PART III
EXPLORATION GIVES PLACE TO FUR TRADE—THE EXPLOITATION OF THE PACIFIC COAST UNDER THE RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY, AND THE RENOWNED LEADER BARANOF
CHAPTER XI
1579-1867
THE RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY
The Pursuit of the Sable leads Cossacks across Siberia, of the Sea-Otter, across the Pacific as far South as California—Caravans of Four Thousand Horses on the Long Trail Seven Thousand Miles across Europe and Asia—Banditti of the Sea—The Union of All Traders in One Monopoly—Siege and Slaughter of Sitka—How Monroe Doctrine grew out of Russian Fur Trade—Aims of Russia to dominate North Pacific
"Sea Voyagers of the Northern Ocean" they styled themselves, the Cossack banditti—robber knights, pirates, plunderers—who pursued the little sable across Europe and Asia eastward, just as the French coureurs des bois followed the beaver across America westward. And these two great tides of adventurers—the French voyager, threading the labyrinthine waterways of American wilds westward; the Russian voyager exchanging his reindeer sled and desert caravans for crazy rafts of green timbers to cruise across the Pacific eastward—were directed both to the same region, animated by the same impulse, the capture of the Pacific coast of America.
