About the same time a party of 200 Russians and Aleuts were lost at sea while on their way from Sitka to Kadiak.

A ship-yard having been established at Sitka, the first ship was launched in March, 1807. This ship was christened the Sitka, and in the following year another, called the Discovery, was launched and the keel of the Chirikoff laid.

The history of the colonies during the next ten years was uneventful. In 1818 Baranoff, who was rapidly failing, both mentally and physically, was relieved by Captain Hagermeister, a naval officer, who accepted the office upon the condition that Lieutenant Yanovsky, who had married Baranoff's daughter, should, as his deputy, be the de facto Governor and chief manager. This arrangement continued until Hagermeister was succeeded by Captain Mouravieff in 1821. Mouravieff invited the natives to return to the old home from which they had been driven in 1804, which they did, occupying the site of the present native village of Sitka. The stockade was then strengthened, and a gate added on the side next to the native settlement at which a market place was established, but no native was permitted to pass the gate without a permit. All trade with the natives was transacted at this market place, the precautions against surprise and attack never being relaxed.

In 1824 Lieutenant Chistiakoff succeeded Mouravieff, and in that year the boundaries of Alaska were fixed as they now exist, and the long established embargo against foreign trade was removed. The Russians had assumed sovereignty over the whole of the Pacific Ocean north of the 51st parallel by proclamation issued and promulgated in 1821, in which the vessels of other nations were forbidden to approach within one hundred miles of the shore, except in cases of extreme distress. Against this claim of sovereignty over a part of the high seas both the United States and Great Britain entered a vigorous protest, and in 1824 a convention was signed between the United States and Russia by the terms of which the North Pacific was declared open to American ships and 54 degrees 40 minutes recognized as the southern boundary of the Russian possessions, a similar treaty being concluded between Russia and Great Britain the following year.

In 1832 Baron Wrangell became Governor and chief director, and by his direction the settlement on St. Michael's Island was established, and has ever since been maintained as a trading post and depot of supplies for the Yukon River district.

In 1839 the Hudson Bay Company attempted

the establishment of a station on the. Stikine River, but the Russians, disputing their right to do so, notwithstanding that the treaty of 1825 guaranteed the free navigation of that stream, built a fort at its mouth and fired on the company's vessel when she attempted an entrance. The contention was finally settled by a lease of all that part of Alaska lying between 54 degrees 40 minutes and Cape Spencer to the Hudson Bay Company. The fort at the mouth of the Stikine was transferred to the lessee company, which also built a similar post on Taku River, only to abandon it two or three years later.

Kupreanoff succeeded Wrangell in 1836, and in 1840 the latter was relieved by Etholin. During Kupreanoff's term the native villages were ravaged by smallpox, the number of those who died being estimated at upwards of 5,000. Prior to this time the Yukon had been explored a thousand miles from its mouth and trading stations tributary to that at St. Michael's established at two or three points, the principal of which was at Nulato. In 1851 the fort at Nulato was surprised by a hostile tribe and most of the inmates, including the natives living outside the stockades, barbarously butchered. Among the killed on this occasion was a young English officer named Barnard, who belonged to the English ship Enterprise, which had been sent in search

of Sir John Franklin. He had been sent by his commander to investigate a reported murder of a party of his countrymen in that section, and an imperious demand sent to the chief of the hostile tribe to appear before him was responded to by the surprise and attack which cost him his life.

The next year the Sitka natives, who began once more to show indications of hostility, burned the buildings at Hot Springs, near Sitka, and stripped the inmates of their clothing, the unfortunates being compelled to make their way through the almost impenetrable forest to Sitka, where they arrived after many days of intense suffering, wholly nude and lacerated almost beyond recognition. A short time after thirty-five Stikines, who were on a friendly visit to the Sitkans, were butchered in plain sight of the town and of the Russian garrison.

The savage appetite for blood being whetted by the last mentioned butchery, the Sitkan natives next attacked the garrison, and, gaining possession of a church which had been erected just outside the stockade for their own spiritual welfare, used it as a point of vantage from which to fire on all who dared expose themselves within the enclosure. After a fight lasting nearly a full day they were finally dislodged with a loss of more than 100 killed and as many more wound

ed. The Russian loss was two killed and nineteen wounded, but the lesson was one which the natives never forgot, and from that time to the present their hostility to the whites has manifested itself only in muttered threatenings, with here and there an occasional cowardly and brutal assassination of some helpless victim.

Tebenkoff followed Etholin as Governor; then came in succession Vouvodsky, Furuhelm, and finally Prince Maksoutoff, the last named being Governor at the time of the transfer of the territory to the United States.

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