Alaska, the Great Country - Ella Higginson

Halleck Island is completely surrounded by Nakwasina Passage and Olga Strait, joining into one grand canal of uniform width.

All these narrow, tortuous, and perilous water-ways wind around the small islands that lie between Baranoff Island on the east and Kruzoff Island on the west. Baranoff is one hundred and thirty miles long and as wide as thirty miles in places. Kruzoff Island is small, but its southern extremity, lying directly west of Sitka, shelters that favored place from the storms of the Pacific.

Whitestone Narrows in the southern end of Neva Strait is extremely narrow and dangerous, owing to sunken rocks. Deep-draught vessels cannot enter at low tide, but must await the favorable half-hour.

Sitka Sound is fourteen miles long and from five to eight wide. It is more exquisitely islanded than any other bay in the world; and after passing the site of Baranoff's first settlement and Old Sitka Rocks, the steamer's course leads through a misty emerald maze. Sweeping slowly around the green shore of one island, a dozen others dawn upon the beholder's enraptured vision, frequently appearing like a solid wall of green, which presently parts to let the steamer slide through,—when, at once, another dazzling vista opens to the view.

Before entering Sitka Sound, Halleck, Partoffs-Chigoff, and Krestoff are the more important islands; in Sitka Sound, Crow, Apple, and Japonski. The latter island is world-famous. It is opposite, and very near, the town; it is about a mile long, and half as wide; its name, "Japan," was bestowed because, in 1805, a Japanese junk was wrecked near this island, and the crew was forced to dwell upon it for weeks. It is greenly and gracefully draped with cedar and spruce trees, and is an object of much interest to tourists.

Around Japonski cluster more than a hundred small islands of the Harbor group; in the whole sound there are probably a thousand, but some are mere green or rocky dots floating upon the pale blue water.

A magnetic and meteorological observatory was established on Japonski by the Russians and was maintained until 1867.