Those murderous factional quarrels of the competing Russian traders throughout Alaska in 1790-98 finally compelled the Emperor Paul to grant, in 1799, much against his will, a charter to a consolidation of the leading companies engaged in American fur-hunting, which was named the Russian American Company. It also embraced the Eastern Siberian and Kamchatkan colonies. That charter gave to this company the exclusive right to all the territory in Alaska, Kamchatka, and the Siberian Okotsk, and Kurile districts, and the privileges conferred by this charter were very great and of the most autocratic nature; but at the same time the company was shrewdly burdened with deftly framed obligations, being compelled to maintain, at its own expense, the new government of the country, a church establishment, a military force, and, at various points in the territory, ample magazines of provisions and stores to be used by the Imperial Government for its naval vessels or land troops whenever ordered. At a time when all such stores had to be transported on land trails over the desolate wastes of Siberia from Russia to the Okotsk, this clause in the franchise was most burdensome, and really fatal to the financial success of the company. The finesse of the Russian authorities is strikingly manifested in that charter, which ostensibly granted to the Russian American Company all these rights of exclusive jurisdiction to a vast domain without selfishly exacting a single tax for the home treasury; but in fact it did pay an immense sum annually into the royal coffers in this way. The entire fur trade in those days was with China, and all the furs of Alaska were bartered by the Russians with the Mongols for teas, which were sold in Russia and Europe. The records of the Imperial treasury show that the duties paid into it by this company upon these teas often exceeded two millions of silver rubles annually.[4] The company was also obliged, by the terms of their charter, to make experiments in the establishment of agricultural settlements wherever the soil and climate of Alaska would permit. The natives of Alaska were freed from all taxes in skins or money, but were obliged to furnish to the company’s order certain quotas of sea-otter hunters every season, all men between the ages of eighteen and fifty being liable to this draft, though not more than one-half of any number thus subject could be enlisted and called out at any one time.