'The men have paid you a great honor, Excellency. I'm proud of them,' and he led the way out of the meeting and into the square, where soldiers, still hungry for a glimpse of the beautiful woman from Moscow, stared and nudged one another as she passed, her golden hair glowing in the darkness. They went to a low building outside of which lay stacked a huge pile of logs, which had been cut far upstream and floated here.
'Voild!'
the young officer cried, and when he pulled open the door the Voronovs found themselves entering a typical thick-walled Russian bath, with an outer room in which to undress, a very small middle area nearly filled with logs, and an inner room lined with low benches facing a collection of red-hot rocks heated by wood piled on from below.
There were also six buckets of water to be thrown on the rocks to provide clouds of steam, so that within minutes of starting a bath, one would be engulfed in a cleansing, relaxing vapor.
'We could not maintain a fort here without this,' Greko said, and he bowed to his distinguished guests and departed.
The promise of a good steam bath was so inviting that the two Voronovs almost raced to see who would reach it first, and when Praskovia won, for she had no high boots to unlace, she cried: 'Heaven at the end of an aretic trip!' and her husband replied with that accuracy which can be so infuriating: 'We're a hundred and twenty-one miles south of the Circle. I checked,' but as the steam rose about them she replied: 'It's arctic to me. I could feel the river preparing to freeze,' and without warning she burst into tears.
'Darling?'
'It's been so wonderful, Arkady. There we were, all those years at Sitka Sound with our beautiful volcano thinking we were in Alaska. I'm so glad you brought me.' She wept for some moments, then took her husband's hand: 'When we were on the river I had the feeling that we were heading into eternity. But then I saw the soldiers come running down to embrace Father Fyodor, and I realized that people lived here and that eternity was somewhere far beyond.' Her tears stopped, and she said: 'Quite far beyond, I think.'
SHE HAD BEEN CORRECT ABOUT THE COMING OF WINTER, for after they had explored this part of the Yukon, going some twenty miles farther on to where a large river debouched from the north, and after they had met with members of various Athapascan tribes coming to the fort to trade, Arkady announced one morning: 'I think we're ready to head downstream,' and he supposed that because they would be drifting with the current rather than poling against it, the five-hundred-mile trip could be made speedily, but Lieutenant Greko corrected him.
'You'd be right if this were the beginning of summer. Easy ride. Pleasant, really.
But this is autumn.'
'If we started right away?'
'Fine. River's open here and it remains open for some time. But at the mouth it freezes early. The cold winds coming in from Asia hit there first.' Allowing time for these facts to register, he then said: 'Excellency, if you and Madame were to leave here now, you might very well be frozen in halfway down, and there you'd be, eight months in an arctic winter with no possible chance of escape.'
Arkady called for his wife to join him so that she could hear the lieutenant's warning, and long before Greko finished, she blurted out: 'We'll stay till the river freezes.
Then return the way we came,' and Greko, hoping to forestall any reconsiderations, jumped at the suggestion: 'Good! You'll be most welcome here and we'll have time to find you a first-class dog team for the return.'
So the Voronovs, he the son of the Metropolitan of All the Russias, she the daughter of a socially prominent family in Moscow, dug in for the opening days of a real Alaskan winter, and they watched with fascination as the thermometer began its steady and sometimes precipitous descent. One morning Praskovia wakened her husband with a rough shake: 'The Yukon's freezing!' and they spent that whole day watching as ice formed along the shores, then broke away, then formed again, then vanished. That day it would not freeze.
But three days later, in mid-October when the thermometer suddenly plunged to three degrees above zero, the mighty river surrendered and ice began to rush across from shore to shore as if it operated under directions of its own, and two days later the Yukon was frozen.
Then came the exacting days of testing to see how thick the ice was, and Lieutenant Greko explained that no matter how cold it became, the bottom of the Yukon never froze: 'The current below and the protection of the snow on top prevent the cold from taking command. In mid-January it'll still be flowing down there.'
