FOOTNOTES:
[1] Bering’s Island—he was wrecked on the east coast, at a point under steep bluffs now known as “Kommandor.” Scarcely a vestige of this shipwreck now remains there.
[2] That curious creature is extinct. It formerly inhabited the sea-shores of these two small islands. The German naturalist Steller, who was the surgeon of Bering’s ship, has given us the only account we have of this animal’s appearance and habits; it was the largest of all the Sirenians; attained a length sometimes of thirty feet. When first discovered it was extremely abundant, and formed the main source of food-supply for the shipwrecked crew of Bering’s vessel. Twenty-seven years afterward it became extinct, due to the merciless hunting and slaughter of it by the Russians, who, on their way over to Alaska from Kamchatka, always made it an object to stop at Bering or Copper Island and fill up large casks with the flesh of this sea-cow. Its large size, inactive habits, and clumsy progress in the water, together with its utter fearlessness of man, made its extinction rapid and feasible.
I make the restoration from a careful study of the details of Steller’s description.
[3] The order of this search and voyaging has been faithfully recorded by Ivan Petroff in his admirable compendium of the subject. (See Tenth Census U. S. A., Vol. VIII.) While this narrative may be interesting to a historian, yet I deem it best not to inflict it upon the general reader. Also in “Bancroft’s History of Alaska,” recently published at San Francisco, it is graphically and laboriously described.
[4] The Russian currency is always expressed in kopecks and in rubles. Gold coinage there is seldom ever seen, and was never used in Alaska. The following table explains itself:
1 copper kopeck = 1 silver kopeck.
2 copper kopecks = 1 grösh.
3 copper kopecks = 1 alteen.
5 copper kopecks = 1 peetak.
5 silver kopecks = 1 peetak.
10 silver kopecks = 1 greevnah.
15 silver kopecks = 1 peteealtin.
20 silver kopecks = 1 dvoogreevenik.
25 silver kopecks = 1 chetvertak.
50 silver kopecks = 1 polteenah.
100 silver kopecks = 1 ruble.
The silver ruble is nearly equal to seventy-five cents in our coin. The paper ruble fluctuates in Russia from forty to fifty cents, specie value; in Alaska it was rated at twenty cents, silver. Much of the “paper” currency in Alaska during Russian rule was stamped on little squares of walrus hide.
A still smaller coin, called the “polooshka” worth ¼ kopeck, has been used in Russia. It takes its name from a hare-skin, “ooshka,” or “little ears,” which, before the use of money by the Slavs, was one of the lowest articles of exchange, pol signifying half, and polooshka, half a hare’s skin. From another small coin, the “deinga” (equal to ½ kopeck in value), is derived the Russian word for money, deingah or deingie.
[5] $7,200,000 gold was paid by the United States into the Imperial treasury of Russia for the Territory of Alaska; it is said that most of this was used in St. Petersburg to satisfy old debts and obligations incurred by Alaskan enterprises, attorneys’ fees, etc. So, in short, Russia really gave her American possessions to the American people, reaping no direct emolument or profit whatsoever from the transfer.
CHAPTER II.
FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION.
The Vast Area of Alaska.—Difficulty of Comparison, and Access to her Shores save in the Small Area of the Sitkan Region.—Many Americans as Officers of the Government, Merchants, Traders, Miners, etc., who have Visited Alaska daring the last Eighteen Years.—Full Understanding of Alaskan Life and Resources now on Record.—Beautiful and Extraordinary Features of the Sitkan Archipelago.—The Decaying Town of Wrangel.—The Wonderful Glaciers of this Region.—The Tides, Currents and Winds.—The Forests and Vegetation Omnipresent in this Land-locked Archipelago.—Indigenous Berries.—Gloomy Grandeur of the Cañons.—The Sitkan Climate.—Neither Cold nor Warm.—Excessive Humidity.—Stickeen Gold Excitement of 1862 and 1875.—The Decay of Cassiar.—The Picturesque Bay of Sitka.—The Romance and Terror of Baranov’s Establishment there in 1800-1805.—The Russian Life and Industries at Sitka.—The Contrast between Russian Sitka and American Sitka a Striking One.
“For hot, cold, moist and dry, four champions fierce
Strive here for mastery.”—MILTON.
The general contour of Alaska is correctly rendered on any and all charts published to-day; but it is usually drawn to a very much reduced scale and tucked away into a corner of a large conventional map of the United States and Territories, so that it fails, in this manner, to give an adequate idea of its real proportion—and does not commonly impress the eye and mind, as it ought to, at first sight. But a moment’s thoughtful observation shows the vast landed extent between that extreme western point of Attoo Island in the occident, and the boundary near Fort Simpson in the orient, to be over 2,000 miles; while from this Alaskan initial post at Simpson to Point Barrow, in the arctic, it covers the limit of 1,200 geographical miles.[6] The superficial magnitude of this region is at once well appreciated when the largest States or Territories are each held up in contrast.
The bewildering indentation and endless length of the coast, the thousands of islands and islets, the numerous volcanoes and towering peaks, and the maze of large and small rivers, make a comparison of Alaska, in any other respect than that of mere superficial area, wholly futile when brought into contrast with the rest of the North American continent. Barred out as she is from close communion with her new relationship and sisterhood in the American Union by her remote situation, and still more so by the unhappiness of her climate, she is not going to be inspected from the platforms of flying express trains; and, save the little sheltered jaunt by steamer from Puget Sound to Sitka and immediate vicinity, no ocean-tourists are at all likely to pry into the lonely nooks and harbors of her extended coasts, surf-beaten and tempest-swept as they are every month in the year.
