DISCOVERY, OCCUPATION, AND TRANSFER. 7 



It is easy to trace the several steps and understand the motives 

 which led to our purchase of Alaska. There was no subtle state- 

 craft involved, and no significance implied. The Russian Govern- ! 

 ment simply grew weary of looking after the American territory, 

 which was an element of annually increasing cost to the Imperial 

 treasury, and was a source of anxiety and weakness in all European 

 difficulties. It became apparent to the minds of the governing coun- 

 cil at St. Petersburg that Russians could not, or at least, would not 

 settle in Russian America to build up a state or province, or do any- 

 thing else there which would redound to the national honor and 

 strength. This view they were well grounded in, after the ripe ex- 

 perience of a century's control and ownership. 



One period in that history of Russian rule afforded to the au- 

 thorities much rosy anticipation. This interval was that season 

 in the affairs of the Russian American Company which was known 

 as Baranov's administration, in which time the revenues to the 

 crown were rich, and annually increasing. But Baranov was a prac- 

 tical business man, while every one of his successors, although dis- 

 tinguished men in the naval and army circles of the home govern- 

 ment, was not. Comment is unnecessary. The change became 

 marked ; the revenues rapidly declined, and the conduct of the 

 operations of the company soon became a matter of loss and not of 

 gain to the stockholders and to the Imperial treasury. The history, 

 however, of the rise and fall of this great Russian trading associa- 

 tion is a most interesting one ; much more so even than that of its 

 ancient though still surviving, but decrepit rival, the Hudson's Bay 

 Company. 



Those murderous factional quarrels of the competing Russian 

 traders throughout Alaska in 1790-98 finally compelled the Em- 

 peror Paul to grant, in 1799, much against his will, a charter to a 

 consolidation of the leading companies engaged in American fur- 

 hunting, which was named the Russian American Company. It 

 also embraced the Eastern Siberian and Kamchatkau colonies. 

 That charter gave to this company the exclusive right to all the ter- 

 ritory in Alaska, Kamchatka, and the Siberian Okotsk, and Kurile 

 districts, and the privileges conferred by this charter were very 

 great and of the most autocratic nature ; but at the same time the 

 company was shrewdly burdened with deftly framed obligations, 

 being compelled to maintain, at its own expense, the new govern- 

 ment of the country, a church establishment, a military force, and, 



