And he played the
game single-handed, no retinue but convicts from Siberia, no subjects
but hostile Indians.
Whether leading the hunting brigades of a thousand men over the sea in
skin canoes light as cork, or rallying his followers ambushed by
hostiles repelling invasion of their hunting-ground, or drowning
hardships with seas of fiery Russian brandy in midnight carousals,
Baranof was supreme autocrat. Drunk or {317} sober, he was master of
whatever came, mutineers or foreign traders planning to oust Russians
from the coast of America. Baranof stood for all that was best and all
that was worst in that heroic period of Pacific coast history when
adventurers from all corners of the earth roamed the otter-hunting
grounds in quest of fortune. Each man was a law unto himself. There
was fear of neither man nor devil. The whole era might have been a
page from the hero epic of prehistoric days when earth was young, and
men ranged the seas unhampered by conscience or custom, magnificent
beasts of prey, glorying in freedom and bloodshed and the warring
elements.
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