334 EXTRAVAGANT PRETENSIONS OF RUSSIA. [1822. 



coveries of the Russians in 1799 ; since which period they had made 

 no discoveries or establishments south of the said line, on the 

 coast now claimed by them. With regard to the suggestion that 

 the Russian government might justly exercise sovereignty over the 

 Pacific Ocean as a close sea, because it claims territories both on 

 the Asiatic and the American shores, Mr. Adams merely observed, 

 that the distance between those shores, on the parallel of 51 degrees 

 north, is four thousand miles ; and he concluded by expressing the 

 persuasion of the president that the citizens of the United States 

 would remain unmolested in the prosecution of their lawful com- 

 merce, and that no effect would be given to a prohibition manifestly 

 incompatible with their rights. 



The Russian minister plenipotentiary, a few days after the receipt 

 of Mr. Adams's last communication, sent another note, supporting 

 the rights of his sovereign, in which he advanced " the authentic 

 fact, that, in 1789, the Spanish packet St. Charles, commanded by 

 Captain Haro, found, in the latitude of forty-eight and forty-nine 

 degrees, Russian establishments, to the number of eight, consisting, 

 in the whole, of twenty families, and four hundred and sixty-two 

 individuals, who were the descendants of the companions of Cap- 

 tain Tchirikof, supposed until then to have perished." Respecting 

 this " authentic fact ," it has been shown, in the account* already 

 given of the Spanish voyage to which the Chevalier Poletica refers, 

 that Martinez and Haro did find eight Russian establishments on 

 the North Pacific coast of America in 1788, but that they were all 

 situated in the latitudes of fifty-eight and fifty-nine degrees, and that 

 the persons inhabiting them had all been, a short time previous, 

 transported thither, from Kamtchatka and the Aleutian Islands, by 

 Schelikof, the founder of the Russian American Company. The 

 minister doubtless derived his information from the introduction to 

 the journal of Marchand's voyage ; but he neglected to read the note 

 appended to that account, in which the error is explained. 



The prohibitory regulation of the Russian emperor, and the 

 correspondence relating to it, were immediately submitted to the 

 Congress of the United States ; and, in the ensuing year, a nego- 

 tiation was commenced at St. Petersburg, the object of which was 

 to settle amicably and definitively the limits of the territories on 

 the north-west side of America, claimed by the two nations re- 

 spectively, and the terms upon which their navigation and trade in 

 the North Pacific were in future to be conducted. A negotiation, 



* See p. 186. 



