APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 277 



region. Though possessing dominion over it for more than a centnry 

 this gigantic Power has not been more genial or productive there than 

 the soil itself. Her Government there is little more than a name or a 

 shadow. It is not even a skeleton. It is hardly visilde. Its only rep- 

 resentative 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 Imjierial 

 capital, and separated from the huge bulk of Eussian 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 posses- 

 sions regarded during the last century that they were scarcely recog- 

 nized as a component part of the Empire. I have now before me an 

 authentic map, published by the Academy of Sciences at St. Peters- 

 burgh in 177G, and reproduced at London in 1787, entitled "General 

 Map of the Kussian Empire," where you will look in vain for Eussian 

 America, unless we accept that link of the Aleutian chain nearest to 

 Asia, wiiich appears to have been incorporated under the Empress Anna 

 at the same time with Siberia. (See Coxe's "Eussian Discoveries.") 

 Alexander Humboldt, whose insight into geograi)hy was unerring, in 

 his great work on "New Spain," published in 1811, after stating tliat 

 he is able from oflicial documeuts to give the position of the Eussian 

 factories on the American Continent, says that they are "nothing but 



sheds and cabins employed as magazines of furs." He remarks 

 48 further that "the larger part of these small Eussian Colonies do 



not comnnmicate witli each other except b^' sea," and then, put- 

 ting 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 2)os- 

 sessio7is on the new continent must not make us think that the coasts of 

 Behring's Basin, the Peninsula of Alaska, or the country of Tchuktchi 

 have become Russian provinces in the sense given to this word, when 

 we speak of the Spanish Provinces of Sonora or Xew Biscay." (Hum- 

 boldt, "Essai Politique sur La Nouvelle-Espagne," Tom. I, pp. 344, .345.) 

 Here is a distinction between the foothold of Spain in California and 

 the foothold of Eussia in North America, which will at least illustrate 

 the slender power of the latter in this region. 



In ceding xiossessions so little Avithin the sphere of her Empire, 

 embracing more than 100 nations or tribes, Eussia 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 exj)lain 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 Eussian 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. 

 Ai^pleton, Assistant Secretary of State. For this purpose the former 

 had more than one interview with the Eussian Minister at Washington 

 some time in December 1859, in which, while j^rofessing to speak for 

 the President unofficially, he represented "that Eussia was too far oft to 

 make the most of these possessions; and that as we are near, we can 

 derive more from them." In reply to an inquiry of the Eussian Minister 



