The Company has not been without criticism. Pictures of it are by no means rose color. These, too, furnish instruction. Early in the century its administration was the occasion of open and repeated complaint. It was pronounced harsh and despotic. Langsdorff is indignant that “a free trading company should exist independent, as it were, of the Government, not confined within any definite regulations, but who can exercise their authority free and uncontrolled, nay, even unpunished, over so vast an extent of country.” In stating the case, he adds, that “the Russian subject here enjoys no protection of his property, lives in no security, and, if oppressed, has no one to whom he can apply for justice. The agents of the factories, and their subordinate officers, influenced by humor or interest, decide everything arbitrarily.” And this arbitrary power seems to have prevailed wherever a factory was established. “The stewardship in each single establishment is entirely despotic; though nominally depending upon the principal factory at Kadiak, these stewards do just what they please, without the possibility of their being called to account.” If such was the condition of Russians, what must have been that of natives? Here the witness answers: “I have seen the Russian fur-hunters dispose of the lives of the natives solely according to their own arbitrary will, and put these defenceless creatures to death in the most horrible manner.”[60] Our own D’Wolf records Langsdorff’s remonstrance in behalf of “the poor Russians,” and adds that it was “but to little purpose.”[61] Krusenstern concurs in this testimony, and, if possible, darkens the colors. According to him, “Every one must obey the iron rule of the agent of the American Company; nor can there be either personal property or individual security, where there are no laws. The chief agent of the American Company is the boundless despot over an extent of country which, comprising the Aleutian Islands, stretches from 57° to 61° of latitude and from 130° to 190° of east longitude”; and he adds, in a note, “There are no courts of justice in Kadiak, nor any of the Company’s possessions.”[62] Chamisso, the naturalist of Kotzebue’s expedition, while confessing incompetency to speak on the treatment of the natives by the Company, declares “his wounded feelings and his commiseration.”[63] It is too probable that the melancholy story of our own aborigines has been repeated. As these criticisms were by Russian officers, they must have had a certain effect. I cannot believe that the recent government, administered by the enlightened magistrates of whom we have heard, has been obnoxious to such terrible accusations; nor must it be forgotten that the report of Lisiansky, contemporaneous with those of Langsdorff and Krusenstern, is much less painful.