When various teams of dogs were brought in, Praskovia found delight in making their acquaintance: big gray-brown malamutes, white Eskimo dogs, mongrels with powerful bodies and inexhaustible energy, and others the Russians called huskies. They were dogs unlike any she had known in Russia, and although some snarled when she approached, others recognized her as a friend and showed their appreciation for her attention. But none became pets, nor did she try to make them so; these were noble animals bred for a particular purpose, and without them life in the arctic would have been difficult.
She found that she was loving the experience of extreme cold, but one night when the mercury thermometer dropped to minus-forty-two and quit, she was stunned by the force of weather at such temperatures, the way icy air sped down into the lungs, almost freezing them, and the curious manner in which a face could be fairly comfortable one minute and frozen the next. When she realized that the thermometer could not register below the low forties, she asked Greko what the actual temperature was, and he consulted his spirit thermometer and said: 'Minus-fifty-three,' and when she asked: 'Why don't I feel it to be that cold?' he said: 'No wind. No humidity. Just this heavy, heavy cold weighting everything down.'
It did not weigh her down. Every day she ran and leaped outside the fort, and not until she had exhausted herself, and felt the cold threaten her very bones, did she hurry inside. 'If I stayed out there,' she asked Greko, 'how long before I'd freeze?' and he called to a soldier, who showed her his wrecked ears and a big white scarlike place on his right cheek.
'How long did that take?' Greko asked, and the man said: 'Twenty minutes, about as cold as this.'
'Is your face permanently damaged?' she asked, and the man answered: 'The ears are gone, the face will be all right, maybe a brown spot later on.'
That night, in the heart of Alaska that few Russians would ever know, she had the most exciting experience of all, for over the fort at Nulato, where twenty-two Russians huddled against the bitter cold, the northern lights began their heaven-encompassing dance. The Voronovs joined Lieutenant Greko in the center of the frozen square, inside the protection of the wooden barracks and the double palisade, and there they watched the great ebb and flow of the colored lights as they pranced across the midnight-darkened sky. 'How cold is it now?' Praskovia asked, and Greko said: 'Maybe sixty-below,' but the Voronovs only huddled deeper within their furs, for they did not want to move inside while this fantastic performance filled the heavens.
Later, as they drank tea and precious brandy with Greko, Praskovia said: 'We've seen Alaska. Without your help we might never have known it existed,' and he said: 'There's three times as much that none of us has seen,' and he agreed that on the day after tomorrow they could safely begin their journey back toward Sitka Sound.
THERE WAS AN ABRUPT CHANGE IN PLANS ON THE RETURN journey, but it had only happy consequences. When they reached the village of Kaltag, where they would have to leave the frozen river in order to take the hill route to Unalakleet, Father Fyodor informed them, with embarrassment: 'I'll be staying here. They need a priest.' Arkady, although distressed at the prospect of continuing what was a dangerous journey without Father Fyodor's help, had witnessed the admirable manner in which this scarecrow of a man fitted into Yukon life, and he had to consent.
'Will you explain to the religious authorities at the capital?' the priest asked, and Arkady said: 'I can see this village needs you,' and was about to express his appreciation for the help he had given the party, when Praskovia marched up, holdin
g by the hand the attractive Indian girl she had noticed on the earlier visit. Going to the priest, she said: 'You proved yourself to be a dear, good man, Father. But you'd be twice as effective with a wife,' and she placed the young woman's hand in his.
When it was understood by everyone, even the children, that Father Fyodor was taking a wife and staying in their village, the young bride said firmly: 'It would be wrong to make the Russian couple cross the mountains by themselves!' And with the help of her father she arranged for a team of dogsled men to carry the Voronovs and the priest and his bride across snow and ice to where the Voronovs would wait for the thaw and a ship that would take them back to New Archangel.
AS THEIR SHIP PULLED INTO SlTKA SOUND THE VORONOVS saw running down from the castle, in a manner quite undignified for a noble chief administrator, the agitated figure of Prince Maksutov, who shouted, as soon as he saw the Voronovs: 'Go over to that English ship!' and as they veered course to pull alongside the merchant steamer, they saw Maksutov jumping into a small boat, which two sailors rowed to the English vessel.
