GEOGRAPHY OF RUSSIAN AMERICA. 37 



districts, each of which is under the direction of an agent ; the whole 

 being superintended by a governor-general, usually an officer of the 

 Russian navy, residing at the capital of the possessions. The furs 

 are collected either by persons in the regular service of the company, or as 

 taxes from its subjects, or by trade with the independent natives ; and they 

 are transported in its vessels to Petropawlowsk in Kamtchatka, or to 

 Ochotsk, in Siberia, or, by special permission of the Chinese government, to 

 Canton, or to the European ports of Russia ; the supplies being received 

 from those places by the same vessels. 



The district of Sitka comprehends the islands of the North-West Ar- 

 chipelago, and the coasts of the American continent, northward from 

 the, parallel of 54 degrees 40 minutes, to Mount St. Elias. The islands 

 are six large, and an infinite number of smaller ones, separated from 

 each other, and from the main land, by narrow, but generally navigable 

 channels. The large islands are those distinguished on English maps 

 as Prince of Wales's Island, the southernmost, between which and the 

 continent, on the east, are the Duke of York's and the Revillagigedo 

 Islands; farther north, on the ocean, is King George the Third's Ar- 

 chipelago, including Baranof's and Tchichagof's Islands; and east of 

 these latter are Admiralty and some other islands. 



Opposite the western end of the channel, separating Baranof's from 

 Tchichagof's Island, is a small island, consisting 'of a single and beautiful 

 conical peak, rising from the ocean, which received from its Spanish 

 discoverers, in 1775, the name of Mount San Jacinto, but is better known 

 by the English appellation of Mount Edgecumb ; a narrow passage, called 

 Norfolk Sound, separates it from Baranof's Island, on the shore of which 

 stands Sitka, or New Archangel, the capital of Russian America. This 

 is a small town, of wooden houses, covered mostly with iron, protected, or 

 rather overlooked, by batteries, and inhabited by about a thousand per- 

 sons, of whom nearly one half are Russians, the majority of the others 

 being Creoles. The governor's house is large and substantially built, 

 and is surmounted by a lighthouse ; the fortifications, which are also of 

 wood, are armed by about forty guns: attached to the establishment are 

 an extensive arsenal, including a ship-yard, a foundery, and shops for 

 various artificers, a hospital, and a church, splendidly adorned in the 

 interior. Sitka, moreover, though thus remote from all civilized coun- 

 tries, contains several schools, in which the children are instructed at the 

 expense of the company, a library of two thousand volumes, a cabinet of 

 natural history, and an observatory supplied with the instruments most 

 necessary for astronomical and magnetic observations. 



On comparing the results of meteorological observations, it appears 

 that the mean temperature of every month of the year, at Sitka, is higher 

 than that of any place in America, east of the Rocky Mountains, within 

 several degrees of the same latitude. No attempts at cultivation have, 

 however, been made there or in any other part of Russian America, except 

 at the settlement of Ross, in California, on a scale sufficiently large to 

 authorize any opinions as to the agricultural value of the soil. 



The district of Kodiak comprises all the coasts from the North- West 

 Archipelago, northward and westward, to the southern extremity of the 

 peninsula of Aliaska, with the adjacent islands, as also a portion of the 

 coast of the Sea of Kamtchatka, on the north-west side of Aliaska. The 

 largest island is Kodiak, situated near the east coast of Aliaska, from 



