continent is delineated with a strait separating it from Asia not unlike Behring’s in outline, and with the name in Italian, Stretto di Anian. Southward the coast has a certain conformity with what is now known to exist. Below is an indentation corresponding to Bristol Bay; then a peninsula somewhat broader than that of Alaska; then the elbow of the coast; then, lower down, three islands, not unlike Sitka, Queen Charlotte, and Vancouver; and then, further south, is the peninsula of Lower California. Sometimes the story of Anian is explained by the voyage of the Portuguese navigator Gaspar de Cortereal, in 1500, when, on reaching Hudson Bay in quest of a passage round America, he imagined that he had found it, and proceeded to name his discovery “in honor of two brothers who accompanied him.” Very soon maps began to record the Strait of Anian; but this does not explain the substantial conformity of the early delineation with the reality, which seems truly remarkable.

The other branch of inquiry is more easily disposed of. This turns on a Spanish document entitled “A Relation of the Discovery of the Strait of Anian, made by me, Captain Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado, in the Year 1588.”[5] If this early account of a northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific were authentic, the whole question would be settled; but recent geographers indignantly discard it as a barefaced imposture. Clearly Spain once regarded it otherwise; for her Government in 1789 sent out an expedition “to discover the strait by which Laurent Ferrer Maldonado was supposed to have passed, in 1588, from the coast of Labrador to the Great Ocean.”[6] The expedition was unsuccessful, and nothing more has been heard of any claim from this pretended discovery. The story of Maldonado has taken its place in the same category with that of Munchausen.

REASONS FOR CESSION BY RUSSIA.

Turning from the question of title, which time and testimony have already settled, I meet the inquiry, Why does Russia part with possessions associated with the reign of her greatest ruler and filling an important chapter of geographical history? Here I am without information not open to others. But I do not forget that the first Napoleon, in parting with Louisiana, was controlled by three several considerations. First, he needed the purchase-money for his treasury; secondly, he was unwilling to leave this distant unguarded territory a prey to Great Britain, in the event of hostilities, which seemed at hand; and, thirdly, he was glad, according to his own remarkable language, “to establish forever the power of the United States, and give to England a maritime rival that would sooner or later humble her pride.”[7] Such is the record of history. Perhaps a similar record may be made hereafter with regard to the present cession. There is reason to imagine that Russia, with all her great empire, is financially poor; so that these few millions may not be unimportant to her. It is by foreign loans that her railroads have been built and her wars aided. All, too, must see that in those “coming events” which now more than ever “cast their shadows before” it will be for her advantage not to hold outlying possessions from which thus far she has obtained no income commensurate with the possible expense for their protection. Perhaps, like a wrestler, she strips for the contest, which I trust sincerely may be averted. Besides, I cannot doubt that her enlightened Emperor, who has given pledges to civilization by an unsurpassed act of Emancipation, would join the first Napoleon in a desire to enhance the maritime power of the United States.

These general considerations are reinforced, when we call to mind the little influence which Russia has been able thus far to exercise in this region. Though possessing dominion for more than a century, the gigantic power has not been more genial or productive there than the soil itself. Her government is little more than a name or a shadow. It is not even a skeleton. It is hardly visible. Its only representative is a fur company, to which has been added latterly an ice company. The immense country is without form and without light, without activity and without progress. Distant from the imperial capital, and separated from the huge bulk of Russian empire, it does not share the vitality of a common country. Its life is solitary and feeble. Its settlements are only encampments or lodges. Its fisheries are only a petty perquisite, belonging to local or personal adventurers rather than to the commerce of nations.

In these statements I follow the record. So little were these possessions regarded during the last century that they were scarcely recognized as a component part of the empire. I have now before me an authentic map, published by the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg in 1776, and reproduced at London in 1780, entitled “General Map of the Russian Empire,”[8] where you will look in vain for Russian America, unless we except the links of the Aleutian chain nearest to the two continents. Alexander Humboldt, whose geographical insight was unerring, in his great work on New Spain, published in 1811, after stating that he is able from an official document to give the position of the Russian factories on the American continent, says that they are “for the most part mere collections of sheds and cabins, but serving as store-houses for the fur-trade.” He remarks further that “the larger part of these small Russian colonies communicate with each other only by sea”; and then, putting us on our guard not to expect too much from a name, he proceeds to say that “the new denomination of ‘Russian America,’ or ‘Russian Possessions on the New Continent,’ must not lead us to think that the coasts of Behring’s Basin, the peninsula of Alaska, or the country of the Tchuktchi have become Russian provinces in the sense given to this word in speaking of the Spanish provinces of Sonora or New Biscay.”[9] Here is a distinction between the foothold of Spain in California and the foothold of Russia in North America which will at least illustrate the slender power of the latter in this region.

In ceding possessions so little within the sphere of her empire, embracing more than one hundred nations or tribes, Russia gives up no part of herself; and even if she did, the considerable price paid, the alarm of war which begins to fill our ears, and the sentiments of friendship declared for the United States would explain the transaction.

THE NEGOTIATION, IN ITS ORIGIN AND COMPLETION.

I am not able to say when the idea of this cession first took shape. I have heard that it was as long ago as the Administration of Mr. Polk. It is within my knowledge that the Russian Government was sounded on the subject during the Administration of Mr. Buchanan. This was done through Mr. Gwin, at the time Senator of