1. _Government._--The Russian settlements were for a long time without any regular government. They were little more than temporary lodgements for purposes of trade, where the will of the stronger prevailed. The natives, who had enslaved each other, became in turn the slaves of these mercenary adventurers. Captain Cook records “the great subjection”[49] of the natives at Oonalaska, when he was there in 1778; and a Russian navigator, fourteen years later, describes the islands generally as “under the sway of roving hunters more savage than any tribes he had hitherto met with.”[50] At Oonalaska the Russians for a long time employed all the men in the chase, “taking the fruits of their labor to themselves.”[51] The first trace of government which I find was in 1790, at the important island of Kadiak, or the Great Island, as it was called, where a Russian company was established under direction of a Greek by the name of Delareff, who, according to the partial report of a Russian navigator, “governed with the strictest justice, as well natives as Russians, and established a school, where the young natives were taught the Russian language, reading and writing.”[52] Here were about fifty Russians, including officers of the company, and another person described as “there on the part of Government to collect tribute.”[53] The establishment consisted of five houses after the Russian fashion,--barracks laid out on either side, somewhat like the boxes at a coffee-house, with different offices, represented as follows: “An office of appeal, to settle disputes, levy fines, and punish offenders by a regular trial; here Delareff presides, and I believe that few courts of justice pass a sentence with more impartiality; an office of receival and delivery, both for the company and for tribute; the commissaries’ department, for the distribution of the regulated portions of provision; counting-house, &c.: all in this building, at one end of which is Delareff’s habitation.”[54] If this picture is not overdrawn,--and it surely is,--affairs here did not improve with time. But D’Wolf, who was there in 1805-6, reports “about forty houses of various descriptions, including a church, school-house, store-house, and barracks”; and he adds: “The school-house was quite a respectable establishment, well filled with pupils.”[55]