APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 245 



statesmen and philosoxjliers, and we are not sure that the attempts to 

 discover a iiortli-west passage, or the dispute respecting Nootka Sound, 

 involved more serious consequences than the eflbrts now making by 

 Kussia, in that quarter of the globe, to monopolize commerce and usurp 

 territory. 



A trade to the north-western coast of America, and the free naviga- 

 tion of the waters that wash its shores, have been enjoyed as a common 

 right by subjects of the United States and of several European Powers, 

 without interruption, for nearly forty years. We are by no means pre- 

 pared to believe, or admit, that all this has been on sufferance merely; 

 and that the rights of commerce and navigation in that region have 

 been vested in liussia alone. If such be the iact, however — if liussia 

 has always possessed the right to interdict this trade, we cannot but 

 wonder at her forbearance in permitting it to be carried on for so long 

 a time, manifestly to the injury of her own subjtcts. Had a monopoly 

 of the fur trade, which Russia now aims at, been secured to the "Kussiau- 

 American Company" thirty years ago, that Company, with any jirudent 

 management, might have attained at the present time the second rank, 

 for wealth and power, In the commercial world, and been worthy not 

 only of Imperial piotectiou, but of Imperial attributes. 



A short account of this trade, and sketch of its present state, may 

 assist our readers in forming some estimate of the importance of this 

 subject to the United States, merely in a commercial view, and inde- 

 pendent of any question of territorial rights which it may be thought 

 to involve. The third voyage of Cook having made us acquainted with 

 countries of which little was before known, several enterprising indi- 

 viduals, allured by the prospect of a i)rofitable traitic with the nacives, 

 engaged in voyages to the north west coast as early as 1784. The citi- 

 zens of the United States, then just recovering from the entire prostra- 

 tion of their commerce by the revolutionary war, and possessing more 

 enterprise than capital, were not slow in perceiving the benefits likely 

 to result from the i)articipation in a branch of trade where industry 

 and i^erseverance could be substituted lor capital. In 1787 two vessels 

 were fitted out in the port of Boston, the ''Columbia," of 300 tons, and 

 the '' Washington," of 100 tons, burthen ; the former commanded by Mr, 

 John Kendrick, the latter by Mr. Kobert Grey, since known as the first 

 navigator who entered the River Columbia. Other vessels followed 

 shortly after, and those entrusted with the management of these voy- 

 ages soon acquired the necessary local knowledge to insure a successful 

 competition with the traders of other nations (mostly English) who had 

 preceded them. The habits and ordinary i)ursuits of the Xew England- 

 ers qualified them in a peculiar manner for carrying on this trade, and 

 the embarrassed state of Europe, combined with other circumstances, 

 gave them, in the course of a few years, almost a monopoly of the most 

 lucrative part of it. In 1801, which was perhaps the most flourishing 

 period of the trade, there were sixteen ships on the north-west coast, 

 fifteen of which were Americans, and one English. Upwards of 18,000 

 sea-otter skins, besides other furs, were collected for the China market 

 in that year by the American vessels alone. Since that time the trade 

 has declined, the sea-otter having become scarce, in consequence of the 

 impolitic system pursued by the Russians, as well as by the natives, 

 who destroy indiscriminately the old and the young of this animal; 

 which will probably in a few years be as rarely met with on the coast 

 of America as it is now on that of Kamtchatka and among the Aleutian 

 Islands, where they abounded when first discovered by the Russians, 

 There are at the present time absent from the United States fourteen 



