California -- History -- Fiction; Rezanov, Nikolai Petrovich, 1764-1807 -- Fiction
Rezanov disembarked from the Juno at Okhotsk during the first days of
October. Had it not been for a touch of fever that had returned in the
filth and warm dampness of Sitka, he would have felt almost as buoyant
in mind and body as in those days when California had gone to his head.
The Juno had touched at Kadiak, Oonalaska, and others of the more
important settlements, and he had found his schools and libraries in
good condition, seals and otters rapidly increasing, in their immunity
from indiscriminate slaughter, new and stronger forts threatening the
nefarious Bostonian and Briton. At Okhotsk he learned that the embassy
of Count Golofkin to China had failed as signally as his own, and this
alone would have put him in the best of tempers even had he not found
his armament and caravan awaiting him, facilitating his immediate
departure. He wrote a gay letter to Concha, giving her the painful
story of the naturalist attached to the Golofkin embassy, Dr. Redovsky,
who had remained in the East animated by the same scientific enthusiasm
as that of his colleague, the good Langsdorff; parted some time since
from his too exacting master. Rezanov had written Concha many letters
during his detention in Sitka, and left them with Baranhov to send at
the first opportunity. The Chief-Manager, deeply interested in the
romance of the mighty Chamberlain with whom he alone dared to take a
liberty, vowed to guard all that came to his care and sooner or later
to send them to California. Rezanov had also written comprehensively
to the Tsar and the directors of the Russian-American Company, adroitly
placing his marriage in the light of a diplomatic maneuver, and
painting California in colors the more vivid and enticing for the
sullen clouds and roaring winds, the dripping forests and eternal snows
of that derelict corner of Earth where he had been stranded so long.
He had also, when Langsdorff announced his intention to start upon a
difficult journey in the interest of science, provided him not only
with letters of recommendation, but with all the comforts procurable in
a land where the word comfort was the stock in trade of the local
satirist. But Langsdorff, although punctiliously acknowledging the
favors, never quite forgave the indifference of a mere ambassador and
chamberlain, rejoicing in the dignity of an honorary membership in the
St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, to the supreme division of natural
history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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