"You would not care to go to the native houses," he replied, still smiling. "But come with me."
He led the way along a neat board walk to a residence that would attract attention in any town. It was large and of artistic design.
"It was designed by Molly Garfield," the young man somewhat proudly informed us. "Her husband was connected with the company for several years, and they built and lived in this house."
The house was richly papered and furnished. It was past the luncheon hour, but we were excellently served by a perfectly trained Chinaman.
For more than a hundred years the great commercial companies—beginning with the Shelikoff Company—have dispensed the hospitality of Alaska, and have acted as hosts to the stranger within their gates. The managers are instructed to sell provisions at reasonable prices, and to supply any one who may be in distress and unable to pay for food.
They frequently entertain, as guests of the company they represent, travellers to these lonely places, not because the latter are in need, but merely as a courtesy; and their hospitality is as free and generous—but not as embarrassing—as that of Baranoff.
That night I sat late alone upon the hills, on a tundra slope that was blue with violets. I could not put my hand down without crushing them. The lights moving across Unalaska were as poignantly interesting as the thoughts that come and go across a stranger's face when he does not know that one is observing.
All the lights and shadows of the vanishing Aleutian race seemed to be moving across the hills, the village, the blue bay.
Scarcely a day has passed that I have not gone back across the blue and emerald water-ways that stretch between, to that lovely place and that luminous hour.
Perhaps, I thought, Veniaminoff may have looked down upon this exquisite scene from this same violeted spot—Veniaminoff, the humble, devout, and devoted missionary, whom I should rather have been than any man or woman whose history I know; Veniaminoff, who lived—instead of wrote—a great, a sublime, poem.