But, in the discharge of official duty, in the search for precious metals, coal and copper, in the desire to locate profitable fishing ventures, and in the interests of natural science, hundreds of energetic, quick-witted Americans have been giving Alaska a very keen examination during the last eighteen years. The sum of their knowledge throws full understanding over the subject of Alaskan life and resources, as viewed and appreciated from the American basis; there is no difficulty in now making a fair picture of any section, no matter how remote, or of conducting the reader into the very presence of Alaska’s unique inhabitants, anywhere they may be sought, and just as they live between Point Barrow and Cape Fox, or Attoo and the Kinik mouth.
In going to Alaska to-day, the traveller is invariably taken into the Sitkan district, and no farther; naturally he goes there and nowhere beyond, for the best of all reasons: he can find no means of transportation at all proper as regards his safety and comfort which will convey him outside of the Alexander archipelago. To this southeastern region of Alaska, however, one may journey every month in the year from the waters of the Columbia River and Puget Sound, in positive pleasure, on a seaworthy steamer fitted with every marine adjunct conducive to the passenger’s comfortable existence in transit; it is a land-locked sea-trip of over eighteen hundred miles, made often to and from Sitka without tremor enough on the part of the vessel even to spill a brimming glass of water upon the cabin table. If fortunate enough to make this trip of eight or nine hundred miles up, and then down again, when the fog is not omnipotent and rain not incessant, the tourist will record a vision of earthly scenery grander than the most vivid imagination can devise, and the recollection of its glories will never fade from his delighted mind.
If, however, you desire to visit that great country to the westward and the northwest, no approach can be made via Sitka—no communication between that region and this portion of Alaska ever takes place, except accidentally; the traveller starts from San Francisco either in a codfishing schooner, a fur-trader’s sloop, or steamer, and sails out into the vast Pacific on a bee-line for Kadiak or Oonalashka; and, from these two chief ports of arrival and departure, he laboriously works his way, if bent upon seeing the country, constantly interrupted and continually beset with all manner of hindrances to the progress of his journey by land and sea. These physical obstructions in the path of travel to all points of interest in Alaska, save those embraced in the Sitkan district, will bar out and deprive thousands from ever beholding the striking natural characteristics of a wonderful volcanic region in Cook’s Inlet and the Aleutian chain of islands. When that time shall arrive in the dim future which will order and sustain the sailing of steamers in regular rotation of transit throughout the waters of this most interesting section, then, indeed, will a source of infinite satisfaction be afforded to those who love to contemplate the weird and the sublime in nature; meanwhile, visits to that region in small sailing-craft are highly risky and unpleasant—boisterous winds are chronic and howling gales are frequent.
The beautiful and extraordinary features of preliminary travel up the British Columbia coast will have prepared the mind for a full enjoyment and comprehension of your first sight of Alaska. If you are alert, you will be on deck and on good terms with the officer in charge when the line is crossed on Dixon Sound, and the low wooded crowns of Zayas and Dundas Islands, now close at hand, are speedily left in the wake as the last landmarks of foreign soil. To the left, as the steamer enters the beautiful water of Clarence Straits, the abrupt, irregular, densely wooded shores of Prince of Wales Island rise as lofty walls of timber and of rock, mossy and sphagnous, shutting out completely a hasty glimpse of the great Pacific rollers afforded in the Sound; while on the right hand you turn to a delighted contemplation of those snowy crests of the towering coast range which, though thirty and fifty miles distant, seem to fairly be in reach, just over and back of the rugged tree-clad elevations of mountainous islands that rise abruptly from the sea-canal in every direction. Not a gentle slope to the water can be seen on either side of the vessel as you glide rapidly ahead; the passage is often so narrow that the wavelets from the steamer’s wheel break and echo back loudly on your ear from the various strips of ringing rocky shingle at the base of bluffy intersections.
Lodges in a Vast Wilderness.
If, by happy decree of fate, fog-banks do not shut suddenly down upon your pleased vision, a rapid succession of islands and myriads of islets, all springing out boldly from the cold blue-green and whitish-gray waters which encircle their bases, will soon tend to confuse and utterly destroy all sense of locality; the steamer’s path seems to be in a circle, to lead right back to where she started from, into another equally mysterious labyrinthine opening: then the curious idiosyncrasy possesses you by which you seem to see in the scenery just ahead an exact resemblance to the bluffs, the summits and the cascades which you have just left behind. Your emphatic expression aloud of this belief will, most likely, arouse some fellow-passenger who is an old voyageur, and he will take a guiding oar: he will tell you that the numerous broad smooth tracks, cut through the densely wooded mountain slopes from the snow lines above abruptly down to the very sea below, are the paths of avalanches; that if you will only crane your neck enough so as to look right aloft to a certain precipice now almost hanging 3,000 feet high and over the deck of the steamer, there you will see a few small white specks feebly outlined against the grayish-red background of the rocks—these are mountain goats; he tells you that those stolid human beings who are squatting in a large dug-out canoe are “Siwashes,” halibut-fishing—and as these savages stupidly stare at the big “Boston” vessel swiftly passing, with uplifted paddles or keeping slight headway, you return their gaze with interest, and the next turn of the ship’s rudder most likely throws into full view a “rancherie,” in which these Indians permanently reside; your kindly guide then eloquently describes the village and descants with much vehemence upon the frailties and shortcomings of “Siwashes” in general—at least all old-stagers in this country agree in despising the aboriginal man. On the steamer forges through the still, unruffled waters of intricate passages, now almost scraping her yard-arms on the face of a precipitous headland—then rapidly shooting out into the heart of a lovely bay, broad and deep enough to float in room and safety a naval flotilla of the first class, until a long, unusually low, timbered point seems to run out ahead directly in the track, when your guide, giving a quick look of recognition, declares that Wrangel[7] town lies just around it, and you speedily make your inspection of an Alaskan hamlet.