When the Voronovs climbed aboard the visiting ship, they waited at the railing for Maksutov to join them, and when he did they saw that he was ashen-faced. 'I want you to hear the news they've brought!' and he hurried them toward the captain's quarters, where they were met by a plump, jovial Scotsman who introduced himself: 'Captain MacRae, Glasgow.'
In a fevered rush Prince Maksutov presented his two guests, then blurted out: 'Tell them what you told me,' and Captain MacRae said: 'It's such a bizarre story I'd like to have young Henderson along. He heard it first and checked it out after I'd heard it from a different source.' So while Henderson was sent for, the Voronovs waited, quite in the dark as to what had been happening during their long absence. Probably England and Russia at war again, Arkady said to himself, but when Henderson appeared to stand beside his captain, the two Britons delivered quite a different story.
'It seems,' Captain MacRae began, 'and we have it on unimpeachable authority both from the Americans in San Francisco and our consul there, that Russia has sold Alaska land, company, buildings, ships, everything to the Americans.'
'Sold?' Voronov gasped. Long ago he and Praskovia had heard rumors of a possible sale, but that was when Russia had her back to the wall in the Crimea and needed money. To sell now would be insane. He and his wife had just seen the grandeur and promise of Alaska, and could not imagine losing such a treasure. His agile mind leaped from one possibility to the next. In the end he asked an almost insulting question:
'Prince Maksutov, how do we know that these two men are not saying this to put us to some disadvantage? I mean, if there's war between our nations?' As soon as he saw the prince blanch he realized how intemperate his question had been, and he turned to the two British officers and apologized.
'Not at all!' MacRae said, his round face beaming. 'This gentleman is quite right.
All we've brought you, as I warned you before, Prince, is a San Francisco rumor.
A very solid one, as I said, but only a rumor until you receive official confirmation from your own people.' He invited the Russians to stay, then ordered a steward to bring drinks for everyone, and as the Voronovs sat in stunned silence, MacRae said almost jovially: 'Henderson here gave a damned good account of himself in the Crimea.
Said you chaps were mighty handy with your heavy guns.'
For some time they talked about the affair at Balaklava as if it had been a cricket match played in the distant past with no rancor left behind, but when that gracious interlude ended, Voronov addressed Henderson: 'Please, sir, would you share with my wife and me exactly what happened?' and the young officer told of having been in a San Francisco waterfront saloon of the better type, with officers from another British ship and a French, when an American businessman asked: 'Any of you Johnnies headed for Sitka? I suppose you know it belongs to America now?' Henderson said that since his ship was heading for Alaska, he asked to know more, and a general discussion evolved into which several Americans were brought, and two of them had knowledge of the sale.
Henderson had then run back to his ship to alert Captain MacRae, who did not believe the yarn but who did hurry to the British consul, who said that although he had no solid knowledge of the transaction, he had been forewarned in the pouch from Washington that the sale had been confirmed by the American political leaders and that the price agreed upon had been $7,200,000.
'Good God,' Voronov gasped. 'How many rubles is that?'
'A little better than two to one, maybe eleven, twelve million rubles.'
'Good God,' Voronov repeated. 'The Yukon River alone is worth that much.'
'Have you been to the Yukon?' MacRae asked, and Praskovia replied: 'Far up. It's a treasure, and I refuse to believe it's been sold.'
MacRae, feeling sympathy for the difficult problems facing these Russians so far from home, invited them to join him for tiffin, during which he did his best to relax their tensions, but when he asked them what they might do if the rumors proved true, he received two sharply different answers. Prince Maksutov said with diplomatic propriety:
'I'm an official of the government. I'd stay here to effect an orderly transfer, salute as our flag came down, then sail home.'
'You wouldn't protest the action?'
'Six times in the past three years I've advised St. Petersburg to hold on to Alaska.
If a contrary decision's been made, as you suggest, I'll have no more to say.'
'But you wouldn't continue to live here in Sitka Sound?'
