Nikolai Rezanov

So the Russian settlers sailed south in search of warmer climates and Spanish trading partners.

In April 1806, with his colony stalked by starvation and his crew decimated by scurvy, Russian-American Company director Nikolai Rezanov steered the pro of his ship, the Juno, into San Francisco Bay.

As the brig limped towards Spain's northernmost California settlement, a Spanish soldier grabbed a megaphone and demanded the strange vessel identify itself.

Russia, a voice called back.

Not a human being, not a boat, not even a herd of cattle was to be seen.

And Reznov, for a moment forgetting to exult in the length of Russia's arm, yielded himself to the subtle influence abroad in the air, and felt that he could dream as he had dreamed in a youth when the courts of Europe to the boy were as fabulous as El Dorado in the immensity of ancestral seclusions.

It is like the approach to paradise, is it not, Excellency? A deferential voice murmured at his elbow.

The plenipotentiary frowned without turning his head.

Dr. Langsdorf, surgeon and naturalist, had accompanied the embassy to Japan, and although Reznov had never found any man more of a bore, and would willingly have seen the last of him at Kamchatka, a skillful dispenser of drugs and mender of bones was necessary in his hazardous voyages, and he retained him in his suite.

Langsdorf returned his polite tolerance with all the hidden resources of his spleen, but his curiosity and scientific enthusiasm would have sustained him through greater trials than the exactions of an autocrat, whom at least he had never ceased to respect in the most trying moments at Nagasaki.

Yes, said Reznov, but I wonder you find anything to admire in such unportable objects as mountains and water.

I have not seen a living thing but gulls and seal, and God knows we had enough of both at Sitka.