Owing to the dense forest-covering of the country, sections of those clays and sands which rest in most of the hollows are seldom seen, only here and there where the banks of a brook are cut out, or where an avalanche has stripped a clear track through the jungle, do you get a chance to see the soil in southeastern Alaska. There are frequent low points to the islands, composed, where beaten upon by the sea, of fine rocky shingle, which form a flat of greater or less width under the bluffs or steep mountain or hill slopes, about three to six feet above present high-water mark; they become, in most cases, covered with a certain amount of good soil, upon which a rank growth of grass and shrubbery exists, and upon which the Indians love to build their houses, camp out, etc. These small flats, so welcome and so rare in this pelagic wilderness, have evidently been produced by the waves acting at different times in opposing directions.
GRAND GLACIER: ICY BAY
View looking across a profile of its sea-wall face, two and a half miles: ice cliffs from one hundred and fifty to three hundred feet high above the water; depth of sea from sixty to eighty fathoms where it is sounded under the steamer’s keel. An October picture, when all its surface cavities and pinnacles are concealed by snow and smoothed by frozen sleet
In all of those channels penetrating the mainland and intervening between the numerous islands from the head of Glacier Bay and Lynn Canal down to the north end of Vancouver’s Island, marks, or glacial scratchings, indicative of the sliding of a great ice-sheet, are to be found, generally in strict conformity with the trend of the passages, wherever the rocks were well suited for their preservation; and it is probable that the ice of the coast range, at one time, reached out as far west as the outer islands which fringe the entire Alaskan and British Columbian coast. Many of the boulders on the beaches are plainly glaciated; and, as they are often bunched in piles upon the places where found, they seem to have not been disturbed since they were dropped there. The shores are everywhere abrupt and the water deep. The entire front of this lofty coast-range chain, that forms the eastern Alaskan boundary from the summit of Mt. St. Elias to the mouth of Portland Canal, is glacier-bearing to-day, and you can scarcely push your way to the head of any cañon, great or small, without finding an eternal ice-sheet anchored there: careful estimation places the astonishing aggregate of over 5,000 living glaciers, of greater or less degree, that are silently but forever travelling down to the sea, in this region.
Those congealed rivers which take their origin in the flanks of Mt. Fairweather[8] and Mt. Crillon[9] are simply unrivalled in frigid grandeur by anything that is lauded in Switzerland or the Himalayas, though the vast bulk of the Greenland ice-sheets is, of course, not even feebly approximated by them; the waters of the channels which lead up from the ocean to the feet of these large glaciers of Cross Sound and Lynn Canal, are full of bobbing icebergs that have been detached from the main sheet, in every possible shape and size—a detachment which is taking place at intervals of every few moments, giving rise, in so doing, to a noise like parks of artillery; but, of course, these bergs are very, very small compared with those of Greenland, and only a few ever escape from the intricate labyrinth of fiörds which are so characteristic of this Sitkan district. An ice-sheet comes down the cañon, and as it slides into the water of the canal or bay, wherever it may be, the pressure exerted by the buoyancy of the partially submerged mass causes it to crack off in the wildest lines of cleavage, and rise to the surface in hundreds and thousands of glittering fragments; or again, it may slide out over the water on a rocky bed, and, as it advances, break off and fall down in thundering salvos, that ring and echo in the gloomy cañons with awe-inspiring repetition. At the head and around the sides of a large indentation of Cross Sound there are no less than five immense, complete glaciers, which take their origin between Fairweather and Crillon Mountains, each one reaching and discharging into tide-water: here is a vast, a colossal glacier in full exhibition, and so easy of access that the most delicate woman could travel to, and view it, since an ocean-steamer can push to its very sea-walls, without a moment’s serious interruption, where from her decks may be scanned the singular spectacle of an icy river from three to eight miles wide, fifty miles long, and varying in depth from fifty to five hundred feet. Between the west side of this frozen bay and the water, all the ground, high and low, is covered by a mantle of ice from one thousand to three thousand feet thick!
Here is an absolute realism of what once took place over the entire northern continent—a vivid picture of the actual process of degradation which the earth and its life were subjected to during that long glacial epoch which bound up in its iron embrace of death just about half of the globe.[10] This startling exhibition of a mighty glacier with its cold, multitudinous surroundings in Cross Sound, is alone well worth the time and cost of the voyage to behold it, and it alone. There is not room in this narrative for further dwelling upon that fascinating topic, for a full description of such a gelid outpouring would in itself constitute a volume.
Throughout this archipelago of the Sitkan district, the strongest tidal currents prevail: they flow at places like mill-races, and again they scarcely interfere with the ship or canoe. The flood-tides usually run northward along the outer coasts, and eastward in Dixon’s Entrance; the weather, which is generally boisterous on the ocean side of the islands, and on which the swell of the Pacific never ceases to break with great fury, is very much subdued inside, and the best indication of these tidal currents is afforded by the streaming fronds of kelp that grow abundantly in all of these multitudinous fiörds, and which are anchored securely in all depths, from a few feet to that of seventy fathoms: when the tide is running through some of those narrow passages, especially at ebb, it forms, with the whip-like stems of sea-weed, a true rapid with much white water, boiling and seething in its wild rushing; these alternations between high and low water here are exceedingly variable—the spring-tides at some places are as great as eighteen feet of rise, and a few miles beyond, where the coast-expansion is great, it will not be more than three or four feet.
Those baffling tides and the currents they create, together with gusty squalls of rain or sleet, and irregular winds, render the navigation of this inside passage wholly impracticable for sailing-vessels—they gladly seek the open ocean where they can haul and fill away to advantage even if it does blow “great guns;” the high mural walls of the Alexander fiörds on both sides, usually, of the channels, cause the wind to either blow up them, or down: it literally funnels through with terrific velocity when the “southeasters” prevail, and nothing, not even the steamer, braves the fury of such a storm.
