Who knows! It was the policy of the Hudson’s Bay Company from the beginning to tell absolutely nothing. Until they played their cards, these gamesters never showed their hands. All we know is when Douglas left Stickine, the Russian company had agreed to buy all the supplies they could procure from the Hudson’s Bay Company farms on Puget Sound and the Willamette and the Columbia. That was cheaper than bringing supplies all the way across Siberia; and the supplies were paid for in Alaskan furs. You see the fine hand of the Company’s diplomacy? On the supplies was a profit varying from 1000 to 2000 per cent. On the furs taken in exchange was another profit unspecified but easily guessed when it is known that the Russians got their furs from the Aleutians by club law. What had the deal cost the English? Two thousand land otter a year for a ten-mile strip, the said otter bartered from the Indians at about two shillings each. But one bad blunder was made, which did not come out till long after. Russia had tried in vain to raise her own supplies on a farm at Bodega, California. On the farm were some 1500 sheep and 3000 cattle and horses. Etholine offered to sell the Hudson’s Bay Company all Russia’s holdings in California for $30,000. There the old diplomacy of always haggling till you caught the other party to the bargain at a disadvantage--over-reached itself. Douglas haggled and missed the bargain; and the bargain was a chance to give his Company foothold in a country, owned by Mexico, which in turn owed debt of five million pounds to British financiers. It is a sort of subterranean diplomacy, after all, but one can guess to what end these hidden motives were aiming.