'Under the Americans? Unthinkable.' Realizing the pejorative nature of that comment to a representative of a third power, he added: 'Nor under anybody else, including you British.' MacRae, appreciating the reason for the correction, said: 'I'd feel the same way.'
But now Praskovia broke in: 'Leave this lovely place? Never!'
'You'd surrender your Russian citizenship?'
Arkady, hoping to forestall an answer his wife might later regret, interrupted: 'How can we predict what the rules will be? If America has bought Alaska, she might want to kick us all out, so your question is premature.'
'Not at all!' strong-willed Praskovia snapped. 'America needs people. So much empty space. So many of their men killed in the war. They'll be begging us to stay.' Looking at each of her listeners in turn, she added: 'And the Voronovs will be staying. We've made this our home.' After she launched this challenge, the fire went out of her, and she looked only at Prince Maksutov: 'You did a terrible thing, sir, when you sent us to Fort Nulato. You allowed us to see Alaska. And we fell in love with it.
Here we shall stay to speed its development, and I won't give a damn who owns it.'
'Bravo!' MacRae cried. 'I'll toast you both on later trips.' Trying her best to smile at this levity, she failed miserably, dropped her face into her hands, and wept.
THE TRANSFER OF ALASKA FROM RUSSIA TO THE UNITED States formed one of those unbelievable incidents of history, because by 1867, Russia was nervously eager to get rid of it, while the United States, still recovering from the Civil War and immersed in the impending impeachment of President Johnson, refused to accept it on any terms.
At this impasse an extraordinary man monopolized center stage. He was not a Russian, a fact which would become important more than a century later, but a soi-disant baron of dubious background, half Austrian, half Italian, and a charmer who was picked up in 1841 for temporary duty representing Russia in the United States and who lingered there till 1868. In that time Edouard de Stoeckl, parading himself as a nobleman, although no one could say for sure how or when or even if he had earned his title, became such an ardent friend of America that he married an American heiress and took upon himself the task of acting as marriage broker between Russia, which he called his homeland, and the United States, his adopted residence.
He faced a most difficult task, for when the United States showed hesitancy about accepting Alaska, support for the sale withered in Russia, and later when Russia wanted to
sell, half a dozen of the most influential American politicians led by Secretary of State William Seward of New York looked far into the future and saw the desirability of acquiring Alaska to serve as America's arctic bastion, yet the hardheaded businessmen in the Senate, the House and the general public opposed the purchase with all the scorn they could summon. 'Seward's Icebox' and 'Seward's Folly' were two of the gentler jibes. Some critics accused Seward of being in the pay of the Russians; others accused De Stoeckl of buying votes in the House. One sharp satirist claimed that Alaska contained nothing but polar bears and Eskimos, and many protested that America should not accept this useless, frozen domain even if Russia wanted to give it away. Many pointed out that Alaska had no wealth of any kind, not even reindeer, which proliferated in other northern areas, and experts affirmed that an arctic area like this could not possibly have any minerals or other deposits of value. On and on went the abuse of this unknown and somewhat terrifying land, and the castigations would have been comical had they not influenced American thinking and behavior and condemned. Alaska to decades of neglect.
But an ingenious man like Baron de Stoeckl was not easily diverted from his main target, and with Seward's unflinching support and admirable statesmanship, the sale squeaked by with a favorable margin of one vote. By such a narrow margin did the United States come close to losing one of her potentially valuable acquisitions, but of course, had one viewed Alaska from the vantage point of frozen Fort Nulato in 1867, with the thermometer at minus-fifty-seven and about to be attacked by hostile Athapascans, the purchase at more than $7,000,000 would have seemed a poor bargain.
Now the comedy intensified, became burlesque, for although the U.S. Senate had bought the place, the U.S. House refused to appropriate the money to pay for it, and for many tense months the sale hung in the balance. When a favorable vote was finally taken, it was almost negated by the discovery that Baron de Stoeckl had disposed of $125,000 in cash for which he refused to give an accounting. Widely suspected of having bribed congressmen to vote for land that was obviously worthless, the baron waited until the sale was completed, then quietly slipped out of the country, his life's ambition having been achieved.