The great growth of trees everywhere here, and the practical impenetrability of these forests on foot, owing to brush and bushes, all green and growing in tangled jungle, is caused by the comparative immunity of this country from the scourge of forest fires: this is due to a phenomenal dampness of the climate—it rains, rains, and drizzles here two-thirds of the time. The heaviest rains are local, usually occurring on the western or ocean slopes of the islands where the sea-winds, surcharged with moisture, first meet a barrier to their flow and are thrown up into the cooler regions of the atmosphere. It will be often noticed, from the steamer, that while heavy rain is falling on the lofty hills and mountains of Prince of Wales Island, it is clear and bright directly over the Strait of Clarence to the eastward, and not far distant. June and July are the most agreeable seasons of the year in which to visit the Sitkan district, as a rule.
Many thoughtful observers have questioned the truth of the exuberant growth of forestry peculiar to this region, as being due to that incessant rainfall mentioned above; no doubt, it is not wholly so; but yet, if the ravages of fire ran through the islets of the archipelago, as it does in the interior slightly to the eastward, the same order of vegetation here would be soon noted as we note it there to-day; everywhere that you ascend the inlets of the mainland, the shores become steep and rocky, with no beach, or very little; the trees become scrubby in appearance, and are mingled with much dead wood (brulé). Scarcely any soil clothes the slopes, and extensive patches of bare rock crop out frequently everywhere.
Although the forest is omnipresent up to snow-line in this great land-locked Sitkan district, yet it differs much in rankness of growth and consequent value; it nowhere clothes the ridges or the summits, which are 1,500 to 2,000 feet above tide-level; these peaks and rocky elevations are usually bare, and show a characteristically green-gray tint due to the sphagnous mosses and dwarfed brier and bushes peculiar to this altitude, making an agreeable and sharp contrast to that sombre and monotonous line of the conifers below. The variety is limited, being substantially confined to three evergreens, the spruce (Abies sitkensis and menziesii), the hemlock (Abies mertensiana), and the cedar (Thuja gigantea). The last is the most valuable, is found usually growing near the shores, and never in great quantities at any one place; wherever a sheltered flat place is found, there these trees seem to grow in the greatest luxuriance. In the narrower passages, where no seas can enter, the forest seems almost to root in the beach, and its branches hang pendent to the tides, and dip therein at high water. Where a narrow beach, capped with warm sands and soil, occurs in sheltered nooks, vividly green grass spreads down until it reaches the yellow sea-weed “tangle” that grows everywhere in such places reached by high tide, for, owing to the dampness of the climate, a few days exposure at neap-tides fails to injure this fucoid growth. Ferns, oh! how beautiful they are!—also grow most luxuriantly and even abundantly upon the fallen, rotting tree-trunks, and even into the living arboreal boughs, and green mosses form great club-like masses on the branches.
Large trunks of this timber, overthrown and dead, become here at once perfect gardens of young trees, moss, and bushes, even though lying high above the ground and supported on piles of yet earlier windfall. Similar features characterize the littoral forests of the entire land-locked region of the northwest coast, from Puget Sound to the mouth of Lynn Canal.
In addition to these overwhelmingly dominant conifers already specified, a few cottonwoods and swamp-maples and alders are scattered in the jungle which borders the many little streams and the large rivers like the Stickeen, Tahko, and Chilkat. Crab-apples (Pyrus rivularis) form small groves on Prince of Wales Island, where the beach is low and capped with good soil. Then on the exposed, almost bare rocks of the western hilltops of the islands of the archipelago, a scrub pine (Pinus contorta) is found; it also grows in small clumps here and there just below the snow-line on the mountains generally. Berries abound; the most important being the sal-lal (Gaultheria shallow)—they are eaten fresh in great quantities, and are also dried for use in winter—and another small raspberry (Rubus sp.), a currant (Ribes sp.), and a large juicy whortleberry. Of course these berries do not have the flavor or body which we prize at home in our small fruits of similar character—but up here they, in the absence of anything better or as good, are eaten with avidity and relish, even by the white travellers who happen to be around when the fruit is ripe; wild strawberries appear in sheltered nooks; a wild gooseberry too is found, but it, like the crab-apple of Prince of Wales Island, is not a favorite—it is drastic.
KOOTZNAHOO INLET
Characteristic view of scenery in the Sitkan Archipelago. The high lands and peaks of Admiralty Island in the distance; Indians fishing for halibut over rocky shoals in the foreground. An October sketch, looking East from Chatham Straits
We find in many places throughout this district highland moors, which constitute the level plateau-summits of ridges and mountain foothills; these areas are always sparsely timbered, covered by a thick carpet of sphagnous heather, and literally brilliant in June and July with the spangled radiance of an extensive variety of flowering annuals and biennials. In these moorland mantles, which are usually soaked full of moisture so as to be fairly spongy under foot, cranberries flourish, of excellent flavor, and quite abundant, though, compared with our choice Jersey and Cape Cod samples, they are very small.
Certainly the scenery of this Venetian wilderness of Lower Alaska is wonderful and unrivalled—the sounds, the gulfs, bays, fiörds, and river-estuaries are magnificent sheets of water, and the snow-capped peaks, which spring abruptly from their mirrored depths, give the scene an ever-changing aspect. At places the ship seems to really be at sea, then she enters a canal whose lofty walls of syenite, slate, and granite shut out the light of day, and against which her rigging scrapes, and the passenger’s hand may almost touch—a hundred thousand sparkling streams fall in feathery cascades, adown their mural heights, and impetuous streams beat themselves into white foam as they leap either into the eternal depths of the Pacific or its deep arms.
