e to sell all of our stores that were
salable and use the proceeds in the payment of our debts. I have no
doubt that this seemed to our worthy directors a perfectly feasible
scheme, and one likely to bring in a considerable amount of ready
money; but, unfortunately, their acquaintance with our environment
was very limited, and their plan, from our point of view, was open to
several objections. In the first place, although we had at Gizhiga
fifteen or twenty thousand dollars' worth of unused material, most of
it was of such a nature as to be absolutely unsalable in that country.
In the second place, the villages of Okhotsk, Yamsk, and Gizhiga,
taken together, did not have more than five hundred inhabitants, and
it was doubtful whether the whole five hundred could make up a purse
of as many rubles, even to ensure their eternal salvation. Assuming,
therefore, that the natives wanted our crowbars, telegraph poles,
and pickaxes they had little or no money with which to pay for them.
However orders were orders; and as soon as practicable we opened, in
front of our principal storehouse, a sort of international bazaar,
and proceeded to dispose of our superfluous goods upon the best terms
possible. We put the price of telegraph wire down until that luxury
was within the reach of the poorest Korak family. We glutted the
market with pickaxes and long-handled shovels, which we assured the
natives would be useful in burying their dead, and threw in a lot of
frozen cucumber pickles and other anti-scorbutics which we warranted
to fortify the health of the living. We sold glass insulators by the
hundred as patent American teacups, and brackets by the thousand
as prepared American kindling-wood. We offered soap and candles as
premiums to anybody who would buy our salt pork and dried apples, and
taught the natives how to make cooling drinks and hot biscuits,
in order to create a demand for our redundant lime-juice and
baking-powder. We directed all our energies to the creation of
artificial wants in that previously happy and contented community, and
flooded the whole adjacent country with articles that were of no more
use to the poor natives than ice-boats and mouse-traps would be to the
Tuaregs of the Saharan desert. In short, we dispensed the blessings of
civilisation with a free hand. But the result was not as satisfactory
as our directors doubtless expected it to be. The market at last
refused to absorb any more brackets and pickaxes;