This Russian friendship had presented itself dramatically to the public at a time when American relations with Great Britain were strained, for Russian fleets had in 1863 suddenly appeared in the harbors of New York and San Francisco. These visits were actually made with a sole regard for Russian interests and in anticipation of the outbreak of a general European war, which the Czar then feared. The appearance of the fleets, however, was for many years popularly supposed to signify sympathy with the Union and a willingness to defend it from attack by Great Britain and France. Many conceived the ingenuous idea that the purchase price of Alaska was really the American half of a secret bargain of which the fleets were the Russian part. Public opinion, therefore, regarded the purchase of Alaska in the light of a favor to Russia and demanded that the favor be granted. Thus of all the schemes of expansion in the fifty years between the Mexican and the Spanish wars, for the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 was really only a rectification of boundary, this alone came to fruition. Seward could well congratulate himself on his alertness in seizing an opportunity and on his management of the delicate political aspects of the purchase. Without his promptness the golden opportunity might have passed and never recurred. Yet he could never have saved this fragment of his policy had not the American people cherished for Russia a sentimental friendship which was intensified at the moment by anger at the supposed sympathy of Great Britain for the South. If Russia hoped by ceding Alaska to involve the United States in difficulties with her rival Great Britain, her desire was on one occasion nearly gratified. The only profit which the United States derived from this new possession was for many years drawn from the seal fishery. The same generation of Americans which allowed the extermination of the buffalo for lap robes found in the sealskin sack the hall mark of wealth and fashion. While, however, the killing of the buffalo was allowed to go on without official check, the Government in 1870 inaugurated a system to preserve the seal herds which was perhaps the earliest step in a national conservation policy. The sole right of killing was given to the Alaska Commercial Company with restrictions under which it was believed that the herds would remain undiminished. The catch was limited to one hundred thousand a year; it was to include only male seals; and it was to be limited to the breeding grounds on the Pribilof Islands.