Probably no one point in the Sitkan archipelago is invested by nature with a grander, gloomier aspect than is that region known as the eastern shore of Prince Frederick’s Sound, where the mountains of the mainland drop down abruptly to the seaside; here a spur of the coast range, opposite Mitgon Islet, presents an unusually dreadful appearance, for it rises to a vast height with an inclination toward and over the water: the serrated, jagged summits are loaded with an immense quantity of ice and snow, which, together with the overhanging masses of rock, seems to cause its sea-laved base to fairly totter under that stupendous weight overhead; the passage beneath it, in the canoe of a traveller, is simply awful in its dread suggestion, and few can refrain from involuntary shuddering as they sail by and gaze upward.
A word about the Sitkan climate: you are not going to be very cold here even in the most severe of winters, nor will you complain of heat in the most favorable of summers; it maybe best epitomized by saying in brief that the weather is such that you seldom ever find a clean cake of ice frozen in the small fresh-water ponds six inches thick; and you never will experience a summer warm enough to ripen a head of oats. The first impression usually made upon the visitor is that it is raining, raining all the time, not a pouring rain or shower, then clearing up quickly, but a steady “driz-driz-drizzle”; it rained upon the author in this manner seventeen consecutive days in October, 1866, accompanied by winds from all points of the compass. Therefore, by contrast, the relatively clear and dry months of June and July in the archipelago are really delightful—clear and pleasant in the sun, and cool enough for fires indoors—then you have about eighteen hours of sunshine and six hours of twilight.
It is very seldom that the zero-point is ever recorded at tide-level during winter here, though in January, 1874, it fell to —7° Fah.; the thermometer at no time in the winter preceding registered lower than 11° above. A late blustering spring and an early, vigorous winter often join hands over a very backward summer—about once or twice every five years; these are the backward seasons; then the first frost in the villages and tidal bottoms occurs about the 28th to 31st of October, soon followed by the rain turning to snow, being as much as three feet deep on the level at times. Severe thunderstorms, with lightning, often take place during these violent snowfalls in the winter—strange to say they are not heard or seen in the summer! Snow and rain and sleet continue till the end of April—sometimes as late as the 10th of May, before giving way to the enjoyable season of June and July. Then again the mild winters are marked by no frost to speak of—perhaps the coldest period will have been in November, little or no snow, six or seven inches at the most, and much clear and bracing weather.
The average rainfall in the Sitkan district is between eighty-four and eighty-six inches annually—it is a very steady average, and makes no heavier showing than that presented by the record kept on the coast of Oregon and Vancouver’s Island. A pleasant season in the archipelago will give the observer about one hundred fair days; the rest of the year will be given over to rain, snow, and foggy-shrouds, which wet like rain itself.[11] A most careful search during the last hundred years has failed to disclose in all the extent of this Sitkan region an arable or bottom-land piece large enough to represent a hundred-acre farm, save in the valley of the Tahkoo River, where for forty or fifty miles a low, level plateau extends, varying in width from a few rods to half a mile, between the steep mountain walls that compass it about. Red-top and wild timothy grasses grow here in the most luxuriant style, as they do for that matter everywhere else in the archipelago on little patches of open land along the streams and sea-beaches; the humidity of the climate makes the cost of curing hay, however, very great, and prevents the profitable ranging of cattle.
We have strayed from the landing which we made at Wrangel, and, returning to the contemplation of that town, candor compels an exclamation of disappointment—it is not inviting, for we see nothing but a straggling group of hastily erected shanties and frame store-houses, which face a rickety wharf and a dirty trackway just above the beach-level; a dense forest and tangled jungle spring up like a forbidding wall at the very rear of the houses, which are supplemented by a number of Indian rancheries that skirt the beach just beyond, and hug the point; this place, however, though now in sad decline, was a place of much life and importance during 1875-79, when the Cassiar gold-excitement in British Columbia, via the Stickeen River, drew many hundreds of venturesome miners up here, and through Wrangel en route. This forlorn spot was still earlier a centre of even greater stir and activity, for, in 1831, the Russians, fearing that they would be forced into war with the Hudson’s Bay people, made a quick movement, came down here from Sitka, and built a bastioned log fortress right where the present Siwash rancheries stand. Lieutenant Zarenbo, who engineered the construction, called his work “Rédoute Saint Dionys,” and had scarcely got under cover when he was attacked by several large bateaux, manned by employés of the great English company; he fired upon them, beat them off, and held his own so well that the grateful Baron Von Wrangel, who then was governor-in-chief, bestowed the name of the plucky officer upon the large, rugged island which overshadows the scene of the conflict, and which it bears upon every chart to-day.[12]
Again, in 1862, the solitude of Wrangel was broken by the sudden eruption of over two thousand British Columbia and Californian miners, who rushed up the Stickeen River on a gold “excitement.” Quite a fleet of sail and steam-vessels hung about the place for a brief season, when the flurry died out, and the restless gold-hunters fled in search of other diggings, taking all their belongings with them.
The steamer does not tarry long at Wrangel; a few packages fall upon the shaky wharf, the captain never leaves the bridge, and in obedience to his tinkling bell, the screw scarce has paused ere it starts anew, and the vessel soon heads right about and west, out to the open swell of the great Pacific; but it takes six or seven hours of swift travel over the glassy surface of Clarence Strait to pass the rough heads of Kuprianov Island on the right, flanked by the sombre, densely wooded elevations of Prince of Wales on the left. The lower, yet sharper spurs of the straggling Kou forests force our course here directly to the south. It is said that more than fifteen hundred islands, big and little, stud this archipelago from Cape Disappointment to Cross Sound. You will not attempt to count them, but readily prefer to believe it is so. From the great bulk of Vancouver’s Land to the tiny islet just peeping above water, they are all covered to the snow-line from the sea-level with an olive-green coniferous forest—islands right ahead, islands on every side, islands all behind. You stand on deck and wonder where the egress from the unruffled inland lake is to be as you enter it; no possible chance to go ahead much faster, is your constant thought, which keeps following every sharp turn of the vessel as she rapidly swings right about here, there, and everywhere, in following the devious path of this weird course to her destination.
