246 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



Bad reputation of promyshleniks. — In addition to the natives 

 tlieinselves, the company transported to AUiska some four or live Imn- 

 dred Kussians, wlio Avere termed " promyshleniks," or '■'■ hunters." They 

 were employed as trappers, fishermen, seamen, sokliers, or mechanics, 

 just as their superiors might command, and they were under the same 

 rule as that I have just described as applicable to the natives. Their 

 lot, according to Paul von Krusenstern, a Russian, who voyaged thither 

 in 1804-05, seems to have been more uninviting even than that of the 

 wretched natives. 



Baranov's attempt to colonize California. — Prior to 1812 Sitka 

 was the extreme southern limit of the Russian- American Company. 

 But old Baranov, greatly annoyed over the loss of supply ships from 

 the Okotsk, by which their bread, at Kadiak and Sitka, was cut ofif for 

 years at a time, determined to settle at some place south, where these 

 necessaries to a comfortable physical existence could be raised frouj the 

 soil; so he asked of the Spanish governor at Monterey permission to 

 erect a few houses on the shore of the small bay at Bodega, California, 

 in order to "procure and salt the meat of the wild cattle'' which over- 

 ran that part of the country north of the harbor of San Francisco, for 

 the "use of the governor's table at New Archangel" (Sitka). The 

 Castilian was happy to oblige a peer; but in the lapse of three or four 

 years after this permit was granted the Russians had formed a large 

 settlement, built a fort, and had in actuality taken possession of the 

 country. The Spanish governor first remonstrated, then commanded 

 Baranov to move off, in the name of his Most Catliolic Majesty the 

 King of Spain, He discovered quickly, to his infinite chagrin, that 

 the Russian had abused his confidence and defied him. The Spaniard 

 could not enforce his order, and Kuskov, the Russian deputy in charge 

 at Bodega, openly taunted and resisted him. The Russian-American 

 Company remained here practically unmolested until 1842, when they 

 sold their fixtures to General Sutter, a Swiss-American, for $30,000, 

 and vacated California. 



Attempt to secure the Sandwich Islands. — In 1815 Baranov, 

 instead of feeling chilled by the California unpleasantness, then in full 

 headway, turned his ambitious eyes to the Sandwich Islands, and actu- 

 ally dispatched a vessel, or rather two of them, under the direction of 

 Dr. Shaefier, a German surgeon, who landed on Atooi with one hun- 

 dred picked Aleuts; but they were, at the lapse of a year, so discour- 

 aged by the open opposition of the Russian Government to this scheme 

 that they abandoned the project. 



Rapid decay of the Russian-American Company after the 

 DEATH OF Baranov. — In 1862, when the third extension of the twenty 

 years' lease had expired, the affairs of the Russian-American Company 

 were in a bad condition financially — deeply in debt, and the Imperial 

 Government was not disposed to renew the charter. This state of 

 affairs gave rise, in 1864-1807, to negotiation with other trading organi- 

 zations for the lease, which finally culminated in the purchase of Alaska 

 by our Government July, 1807. Such, in brief, was the Russian -Ameri- 

 can Company; it flourished under Baranov, but declined steadily to 

 bankruptcy twenty years after his removal, when 80 years old, on 

 account of extreme age, in 1818. In short, its great compeer, the Hud- 

 son Bay Company, was very much earlier initiated in the same nianner, 

 June, 1670; then it finally organized with the Northwest Company 

 under its present title, with renewed royal prerogatives and despotic 

 sway over all British North America in 1821. It, too, has declined to a 

 commercial cipher to-day, with its autocratic rights abolished long 



