“The island of Kadiak, with the rest of the Russian settlements along the northwest coast of America, are superintended by a kind of governor-general or commander-in-chief, who has agents under him, appointed, like himself, by the Company at Petersburg. The smaller settlements have each a Russian overseer. These overseers are chosen by the governor, and are selected for the office in consequence of their long services and orderly conduct. They have the power of punishing, to a certain extent, those whom they superintend; but are themselves amenable to the governor, if they abuse their power by acts of injustice. The seat of government is the Harbor of St. Paul, which has a barrack, different store-houses, several respectable wooden habitations, and a church, the only one to be found on the coast.”[58] From this time the Company seems to have established itself on the coast. Lisiansky speaks of a single hunting party of nine hundred men, gathered from different places, as Alaska, Kadiak, Cook’s Inlet, Prince William Sound, and “commanded by thirty-six _toyons_, who are subordinate to the Russians in the service of the American Company, and receive from them their orders.”[59] From another source I learn that the inhabitants of Kadiak and of the Aleutian Islands were regarded as “immediate subjects of the Company,”--the males from eighteen to fifty being bound to serve it for the term of three years each. They were employed in the chase. The population of Alaska and of the two great bays, Cook’s Inlet and Prince William Sound, were also subject to the Company; but they were held to a yearly tax on furs, without regular service, and they could trade only with the Company; otherwise they were independent. This seems to have been before a division of the whole into districts, all under the Company, which, though primarily for the business of the Company, may be regarded as so many distinct jurisdictions, each with local powers of government. Among these were two districts which I mention only to put aside, as not included in the present cession: (1.) the Kurile Islands, being the group nestling near the coast of Japan, on the Asiatic side of the dividing line between the two continents; (2.) the Ross settlement in California, now abandoned.