Unless the fog shuts down very thick, the darkness of night does not impede the steamer’s steady progress, for the pilot sees the mountain tops loom up darker against the blue-black sky, and with unerring certainty he guides the helm. When the ship is running through tide-rapids in the night, the boiling phosphorescence of the foaming waters, as they rush noisily under our keel, gives a fresh zest to the novelty of the cruise, and the pilot’s cries of command ring out in hoarse echoes over the surging tumult below; meanwhile, the passengers anxiously and nervously watch the unquiet turns of the trembling vessel—then suddenly the helm is put up, and the steamer fairly bounds out of still water and the leeward of Coronation Island, into the rhythmic roll of the vast billows of the Pacific, which toss her in strange contrast to the even keel that has characterized our long, land-locked sea-voyage up to this moment. The wrinkled, rugged nose of Cape Ommaney looms right ahead in the north, and soon we are well abreast of the mountainous front to the west coast of Baranov Island, running swiftly into Sitka Sound.[13]
Cape Ommaney is a very remarkable promontory; it is a steep, bluffy cliff, with a round, high rocky islet, lying close by and under it. The eastern shore of that cape takes a very sharp northerly direction, and thus makes this southern extremity of Baranov Island an exceedingly narrow point of land. An unlucky sailor, Isaac Wooden, fell overboard from Vancouver’s ship the Discovery, when abreast of it and homeward bound, Sunday, August 24, 1794, and—was drowned, after having safely passed through all the perils of that most remarkable voyage, extended as it was over a period of four consecutive years’ absence from home. The rock bears the odd name “Wooden” in consequence.
The location of New Archangel, or Sitka village, is now conceded to be the one of the greatest natural beauty and scenic effect that can be found in all Alaska. The story of its occupation by the Russians is a recitation of violent deeds and unflinching courage on the part of the iron-willed Baranov and his obedient servants: he led the way down here from Kadiak first, of all white men, in 1799, after hearing the preliminary report of exploration made two years previously by his lieutenant, Captain James Shields, an English adventurer and shipbuilder, who entered the service of the Russian Company in the Okotsk. Baranov, though small in stature, was possessed of unusual physical endurance and muscular strength. He was absolutely fearless; he never allowed any obstacle, no matter how serious, which the elements or savage men were perpetually raising, to check his advances. He loved to travel and explore, and possessed rare executive or governing power over his rude and boisterous followers. He soon realized that the establishment of the headquarters of the company at St. Paul, Kadiak Island, was disadvantageous, and quickly resolved to settle himself permanently in the Bay of Sitka, or Norfolk Sound, where he could communicate with the vessels of other nations and purchase supplies of them. Late in the autumn of 1799 he sailed to this port in the brig Catherine, accompanied by a large fleet of Aleutian and Kadiak sea-otter hunters with their bidarkas, or skin-canoes. So abundant were sea-otters then, now so rare, that, with the assistance of these native hunters, he secured over fifteen hundred prime otter-skins in less than a month; then satisfied with the trading resources of the locality, Baranov began the construction of a stockaded post, the site selected for which was on the main island, about six miles to the northward of the Sitkan town-site of to-day. During the winter of 1799-1800 he and his whole force were busily engaged in the erection of substantial log houses and the surrounding stockade at this location. In the spring, two American fur-trading vessels made their appearance here, and the owners began to carry on a brisk traffic with the native Sitkans, right under the eyes of Baranov. Knowing that this must be stopped, the energetic Russian hastened back to Kadiak and set the machinery in motion to that end. But his absence in the meantime from Sitka was improved upon by the Koloshians, who, acting in preconcerted plan, utterly destroyed the post. These savages on a certain day, when most of the garrison was far outside of the stockade, hunting and fishing, rushed in, several thousand of them, upon a few armed men, surrounded the block-house, assailed it from all sides at once, and soon forced an entrance. They massacred the defenders to a man, including the commander, Medvaidniekov, and carried off more than three thousand sea-otter pelts from the warehouses.
During this wild and bloody fight an English ship was lying at anchor far down the harbor, some ten miles from the scene; three Russians and five Aleutes only, out of the hunting parties absent at the time of the attack, managed to secrete themselves in the woods, and hide until they could gain the decks and protection of this vessel, and thus acquaint her captain, Barber, of the outrage; he contrived to entice two of the leading Sitkan chiefs on board of his ship, plied them with drink, and soon had them securely ironed, and then, having quite a battery of guns, he was able to make his own terms for their release; this was done after the surrender of eighteen women (captured outside of the stockade) and 2,000 sea-otter skins was made to Barber, who at once sailed for Kadiak. Here the British seaman demanded from Baranov the salvage of 50,000 rubles for rescuing his men and women and property; with this demand the Russian could not or would not comply; but, after many days in amicable argument, Captain Barber received and accepted 10,000 rubles in full settlement.
While the lurid light of the burning wreck of this first Sitkan post was flashing over the sound, and the Koloshes were howling and dancing around it in their fiendish exultation, nearly two hundred Aleutian hunters were surprised and slaughtered at various points in the vicinity, and a party of over one hundred of these simple natives perished almost to a man, on the same day, from eating poisonous mussels which they detached from the rocks in the strait that separates Baranov Island from Chichagov; that canal still bears the name commemorative of this dreadful accident—it is called “Pogeebshie”[14] or “Destruction” Strait.
