The several small settlements which we find upon this pastoral strip to-day have a curious history, as to the origin of their inhabitants. About the period of 1836-38, the expenses of the Russian American Company in maintaining their trading stations in Alaska were increasing to an alarming degree, while the receipts remained stationary, or fell off. An enquiry into its cause revealed it. The fact was, that hundreds of superannuated employés were drawing their salaries and subsistence, rendering no adequate return for the same. These persons had grown old, and had lost their health in serving the company; were, nearly all of them, infirm survivors of Shellikov and Baranov’s parties, whose daring and energy had established the company. It would be inhuman to discharge these aged and crippled Russians, and throw them upon their own resources in such a region. After much deliberation the company was authorized by the Crown to make the following terms of settlement and relief, and thus locate them as permanent pensioners and settlers in the country. Therefore all of the old employés who had married or lived with native or half-breed women, and who were unable to successfully engage in the trading avocations of the company, by reason of age and other infirmities, were, upon their written or witnessed request, after being stricken from the pay-rolls, provided for in this manner. The company was obliged to select and donate a piece of ground, build a comfortable dwelling, furnish agricultural tools, seeds, cattle and fowls, and supply the pensioner receiving all this with provisions enough to support him and his wife for one year. These “old colonial citizens” (as they were called), thus established, were then exempted from all taxation, military duty, or molestation whatsoever, and a list of their names was annually forwarded in the reports of the company. The children of those settlers were at liberty to enter or not, as they pleased, the service of the company at stated salaries. The company, furthermore, was commanded to purchase all the surplus produce of these pensioners, furs, and dried fish, etc. This order of the Crown, thus fixing the status of those old servants, also included the half-breeds who were equally infirm by reason of such service. Such whites, or Russians, were officially designated “colonial citizens,” the half-breeds were styled “colonial settlers.”