128 
DALL. 
Alexander archipelago were confined to a few small fortified 
trading posts. Fort Wrangell and Fort Tongass alone could 
be regarded as approximately permanent. The parties sent 
out to trade or hunt worked from a temporary camp or an 
armed vessel as a base, and, owing to the ill-feeling which 
existed between the natives and Russians, smuggling and 
illicit trading were rife. Missionary effort did not exist out¬ 
side of Sitka, and even there amounted to little more than 
the bribery of some greedy savage to perform for a consid¬ 
eration some rites which he did not understand. 
The law of Russia which prevented a permanent severance 
of a subject from his native soil (except for crime) operated 
to encourage temporary unions of the company’s servants 
with native women. Marriages were not allowed between 
full-blooded Russians and natives, as at the expiration of his 
term of service the Russian must return to his own parish 
in Russia, and the native could not be carried away from the 
place of her nativity. After the transfer of Alaska to the 
United States many of these Russians elected to remain in 
the country and were married to the mothers of their chil¬ 
dren ; but at the time of our first visit the most surprising 
social fact to us was the perfect equality which appeared to 
subsist between these irregular partners and the married 
women who had come from Russia. So far as we could per¬ 
ceive, both classes behaved with equal propriety and were 
treated with equal respect by the community, and the only 
restriction which the authorities insisted upon was that no 
Russian should take to himself a partner who had not been 
duly baptized. The issue of these unions, being of Alaskan 
birth, were free to marry in the country, and w r ith their de¬ 
scendants constituted the class to which the Russians gave 
the name of “Creoles.” Some of them rose to eminence in 
the service, and one at least became governor of the colonies. 
At the time of our visit the business of the colony was ex¬ 
clusively the development of the fur trade. Agriculture was 
confined to a trifling amount of gardening very imperfectly 
performed. The fisheries were utilized only to supply food 
