Alaska's Capital.
Sitka has always seemed to me the jumping-off place. I have vaguely
imagined that somehow--I know not just how--it had a mysterious affinity
with Moscow, and was in some way a dependence of that Muscovite
municipality. I was half willing to believe that an underground passage
connected the Kremlin with the Castle of Sitka; that the tiny capital of
Great Alaska responded, though feebly, to every throb of the Russian
heart. Perhaps it did in the good old days now gone; but there is little
or nothing of the Russian element left, and the place is as dead as dead
can be without giving offence to the olfactory organ.
We were picking our way through a perfect wilderness of islands, on the
lookout for the capital, of which we had read and heard so much. Surely
the Alaskan pilot must have the eye and the instinct of a sea bird or he
could never find a port in that labyrinth. Moreover, the air was misty:
we felt that we were approaching the sea. Lofty mountains towered above
us; sometimes the islands swam apart--they seemed all in motion, as if
they were swinging to and fro on the tide,--and then down a magnificent
vista we saw the richly wooded slopes of some glorious height that
loomed out of the vapor and bathed its forehead in the sunshine.
Sometimes the mist grew denser, and we could see hardly a ship's-length
ahead of us; and the air was so chilly that our overcoats were drawn
snugly about us, and we wondered what the temperature might be "down
south" in Dakota and New England.
In the grayest of gray days we came to Sitka, and very likely for this
reason found it a disappointment at first sight. Certainly it looked
dreary enough as we approached it--a little cluster of tumbledown houses
scattered along a bleak and rocky shore. We steamed slowly past it, made
a big turn in deep water, got a tolerable view of the city from one end
of it to the other, and then crept up to the one little dock, made fast,
and were all granted the freedom of the capital for a couple of days. It
is a gray place--gray with a greenish tinge in it--the kind of green
that looks perennial--a dark, dull evergreen.
There was some show of color among the costumes of the people on
shore--bright blankets and brighter calicoes,--but there was no
suspicion of gaiety or of a possible show of enthusiasm among the few
sedate individuals who came down to see us disembark. I began to wonder
if these solemn spectators that were grouped along the dock were ghosts
materialized for the occasion; if the place were literally dead--dead as
the ancient Russian cemetery on the hill, where the white crosses with
their double arms, the upper and shorter one aslant, shone through the
sad light of the waning day.
We had three little Russian maids on our passenger list, daughters of
Father Mitropolski, the Greek priest at Sitka. They were returning from
a convent school at Victoria, and were bubbling over with delight at the
prospective joys of a summer vacation at home. But no sooner had they
received the paternal embraces upon the deck than the virtue of
happiness went out of them; and they became sedate little Sitkans, whose
dignity belied the riotous spirit that had made them the life of the
ship on the way up.
We also brought home a little Russian chap who had been working down at
Fort Wrangell, and, having made a fortune--it was a fortune in his
eyes,--he was returning to stay in the land of his nativity. He was
quiet enough on shipboard--indeed, he had almost escaped observation
until we sighted Sitka; but then his heart could contain itself no
longer, and he made confidants of several of us to whom he had spoken
never a word until this moment. How glad he was to greet its solemn
shores, to him the dearest spot in all the earth! A few hours later we
met him. He was swinging on the gate at the homestead in the edge of the
town: a sweet, primitive place, that caught our eye before the youngster
caught our ears with his cheerful greeting. "Oh, I so glad!" said he,
with a mist in his eye that harmonized with everything else. "I make
eighty dollar in four month at Wrangell. My sister not know me when I
get home. I so glad to come back to Sitka. I not go away any more."
Of course we poured out of the ship in short order, and spread through
the town like ants. At the top of the dock is the Northwest Trading
Company's store--how we learned to know these establishments! Some
scoured it for a first choice, and got the pick of the wares; but here,
as elsewhere, we found the same motley collection of semi-barbarous
bric-a-brac--brilliantly painted Indian paddles spread like a sunburst
against the farther wall; heaps of wooden masks and all the fantastical
carvings such as the aborigines delight in, and in which they almost
excel. Up the main street of the town is another store, where a series
of large rooms, crowded with curios bewilders the purchaser of those
grotesque wares.
At the top of Katalan's rock, on the edge of the sea, stands the
Colonial Castle. It is a wooden structure, looking more like a barrack
than a castle. At the foot of the rock are the barracks and Custom
House. A thin sprinkling of marines, a few foreign-looking citizens--the
full-fledged Rusk of the unmistakable type is hard to find
nowadays,--and troops of Indians give a semblance of life to this
quarter. At the head of the street stands the Russian Orthodox Church;
and this edifice, with its quaint tower and spire, is really the lion of
the place. St. Michael's was dedicated in 1844 by the Venerable Ivan
Venianimoff, the metropolitan of Moscow, for years priest and Bishop at
Ounalaska and Sitka.
In his time the little chapel was richly decorated; but as the
settlement began falling to decay, the splendid vestments and sacred
vessels and altar ornaments, and even the Bishop himself, were
transferred to San Francisco. It then became the duty of the Bishop to
visit annually the churches at Sitka, Ounalaska and Kodiak, as the
Russian Government still allowed these dependencies an annuity of
$50,000. But the last incumbent of the office, Bishop Nestor, was lost
tragically at sea in May, 1883; and, as the Russian priesthood seems to
be less pious than particular, the office is still a-begging--unless I
have been misinformed. Probably the mission will be abandoned. Certainly
the dilapidated chapel, with its remnants of tarnished finery, its three
surviving families of Russian blood, its handful of Indian converts,
seems not likely to hold long together.
