If an exile forced to act as transport packer fell behind, that was the
last of him. The Russian fur traders of America never paused in their
plans for a life more or less. Ordinarily it took three years for
goods sent from St. Petersburg to reach the Pacific; and this was only
a beginning of the hardships. The Pacific had to be crossed, and a
coast lined with reefs like a ploughed field traversed for two thousand
miles among Indians notorious for their treachery.
The vessels were usually crammed with traps and firearms and trinkets
to the water-line. The crews of forty, or seventy, or one hundred were
relegated to vermin-infested hammocks above decks, with short rations
of rye bread and salt fish, and such scant supply of fresh water that
scurvy invariably ravaged the ship whenever foul weather lengthened the
passage. Having equipped the vessel, the Siberian merchants passed
over the management to the Cossacks, whose pretence of conquering new
realms and collecting tribute for the Czar was only another excuse for
the same plunder in gathering sea-otter as their predecessors had
practised in hunting the sable.
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