fact that he was virtually a prisoner, and then dis-
missed without admission to the audience he sought
with the mikado. He had gone then to bleak, in-
hospitable Sitka, to find the settlement there in a
plague of scurvy and starvation only slightly miti-
gated by vodka. Down the coast then he sailed to
the Spanish settlement for food for the settlement.
He comes to that place where in his vision he sees
arise that city of the future which we know now
as San Francisco. Masterful man that he is, he
feels that here some great thing awaits him. The
Spaniards are wary of him. They will not trade
with him, but they receive him courteously and they
are fascinated by his self-possessed, well-poised but
withal so gracious personality. The life there at
the time is a sort of lotus-eating existence. It is
a piece of Spain translated to a more luscious, a
lovelier land, overlooking beautiful seas and peril-
ous. Into the dolce far niente Rezanov enters with
some surrender to its softening spell, but with the
courtier's prudence.

And he meets the girl, Concha Arguello. He
sees her in the setting of burning and sweet Cas-
tilian roses--a girl who has had the benefit of edu-
cation, who keeps the graces of old Madrid in this
realm beyond sea, a burgeoning bud of womanhood,
daughter of the commandante. The doom of both
is upon them at once. They have drunk the pois-
oned cup. Rezanov resists the first approaches of