Alaska, the Great Country - Ella Higginson

A "temperance captain" who stood fast to his faith and kept his sobriety inviolate might go elsewhere for a market; he was not a man after the governor's heart. Rarely, however, did any captain made of such unusual stuff darken the doors of Baranoff's high-set castle. The coasting captains knew too well his humor and their own interests. They joined with either real or well-affected pleasure in his roistering banquets; they ate much and drank more; they sang themselves hoarse and drank themselves under the table; and it is chronicled that never was Baranoff satisfied until the last-named condition had come to pass. The more the guests that lay sprawling under the table, upon and over one another, the more easily were trading arrangements effected with Baranoff later on.

Mr. Hunt relates the memorable warning to all "flinchers" which occurred shortly after his arrival. A young Russian naval officer had recently been sent out by the Emperor to take command of one of the company's vessels. The governor invited him to one of his "prosnics" and plied him with fiery potations. The young officer stoutly maintained his right to resist—which called out all the fury of the old ruffian's temper, and he proceeded to make the youth drink, whether he would or not. As the guest began to feel the effect of the burning liquors, his own temper rose to the occasion. He quarrelled violently with his almost royal host, and expressed his young opinion of him in the plainest language—if Russian language ever can be plain. For this abuse of what Baranoff considered his magnificent hospitality, he was given seventy-nine lashes when he was quite sober enough to appreciate them.

With all his drinking and prodigal hospitality, Baranoff always managed to get his own head clear enough for business before sobriety returned to any of his guests, who were not so accustomed to these wild and constant revels of their host's; so that he was never caught napping when it came to bargaining or trading. His own interests were ever uppermost in his mind, which at such times gave not the faintest indication of any befuddlement by drink or by licentiousness of other kinds.

For more than twenty years Baranoff maintained a princely and despotic sway over the Russian colonies. His own commands were the only ones to receive consideration, and but scant attention was given by him to orders from the Directory itself. Complaints of his rulings and practices seldom reached Russia. Tyrannical, coarse, shrewd, powerful, domineering, and of absolutely iron will, all were forced to bow to his desires, even men who considered themselves his superiors in all save sheer brute force of will and character. Captain Krusenstern, a contemporary, in his account of Baranoff, says: "None but vagabonds and adventurers ever entered the company's services as Promishléniks;"—uneducated Russian traders, whose inferior vessels were constructed usually of planks lashed to timbers and calked with moss; they sailed by dead reckoning, and were men controlled only by animal instincts and passions;—"it was their invariable destiny to pass a life of wretchedness in America." "Few," adds Krusenstern, "ever had the good fortune to touch Russian soil again."

In the light of present American opinion of the advantages and joys of life in Russia, this naïve remark has an almost grotesque humor. Like many of the brilliantly successful, but unscrupulous, men of the world, Baranoff seemed to have been born under a lucky star which ever led him on. Through all his desperate battles with Indians, his perilous voyages by sea, and the plottings of subordinates who hated him with a helpless hate, he came unharmed.

During his later years at Sitka, Baranoff, weighed down by age, disease, and the indescribable troubles of his long and faithful service, asked frequently to be relieved. These requests were ignored, greatly to his disappointment.

When, finally, in 1817, Hagemeister was sent out with instructions to assume command in Baranoff's place, if he deemed it necessary, the orders were placed before the old governor so suddenly and so unexpectedly that he was completely prostrated. He was now failing in mind, as well as body; and in this connection Bancroft adds another touch of ironical humor, whether intentional or accidental it is impossible to determine. "One of his symptoms of approaching imbecility," writes Bancroft, "being in his sudden attachment to the church. He kept constantly about him the priest who had established the first church at Sitka, and, urged by his spiritual adviser, made large donations for religious purposes."

The effect of the unexpected announcement is supposed to have shortened Baranoff's days. Lieutenant Yanovsky, of the vessel which had brought Hagemeister, was placed in charge by the latter as his representative. Yanovsky fell in love with Baranoff's daughter and married her. It was, therefore, to his own son-in-law that the old governor at last gave up the sceptre.