Note 85 — Chapter XXVIII · 1787-1808.
Reading edition
To exhibit anew the exaggeration common to the acquisition of new possessions, I may observe that Shelekoff reported that he had subjected to the crown of Russia, "fifty thousand men in the Island of Kodiak alone." But Lisiansky, who took a prominent part in the Russian Company, remarks, in 1805, that "the population of the island, when compared with its size, is very small." After the "minutest research" at that time he found it amounted to only four thousand souls.