The enraged Russian manager was unable, by reason of a complicated flood of troubles with his subordinates elsewhere, to revisit Sitka until the spring of 1804; he then came down from Kadiak in a squadron consisting of three small sloops, in all considerably less than 100 tons burden; these craft he had built and fitted out in Prince William Sound and Yakootat Bay during the preceding winter. He had with him forty Russians and three hundred Aleutian sea-otter hunters. With this small force the indomitable man resolved to attack and subjugate a body of not less than five or six thousand fierce, untamed savages, who were flushed with their cruel successes, and eager to shed more blood. He was unexpectedly strengthened by the sudden appearance in the bay of the Neva, 400 tons, which had sailed from London to Kadiak, and arrived just after Baranov’s departure, but Captain Lissiansky, learning of the object of his trip, determined to assist in rebuilding the Sitkan post and to punish the Indians, so he sailed at once for the place.
Baranov found the Sitkans all entrenched behind a huge stockade that was thrown up on the same lofty rocky site of the governor’s castle in the town to-day. They reviled him and defied him, taunted him with his misfortunes, and easily succeeded in exciting him to a ferocious attack, in which, despite his demoniacal bravery, he was beaten off at first with the loss of eleven white sailors and hunters, he himself badly wounded, together with Lieutenants Arbuzov and Povalishin. The darkness of a violent rain and sleet storm, with night close at hand, caused a cessation, for the time, of further hostilities, but in the morning the ship and the little sloops approached the beach and opened upon the startled savages a hot bombardment—the splintering of their log bastions and the terrible, unwonted noise accompanying, was too much for their self-control, and though, during the whole day they refused to fly, yet when night again came round they abandoned their fortification, and retreated silently and quickly in canoes to Chatham Strait.
The Castle of Baranov: 1809-1827.
[Wholly remodelled and rebuilt by his successors.]
The Russians then took possession of the present town-site of Sitka. The rocky eminence which the savages had so bravely held was cleared of their rude barricades, and the foundations were laid then to the castle that still stands so conspicuous. Around this nucleus the Russian settlement soon sprang up in a few months, a high stockade was then erected between the village and the Indian rancheries, which still stands in part to-day; it was bastioned and fortified with an armament of three-pounder brass guns. From this time on the supremacy of the Russians was never questioned by the Indians of the Sitkan archipelago. The reckless daring of Baranov, evinced by his personal bearing at the head of a handful of men in repeated attacks upon the castle-rock encampment was exaggerated by the savages in repetition among themselves, until his name to them became synonymous with a charmed life and supreme authority. Baranov himself called this spot the final headquarters of the Russian American Company, and henceforth it became so, and it was officially known as New Archangel; but the tribal name of the savages who lived just outside the stockade fence was “Seet-kah,” and soon the present designation was used by all visitors and Russians alike, brevity and euphony making it “Sitka.”
It is not probable that the beautiful vistas of this sound influenced Baranov in the slightest when he selected it for his base of operations; but there must have been mornings and evenings when this hardy man looked at them with some responsive pleasure, for certainly the human being who could remain insensible to their scenic glories must be one without a drop of warm blood in his veins. Those high-peaked summits of the Baranov Mountains, which overshadow the town on the east, destroy, in a great measure, the effects of sunrise; but the transcendent glow of sundown colors is the glow that floods the crown and base of Mt. Edgecumb on the western horizon of the bay, and repeats its radiance in tipping with golden gild the host of tiny islets which stud the flashing waters, to burn in lingering brightness on the peaks of Verstova and her sister hills, when all else is in darkness or its shades around about.
The most characteristic and expressive single view of Sitka is that one afforded from Japan Island, which is close by and right opposite the town: the place was in its greatest architectural grandeur prior to the departure of the Russians, in 1866. The lofty peak which rises abruptly back of the village is Verstova, to the bald summit of which a champagne picnic by the Russians was religiously made every summer. Although the mountain is slightly under three thousand feet in altitude and seemingly right at hand, yet the journey to its crest is one that taxes the best physical energies of strong men. The forest is so dense, so damp, the underbrush so thick and so tangled, that the walk requires a supreme bodily effort, if the trip be made up there and back in the same day.
This view from “Yahponskie” gives an exceedingly good idea of the ultra-mountainous character of Baranov Island, much better than any power of verbal description can. It also illustrates the futility of land travel in the Sitkan archipelago, and affords ample reason for the utter absence of all roads, even footpaths, in that entire region; it also preserves the somewhat imposing front which the extensive warehouses and official quarters of the Russian American Company presented in 1866, before their transfer to us, and the ravages of fire and that decay which has since well-nigh destroyed them; it recalls the shipyards and the brass and iron foundries and machine-shops that have not even a vestige of their existence on that ground to-day, and it outlines a larger Indian village than the one we find there now.
For the objects of self-protection and comfort the Russians built large apartment-houses or flats, and lived in them at Sitka. Several of these dwellings were 150 feet in length by 50 to 80 feet in depth, three stories high, with huge roof-attics. They were constructed of big spruce logs, smoothly trimmed down to 12’ × 12’ timbers. These were snugly dovetailed at the corners, and the expansive roof covered with sheet-iron. The exteriors were painted a faint lemon-yellow, while the iron roof everywhere glistened with red-ochre. The windows were uniformly small, but fitted very neatly in tasteful casemates, and usually with double sashes. Within, the floors were laid of whipsawed planks, tongued and grooved by hand and highly polished. The inner walls were “ceiled” up on all sides and overhead by light boards, and usually papered showily. The heavy, unique Russian furniture was moved in upon rugs of fur and tapestry, and then these people bade defiance to the elements, no matter how unruly, and led therein the most enjoyable of physical lives. The united testimony of all travellers, who were many, and who shared the hospitality of the Russians at Sitka, is one invariable tribute to the excellence and the comfort of their indoor living at New Archangel.
