Early Relations betztjeen the United States and China. 55 



have proved highly injurious to the American trade. "^ A Httle 

 over a year later, Thomas H. Perkins, one of the principal China 

 merchants wrote : . . . . "The Northwest Coast trade .... 

 is nearly extinct. . . . As the Russians employed the Kodiack 

 Indians to take the sea otter, the cost of them is very little, as 

 the hunters have very little more than a miserable support for 

 their labor in the chase — we cannot therefore compete with such 

 opponents. . . . The Indians who formerly visited the sea 

 shores to trade with our ships have no longer any inducement to 

 come to the coast, their former occupation being taken away by 

 the enterprise of the Russians and those employed under their 

 direction."* Mr. Perkins had made the picture a little too dark, 

 but in the main he was right. Although there were three or four 

 vessels on the coast when he wrote, ^ and although as late as 1826 

 we tind a trading ship starting for the coast," the trade had passed 

 its palmiest days, and had ceased to be an important factor in 

 the commerce with Canton.'^ 



Although the Northwest Coast fur trade had practically ceased, 

 its most important diplomatic and political results came after 

 1820. Negotiations with Russia had, as we have seen, been 

 dropped for a time in 1810. In September, 1821, the emperor 

 astonished the world by issuing a ukase declaring the North 

 Pacific from Behring's Straits to latitude fifty-one degrees north, 

 a mare clausum to all whaling, sealing, and fishing. Adams 

 strenuously objected and negotiations followed. The result of 



''William Sturgis to Charles Morris, Aug. 22, 1816, MS. 



^T. H. Perkins to Charles Bulfinch, Boston, Dec. 21, 1817, MS. See 

 too on this same subject, Cleveland, Voyages, I : iv, where much the 

 same view is held. 



'Perkins to Bulfinch, Dec. 21, 1817. MS. 



"Journal of the Voyage of the ship "Louisa" from Boston to the North- 

 west Coast of America, Canton and Boston, William Martin, .Alaster, 

 1826-9. AIS. in Essex Institute. 



' Furs from inland America continued to be shipped to Canton, how- 

 ever, long after the war. Those of the British Northwest Fur Company 

 were often sent to the Canton market by way of New York and Phila- 

 delphia (Reports of Coms., p. 43, 2 Sess., 24 Cong.), and some continued 

 to be taken directly from the United States to China. (Cong. Globe, i 

 Sess., 28 Cong., App., p. 226, gives a table showing the fur trade from 

 1821 to 1840. The direct trade varied from $142,399 in 1821 to $561 in 

 1840, and $2,368 in 1840, averaging about $60,000 a year.) 



