y of this period and
region. It was from Korelin, one of the four refugees, that the
Russian archivists took the first account of the massacre; and Coxe's
narrative is based on Korelin's story, though the tradition of the
massacre has been handed down from father to child among Oonalaskans to
this day, so that certain caves near Captain Harbor, and Makushin
Volcano are still pointed out as the refuge of the four pursued
Russians.

{106}

CHAPTER V

1768-1772

COUNT MAURITIUS BENYOWSKY, THE POLISH PIRATE

Siberian Exiles under Polish Soldier of Fortune plot to overthrow
Garrison of Kamchatka and escape to West Coast of America as Fur
Traders--A Bloody Melodrama enacted at Bolcheresk--The Count and his
Criminal Crew sail to America

Fur hunters, world over, live much the same life. It was the beaver
led French voyageurs westward to the Rocky Mountains. It was the
sea-otter brought Russian coasters cruising southward from Alaska to
California; and it was the little sable set the mad pace of the
Cossacks' wild rush clear across Siberia to the shores of the Pacific.
The tribute that the riotous Cossacks collected, whether from Siberia
or America, was tribute in furs.

The farther the hunters wandered, the harder it was to obtain supplies
from the cities. In each case--in New France, on the Missouri, in
Siberia--this compelled resort to the same plan; a grand rallying
place, a yearly rendezvous, a stamping-ground for hunters and traders.
Here merchants brought their goods; {107} hunters, their furs;
light-fingered gentry, offscourings from everywhere, horses to sell, or
smuggled whiskey, or plunder that had been picked up in ways untold.

The great meeting place for Russian fur traders was on a plain east of
the Lena River, not far from Yakutsk, a thousand miles in a crow line
from the Pacific. In the fall of 1770 there had gathered here as
lawless birds of a feather as ever scoured earth for prey. Merchants
from the inland cities had floated down supplies to the plain on white
and black and lemon-painted river barges. Long caravans of pack horses
and mules and tented wagons came rumbling dust-covered across the
fields, bells ajingle, driven by Cossacks all the way from St.
Petersburg, six thousand miles. Through snow-padded forests, over
wind-swept plains, across the heaving mountains of two continents,
along deserts and Siberian rivers, almost a year had the caravans
travelled. These, for the mo