pyrites, garnets, schorl, granite, schist, horn-stone, very pure quartz, mica, plumbago, coal, and then adds that some of these substances announce that the mountains conceal mines of iron and copper. He reports further that the natives had daggers of iron, and sometimes of red copper; that the latter metal was common enough, serving for ornaments and for the points of arrows; and he then states the very question of Cook with regard to the acquisition of these metals. He insists also that “the natives know how to forge iron and work copper.”[135] Spears and arrows “pointed with bone or iron,” and also “an iron dagger” for each man, appear in Vancouver’s account of the natives on the parallel of 55°, just within the southern limit of Russian America.[136] Lisiansky saw at Sitka “a thin plate made of virgin copper” found on Copper River, three feet in length, and at one end twenty-two inches in breadth, with various figures painted on one side, which had come from the possession of the natives.[137] Meares reports “pure malleable lumps of copper ore in the possession of the natives,”—one piece weighing as much as a pound, said to have been obtained in barter with other natives further north,—also necklaces and bracelets “of the purest ore.”[138] Portlock, while in Cook’s Inlet, in latitude 59° 27´, at a place called Graham’s Harbor, makes another discovery. Walking round the bay, he saw “two veins of kennel coal situated near some hills just above the beach, and with very little trouble several pieces were got out of the bank nearly as large as a man’s head.” If the good captain did not report more than he saw, this would be most important; for, from the time when the amusing biographer of Lord Keeper North described that clean flaky coal which he calls “candle,” because often used for its light, but which is generally called “cannel,” no coal has been more of a household favorite. He relates, further, that, returning on board in the evening, he “tried some of the coal, and found it to burn clear and well.”[139] Add to these different accounts the general testimony of Meares, who, when dwelling on the resources of the country, boldly includes “mines which are known to lie between the latitudes of 40° and 60° north, and which may hereafter prove a most valuable source of commerce between America and China.”[140]

It is especially when seeking to estimate the mineral products that we feel the want of careful explorations. We know more of the roving aborigines than of these stationary tenants of the soil. We know more of the trees. A tree is conspicuous; a mineral is hidden in the earth, to be found by chance or science. Thus far it seems as if chance only had ruled. The Russian Government handed over the country to a trading company, whose exclusive interest was furs. The company followed its business, when it looked to wild beasts with rich skins rather than to the soil. Its mines were above ground, and not below. There were also essential difficulties in the way of exploration. The interior was practically inaccessible. The thick forest, saturated with rain and overgrown with wet mosses, presented obstacles which nothing but enlightened enterprise could overcome. Even at a short distance from the port of Sitka all effort failed, and the inner recesses of the island, only thirty miles broad, were never penetrated.

The late Professor Henry D. Rogers, in his admirable paper on the Physical Features of America, being part of his contribution to Keith Johnston’s Atlas, full of knowledge and of fine generalization, says of this northwest belt, that it is “little known in its topography to any but the roving Indians and the thinly scattered fur-trappers.” But there are certain general features which he proceeds to designate. According to him, it belongs to what is known as the tertiary period of geology, intervening between the cretaceous period and that now in progress, but including also granite, gneiss, and ancient metamorphic rocks. It is not known if the true coal measures prevail in any part, although there is reason to believe that they exist on the coast of the Arctic Ocean between Cape Lisburne and Point Barrow.

Beginning at the south, we have Sitka and its associate islands, composed chiefly of volcanic rocks, with limestone near. Little is known even of the coast between Sitka and Mount St. Elias, which, itself a volcano, is the beginning of a volcanic region occupying the peninsula of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, and having no less than thirty volcanoes, some extinct, but others still active. Most of the rocks here are volcanic, and the only fossiliferous beds are of the tertiary period. North of Alaska, and near the mouth of the Kwichpak, the coast seems volcanic or metamorphic, and probably tertiary, with a vein of lignite near the head of Norton Sound. At the head of Kotzebue Sound the cliffs abound in the bones of elephants and mammals now extinct, together with those of the musk-ox and other animals still living in the same latitude. From Kotzebue Sound northward, the coast has a volcanic character. Then at Cape Thompson it is called subcarboniferous, followed by rocks of the carboniferous age, being limestones, shales, and sandstones, which extend from Cape Lisburne far round to Point Barrow. At Cape Beaufort, very near the seventieth parallel of latitude, and north of the Arctic Circle, on a high ridge a quarter of a mile from the beach is a seam of coal which appears to be of the true coal measures.

From this general outline, which leaves much in uncertainty, I come to what is more important.

It is not entirely certain that iron has been found, although frequently reported. Evidence points to the south, and also to the north. Near Sitka it was reported by the Russian engineer Doroschin, although it does not appear that anything has been done to verify his report. A visitor there, as late as last year, saw excellent iron, said to be from a bed in the neighborhood, reported inexhaustible, and with abundant wood for its reduction. Then again on Kotzebue Sound specimens have been collected. At 66° 13´ Kotzebue found a false result in his calculations, which he attributes to the disturbing influence of “iron.”[141] A resident on the Yukon thinks that there is iron in that neighborhood.

Silver, also, has been reported at Sitka by the same Russian engineer who reported iron, and, like the iron, in “sufficient quantity to pay for the working.”