Indian legends and traditions can be had by the score at Sitka, but it is hard to verify any of them, and the myths, rites, and folk-lore of the people are not to be gathered with exactness during the touch-and-go excitement of a summer cruise. Bishop Veniaminoff mastered their language, and translated books of the Testament, hymns, and catechism, and published several works on the Koloshians. Baron Wrangell also wrote a great deal concerning them, and abstracts from these two writers have been given by Dall and Petroff. No ethnologists have made studies among the Thlinkets since Veniaminoff and Wrangell, a half century ago, and the field lies ready for some northern Cushing.

CHAPTER XIII.
SITKA—SUBURBS AND CLIMATE.

Enthusiasts who have seen both, declare that the Bay of Sitka surpasses the Bay of Naples in the grandeur and beauty of its surroundings. The comparison is instituted between these two distant places, because the extinct volcano, Mount Edgecumbe, rears its snow-filled crater above the bay, as Vesuvius does by the curving shores of the peerless bay of the Mediterranean. Nothing could be finer than the outlines of this grand old mountain that rises from the jutting corner of an island across the bay, and in the sleepy, summer sun, Edgecumbe’s slopes are bluer than lapis lazuli or sapphire, and the softest, filmiest gray clouds trail across the ragged walls of the crater. It is more than a century since it poured forth its smoke and lava, but jets of steam occasionally rise from it now, and if an exploration of its unknown slopes is ever made, some signs of active life will doubtless be found. Great patches of snow lie within the crater’s rim, and, standing as a sentinel on the very edge of the great Pacific, Edgecumbe is perpetually wreathed with the clouds that float in from the sea. The Indians have fastened many of their legends and myths to it, and the Creator and the original crow are supposed to have come from its depths and to still dwell therein, while Captain Cook, the great navigator, gave it the name which it now bears.

A hundred little islands lie in the harbor of Sitka, within the great sweep of the Baranoff shores, whose curve is greater than a semicircle at this point. Each one is a tangled bit of rock and forest, and their dense, green thickets and grassy slopes are bordered with mats of golden and russet seaweeds, that at low tide add the last fine tone to a landscape of the richest coloring. Every foot of island shore off Sitka is sketchable, and a picture in itself; and the clear, soft light, the luminous transparent tones, would be the rapture of a water-color artist. Japonski, which is the largest of this group of little islands, lies directly abreast of Sitka, and the Russians maintained an observatory on it during their ownership. At the time of the transfer, all of the larger islands of the harbor were marked off as government reservations, but during these seventeen years nothing has been done to maintain the government’s claim, and settlers have lived on, cleared, and cultivated the land without molestation. The old observatory on Japonski Island has dropped to ruins, the last vestige of it has disappeared under the dense cover of vegetation, and the squatter who now occupies it raises fine Japonski potatoes for the Sitka market.

During the time that the Russians kept their careful meteorological records at the Japonski Observatory and on shore, the thermometer went below zero only four times, and the variation between the summer and winter temperature is no greater than on the California coast. It is the warm current of the Kuro Siwo, or Black Stream of Japan, pouring full on this shore, that modifies the temperature, and brings the fogs and mists that perpetually wreath the mountains, so that Fort Wrangell, though south of Sitka, is colder in winter and warmer in summer on account of its distance from the ocean current. The Sitka summer temperature of 51° and 55° pleases the fancy of dwellers in the east, quite as much as the even and temperate chill of 31° and 38° in midwinter. Ice seldom forms of any thickness, and skating on the lake back of the church at Sitka is a rarity in the winter amusements. While St. John’s in Newfoundland is beleaguered by icebergs in summer, and its harbor frozen solid in winter, Sitka, ten degrees north of it, has always an open roadstead. As compared with the climate of Leadville, or some of the torrid spots in Arizona, the miners at Sitka and Juneau have nothing to complain of, and never have to contend against the fearful odds that opposed the miners during the first rush to the Cœur d’Alène region.

The mean temperature of the air and of the surface sea water, and the precipitation for each month of the year at Sitka, as given in the tables in the Alaska Coast Pilot for 1883, are as follows:—

Month.Temperature of the air.Temperature of surface sea water.Precipitation.
January31.4397.35
February32.9396.45
March35.739.55.29
April40.8425.17
May47.046.54.13
June52.4483.62
July55.5494.19
August55.9506.96
September51.551.59.66
October44.948.911.83
November38.144.48.65
December33.341.78.39
Year43.345.081.69

The only drawback to this cool and equable climate is the heavy rainfall, which even a Scotchman says makes it “a wee hair too wet.” One soon gets used to it, and goes around unconcernedly in a panoply of rubber and gossamer cloth, and rejoices that Sitka is not Fort Tongass, where the rainfall was 118.30 inches a year, for the time that the drenched and half-drowned officers kept the records. With all this downpour there is little dampness in the air, and, contradictory as this may seem, it is proven by the fact that clothes will dry under a shed during the heaviest rains. Boots and shoes do not mould, clothing does not get musty as in other climates, and on shipboard it is noticeable that kid gloves and shoes show no reluctance at being pulled on on the wettest mornings. The snow lies on the mountain tops and sides all the year through, though in a warm, dry summer it retreats to the summits and higher ravines. In winter the snow seldom lasts long on the level, and mist and rain, coming after each snowfall, soon reduce it to slush. These contradictions of climate are quite at variance with the accepted ideas of Alaska, and although its enemies say that it can never be made to support a population since grain and vegetables will not grow there, vegetables continue to be raised in this part of the territory, as they have for more than fifty years, and wild timothy and grasses grow three and four feet high in every clearing. No very intelligent methods of cultivating the soil have ever been attempted, and drainage is an unknown science. Vancouver found the Indians cultivating potatoes and a kind of tobacco, and there are little plantations back in sheltered nooks of the archipelago, where the Indians go each year to plant and gather their potatoes. The Siwash sows his potatoes as a farmer does his grain, and very fine tubers cannot be expected from such farming. So far the residents of the territory have been like those dwellers on western cattle ranches, who count their cattle by thousands and use condensed milk and imported butter, and the tin can is oftener seen than the hoe or garden tools among them.

Although hay cannot be cured in the natural way in this rainy region, scientific farmers think it feasible to cut and salt in trenches all the hay that will be needed for the cattle for many years. Sleek cows are grazing in the streets and open places around Sitka, and the residents point with pride to two venerable mules that were left by the quarter-master, when the garrison was abandoned, and that for seven years ran wild and “rustled” for themselves summer and winter. They weathered all the wet seasons, foraged for themselves in the winters, and rioted in sweet grasses as high as their ears during the perfect, luxuriant summers, and are good mules now.

The fine little sponges and the delicate coral branches that are occasionally found in the harbor puzzle one with another hint of the tropics in this high latitude. Great fronds of seaweed and kelp as large as banana leaves drift on the rocks with the rushing tides, and the long, snaky algæ that float on the water are often found eighty and one hundred feet long. It is of these tough, hollow pipes that the Indians make the worms for their rude hoochinoo distilleries, or, splitting and twisting it, make fishing lines many fathoms in length. The same little teredo that eats up ship timbers and piles in southern oceans is as destructive here in the harbor of Sitka as anywhere in the tropics. The piles of the wharf only last five years at the longest, and the merciless borers eat up the timbers of the old wrecks and hulks with which the first foundations for a wharf were begun, and nothing but the yellow cedar of the archipelago is said to withstand the teredo.