Rezanov | Page 6

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 im- mensity 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. Langsdorff,
surgeon and naturalist, had accompanied the Embassy to Japan, and
although Rezanov had never found any man more of a bore and would
willingly have seen the last of him at Kamchatka, a skilful dispenser of
drugs and mender of bones was necessary in his hazardous voy- ages,
and he retained him in his suite. Langsdorff returned his polite
tolerance with all the hidden re- sources 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 Rezanov. "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."
"Ah, your excellency, in a land as fertile as this, and caressed by a
climate that would coax life from a stone, there must be an infinite
number of aquatic and aerial treasures that will add materially to the
scientific lore of Europe."
"Humph!" said Rezanov, and moved his shoulder in an uncontrollable
gesture of dismissal. But the spell of the April morning was broken,
although the learned doctor was not to be the only offender.
The Golden Gate is but a mile in width and the swift current carried the
Juno toward a low prom- ontory from the base of which a shrill cry
suddenly ascended. Rezanov, raising his glass, saw that what he had

taken to be a pile of fallen rocks was a fort, and that a group of excited
men stood at its gates. Once more the plenipotentiary on a delicate
mission, he ordered the two naval officers sailing the ship to come
forward, and retired to the dignified isola- tion of the cabin.
The high-spirited young officers, who would have raised a gay hurrah
at the sight of civilized man had it not been for the awe in which they
held their chief, saluted the Spaniards formally, then stood in an
attitude of extreme respect; the Juno was directly under the guns of the
fort.
One of the Spaniards raised a speaking trumpet and shouted:
"Who are you?"
No one on the Juno, save Rezanov, could speak a word of Spanish, but
the tone of the query was its own interpreter. The oldest of the
lieutenants, through the ship's trumpet, shouted back:
"The Juno--Sitka--Russian."
The Spanish officer made a peremptory gesture that the ship come to
anchor in the shelter given by an immense angle of the mainland, of
which the fort's point was the western extreme. The Rus- sians, as
befitted the peaceful nature of their mis- sion, obeyed without delay.
Before their resting place, and among the sand hills a mile from the
beach, was a quadrangle of buildings some two hun- dred feet square
and surrounded by a wall about fourteen feet high and seven feet thick.
This they knew to be the Presidio. They saw the officers that had hailed
them gallop over the hill behind the fort to the more ambitious
enclosure, and, in the square, confer with another group that seemed to
be in a corresponding state of excitement. A few moments later a
deputation of officers, accompanied by a priest in the brown habit of
the Franciscan order, started on horseback for the beach. Rezanov or-
dered Lieutenant Davidov and Dr. Langsdorff to the shore as his
representatives.
The Spaniards wore the undress uniform of black and scarlet in which

they had been surprised, but their peaked straw hats were decorated
with cords of gold or silver, the tassels hanging low on the broad brim;
their high deer-skin boots were gaily embroidered, and bristled with
immense silver spurs. The commanding officer alone had invested
himself with a gala serape, a square of red cloth with a bound and
embroidered slit for the head. Leading the rapid procession, his left
hand resting significantly on his sword, he was a fine specimen of the
young California grandee, dark and dashing and reckless, lithe of figure,
thoroughbred, ardent. His eyes were sparkling at the prospect of excite-
ment; not only had the Russians, by their nefarious appropriation of the
northwestern corner of the continent and a recent