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I explained to him that we were trying to establish telegraphic communication between America and Europe by way of Alaska, Bering Strait, and Siberia, and asked him if he had never heard of the Russian-American Telegraph Company. "Never," he replied. "I didn't know there was such a company; but I've been out two years on a cruise, and I haven't kept up very well with the news."
Julian Ralph's strong and free sketch contributes a fresh East Side flower, hollyhock-like in its gaudiness, to the garden of American girls, Irish-American in this case, but destined to be companioned hereafter by blossoms of our Italian-American, Yiddish-American, and Russian-American civilization, as soon as our nascent novelists shall have the eye to see and the art to show them.
Rezanov had also written comprehensively to the Tsar and the directors of the Russian-American Company, adroitly placing his marriage in the light of a diplomatic maneuver, and painting California in colors the more vivid and enticing for the sullen clouds and roaring winds, the dripping forests and eternal snows of that derelict corner of Earth where he had been stranded so long.
We now steered direct for the bay called by the English Norfolk Sound, and by the Russians Sitka Bay, and the island at its back, which the natives call Sitchachan, whence the Russian Sitka. This island, called by the Russians New Archangel, is at present the principal settlement of the Russian-American company.
We spurred our tired horses, and excited no small astonishment as we passed through the gate at a gallop. M. Von Schmidt, the governor of the establishment, received us in the kindest manner, fired some guns to greet our arrival on Russian-American ground, and conducted us into his commodious and orderly mansion, built in the European fashion with thick beams.
"'In consequence of the success of the Atlantic cable, all work on the Russian-American telegraph line has been stopped and the enterprise has been abandoned." "Well!" said Robinson, after a moment of thoughtful silence, "that seems to settle it. The cable has knocked us out."
Upon first sight of the frail canoes, to which our destinies and the interests of the Russian-American Telegraph Company were to be intrusted, there was a very general expression of surprise and dissatisfaction. One of our party, with the rapid
This momentous instrument granted to the "Russian-American Company under our Highest Protection," "full privileges, for a period of twenty years on the coast of northwestern America, beginning from latitude 55 degrees north, and including the chain of islands extending from Kamchatka northward, and southward to Japan; the exclusive right to all enterprises, whether hunting, trading, or building, and to new discoveries; with strict prohibition from profiting from any of these pursuits, not only to all parties who might engage in them on their own responsibility, but also to those who formerly had ships and establishments there, except those who have united with the new Company."
Probably a few years more would have seen the total extinction of the Company, and the reversion of all its rights and expenses to the Crown. In 1866 the fleet of the Russian-American Company comprised two sea steamers, six ships, two brigs, one schooner, and several smaller craft for coasting and inland service.
The officer, concentrating in his injected eyes all the lively hatred and jealousy of his service for the Russian-American Company in this region where it reigned supreme and cared no more for the Admiralty than for some native chieftain covered with shells and warpaint, glared at its plenipotentiary as if calling upon his deeper resources of insolence; but the steady, contemptuous gaze of the man who had dealt with his kind often and successfully overcame his sodden spirit, and he turned sulkily and slouched off to his quarters to console himself with more brandy.
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