The sentence 'But an ingenious man like Baron de Stoeckl was...

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Read the excerpt below and answer the questions 34 to 40.


  1. The transfer of Alaska from Russia to the United States formed one of those unbelievable incidents of
  2. history because by 1867, Russia was nervously eager to get rid of it, while the United States still
  3. recovering from the Civil War and immersed in the impending impeachment of President Johnson,
  4. refused to accept it on any terms.
  5. At this impasse an extraordinary man monopolized center stage. He was not a Russian, a fact which
  6. would become important more than a century later, but a soi-disant baron of dubious background; half
  7. Austrian, half Italian, and a charmer who was picked up in 1841 for temporary duty representing Russia in
  8. the United States and who lingered there till 1868. In that time, Edouard de Stoeckl, parading himself as a
  9. nobleman, although no one could say for sure how or when or even if he had earned his title, became
  10. such an ardent friend of America that he married an American heiress and took upon himself the task of
  11. acting as marriage broker between Russia, which he called homeland, and the United States, his adopted
  12. residence.
  13. He faced a most difficult task, for when the United States showed hesitancy about accepting Alaska,
  14. support for the sale withered in Russia, and later when Russia wanted to sell, half a dozen of the most
  15. influential American politicians led by Secretary of State William Seward of New York looked far into the
  16. future and saw the desirability of acquiring Alaska to serve as America's artic bastion, yet the hard-
  17. headed businessmen in the Senate, the House and the general public opposed the purchase with all the
  18. scorn they could summon. 'Seward's Icebox' and 'Seward's Folly' were two of the gentler jibes. Some
  19. critics accused Seward of being in the pay of the Russians; others accused De Stoeckl of buying votes in
  20. the House. One sharp satirist claimed that Alaska contained nothing but polar bears and Eskimos, and
  21. many protested that America should not accept this useless, frozen domain even if Russia wanted to give
  22. it away.
  23. Many pointed out that Alaska had no wealth of any kind, not even reindeer, which proliferated in other
  24. northern areas, and experts affirmed that an arctic area like this could not possibly have any minerals or
  25. other deposits of value. On and on went the abuse of this unknown and somewhat terrifying land, and the
  26. castigations would have been comical had they not influenced American thinking and behavior and
  27. condemned Alaska to decades of neglect.
  28. But an ingenious man like Baron de Stoeckl was not easily diverted from his main target, and with
  29. Seward's unflinching support and admirable statesmanship, the sale squeaked by with a favorable margin
  30. of one vote. By such a narrow margin did the United States come close to losing one of her potentially
  31. valuable acquisitions, but of course, had one viewed Alaska from the vantage point of frozen Fort Nulato
  32. in 1867, with the thermometer at minus-fifty-seven and about to be attacked by hostile Athapascans, the
  33. purchase at more than $7,000,000 would have seemed a poor bargain.
  34. Now the comedy intensified, became burlesque, for although the U.S Senate had bought the place,
  35. the U.S. House refused to appropriate the money to pay for it, and for many tense months the sale hung
  36. in the balance. When a favorable vote was finally taken, it was almost negated by the discovery that
  37. Baron de Stoeckl had disposed of $125,000 in cash for which he refused to give an accounting. Widely
  38. suspected of having bribed congressmen to vote for land that was obviously worthless, the baron waited
  39. until the sale was completed, then quietly slipped out of the country, his life's ambition having been
  40. achieved.
  41. One congressman with a keen sense of history, economics and geopolitics said of the whole affair:
  42. 'If we were so eager to show Russia our appreciation of the help she gave us during the Civil War, why
  43. didn't we give her the seven million and tell her to keep her damned colony? It'll never be of any use to
  44. us.'

Excerpt from: MICHENER, James A. Alaska. Fawcett Books: New York, 1988, p. 369 - 370.

The sentence 'But an ingenious man like Baron de Stoeckl was not easily diverted from his main target' (line 28) could be paraphrased only by the following sentence:

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