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 most part, carried ship supplies--cordage,
tackling, iron--for vessels to be built on the Pacific to sail for
America.
Then there rode in at furious pace, from the northern steppes of
Siberia, the Cossack tribute collectors--four hundred of them centred
here--who gathered one-tenth of the furs for the Czar, nine-tenths for
themselves: drunken brawlers they were, lawless as Arabs; and the only
law they knew was the law they wielded.
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