But like the prospector, who suffers untold hardships seeking the
wealth of gold, these seekers of wealth in furs could not relinquish
the {105} wild freedom of the perilous life. They signed contracts to
hunt with Glottoff for the year.
It is no part of this story to tell how the Cossack, Solovieff, entered
on a campaign of punishment for the Aleuts when he came. Whole
villages were blown up by mines of powder in birch bark. Fugitives
dashing from the conflagration were sabred by the Russians, as many as
a hundred Aleuts butchered at a time, villages of three hundred
scattered to the winds, warriors bound hand and foot in line, and shot
down.
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.
Pages:
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150