In the following year they would resume their summer trade, commencing at California and proceeding north: and, having in the course of the two seasons collected a sufficient cargo of peltries, would make the best of their way to China.

Here they would sell their furs, take in teas, nankeens, and other merchandise, and return to Boston, after an absence of two or three years.
The people, however, who entered most extensively and effectively in the fur trade of the Pacific, were the Russians.

Instead of making casual voyages, in transient ships, they established regular trading houses in the high latitudes, along the northwest coast of America, and upon the chain of the Aleutian Islands between Kamtschatka and the promontory of Alaska.
To promote and protect these enterprises, a company was incorporated by the Russian government with exclusive privileges, and a capital of two hundred and sixty thousand pounds sterling; and the sovereignty of that part of the American continent, along the coast of which the posts had been established, was claimed by the Russian crown, on the plea that the land had been discovered and occupied by its subjects.
As China was the grand mart for the furs collected in these quarters, the Russians had the advantage over their competitors in the trade.

The latter had to take their peltries to Canton, which, however, was a mere receiving mart, from whence they had to be distributed over the interior of the empire and sent to the northern parts, where there was the chief consumption.

The Russians, on the contrary, carried their furs, by a shorter voyage, directly to the northern parts of the Chinese empire; thus being able to afford them in the market without the additional cost of internal transportation.
We come now to the immediate field of operation of the great enterprise we have undertaken to illustrate.
Among the American ships which traded along the northwest coast in 1792, was the Columbia, Captain Gray, of Boston.