This old castle was once the home of nobility and the scene of grand festivities. Here princes and princesses of the blood royal ate their caviare, quaffed their vodka and measured a minuet. It was in this old castle that Lady Franklin spent three weeks twenty-five years ago when in search of her husband, Sir John. It was here that W. H. Seward spent several days when on a trip to Alaska after its purchase from Russia, through the sagacity of himself and Charles Sumner. At one of the windows sat the beautiful Princess Maksoutoff weeping bitter tears as the Russian flag was lowered for the last time. On the 18th of October, 1867, three United States warships lay at anchor in the bay. They were the Ossipee, Resaca and Jamestown, commanded by Captains Emmons, Bradford and McDougal. Each vessel was dressed in the national colors, while the Russian soldiers, citizens and Indians assembled upon the open space at the foot of the castle carrying aloft the eagle of the czar of all the Russias. At a given signal the American navy fired a salute in honor of the Russian flag, which was lowered from the staff on the castle. After a national salute from the Russian garrison in honor of our flag, the stars and stripes were hoisted to the top of the old flag staff.
The Russian parade ground has been converted into a base ball ground, where Indian and white teams contest for honors.
The native races of Alaska are slowly dying out. The bright light of civilization is always the death doom of savagism.
RAPIDS, INDIAN RIVER, SITKA.
The most beautiful natural park in the world lies just above Sitka, on the banks of the Indian River, which rises in the valley between the mountains and winding down, empties into the sea.
Here are the greenest of pines, cedars and firs. The grasses and mosses are the brilliant green of the tropics. A neat suspension foot bridge swings clear of the water from buttress to buttress. The shallow, murmuring, sparkling water bathes the brown roots of shrubs and trees. Great cedars lie prostrate, covered with short green moss. Giant firs are draped with a delicate sea green moss, which hangs in festoons and pendants from branch, limb and trunk. The pine tops sigh softly the music of the seas.
Sunny banks are yellow with the familiar cinquefoil, the blossoms of which are five or six times as large as they are at home. In open glades the ground is white with cornells, and tiny dogwood shrubs growing from two to five inches high. The wild purple geranium brightens sunny glades, while the mountain spiraea, the most beautiful of all spiraeas, bends and sways in the breeze.
Thickets of salmon berry and wonderful mazes of strange ferns meet one at every turn. One of the handsomest bushes in the park is the magnificent Devil’s Club. There are great thickets of them twenty feet high casting an enticing but dangerous shade. The dainty green leaves, as large as dinner plates, rear their heads aloft, umbrella-like. The stems, limbs, and trunk are covered with thousands of tiny poisonous prickles, which work deep into the flesh, making ugly sores.
Down on the beach are the graves of Lisiansky’s men, who were killed by ambuscaded Indians while taking water for their ship, in 1804.