During our first stay the assistant priest found a chest of old bronze medals, crosses, and enamelled triptychs in the garret of the church, and the visitors contributed well to the poor fund in order to obtain these relics. It was certified that all the small crosses and medals had been blessed at Moscow before being sent out to the colony, and these ikons or images were given to the soldiers and others on their saints’ days. A small bronze medal with the image of St. Nicholas fell to my lot, with the head of Christ in one corner, that of the Virgin in another, and their names raised in old Slavonic characters above them. It has a loop to be hung by a ribbon, and St Nicholas’ face is worn smooth by the reverent lips that have touched it. These medals,—common enough and to be bought for a few coppers in Russia,—were highly valued by us among our other Sitkan souvenirs.
The priest of the Sitka church, Father Mitropolski, is broad and liberal in his views, and quite astonishes some narrower sectarians by his mode of life and participation in ordinary amusements. His tolerance and liberal tendencies were proved by his recently reading the Episcopal marriage service before the altar of the Greek Church, uniting at the time a naval officer of Unitarian faith to a teacher at the Presbyterian mission. Father Mitropolski, a wife, and a family of little daughters—Xenia, Nija, and Alexandra—keep life and sunshine in the rambling, half-ruined house, which, as the bishop’s residence, was formerly the finest dwelling after the castle. The roof was then bright emerald green, and this and the green dome and roof of the church showed well in the cluster of red roofs that covered the other buildings in the town. With diminished church revenues and a lessening congregation, the building has slowly fallen into sad decay, the galleries and porches have dropped off, and only a part of the house is now occupied. The drawing-room contains a few pieces of rich furniture as relics of its former days, and the portraits of the czars, and the shining samovar, declare it the home of loyal Russians. An ancient guitar, made of some finely grained wood that is hardly known to modern makers of that instrument, was for a long time in the possession of Father Mitropolski, having descended with the residence from the line of bishops and priests. It is very curious in its shape and details, one end of it being rounded in a great curve, and the keyboard not resting on the body of the guitar at all. It has a sweet, melancholy tone, and accompanies appropriately some of the strange little Russian songs that are sung to it. There is a private chapel off the drawing-room, which contains a beautifully decorated altar, and family service is held there daily.
A Lutheran church, facing the Greek church on the square, was founded by Governor Etolin, in 1844, for the Swedes and Finns employed by the fur company, and in the foundries and shipyard at Sitka. During the stay of the United States troops the Lutheran church was used by the post chaplain, a Methodist. The abandoned church is now in the last stage of ruin, the roof sunken in, and the walls dropping apart. The pipe-organ, brought from Germany forty years ago, was rescued by a young officer of musical tastes, and by clever repairing it was put in good condition, and found to be a very fine instrument.
Facing on this same church square is the warehouse and the office of the old Russian-American Fur Company. The solid log buildings have stood the ravages of time and the damp climate, and a mining-engineer and assayer has taken possession of it for his office. Quite appropriately the headquarters of the fur trade, which constituted the most valuable interest of the early days, is now the laboratory of an assayer, who tests the minerals upon which so much of the future importance of the territory rests.
The officers’ club-house, back of the Greek church, is still in a fair condition, but the tea-gardens and the race-course have vanished in undergrowth. A sturdy little fir-tree, rooted in the crevice of a great boulder or outcropping ledge of rocks in front of the club-house, is one of the curiosities of Sitka, and has been growing in that solid granite as long as anyone now living there can remember.
The sawmill, with its large water-wheel, is dropping to decay, the hospital building was burned while used as a mission-school, and it is hard to trace the site of the old shipyard, that was a most complete establishment in its day. For a long time it was the only yard on the coast, and vessels of all nationalities put in there for repairs. The Russians had one hundred and eighty church holidays during the year, and observed them all carefully. English naval commanders, by keeping their own Sabbath, and having the Russian Sabbath and holidays celebrated by closing the shipyards and stopping work, used to have long stays in the harbor; and the impatient navigators, in view of the whirl of social life that marked the visit of a strange ship, fairly believed that the delays were managed by the governor’s authority. At the foundries, ploughs were made and exported to the Mexican possessions south of them, and the bells of half the California mission churches were cast at the Sitka foundry.
At the end of the scattered line of houses that fringe the shore, the Jackson Institute, a Presbyterian mission-school and home, occupies a fine site, facing the harbor. The mission was founded in 1878, and named for the Rev. Sheldon Jackson, who has charge of the Presbyterian missions in Alaska, and the building is soon to be enlarged, to accommodate a larger number of pupils than were first gathered in it, under the care of Mr. and Mrs. Austin.
CHAPTER XII.
SITKA—THE INDIAN RANCHERIE.
The doorway of the Greek church, and the dial on its tower, face toward the harbor, and command the main street. Beyond the houses at the right there is a little pine-crowned hill, with the broken and rusty ruins of a powder-magazine on its slope, and on a second hill beyond is the graveyard where the Russians buried their dead. An old block house, that commanded an angle of the stockade, stands sentry over the graves, and the headstones and tombs are overgrown with rank bushes, ferns, and grasses. Prince Maksoutoff’s first wife, who died at Sitka, was buried on the hill, and a costly, elaborately carved tombstone was sent from Russia to mark the spot. After the transfer and withdrawal of troops, the Indians, in their maraudings, defaced the stone, and attempted to carry it off. It was broken in the effort, and left in fragments on the ground. Lieutenant Gilman, in charge of the marines during the stay of the Adams, became interested in the matter, hunted for the grave in the underbrush, and undertook the work of replacing the tombstone. Beyond the Russian cemetery, on the same overgrown hillside, are the tombs of the chiefs and medicine-men of the Sitka kwan. The grotesque images and the queer little burial boxes are nearly hidden in the tangle of bushes and vines, and their sides are covered with moss.
The Russians had a special chapel out on this hill for the Indians to worship in, as shown in old illustrations of Sitka, but the building has disappeared. There was a heavy stockade wall also, separating the Indian cemetery and village from the white settlement, but it has nearly all been torn down and carried off by the Indians during the years of license allowed them after the troops left, and only fragments of it remain in places.