hose who formerly had ships and
establishments there, except those who have united with the new
Company." All private traders who refused to join the Company were to
be allowed to sell their property and depart in peace.

Thus was formed the first of the Trusts in America; and the United
States never has had so formidable a menace to her territorial
greatness as this Russian nobleman who paced that night the wretched
deck of the little ship he had bought from one of her skippers.
Perturbed in mind at his recent failures and immediate prospects, he
was no less determined to take California from the Spaniards either by
absorption or force.

On his way from New Archangel to San Francisco he had met with his
second failure since leaving St. Petersburg. It was his intention to
move the Sitkan colony down to the mouth of the Columbia River; not
only pressed by the need of a more beneficent soil, but as a first
insidious advance upon San Francisco Bay. Upon this trip it would be
enough to make a survey of the ground and bury a copper plate
inscribed: "Possession of the Russian Empire." The Juno had
encountered terrific storms. After three desperate attempts to reach
the mouth of the river, Rezanov had been forced to relinquish the
enterprise for the moment and hasten with his diseased and almost
useless crew to the nearest port. It was true that the attempt could
be made again later, but Rezanov, sanguine of temperament, was
correspondingly depressed by failure and disposed to regard it as an
ill-omen.

An ambassador inspired by heaven could have accomplished no more with
the Japanese at that mediaeval stage of their development than he had
done, and the most indomitable of men cannot yet control the winds of
heaven; but sovereigns are rarely governed by logic, and frequently by
the favorite at hand. The privilege of writing personally to the Tsar,
in his case, meant more and less than appeared on the surface. It was
a measure to keep the reports of the Company out of the hands of the
Admiralty College, its bitterest enemy, and always jealous of the Civil
Service. Nevertheless, Rezanov knew that he had no immediate reason to
apprehend the loss of Alexander's friendship and esteem; and if he
placed the Company, in which all the imperial family had bought shares,
on a sounder basis than ever before, and doubled its earnings by
insuring the health of its employees, he would meet, when in St.
Petersburg again, with pr