formidable a menace to her territorial greatness as
this Russian nobleman who paced that night the
wretched deck of the little ship he had bought from
one of her skippers. Perturbed in mind at his re-
cent failures and immediate prospects, he was no
less determined to take California from the Span-
iards either by absorption or force.

On his way from New Archangel to San Fran-
cisco he had met with his second failure since leav-
ing St. Petersburg. It was his intention to move
the Sitkan colony down to the mouth of the Colum-
bia River; not only pressed by the need of a more
beneficent soil, but as a first insidious advance upon
San Francisco Bay. Upon this trip it would be
enough to make a survey of the ground and bury a
copper plate inscribed: "Possession of the Rus-
sian Empire." The Juno had encountered terrific
storms. After three desperate attempts to reach
the mouth of the river, Rezanov had been forced to
relinquish the enterprise for the moment and hasten
with his diseased and almost useless crew to the
nearest port. It was true that the attempt could be
made again later, but Rezanov, sanguine of tem-
perament, was correspondingly depressed by failure
and disposed to regard it as an ill-omen.

An ambassador inspired by heaven could have
accomplished no more with the Japanese at that
mediaeval stage of their development than he had