Thirty-six forts and twelve vessels the Russian American fur hunters
owned twenty years after the loss of Sitka. New Archangel became more
important to the Pacific than San Francisco. Nor was it a mistake to
move the capital so far south. Within a few years Russian traders and
their Indians were north as far as the Yukon, south hunting sea-otter
as far as Santa Barbara. To enumerate but a few of the American
vessels that yearly hunted sea-otter for the Russians southward of
Oregon and California, taking in pay skins of the seal islands, would
fill a coasting list. Rezanoff, who had failed to open the embassy to
Japan and so came across to America, spent two months in Monterey and
San Francisco trying to arrange with the Spaniards to supply the
Russians with provisions. He was received coldly by the Spanish
governor till {315} a love affair sprang up with the daughter of the
don, so ardent that the Russian must depart post-haste across Siberia
for the Czar's sanction to the marriage. Worn out by the midwinter
journey, he died on his way across Siberia.
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