A GLIMPSE OF SITKA
View in Sitka Sound, looking up towards the town: Mt. Verstova, in the middle distance, and the rugged granitic peaks of Indian River on the horizon. Sitkan Indians running down to Borka Islet for halibut. June, 1874
The shipyard of Sitka was as complete as any similar establishment in the Russian Empire. It was actively employed in boat and sail-vessel building, being provided with all sorts of workshops and materials. Experiments were also instituted and prosecuted, to some extent, in making bricks, so much prized in the construction of the big conventional Russian “stoves,” the turning of wooden-ware, the manufacture of woollen stuffs from the crude material brought up from California; but the great cost of importing skilled labor from far-distant Russia, and the relative expense of maintaining it here, caused the financial failure of all these undertakings. Much money was also wasted in attempting to make iron out of the different grades of ore found in many sections of the country. The only real advantage that the company ever reaped from the workshops at Sitka was that which accrued to it from the manufacture of agricultural implements, which it sold to the indolent rancheros of California and Mexico. Thousands of the primitive ploughshares and rude hoes and rakes used in those countries then were made here; also axes, hatchets, and knives were turned out by industrious Muscovites for Alaskan post-trading. The foundry was engaged most of the time in making the large iron and brazen bells which every church and mission from Bering’s Straits to Mexico called for. Most of these bells are still in use or existence, and give ample evidence of skilful workmanship, and of this early development of a unique industry on our northern coast.
Naturally enough the contrast of what the Russian Sitka was, with what the American Sitka is to-day, is a striking one: then a force of six or eight hundred white men, with wives and families, busily engaged as above sketched, directed by a retinue of fifty or sixty subalterns of the governor, lived right under the windows of his castle and within the stockade; then the Greek-Catholic Bishop of all Alaska also resided there, with a staff of fifteen ordained priests and scores of deacons all around him, maintained regardless of expense, at this time, by the Imperial Government in that ecclesiastical pomp so peculiar to this Oriental Church—then a fleet of twelve to fifteen sailing-vessels, from ships in size to mere sloops, with two ocean-going steamers, made the waters of the bay their regular rendezvous, their hardy crews assisting to give life and stir to the town, shore, and streets—all this ordered by the concentration of the entire trade and commerce of Alaska at New Archangel.
Now, how different! As you step ashore you scarcely pause to notice the handful of whites who have assembled on the wharf, but at once the impression of general decay is made upon your mind; the houses, mostly the original Russian buildings, are settling here, there, and everywhere, rotting on their foundations, and scarcely more than half of them even occupied, while the combined population of some three hundred souls in number peers at you from every corner. The great majority of these people are the half-breeds, or “Creoles,” or the descendants of Indians and Russians; some of them are tall and well-formed, and a few of them good-looking, but they are nearly all short-statured, abject, and apathetic. Yet in one respect Sitka has vastly improved under American supremacy—she has become clean; for although the Russian officers kept the immediate surroundings of their residences in good order, still they never looked after the conduct of the rest of the town. There were, in their time, no defined streets or sidewalks, and mud and filth were knee-deep and most noisome. Our military authorities, however, who first took charge immediately after the transfer, and who are proverbial for cleanliness and neatness in garrison life, made the sanitary reformation of Sitka an instant and imperative duty; the slimy walks were soon planked, the muddy streets were gravelled and curbed, the main street especially widened, the oldest houses were repainted, and where dilapidated, repaired, and things put into shape most thoroughly; they also graded and sauntered over the first wagon-road ever opened in Alaska, which they constructed, from the steamers’ landing under the castle, back bordering the bay to Indian River, over a mile in length.
But the pomp and circumstance of the old castle—still the most striking artificial feature now in all Alaska—will never wake to the echoes of that proud and lavish hospitality which once reigned within its walls, and when the flashing light in its lofty cupola carried joy out over the dark waters of the sound to the hearts of inbound mariners, who came safely into anchor by its gleaming—the elegant breakfasts and farewell dinners given to favored guests, where the glass, the plate, viands, wines and appointments were fit for regal entertainment itself—all these have vanished, and naught but the uneven, slowly settling floors, warped doors, and general mouldiness of the present hour greets the inquiring eye. So heavy are its timbers, and so faithfully were they keyed together, that in spite of neglect, the ravages of decay and frequent vandalism, yet, in all likelihood, an age will elapse ere the structure is removed by these destroying agencies now so actively at work upon it. Moved by the desire to preserve the salient features of this historical structure, the author made, during one clear June day, a pre-Raphaelitic drawing of it,[15] as his vessel swung at anchor under its shadows; in it the reader will observe that the rocky eminence which it crowns is covered to the very foundations and to the promenade cribbing that surrounds them, with a thick growth of alders, stunted spruces, and other indigenous vegetation. That walk around the castle, which was artificially reared thereon, gives a most commanding view of everything, over all objects in the town and Indian village, and sweeps the landscape and the sound. Another picture from the promenade walk under the flagstaff is also given, in order that a faint effect may be conveyed to the reader of the exceeding beauty of the island-studded Bay of Sitka. Descending and standing immediately under the castle on the beach, to the right you have a perfect Alpine scene as you look east along the pebbly shore to the living green flanks of Mount Verstova, which carry your gaze up quickly over rolling purplish curtains of fog to the snowy crest of it, and other lofty crests ad infinitum, over far beyond. The little trading stores on the left in this view hide the track so well known in Sitka as the “Governor’s Walk,” for this is the only direction out to the saw-mill in the middle distance, in which the earth lies smooth and dry enough in all this archipelago for a clean mile-jaunt. These still blue and green waters are alive with food-fishes, while the dense coverts on the mountains harbor grouse and venison in lavish supply; the oyster and the lobster you have not, but the clam and the crab are here in overwhelming abundance and excellence. “Ah!” you exclaim, “if it were not for this eternal rain, this everlasting damp precipitation, how delightful this place would be to live in!”