[2] The data of Vancouver's voyage come chiefly, of course, from the volume by himself, issued after his death, Voyage of Discovery to the Pacific Ocean, London, 1798. Supplementary data may be found in the records of predecessors and contemporaries like Meares's Voyages, London, 1790, Portlock's Voyage, London, 1789; Dixon's Voyage, London, 1789, and others, from whom nearly all modern writers, like Greenhow, Hubert Howe Bancroft, draw their information. The reports of Dr. Davidson in his Coast and Survey work, and his Alaska Boundary, identify many of Vancouver's landfalls, and illustrate the tremendous difficulties overcome in local topography. It is hardly necessary to refer to Begg and Mayne, and other purely local sketches of British Columbian coast lines; as Begg's History simply draws from the old voyages. Of modern works, Dr. Davidson's Survey works, and the official reports of the Canadian Geological Survey (Dawson), are the only ones that add any facts to what Vancouver has recorded.

{291}

PART III

EXPLORATION GIVES PLACE TO FUR TRADE—THE EXPLOITATION OF THE PACIFIC COAST UNDER THE RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY, AND THE RENOWNED LEADER BARANOF

{293}

CHAPTER XI
1579-1867
THE RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY

The Pursuit of the Sable leads Cossacks across Siberia, of the Sea-Otter, across the Pacific as far South as California—Caravans of Four Thousand Horses on the Long Trail Seven Thousand Miles across Europe and Asia—Banditti of the Sea—The Union of All Traders in One Monopoly—Siege and Slaughter of Sitka—How Monroe Doctrine grew out of Russian Fur Trade—Aims of Russia to dominate North Pacific

"Sea Voyagers of the Northern Ocean" they styled themselves, the Cossack banditti—robber knights, pirates, plunderers—who pursued the little sable across Europe and Asia eastward, just as the French coureurs des bois followed the beaver across America westward. And these two great tides of adventurers—the French voyager, threading the labyrinthine waterways of American wilds westward; the Russian voyager exchanging his reindeer sled and desert caravans for crazy rafts of green timbers to cruise across the Pacific eastward—were directed both to the same region, animated by the same impulse, the capture of the Pacific coast of America.

{294}