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of all official rank and banished to the Ladoga canal
as overseer of this great enterprise. Later he was
pardoned, but when, in 1727, he conspired against
Prince Menshikoff, he was deprived of everything,
knouted, branded, and then exiled to Siberia as a
colonist. After a series of vicissitudes he appeared,
in the capacity of harbor-master at Okhotsk, but the
government gave him no rank; he was not even
permitted to cover his brand. This old man, made
vicious by a long and unjust banishment, became
Bering’s evil spirit. In spite of his sixty or seventy
years, he was as restless, fiery and vehement in both
speech and action as when a youth, dissolute,
corruptible, and slanderous—a false and malicious
babbler, a full-fledged representative of the famous
Siberian “school for scandal.” For six long years he
persecuted the expedition with his hatred and
falsehoods, and was several times within an ace of
overthrowing everything. He lived in a stockaded fort a few
miles in the country, while Spangberg’s quarters were
down by the sea, on the so-called Kushka, a strip
of land in the Okhota delta, where the town was to
be founded. The power of each was unrestrained.
Both were dare-devils who demanded an obedience
which foretold the speedy overthrow of each. Both
sought to maintain their authority through
imprisonment and corporal punishment. Thus they wrangled
for a year, Pissarjeff, meanwhile, sending numerous
complaints to Yakutsk and St. Petersburg. But
Spangberg was not to be trifled with. In the fall
of 1736 he swore that he would effectually rid himself
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