[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.
