Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska

by Charles Warren Stoddard

It is a grassy and a mossy town that gathers about the Russian chapel. All the old houses were built to last (as they are likely to do) for many generations to come. They are log-houses—the public buildings, the once fashionable officers' club, and many of the residences,—formed of solid square brown logs laid one upon another until you come to the roof. At times the logs are clapboarded without, and are all lathed and plastered within. The floors are solid and the stairs also. The wonder is how the town can ever go to ruin—save by fire; for wood doesn't rot in Alaska, but will lie in logs exposed to the changes of the season for an indefinite period.

I saw in a wood back of the town an immense log. It was in the primeval forest, and below it were layers of other logs lying crosswise and in confusion. I know not how far below me was the solid earth, for mats of thick moss and deep beds of dead leaves filled the hollows between the logs; but this log, nearly three feet in diameter, was above them all; and out of it—from a seed no doubt imbedded in the bark—had sprung a tree that is to-day as great in girth as the log that lies prostrate beneath its roots. These mighty roots have clasped that log in an everlasting embrace and struck down into the soil below. You can conjecture how long the log has been lying there in that tangle of mighty roots—yet the log is to-day as sound a bit of timber as one is likely to find anywhere.

Alaska is buried under forests like these—I mean that part of it which is not still cased in ice and snow. A late official gave me out of his cabinet a relic of the past. It is a stone pestle, rudely but symmetrically hewn,—evidently the work of the aborigines. This pestle, with several stone implements of domestic utility, was discovered by a party of prospectors who had dug under the roots of a giant tree. Eleven feet beneath the surface, directly under the tree and surrounded by gigantic roots, this pestle, and some others of a similar character, together with mortars and various utensils, were scattered through the soil. Most of the collection went to the Smithsonian Institute, and perhaps their origin and history may be some day conjectured. How many ages more, I wonder, will be required to develop the resources of this vast out-of-door country?

When the tardy darkness fell upon Sitka—toward midnight—the town was hardly more silent than it had been throughout the day. A few lights were twinkling in distant windows; a few Indians were prowling about; the water rippled along the winding shore; and from time to time as the fresh gusts blew in from the sea, some sleepless bird sailed over us on shadowy wings, and uttered a half-smothered cry that startled the listener. Then, indeed, old Sitka, which was once called New Archangel, seemed but a relic of the past, whose vague, romantic history will probably never be fully known.

Chapter XIII.
Katalan's Rock.

Katalan's Rock towers above the sea at the top corner of Sitka. Below it, on the one hand, the ancient colonial houses are scattered down the shore among green lawns like pasture lands, and beside grass-grown streets with a trail of dust in the middle of them. On the other hand, the Siwash Indian lodges are clustered all along the beach. This rancheria was originally separated from the town by a high stockade, and the huge gates were closed at night for the greater security of the inhabitants; but since the American occupation the gates have been destroyed, and only a portion of the stockade remains.

Katalan's Rock is steep enough to command the town, and ample enough to afford all the space necessary for fortifications and the accommodation of troops and stores. A natural Gibraltar, it was the site of the first settlement, and has ever remained the most conspicuous and distinguished quarter of the colony. The first building erected on this rock was a block-house, which was afterward burned. A second building, reared on the ruins of the first, was destroyed by an earthquake; but a third, the colonial castle and residence of the governors, stands to this day. It crowns the summit of the rock, is one hundred and forty feet in length, seventy feet in depth, two stories with basement and attic, and has a lookout that commands one of the most romantic and picturesque combinations of land and sea imaginable.

It is not a handsome edifice, nor is it in the least like a castle, nor like what one supposes a castle should be. Were it anywhere else, it might pass for the country residence of a gentleman of the old school, or for an unfashionable suburban hotel, or for a provincial seminary. It is built of solid cedar logs that seem destined to weather the storms of ages. These logs are secured by innumerable copper bolts; and the whole structure is riveted to the rocks, so that neither wind nor wave nor earthquake shock is likely to prevail against it.

Handsomely finished within, it was in the colonial days richly furnished; and as Sitka was at that time a large settlement composed of wealthy and highbred Russians, governed by a prince or a baron whose petty court was made up of the representatives of the rank and fashion of St. Petersburg and Moscow, the colonial castle was most of the time the scene of social splendor.