debilitated by lack of proper food and suffering from scurvy, caused him
to hasten on. He heard that a party of U. S. soldiers were building a
fort there. This rumor doubtless came from the presence of Lewis and
Clarke near the present Astoria.

While on this visit to San Francisco Resanof met the Spanish beauty,
Dona Concepcion de Arguello, of whom one of the visitors said, "She was
lively and animated, had sparkling, love-inspiring eyes, beautiful
teeth, pleasing and expressive features, a fine form and a thousand
other charms," and he lost his heart to her. The romance of the Russian
courtier and the fair Californian furnished to Bret Harte the theme for
some of his most beautiful verse. Resanof, hurrying home to Russia to
gain the Imperial permission to his marriage, died at Krasnoyarsk,
Siberia, and Dona Concepcion waited for years for the coming of her
lover, not knowing that he lay dead under the Siberian snows. When the
news of his sad fate came to her she donned the habit of a nun and
devoted herself to charitable works.

This visit to California was the beginning of a trade that continued for
many years, through all the period of Russian occupation. During the
days of the gold discoveries in California large shipments of goods were
made from Sitka to San Francisco, and after the sale of the territory to
the United States great quantities of merchandise were shipped from the
warehouses of the Company to the California metropolis, amounting to
over a quarter of a million dollars in one year.

The breadstuffs for the colonies were procured from California, from San
Francisco and from Ross Colony, or from Peru, until 1840, when a
contract was made with the Hudson's Bay Company under which the supplies
were brought from the farms of the Nisqually or from Vancouver, in
Oregon Territory.

Until the time of the arrival of the "Neva", 1804, all trading goods
were brought across Siberia to Okhotsk, and thence by sailing vessel to
the colony, or were purchased from the American or English trading ships
which came to the coast for furs. To the natives the English who came to
these waters became known as "King George Men," and the Americans were
called "Boston Men," the latter being from the great number of ships
that sailed from the great shipping port of New England. From these
traders goods were purchased by Baranof at lower rates than those cost
which were brought from Russia. John Jacob Astor was one of the first t