ERICAN FUR COMPANY, AND
THE RENOWNED LEADER BARANOF

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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.

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[Illustration: Raised Reindeer Sledges.]

The tide of adventure set eastward across Siberia at the very time
(1579) Francis Drake, the English freebooter, was sacking the ports of
New Spain on his way to California. Yermac, robber knight and leader
of a thousand Cossack banditti, had long levied tribute of loot on the
caravans bound from Russia to Persia. Then came the avenging army of
the Czar. Yermac fled to Siberia, wrested the country from the
Tartars, and obtained forgiveness from the Czar by laying a new realm
at his feet. But these Cossack plunderers did not stop with Siberia.
Northward were the ivory tusks of the frozen tundras. Eastward were
precious furs of the snow-padded forests and mountains toward
Kamchatka. For both ivory and furs the smugglers of the Chinese
borderlands would pay a price. On pretence of collecting one-tenth
tribute for the Czar, forward pressed the Cossacks; now on
horseback,--wild {295} brutes got in trade from Tartars,--now behind
reindeer teams through snowy forests where the spreading hoofs carried
over drifts; now on rude-planked rafts hewn from green firs on the
banks of Siberian rivers; on and on pushed the plunderers till the
Arctic rolled before them on the north, and the Pacific on the east.[1]