[Illustration: Sitka from the Sea.]
Later, in 1812, when the Russian coasters were refused watering privileges at San Francisco, the Russian American Company bought land near Bodega, and settled their famous Ross, or California colony, with cannon, barracks, arsenal, church, workshops, and sometimes a population of eight hundred Kadiak Indians. Here provisions were gathered for Sitka, and hunters despatched for sea-otter of the south. The massacres on the Yukon and the clashes with the Hudson's Bay traders are a story by themselves. The other doings of these "Sea Voyagers" became matters of international history when they tried to exclude American and British traders from the Pacific. The fur hunters in the main were only carrying out the far-reaching plans of Shelikoff, who originated the charter for the company; but even Shelikoff could hardly foresee that the country which the Russian government was willing to sell to the United States in 1867 for seven million dollars, would produce more than twice that during a single year in gold. To-day all that remains to Russia of these sea voyagers' plundering are two small islands, Copper and Bering in Bering Sea.
[1] Coxe and Müller are the two great authorities on the early Russian fur trade. Data on later days can be found in abundance in Krusenstern's Voyage, London, 1813; Kohl's History, London, 1862; Langsdorff's Travels, London, 1813; Stejneger's Contributions to Smithsonian, 1884, and Report on Commander Islands; Elliott's Our Arctic Province; Dall's Alaska; Veniaminof's Letters on Aleutians; Cleveland's Voyages, 1842, Nordenskjöld's Voyage of the Vega; Macfie's Vancouver Island; Ivan Petroff's Report on Alaska, 1880; Lisiansky's Voyage Round the World; Sauer's Geographical Account of Expedition to Northern Parts; Kotzebue's Voyages of Discovery, 1819, and New Voyage, 1831; Chappe d'Auteroche's Siberia and Kracheninnikof's Kamchatka, 1764; Simpson's Voyage Round World, 1847; Burney's Voyages; Gmelin's Siberia, Paris, 1767; Greenhow's Oregon; Pallas's Northern Settlements; Broughton's Voyage, 1804; Berg's Aleutian Islands; Bancroft's Alaska; Massa. Hist. Coll., 1793-1795; U. S. Congressional Reports from 1867; Martin's Hudson's Bay Territories, London, 1849.
[2] Over one hundred American ships had been on the Pacific coast of America before 1812.
[3] Rezanoff married the fur trader's daughter. The bride did not live long, nor does the union seem to have been a love affair; as Rezanoff's infatuation with the daughter of a Spanish don later seemed to indicate a heart-free lover.
[4] See Chapter XII.
CHAPTER XII
1747-1818
BARANOF, THE LITTLE CZAR OF THE PACIFIC
Baranof lays the Foundations of Russian Empire on the Pacific Coast of America—Shipwrecked on his Way to Alaska, he yet holds his Men in Hand and turns the Ill-hap to Advantage—How he bluffs the Rival Fur Companies in Line—First Russian Ship built in America—Adventures leading the Sea-otter Hunters—Ambushed by the Indians—The Founding of Sitka—Baranof, cast off in his Old Age, dies of Broken Heart
No wilder lord of the wild northland ever existed than that old madcap Viking of the Pacific, Alexander Baranof, governor of the Russian fur traders. For thirty years he ruled over the west coast of America from Alaska to southern California despotic as a czar. And he played the game single-handed, no retinue but convicts from Siberia, no subjects but hostile Indians.
Whether leading the hunting brigades of a thousand men over the sea in skin canoes light as cork, or rallying his followers ambushed by hostiles repelling invasion of their hunting-ground, or drowning hardships with seas of fiery Russian brandy in midnight carousals, Baranof was supreme autocrat. Drunk or {317} sober, he was master of whatever came, mutineers or foreign traders planning to oust Russians from the coast of America. Baranof stood for all that was best and all that was worst in that heroic period of Pacific coast history when adventurers from all corners of the earth roamed the otter-hunting grounds in quest of fortune. Each man was a law unto himself. There was fear of neither man nor devil. The whole era might have been a page from the hero epic of prehistoric days when earth was young, and men ranged the seas unhampered by conscience or custom, magnificent beasts of prey, glorying in freedom and bloodshed and the warring elements.