We witnessed a service in St. Michael's. The tinkling bells in the green
belfry--a bulbous, antique-looking belfry it is--rang us in from the
four quarters of the town. As there were neither pews, chairs nor prayer
carpets, we stood in serio-comic silence while the double mysteries of
the hidden Holy of Holies were celebrated. Not more than a dozen
devotees at most were present. These gathered modestly in the rear of
the nave and put us to shame with their reverent gravity. Strange chants
were chanted; it was a weird music, like a litany of bumblebees. Dense
clouds of incense issued from gilded recesses that were screened from
view.
It was all very strange, very foreign, very unintelligible to us. It was
also very monotonous; and when some of the unbelievers grew restless and
stole quietly about on voyages of exploration and discovery, they were
duly rewarded at the hands of the custodian of the chapel, who rather
encouraged the seeming sacrilege. He left his prayers unsaid to pilot us
from nook to nook; he exhibited the old paintings of Byzantine origin,
and in broken English endeavored to interpret their meaning. He opened
antique chests that we might examine their contents; and when a volume
of prayers printed in rustic Russian type and bound with clumsy metal
clasps, was bartered for, he seemed quite willing to dispose of it,
though it was the only one of the kind visible on the premises. This
excited our cupidity, and, with a purse in our hand, we groped into the
sacristy seeking what we might secure.
A set of small chromos came to light: bright visions of the Madonna,
done in three or four colors, on thin paper and fastened to blocks of
wood. They were worth about two cents--perhaps three for five. We paid
fifty cents apiece, and were glad to get them at that price--oh, the
madness of the seeker after souvenirs! Then all unexpectedly we came
upon a collection of half-obliterated panel paintings. They were thrown
carelessly in a deep window-seat, and had been overlooked by many. They
were Russian to the very grain of the wood; they were quaint to the
verge of the ludicrous; they were positively black with age; thick
layers of dust and dirt and smoke of incense coated them, so that the
faint colors that were laid upon them were sunk almost out of sight. The
very wood itself was weather-stained, and a chip out of it left no trace
of life or freshness beneath. Centuries old they seemed, these small
panels, sacred _Ikons_. In far-away Russia they may have been venerated
before this continent had verified the dream of Columbus. As we were
breaking nearly all the laws of propriety, I thought it safe to inquire
the price of these. I did so. Would I had been the sole one within
hearing that I might have glutted my gorge on the spot! They were
fifteen cents apiece, and they were divided among us as ruthlessly as if
they were the seamless shirt of blessed memory.
Meanwhile the ceremonies at the high altar had come to an end. The
amiable assistant of Father Mitropolski was displaying the treasures of
the sanctuary with pardonable pride,--jewelled crosiers, golden
chalices, robes resplendent with rubies, amethysts and pearls, paintings
upon ivory, and images clothed in silver and precious stones. The little
chapel, cruciform, is decorated in white and gold; the altar screens are
of bronze set with images of silver. Soft carpets of the Orient were
spread upon the steps of the altar.
How pretty it all seemed as we turned to leave the place and saw
everything dimly in the blue vapor that still sweetened and hallowed it!
And when the six bells in the belfry all fell to ringing riotously, and
the sun let slip a few stray beams that painted the spire a richer
green, and the grassy street that stretches from the church porch to the
shore was dotted with groups of strollers, St Michael's at Sitka, in
spite of its dingy and unsymmetrical exterior, seemed to us one of the
prettiest spots it had ever been our lot to see.
It is a grassy and a mossy town that gathers about the Russian chapel.
All the old houses were built to last (as they are likely to do) for
many generations to come. They are log-houses--the public buildings, the
once fashionable officers' club, and many of the residences,--formed of
solid square brown logs laid one upon another until you come to the
roof. At times the logs are clapboarded without, and are all lathed and
plastered within. The floors are solid and the stairs also. The wonder
is how the town can ever go to ruin--save by fire; for wood doesn't rot
in Alaska, but will lie in logs exposed to the changes of the season for
an indefinite period.
I saw in a wood back of the town an immense log. It was in the primeval
forest, and below it were layers of other logs lying crosswise and in
confusion. I know not how far below me was the solid earth, for mats of
thick moss and deep beds of dead leaves filled the hollows between the
logs; but this log, nearly three feet in diameter, was above them all;
and out of it--from a seed no doubt imbedded in the bark--had sprung a
tree that is to-day as great in girth as the log that lies prostrate
beneath its roots. These mighty roots have clasped that log in an
everlasting embrace and struck down into the soil below. You can
conjecture how long the log has been lying there in that tangle of
mighty roots--yet the log is to-day as sound a bit of timber as one is
likely to find anywhere.
Alaska is buried under forests like these--I mean that part of it which
is not still cased in ice and snow. A late official gave me out of his
cabinet a relic of the past. It is a stone pestle, rudely but
symmetrically hewn,--evidently the work of the aborigines. This pestle,
with several stone implements of domestic utility, was discovered by a
party of prospectors who had dug under the roots of a giant tree. Eleven
feet beneath the surface, directly under the tree and surrounded by
gigantic roots, this pestle, and some others of a similar character,
together with mortars and various utensils, were scattered through the
soil. Most of the collection went to the Smithsonian Institute, and
perhaps their origin and history may be some day conjectured. How many
ages more, I wonder, will be required to develop the resources of this
vast out-of-door country?
When the tardy darkness fell upon Sitka--toward midnight--the town was
hardly more silent than it had been throughout the day. A few lights
were twinkling in distant windows; a few Indians were prowling about;
the water rippled along the winding shore; and from time to time as the
fresh gusts blew in from the sea, some sleepless bird sailed over us on
shadowy wings, and uttered a half-smothered cry that startled the
listener. Then, indeed, old Sitka, which was once called New Archangel,
seemed but a relic of the past, whose vague, romantic history will
probably never be fully known.