Lord of Alaska, by Hector Chevigny. 8vo., 320 pages, including bibliography, index and end-paper map. New York: Viking Press, 1942. Price $3.00.

This is the story of Aleksandr Baranov and the Russian adventure in Alaska, and should be read by those who have visited parts of that country’s coast between Kodiak Island and Sitka. It is the amazing history of a man of humble origin, with the petty faults of his class and withal an amazing tenacity, who governed the first Russian colony in North America, at a time when the search for the Northwest Passage and traffic in sea otter fur were enterprises of free companies during the reign of Catherine the Great. With her death Petersburg took control, and much of Baranov’s life was a struggle with caste prejudice, petty intrigue and insufficient backing. For more than a quarter of a century (1791-1819), in the face of almost insuperable hardship and difficulty, Baranov held the little colony together, built ships, of which the Phoenix was the first, reconquered and rebuilt Sitka after the massacre, and in the end, with greater initiative, Russia could have had California by the mere acknowledgment of Mexican independence from Spain. But, as Peter the Great complained, Russians were not intended to become a nation of sailors, nor did they penetrate far into the Alaskan interior, lest gold divert the quest from fur. In the last years of Baranov’s administration the annual fur take brought a profit of more than one and a half million dollars ; yet in 1867 the American flag was raised for a price of only seven million.