_First._ In trying to arrive at an idea of their _numbers_, I begin with Lippincott’s Gazetteer, as it is the most accessible, according to which the whole population in 1851, aboriginal, Russian, and Creole, was 61,000. The same estimate appears also in the London “Imperial Gazetteer” and in the “Geographie” of Wappäus. Keith Johnston, in his “Physical Atlas,” calls the population, in 1852, 66,000. McCulloch, in the last edition of his “Geographical Dictionary,” puts it as high as 72,375. On the other hand, the “Almanach de Gotha” for the present year calls it 54,000. This estimate seems to have been adopted substantially from the great work, “Les Peuples de la Russie,” which I am disposed to consider as the best authority. Exaggerations are common with regard to the inhabitants of newly acquired possessions, and this distant region is no exception. An enthusiastic estimate once placed its population as high as 400,000. Long ago, Schelekoff, an early Russian adventurer, reported that he had subjected to the Crown of Russia 50,000 persons in the island of Kadiak alone.[68] But Lisiansky, who followed him there in 1804-5, says: “The population of this island, when compared with its size, is very small.” After “the minutest research,” he found that it amounted only to 4,000 souls.[69] It is much less now,--probably not more than 1,500. It is easy to know the number of those within the immediate jurisdiction of the Company. This is determined by a census. Even here the aborigines are the most numerous. Then come the Creoles, and last the Russians. But here you must bear in mind a distinction with regard to the former. In Spanish America all of European parentage born there are “Creoles”; in Russian America this term is applicable only to those whose parents are European and native,--in other words, “half-breeds.” According to Wrangell, in 1833, the census of dependants of the Company in all its districts was 652 Russians, 991 Creoles, and 9,016 Aleutians and Kadiaks, being in all 10,659. Of these, 5,509 were men and 5,150 were women. In 1851, according to the report of the Company, there was an increase of Creoles, with a corresponding diminution of Russians and aborigines, being 505 Russians, 1,703 Creoles, and 7,055 aborigines, in all 9,263. In 1857 there were 644 Russians, 1,903 Creoles, and 7,245 aborigines, in all 9,792, of whom 5,133 were men and 4,659 were women. The increase from 1851 to 1857 was only 529, or about one per cent. annually. In 1860 there were “some hundreds” of Russians, 2,000 Creoles, and 8,000 aborigines, amounting in all to 10,540, of whom 5,382 were men and 5,158 were women. I am thus particular, that you may see how stationary population has been even within the sphere of the Company.