[Illustration: Alexander Baranof.]
Yet in person Baranof was far from a hero. He was wizened, sallow,
small, a margin of red hair round a head bald as a bowl, grotesque
under a black wig tied on with a handkerchief. And he had gone up in
life much the way a monkey climbs, by shifts and scrambles and
prehensile hoists with frequent falls. It was an ill turn of fortune
that sent him to America in the first place. He had been managing a
glass factory at Irkutsk, Siberia, where the endless caravans of fur
traders passed. Born at Kargopol, East Russia, in 1747, he had drifted
to Moscow, set up in a shop for himself at twenty-four, failed in
business, and emigrated to Siberia at thirty-five. Tales of profit in
the fur trade were current at Irkutsk. Tired of stagnating in what was
an absolutely safe but unutterably monotonous life, Baranof left the
factory and invested all his {318} savings in the fur trade to the
Indians of northern Siberia and Kamchatka. For some years all went
well. Baranof invested deeper, borrowing for his ventures. Then the
Chukchee Indians swooped down on his caravans, stampeded the pack
horses, scuttled the goods, and Baranof was a bankrupt.
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