Vikings of the Pacific: The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, EastwardLaut, Agnes C.
History
Vikings of the Pacific: The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward
Laut, Agnes C.
America -- Discovery and exploration; Discoveries in geography; Northwest Coast of North America; Pacific Ocean
Suffice it to say, scurvy slaked Solovieff's vengeance. Both Aleuts
and Russians had learned the one all-important lesson--the Christian's
doctrine of retribution, the scientist's law of equilibrium--that brute
force met by brute force ends only in mutual destruction, in anarchy,
in death. Thirty years later, Vancouver visiting the Russians could
report that their influence on the Indians was of the sort that springs
from deep-rooted kindness and identity of interests. Both sides had
learned there was a better way than the wolf code.[3]
[1] See Coxe's _Discoveries of the Russians_.
[2] Some of the old records spell the name of this wrecked Russian
"Korelin," as if it were "Gorelin," the sailor, of Pushkareff's crew,
who brained the Indian girl; I am unable to determine whether "Korelin"
and "Gorelin" are the same man or not. If so, then the punishment came
home indeed.
[3] It would be almost impossible to quote all the authorities on this
massacre of the Russians, and every one who has written on Russian fur
trade in America gives different scraps of the tragedy; but nearly all
can be traced back to the detailed account in Coxe's _Discoveries of
the Russians between Asia and America_, and on this I have relied, the
French edition of 1781. The Census Report, Vol. VIII, 1880, by Ivan
Petroff, is invaluable for topography and ethnology 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.
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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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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