But like many heroes of misfortune, Benyowsky could not
stand success. It turned his head. He entered Macao with the airs of
an emperor, that at once discredited him with the solid people. If he
had returned to the west coast of America, as a fur trader, he might
have wrested more honors from Russia; but his scheme to capture an
island of which he was to be king, ended in ruin for himself and his
friends.[1]
[1] It may as well be acknowledged that Mauritius Augustus, Count
Benyowsky (pronounced by himself Be-nyov-sky), is a liar without a peer
among the adventurers of early American history. If it were not that
his life was known to the famous men of his time, his entire memoirs
from 1741 to 1771 might be rejected as fiction of the yellow order; but
the comical thing is, the mendacious fellow cut a tremendous swath in
his day. The garrisons of Kamchatka trembled at his name twenty-five
years after his escapades. Ismyloff, who became a famous trader in the
Russian Fur Company, could not be induced to open his mouth about the
Pole to Cook, and actually made use of the universal fear of Benyowsky
among Russians, to keep Cook from learning Russian fur trade secrets,
when the Englishman went to Kamchatka, by representing that Cook was a
pirate, too.
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