Then, also,
the Chinese market was becoming of importance to the fur trade.
Already Mackenzie, at the end of the eighteenth century, is found
considering whether a sea trade between China and a British port on
the North Pacific coast could not be arranged so as to develop a
profitable market among the mandarins and grandees of the Celestial
Empire for a good proportion of the North-west Company's skins.
[Illustration: Map of Part of the Coast Region of BRITISH COLUMBIA]
Peter Pond, already referred to on p. 278, is said to have expressed
his intention (in 1788) of going to treat with the Empress Catherine
II for a Russian occupation of the Alaskan and Columbian coasts. For
this reason, or the mere desire to have a proportion of this
fur-producing country, the Emperor Paul, in 1799, created a Russian
Chartered Company to occupy the Alaska and north Columbian coasts.
Great Britain offered no objection--in spite of having acquired some
rights here by an agreement with Spain--and that is why, when you look
at the map of the vast Canadian Dominion, you find with surprise that
it has been robbed (one might almost say) of at least half of its
legitimate Pacific seaboard. The Russian Company was allowed to claim
the north Columbian coast between Alaska proper and Queen Charlotte
Islands.
In 1867 the Russian Government sold all Alaska and the north Columbian
coast to the United States, partly to annoy Great Britain, whom it had
not forgiven for the Crimean War.
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