Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 9, 2025
I had come to Siberia with full confidence in the ultimate success of the Russian-American Telegraph line, but as I penetrated deeper and deeper into the country and saw its utter desolation I grew less and less sanguine. Since leaving Gizhiga we had travelled nearly three hundred versts, had found only four places where we could obtain poles, and had passed only three settlements.
By his order, in 1797, a Russian-American mercantile company was established, which was to supersede the trading societies hitherto existing, and possess the exclusive privilege of carrying on trade and founding settlements in these regions.
When, in the latter part of March, Major Abaza returned to Yakutsk to complete the organisation and equipment of our Yakut labourers, and I to Gizhiga to await once more the arrival of vessels from America, the future of the Russian-American Telegraph Company looked much brighter.
Strange as it may seem, Humboldt Bay was not discovered at this time. Some years ago a searcher of the archives of far-off St. Petersburg found unquestionable proof that the discovery was made in 1806, and not in 1849-50. Early in the nineteenth century the Russian-American Company was all-powerful and especially active in the fur trade.
The Russian-American Telegraph Company, otherwise known as the "Western Union Extension," was organised at New York in the summer of 1864. The idea of a line from America to Europe, by way of Bering Strait, had existed for many years in the minds of several prominent telegraphers, and had been proposed by Perry McD. Collins, as early as 1857, when he made his trip across northern Asia.
A captain of one of the Russian-American Company's ships, who had been in Rio Janeiro, related to me the following anecdote of his benevolence. Two sailors belonging to his crew had been ashore, and having got drunk, were found lying senseless on the road to Corcovado. The Emperor and Empress happening to ride that way, attended only by a few servants, saw them, and supposed them to be sick.
In it I assured her that she need not feel any further anxiety about my safety, because the Russian-American telegraph line had been abandoned. I was to be landed by the Onward at Okhotsk; I was coming home by way of St. Petersburg over a good post-road; and I should not be exposed to any more dangers.
So seductive were the festivities of the day and the pleasures of the dance, that they were not closed until a late hour of the night, or rather until an early hour in the morning. Among the numerous vessels of many nations at anchor in the harbour is a Russian brig from Sitca, the central port of the Russian-American Fur Company, on the northwestern coast of this continent.
These included ships of the Cunard and International Marine lines, the north German Lloyd, the Hamburg-American, the Russian-American, and the French lines, until this port led the world in the congestion of great liners rendered inactive by the war situation abroad. The few that put to sea were utterly incapable of accommodating a tithe of the anxious and appealing applicants.
The village of Okhotsk, eight hundred versts distant, could be reached on dog-sledges in about a month. This, in brief, was all the information we could get, and it did not inspire us with very much confidence in the ultimate success of our enterprise. I realised for the first time the magnitude of the task which the Russian-American Telegraph Company had undertaken.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking