FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION.
The Vast Area of Alaska.—Difficulty of Comparison, and Access
to her Shores save in the Small Area of the Sitkan Region.—Many
Americans as Officers of the Government, Merchants, Traders,
Miners, etc., who have Visited Alaska daring the last Eighteen
Years.—Full Understanding of Alaskan Life and Resources now
on Record.—Beautiful and Extraordinary Features of the Sitkan
Archipelago.—The Decaying Town of Wrangel.—The Wonderful Glaciers
of this Region.—The Tides, Currents and Winds.—The Forests and
Vegetation Omnipresent in this Land-locked Archipelago.—Indigenous
Berries.—Gloomy Grandeur of the Cañons.—The Sitkan Climate.—Neither
Cold nor Warm.—Excessive Humidity.—Stickeen Gold Excitement of
1862 and 1875.—The Decay of Cassiar.—The Picturesque Bay of
Sitka.—The Romance and Terror of Baranov’s Establishment there in
1800-1805.—The Russian Life and Industries at Sitka.—The Contrast
between Russian Sitka and American Sitka a Striking One.
“For hot, cold, moist and dry, four champions fierce
Strive here for mastery.”—MILTON.
The general contour of Alaska is correctly rendered on any and all
charts published to-day; but it is usually drawn to a very much
reduced scale and tucked away into a corner of a large conventional
map of the United States and Territories, so that it fails, in this
manner, to give an adequate idea of its real proportion—and does not
commonly impress the eye and mind, as it ought to, at first sight.
But a moment’s thoughtful observation shows the vast landed extent
between that extreme western point of Attoo Island in the occident,
and the boundary near Fort Simpson in the orient, to be over 2,000
miles; while from this Alaskan initial post at Simpson to Point
Barrow, in the arctic, it covers the limit of 1,200 geographical
miles.[6] The superficial magnitude of this region is at once well
appreciated when the largest States or Territories are each held up
in contrast.
The bewildering indentation and endless length of the coast, the
thousands of islands and islets, the numerous volcanoes and towering
peaks, and the maze of large and small rivers, make a comparison of
Alaska, in any other respect than that of mere superficial area,
wholly futile when brought into contrast with the rest of the North
American continent. Barred out as she is from close communion
with her new relationship and sisterhood in the American Union
by her remote situation, and still more so by the unhappiness of
her climate, she is not going to be inspected from the platforms
of flying express trains; and, save the little sheltered jaunt
by steamer from Puget Sound to Sitka and immediate vicinity, no
ocean-tourists are at all likely to pry into the lonely nooks and
harbors of her extended coasts, surf-beaten and tempest-swept as they
are every month in the year.
But, in the discharge of official duty, in the search for precious
metals, coal and copper, in the desire to locate profitable fishing
ventures, and in the interests of natural science, hundreds of
energetic, quick-witted Americans have been giving Alaska a very
keen examination during the last eighteen years. The sum of their
knowledge throws full understanding over the subject of Alaskan life
and resources, as viewed and appreciated from the American basis;
there is no difficulty in now making a fair picture of any section,
no matter how remote, or of conducting the reader into the very
presence of Alaska’s unique inhabitants, anywhere they may be sought,
and just as they live between Point Barrow and Cape Fox, or Attoo and
the Kinik mouth.
In going to Alaska to-day, the traveller is invariably taken into
the Sitkan district, and no farther; naturally he goes there and
nowhere beyond, for the best of all reasons: he can find no means
of transportation at all proper as regards his safety and comfort
which will convey him outside of the Alexander archipelago. To this
southeastern region of Alaska, however, one may journey every month
in the year from the waters of the Columbia River and Puget Sound,
in positive pleasure, on a seaworthy steamer fitted with every
marine adjunct conducive to the passenger’s comfortable existence
in transit; it is a land-locked sea-trip of over eighteen hundred
miles, made often to and from Sitka without tremor enough on the
part of the vessel even to spill a brimming glass of water upon the
cabin table. If fortunate enough to make this trip of eight or nine
hundred miles up, and then down again, when the fog is not omnipotent
and rain not incessant, the tourist will record a vision of earthly
scenery grander than the most vivid imagination can devise, and the
recollection of its glories will never fade from his delighted mind.
If, however, you desire to visit that great country to the
westward and the northwest, no approach can be made via Sitka—no
communication between that region and this portion of Alaska ever
takes place, except accidentally; the traveller starts from San
Francisco either in a codfishing schooner, a fur-trader’s sloop,
or steamer, and sails out into the vast Pacific on a bee-line for
Kadiak or Oonalashka; and, from these two chief ports of arrival
and departure, he laboriously works his way, if bent upon seeing
the country, constantly interrupted and continually beset with all
manner of hindrances to the progress of his journey by land and sea.
These physical obstructions in the path of travel to all points of
interest in Alaska, save those embraced in the Sitkan district,
will bar out and deprive thousands from ever beholding the striking
natural characteristics of a wonderful volcanic region in Cook’s
Inlet and the Aleutian chain of islands. When that time shall arrive
in the dim future which will order and sustain the sailing of
steamers in regular rotation of transit throughout the waters of this
most interesting section, then, indeed, will a source of infinite
satisfaction be afforded to those who love to contemplate the weird
and the sublime in nature; meanwhile, visits to that region in small
sailing-craft are highly risky and unpleasant—boisterous winds are
chronic and howling gales are frequent.
The beautiful and extraordinary features of preliminary travel up
the British Columbia coast will have prepared the mind for a full
enjoyment and comprehension of your first sight of Alaska. If you
are alert, you will be on deck and on good terms with the officer in
charge when the line is crossed on Dixon Sound, and the low wooded
crowns of Zayas and Dundas Islands, now close at hand, are speedily
left in the wake as the last landmarks of foreign soil. To the left,
as the steamer enters the beautiful water of Clarence Straits, the
abrupt, irregular, densely wooded shores of Prince of Wales Island
rise as lofty walls of timber and of rock, mossy and sphagnous,
shutting out completely a hasty glimpse of the great Pacific rollers
afforded in the Sound; while on the right hand you turn to a
delighted contemplation of those snowy crests of the towering coast
range which, though thirty and fifty miles distant, seem to fairly be
in reach, just over and back of the rugged tree-clad elevations of
mountainous islands that rise abruptly from the sea-canal in every
direction. Not a gentle slope to the water can be seen on either side
of the vessel as you glide rapidly ahead; the passage is often so
narrow that the wavelets from the steamer’s wheel break and echo back
loudly on your ear from the various strips of ringing rocky shingle
at the base of bluffy intersections.
[Illustration: Lodges in a Vast Wilderness.]
If, by happy decree of fate, fog-banks do not shut suddenly down
upon your pleased vision, a rapid succession of islands and myriads
of islets, all springing out boldly from the cold blue-green and
whitish-gray waters which encircle their bases, will soon tend to
confuse and utterly destroy all sense of locality; the steamer’s
path seems to be in a circle, to lead right back to where she
started from, into another equally mysterious labyrinthine opening:
then the curious idiosyncrasy possesses you by which you seem to
see in the scenery just ahead an exact resemblance to the bluffs,
the summits and the cascades which you have just left behind. Your
emphatic expression aloud of this belief will, most likely, arouse
some fellow-passenger who is an old voyageur, and he will take
a guiding oar: he will tell you that the numerous broad smooth
tracks, cut through the densely wooded mountain slopes from the snow
lines above abruptly down to the very sea below, are the paths of
avalanches; that if you will only crane your neck enough so as to
look right aloft to a certain precipice now almost hanging 3,000
feet high and over the deck of the steamer, there you will see a
few small white specks feebly outlined against the grayish-red
background of the rocks—these are mountain goats; he tells you that
those stolid human beings who are squatting in a large dug-out canoe
are “Siwashes,” halibut-fishing—and as these savages stupidly stare
at the big “Boston” vessel swiftly passing, with uplifted paddles
or keeping slight headway, you return their gaze with interest, and
the next turn of the ship’s rudder most likely throws into full
view a “rancherie,” in which these Indians permanently reside; your
kindly guide then eloquently describes the village and descants with
much vehemence upon the frailties and shortcomings of “Siwashes” in
general—at least all old-stagers in this country agree in despising
the aboriginal man. On the steamer forges through the still,
unruffled waters of intricate passages, now almost scraping her
yard-arms on the face of a precipitous headland—then rapidly shooting
out into the heart of a lovely bay, broad and deep enough to float in
room and safety a naval flotilla of the first class, until a long,
unusually low, timbered point seems to run out ahead directly in the
track, when your guide, giving a quick look of recognition, declares
that Wrangel[7] town lies just around it, and you speedily make your
inspection of an Alaskan hamlet.
Owing to the dense forest-covering of the country, sections of those
clays and sands which rest in most of the hollows are seldom seen,
only here and there where the banks of a brook are cut out, or
where an avalanche has stripped a clear track through the jungle,
do you get a chance to see the soil in southeastern Alaska. There
are frequent low points to the islands, composed, where beaten upon
by the sea, of fine rocky shingle, which form a flat of greater or
less width under the bluffs or steep mountain or hill slopes, about
three to six feet above present high-water mark; they become, in most
cases, covered with a certain amount of good soil, upon which a rank
growth of grass and shrubbery exists, and upon which the Indians love
to build their houses, camp out, etc. These small flats, so welcome
and so rare in this pelagic wilderness, have evidently been produced
by the waves acting at different times in opposing directions.
[Illustration: GRAND GLACIER: ICY BAY
View looking across a profile of its sea-wall face, two and a half
miles: ice cliffs from one hundred and fifty to three hundred feet
high above the water; depth of sea from sixty to eighty fathoms where
it is sounded under the steamer’s keel. An October picture, when all
its surface cavities and pinnacles are concealed by snow and smoothed
by frozen sleet]
In all of those channels penetrating the mainland and intervening
between the numerous islands from the head of Glacier Bay and Lynn
Canal down to the north end of Vancouver’s Island, marks, or glacial
scratchings, indicative of the sliding of a great ice-sheet, are
to be found, generally in strict conformity with the trend of the
passages, wherever the rocks were well suited for their preservation;
and it is probable that the ice of the coast range, at one time,
reached out as far west as the outer islands which fringe the
entire Alaskan and British Columbian coast. Many of the boulders on
the beaches are plainly glaciated; and, as they are often bunched
in piles upon the places where found, they seem to have not been
disturbed since they were dropped there. The shores are everywhere
abrupt and the water deep. The entire front of this lofty coast-range
chain, that forms the eastern Alaskan boundary from the summit of Mt.
St. Elias to the mouth of Portland Canal, is glacier-bearing to-day,
and you can scarcely push your way to the head of any cañon, great or
small, without finding an eternal ice-sheet anchored there: careful
estimation places the astonishing aggregate of over 5,000 living
glaciers, of greater or less degree, that are silently but forever
travelling down to the sea, in this region.
Those congealed rivers which take their origin in the flanks of Mt.
Fairweather[8] and Mt. Crillon[9] are simply unrivalled in frigid
grandeur by anything that is lauded in Switzerland or the Himalayas,
though the vast bulk of the Greenland ice-sheets is, of course, not
even feebly approximated by them; the waters of the channels which
lead up from the ocean to the feet of these large glaciers of Cross
Sound and Lynn Canal, are full of bobbing icebergs that have been
detached from the main sheet, in every possible shape and size—a
detachment which is taking place at intervals of every few moments,
giving rise, in so doing, to a noise like parks of artillery; but,
of course, these bergs are very, very small compared with those of
Greenland, and only a few ever escape from the intricate labyrinth
of fiörds which are so characteristic of this Sitkan district. An
ice-sheet comes down the cañon, and as it slides into the water
of the canal or bay, wherever it may be, the pressure exerted by
the buoyancy of the partially submerged mass causes it to crack
off in the wildest lines of cleavage, and rise to the surface in
hundreds and thousands of glittering fragments; or again, it may
slide out over the water on a rocky bed, and, as it advances, break
off and fall down in thundering salvos, that ring and echo in the
gloomy cañons with awe-inspiring repetition. At the head and around
the sides of a large indentation of Cross Sound there are no less
than five immense, complete glaciers, which take their origin
between Fairweather and Crillon Mountains, each one reaching and
discharging into tide-water: here is a vast, a colossal glacier in
full exhibition, and so easy of access that the most delicate woman
could travel to, and view it, since an ocean-steamer can push to its
very sea-walls, without a moment’s serious interruption, where from
her decks may be scanned the singular spectacle of an icy river from
three to eight miles wide, fifty miles long, and varying in depth
from fifty to five hundred feet. Between the west side of this frozen
bay and the water, all the ground, high and low, is covered by a
mantle of ice from one thousand to three thousand feet thick!
Here is an absolute realism of what once took place over the
entire northern continent—a vivid picture of the actual process of
degradation which the earth and its life were subjected to during
that long glacial epoch which bound up in its iron embrace of death
just about half of the globe.[10] This startling exhibition of a
mighty glacier with its cold, multitudinous surroundings in Cross
Sound, is alone well worth the time and cost of the voyage to behold
it, and it alone. There is not room in this narrative for further
dwelling upon that fascinating topic, for a full description of such
a gelid outpouring would in itself constitute a volume.
Throughout this archipelago of the Sitkan district, the strongest
tidal currents prevail: they flow at places like mill-races, and
again they scarcely interfere with the ship or canoe. The flood-tides
usually run northward along the outer coasts, and eastward in Dixon’s
Entrance; the weather, which is generally boisterous on the ocean
side of the islands, and on which the swell of the Pacific never
ceases to break with great fury, is very much subdued inside, and the
best indication of these tidal currents is afforded by the streaming
fronds of kelp that grow abundantly in all of these multitudinous
fiörds, and which are anchored securely in all depths, from a few
feet to that of seventy fathoms: when the tide is running through
some of those narrow passages, especially at ebb, it forms, with the
whip-like stems of sea-weed, a true rapid with much white water,
boiling and seething in its wild rushing; these alternations between
high and low water here are exceedingly variable—the spring-tides at
some places are as great as eighteen feet of rise, and a few miles
beyond, where the coast-expansion is great, it will not be more than
three or four feet.
Those baffling tides and the currents they create, together with
gusty squalls of rain or sleet, and irregular winds, render
the navigation of this inside passage wholly impracticable for
sailing-vessels—they gladly seek the open ocean where they can haul
and fill away to advantage even if it does blow “great guns;” the
high mural walls of the Alexander fiörds on both sides, usually,
of the channels, cause the wind to either blow up them, or down:
it literally funnels through with terrific velocity when the
“southeasters” prevail, and nothing, not even the steamer, braves the
fury of such a storm.
The great growth of trees everywhere here, and the practical
impenetrability of these forests on foot, owing to brush and bushes,
all green and growing in tangled jungle, is caused by the comparative
immunity of this country from the scourge of forest fires: this is
due to a phenomenal dampness of the climate—it rains, rains, and
drizzles here two-thirds of the time. The heaviest rains are local,
usually occurring on the western or ocean slopes of the islands
where the sea-winds, surcharged with moisture, first meet a barrier
to their flow and are thrown up into the cooler regions of the
atmosphere. It will be often noticed, from the steamer, that while
heavy rain is falling on the lofty hills and mountains of Prince of
Wales Island, it is clear and bright directly over the Strait of
Clarence to the eastward, and not far distant. June and July are
the most agreeable seasons of the year in which to visit the Sitkan
district, as a rule.
Many thoughtful observers have questioned the truth of the exuberant
growth of forestry peculiar to this region, as being due to that
incessant rainfall mentioned above; no doubt, it is not wholly
so; but yet, if the ravages of fire ran through the islets of the
archipelago, as it does in the interior slightly to the eastward,
the same order of vegetation here would be soon noted as we note it
there to-day; everywhere that you ascend the inlets of the mainland,
the shores become steep and rocky, with no beach, or very little; the
trees become scrubby in appearance, and are mingled with much dead
wood (_brulé_). Scarcely any soil clothes the slopes, and extensive
patches of bare rock crop out frequently everywhere.
Although the forest is omnipresent up to snow-line in this great
land-locked Sitkan district, yet it differs much in rankness of
growth and consequent value; it nowhere clothes the ridges or the
summits, which are 1,500 to 2,000 feet above tide-level; these peaks
and rocky elevations are usually bare, and show a characteristically
green-gray tint due to the sphagnous mosses and dwarfed brier and
bushes peculiar to this altitude, making an agreeable and sharp
contrast to that sombre and monotonous line of the conifers below.
The variety is limited, being substantially confined to three
evergreens, the spruce (_Abies sitkensis_ and _menziesii_), the
hemlock (_Abies mertensiana_), and the cedar (_Thuja gigantea_). The
last is the most valuable, is found usually growing near the shores,
and never in great quantities at any one place; wherever a sheltered
flat place is found, there these trees seem to grow in the greatest
luxuriance. In the narrower passages, where no seas can enter, the
forest seems almost to root in the beach, and its branches hang
pendent to the tides, and dip therein at high water. Where a narrow
beach, capped with warm sands and soil, occurs in sheltered nooks,
vividly green grass spreads down until it reaches the yellow sea-weed
“tangle” that grows everywhere in such places reached by high tide,
for, owing to the dampness of the climate, a few days exposure
at neap-tides fails to injure this fucoid growth. Ferns, oh! how
beautiful they are!—also grow most luxuriantly and even abundantly
upon the fallen, rotting tree-trunks, and even into the living
arboreal boughs, and green mosses form great club-like masses on the
branches.
Large trunks of this timber, overthrown and dead, become here at once
perfect gardens of young trees, moss, and bushes, even though lying
high above the ground and supported on piles of yet earlier windfall.
Similar features characterize the littoral forests of the entire
land-locked region of the northwest coast, from Puget Sound to the
mouth of Lynn Canal.
In addition to these overwhelmingly dominant conifers already
specified, a few cottonwoods and swamp-maples and alders are
scattered in the jungle which borders the many little streams and
the large rivers like the Stickeen, Tahko, and Chilkat. Crab-apples
(_Pyrus rivularis_) form small groves on Prince of Wales Island,
where the beach is low and capped with good soil. Then on the
exposed, almost bare rocks of the western hilltops of the islands of
the archipelago, a scrub pine (_Pinus contorta_) is found; it also
grows in small clumps here and there just below the snow-line on
the mountains generally. Berries abound; the most important being
the sal-lal (_Gaultheria shallow_)—they are eaten fresh in great
quantities, and are also dried for use in winter—and another small
raspberry (_Rubus sp._), a currant (_Ribes sp._), and a large juicy
whortleberry. Of course these berries do not have the flavor or body
which we prize at home in our small fruits of similar character—but
up here they, in the absence of anything better or as good, are eaten
with avidity and relish, even by the white travellers who happen to
be around when the fruit is ripe; wild strawberries appear in
sheltered nooks; a wild gooseberry too is found, but it, like the
crab-apple of Prince of Wales Island, is not a favorite—it is drastic.
[Illustration: KOOTZNAHOO INLET
Characteristic view of scenery in the Sitkan Archipelago. The high
lands and peaks of Admiralty Island in the distance; Indians fishing
for halibut over rocky shoals in the foreground. An October sketch,
looking East from Chatham Straits]
We find in many places throughout this district highland moors,
which constitute the level plateau-summits of ridges and mountain
foothills; these areas are always sparsely timbered, covered by a
thick carpet of sphagnous heather, and literally brilliant in June
and July with the spangled radiance of an extensive variety of
flowering annuals and biennials. In these moorland mantles, which
are usually soaked full of moisture so as to be fairly spongy under
foot, cranberries flourish, of excellent flavor, and quite abundant,
though, compared with our choice Jersey and Cape Cod samples, they
are very small.
Certainly the scenery of this Venetian wilderness of Lower Alaska is
wonderful and unrivalled—the sounds, the gulfs, bays, fiörds, and
river-estuaries are magnificent sheets of water, and the snow-capped
peaks, which spring abruptly from their mirrored depths, give the
scene an ever-changing aspect. At places the ship seems to really be
at sea, then she enters a canal whose lofty walls of syenite, slate,
and granite shut out the light of day, and against which her rigging
scrapes, and the passenger’s hand may almost touch—a hundred thousand
sparkling streams fall in feathery cascades, adown their mural
heights, and impetuous streams beat themselves into white foam as
they leap either into the eternal depths of the Pacific or its deep
arms.
Probably no one point in the Sitkan archipelago is invested by nature
with a grander, gloomier aspect than is that region known as the
eastern shore of Prince Frederick’s Sound, where the mountains of
the mainland drop down abruptly to the seaside; here a spur of the
coast range, opposite Mitgon Islet, presents an unusually dreadful
appearance, for it rises to a vast height with an inclination
toward and over the water: the serrated, jagged summits are loaded
with an immense quantity of ice and snow, which, together with the
overhanging masses of rock, seems to cause its sea-laved base to
fairly totter under that stupendous weight overhead; the passage
beneath it, in the canoe of a traveller, is simply awful in its dread
suggestion, and few can refrain from involuntary shuddering as they
sail by and gaze upward.
A word about the Sitkan climate: you are not going to be very cold
here even in the most severe of winters, nor will you complain of
heat in the most favorable of summers; it maybe best epitomized by
saying in brief that the weather is such that you seldom ever find a
clean cake of ice frozen in the small fresh-water ponds six inches
thick; and you never will experience a summer warm enough to ripen
a head of oats. The first impression usually made upon the visitor
is that it is raining, raining all the time, not a pouring rain or
shower, then clearing up quickly, but a steady “driz-driz-drizzle”;
it rained upon the author in this manner seventeen consecutive
days in October, 1866, accompanied by winds from all points of the
compass. Therefore, by contrast, the relatively clear and dry months
of June and July in the archipelago are really delightful—clear and
pleasant in the sun, and cool enough for fires indoors—then you have
about eighteen hours of sunshine and six hours of twilight.
It is very seldom that the zero-point is ever recorded at tide-level
during winter here, though in January, 1874, it fell to —7° Fah.; the
thermometer at no time in the winter preceding registered lower than
11° above. A late blustering spring and an early, vigorous winter
often join hands over a very backward summer—about once or twice
every five years; these are the backward seasons; then the first
frost in the villages and tidal bottoms occurs about the 28th to 31st
of October, soon followed by the rain turning to snow, being as much
as three feet deep on the level at times. Severe thunderstorms, with
lightning, often take place during these violent snowfalls in the
winter—strange to say they are not heard or seen in the summer! Snow
and rain and sleet continue till the end of April—sometimes as late
as the 10th of May, before giving way to the enjoyable season of June
and July. Then again the mild winters are marked by no frost to speak
of—perhaps the coldest period will have been in November, little or
no snow, six or seven inches at the most, and much clear and bracing
weather.
The average rainfall in the Sitkan district is between eighty-four
and eighty-six inches annually—it is a very steady average, and
makes no heavier showing than that presented by the record kept
on the coast of Oregon and Vancouver’s Island. A pleasant season
in the archipelago will give the observer about one hundred fair
days; the rest of the year will be given over to rain, snow, and
foggy-shrouds, which wet like rain itself.[11] A most careful search
during the last hundred years has failed to disclose in all the
extent of this Sitkan region an arable or bottom-land piece large
enough to represent a hundred-acre farm, save in the valley of the
Tahkoo River, where for forty or fifty miles a low, level plateau
extends, varying in width from a few rods to half a mile, between the
steep mountain walls that compass it about. Red-top and wild timothy
grasses grow here in the most luxuriant style, as they do for that
matter everywhere else in the archipelago on little patches of open
land along the streams and sea-beaches; the humidity of the climate
makes the cost of curing hay, however, very great, and prevents the
profitable ranging of cattle.
We have strayed from the landing which we made at Wrangel, and,
returning to the contemplation of that town, candor compels an
exclamation of disappointment—it is not inviting, for we see nothing
but a straggling group of hastily erected shanties and frame
store-houses, which face a rickety wharf and a dirty trackway just
above the beach-level; a dense forest and tangled jungle spring
up like a forbidding wall at the very rear of the houses, which
are supplemented by a number of Indian rancheries that skirt the
beach just beyond, and hug the point; this place, however, though
now in sad decline, was a place of much life and importance during
1875-79, when the Cassiar gold-excitement in British Columbia, via
the Stickeen River, drew many hundreds of venturesome miners up here,
and through Wrangel _en route_. This forlorn spot was still earlier a
centre of even greater stir and activity, for, in 1831, the Russians,
fearing that they would be forced into war with the Hudson’s Bay
people, made a quick movement, came down here from Sitka, and built
a bastioned log fortress right where the present Siwash rancheries
stand. Lieutenant Zarenbo, who engineered the construction, called
his work “Rédoute Saint Dionys,” and had scarcely got under cover
when he was attacked by several large bateaux, manned by employés
of the great English company; he fired upon them, beat them off, and
held his own so well that the grateful Baron Von Wrangel, who then
was governor-in-chief, bestowed the name of the plucky officer upon
the large, rugged island which overshadows the scene of the conflict,
and which it bears upon every chart to-day.[12]
Again, in 1862, the solitude of Wrangel was broken by the sudden
eruption of over two thousand British Columbia and Californian
miners, who rushed up the Stickeen River on a gold “excitement.”
Quite a fleet of sail and steam-vessels hung about the place for a
brief season, when the flurry died out, and the restless gold-hunters
fled in search of other diggings, taking all their belongings with
them.
The steamer does not tarry long at Wrangel; a few packages fall
upon the shaky wharf, the captain never leaves the bridge, and in
obedience to his tinkling bell, the screw scarce has paused ere it
starts anew, and the vessel soon heads right about and west, out to
the open swell of the great Pacific; but it takes six or seven hours
of swift travel over the glassy surface of Clarence Strait to pass
the rough heads of Kuprianov Island on the right, flanked by the
sombre, densely wooded elevations of Prince of Wales on the left.
The lower, yet sharper spurs of the straggling Kou forests force
our course here directly to the south. It is said that more than
fifteen hundred islands, big and little, stud this archipelago from
Cape Disappointment to Cross Sound. You will not attempt to count
them, but readily prefer to believe it is so. From the great bulk of
Vancouver’s Land to the tiny islet just peeping above water, they are
all covered to the snow-line from the sea-level with an olive-green
coniferous forest—islands right ahead, islands on every side, islands
all behind. You stand on deck and wonder where the egress from the
unruffled inland lake is to be as you enter it; no possible chance to
go ahead much faster, is your constant thought, which keeps following
every sharp turn of the vessel as she rapidly swings right about
here, there, and everywhere, in following the devious path of this
weird course to her destination.
Unless the fog shuts down very thick, the darkness of night does
not impede the steamer’s steady progress, for the pilot sees the
mountain tops loom up darker against the blue-black sky, and with
unerring certainty he guides the helm. When the ship is running
through tide-rapids in the night, the boiling phosphorescence of
the foaming waters, as they rush noisily under our keel, gives a
fresh zest to the novelty of the cruise, and the pilot’s cries of
command ring out in hoarse echoes over the surging tumult below;
meanwhile, the passengers anxiously and nervously watch the unquiet
turns of the trembling vessel—then suddenly the helm is put up, and
the steamer fairly bounds out of still water and the leeward of
Coronation Island, into the rhythmic roll of the vast billows of the
Pacific, which toss her in strange contrast to the even keel that has
characterized our long, land-locked sea-voyage up to this moment. The
wrinkled, rugged nose of Cape Ommaney looms right ahead in the north,
and soon we are well abreast of the mountainous front to the west
coast of Baranov Island, running swiftly into Sitka Sound.[13]
Cape Ommaney is a very remarkable promontory; it is a steep, bluffy
cliff, with a round, high rocky islet, lying close by and under
it. The eastern shore of that cape takes a very sharp northerly
direction, and thus makes this southern extremity of Baranov Island
an exceedingly narrow point of land. An unlucky sailor, Isaac
Wooden, fell overboard from Vancouver’s ship the _Discovery_, when
abreast of it and homeward bound, Sunday, August 24, 1794, and—was
drowned, after having safely passed through all the perils of that
most remarkable voyage, extended as it was over a period of four
consecutive years’ absence from home. The rock bears the odd name
“Wooden” in consequence.
The location of New Archangel, or Sitka village, is now conceded to
be the one of the greatest natural beauty and scenic effect that can
be found in all Alaska. The story of its occupation by the Russians
is a recitation of violent deeds and unflinching courage on the part
of the iron-willed Baranov and his obedient servants: he led the way
down here from Kadiak first, of all white men, in 1799, after hearing
the preliminary report of exploration made two years previously
by his lieutenant, Captain James Shields, an English adventurer
and shipbuilder, who entered the service of the Russian Company in
the Okotsk. Baranov, though small in stature, was possessed of
unusual physical endurance and muscular strength. He was absolutely
fearless; he never allowed any obstacle, no matter how serious,
which the elements or savage men were perpetually raising, to check
his advances. He loved to travel and explore, and possessed rare
executive or governing power over his rude and boisterous followers.
He soon realized that the establishment of the headquarters of the
company at St. Paul, Kadiak Island, was disadvantageous, and quickly
resolved to settle himself permanently in the Bay of Sitka, or
Norfolk Sound, where he could communicate with the vessels of other
nations and purchase supplies of them. Late in the autumn of 1799 he
sailed to this port in the brig _Catherine_, accompanied by a large
fleet of Aleutian and Kadiak sea-otter hunters with their bidarkas,
or skin-canoes. So abundant were sea-otters then, now so rare, that,
with the assistance of these native hunters, he secured over fifteen
hundred prime otter-skins in less than a month; then satisfied with
the trading resources of the locality, Baranov began the construction
of a stockaded post, the site selected for which was on the main
island, about six miles to the northward of the Sitkan town-site of
to-day. During the winter of 1799-1800 he and his whole force were
busily engaged in the erection of substantial log houses and the
surrounding stockade at this location. In the spring, two American
fur-trading vessels made their appearance here, and the owners began
to carry on a brisk traffic with the native Sitkans, right under the
eyes of Baranov. Knowing that this must be stopped, the energetic
Russian hastened back to Kadiak and set the machinery in motion to
that end. But his absence in the meantime from Sitka was improved
upon by the Koloshians, who, acting in preconcerted plan, utterly
destroyed the post. These savages on a certain day, when most of the
garrison was far outside of the stockade, hunting and fishing, rushed
in, several thousand of them, upon a few armed men, surrounded the
block-house, assailed it from all sides at once, and soon forced
an entrance. They massacred the defenders to a man, including the
commander, Medvaidniekov, and carried off more than three thousand
sea-otter pelts from the warehouses.
During this wild and bloody fight an English ship was lying at anchor
far down the harbor, some ten miles from the scene; three Russians
and five Aleutes only, out of the hunting parties absent at the time
of the attack, managed to secrete themselves in the woods, and hide
until they could gain the decks and protection of this vessel, and
thus acquaint her captain, Barber, of the outrage; he contrived to
entice two of the leading Sitkan chiefs on board of his ship, plied
them with drink, and soon had them securely ironed, and then, having
quite a battery of guns, he was able to make his own terms for
their release; this was done after the surrender of eighteen women
(captured outside of the stockade) and 2,000 sea-otter skins was made
to Barber, who at once sailed for Kadiak. Here the British seaman
demanded from Baranov the salvage of 50,000 rubles for rescuing his
men and women and property; with this demand the Russian could not or
would not comply; but, after many days in amicable argument, Captain
Barber received and accepted 10,000 rubles in full settlement.
While the lurid light of the burning wreck of this first Sitkan
post was flashing over the sound, and the Koloshes were howling and
dancing around it in their fiendish exultation, nearly two hundred
Aleutian hunters were surprised and slaughtered at various points
in the vicinity, and a party of over one hundred of these simple
natives perished almost to a man, on the same day, from eating
poisonous mussels which they detached from the rocks in the strait
that separates Baranov Island from Chichagov; that canal still
bears the name commemorative of this dreadful accident—it is called
“Pogeebshie”[14] or “Destruction” Strait.
The enraged Russian manager was unable, by reason of a complicated
flood of troubles with his subordinates elsewhere, to revisit
Sitka until the spring of 1804; he then came down from Kadiak in a
squadron consisting of three small sloops, in all considerably less
than 100 tons burden; these craft he had built and fitted out in
Prince William Sound and Yakootat Bay during the preceding winter.
He had with him forty Russians and three hundred Aleutian sea-otter
hunters. With this small force the indomitable man resolved to attack
and subjugate a body of not less than five or six thousand fierce,
untamed savages, who were flushed with their cruel successes, and
eager to shed more blood. He was unexpectedly strengthened by the
sudden appearance in the bay of the _Neva_, 400 tons, which had
sailed from London to Kadiak, and arrived just after Baranov’s
departure, but Captain Lissiansky, learning of the object of his
trip, determined to assist in rebuilding the Sitkan post and to
punish the Indians, so he sailed at once for the place.
Baranov found the Sitkans all entrenched behind a huge stockade
that was thrown up on the same lofty rocky site of the governor’s
castle in the town to-day. They reviled him and defied him, taunted
him with his misfortunes, and easily succeeded in exciting him to
a ferocious attack, in which, despite his demoniacal bravery, he
was beaten off at first with the loss of eleven white sailors and
hunters, he himself badly wounded, together with Lieutenants Arbuzov
and Povalishin. The darkness of a violent rain and sleet storm, with
night close at hand, caused a cessation, for the time, of further
hostilities, but in the morning the ship and the little sloops
approached the beach and opened upon the startled savages a hot
bombardment—the splintering of their log bastions and the terrible,
unwonted noise accompanying, was too much for their self-control,
and though, during the whole day they refused to fly, yet when night
again came round they abandoned their fortification, and retreated
silently and quickly in canoes to Chatham Strait.
[Illustration: The Castle of Baranov: 1809-1827.
[_Wholly remodelled and rebuilt by his successors._]]
The Russians then took possession of the present town-site of Sitka.
The rocky eminence which the savages had so bravely held was cleared
of their rude barricades, and the foundations were laid then to the
castle that still stands so conspicuous. Around this nucleus the
Russian settlement soon sprang up in a few months, a high stockade
was then erected between the village and the Indian rancheries,
which still stands in part to-day; it was bastioned and fortified
with an armament of three-pounder brass guns. From this time on the
supremacy of the Russians was never questioned by the Indians of the
Sitkan archipelago. The reckless daring of Baranov, evinced by his
personal bearing at the head of a handful of men in repeated attacks
upon the castle-rock encampment was exaggerated by the savages in
repetition among themselves, until his name to them became synonymous
with a charmed life and supreme authority. Baranov himself called
this spot the final headquarters of the Russian American Company,
and henceforth it became so, and it was officially known as New
Archangel; but the tribal name of the savages who lived just outside
the stockade fence was “Seet-kah,” and soon the present designation
was used by all visitors and Russians alike, brevity and euphony
making it “Sitka.”
It is not probable that the beautiful vistas of this sound influenced
Baranov in the slightest when he selected it for his base of
operations; but there must have been mornings and evenings when
this hardy man looked at them with some responsive pleasure, for
certainly the human being who could remain insensible to their scenic
glories must be one without a drop of warm blood in his veins. Those
high-peaked summits of the Baranov Mountains, which overshadow
the town on the east, destroy, in a great measure, the effects of
sunrise; but the transcendent glow of sundown colors is the glow that
floods the crown and base of Mt. Edgecumb on the western horizon
of the bay, and repeats its radiance in tipping with golden gild
the host of tiny islets which stud the flashing waters, to burn in
lingering brightness on the peaks of Verstova and her sister hills,
when all else is in darkness or its shades around about.
The most characteristic and expressive single view of Sitka is that
one afforded from Japan Island, which is close by and right opposite
the town: the place was in its greatest architectural grandeur prior
to the departure of the Russians, in 1866. The lofty peak which rises
abruptly back of the village is Verstova, to the bald summit of
which a champagne picnic by the Russians was religiously made every
summer. Although the mountain is slightly under three thousand feet
in altitude and seemingly right at hand, yet the journey to its
crest is one that taxes the best physical energies of strong men. The
forest is so dense, so damp, the underbrush so thick and so tangled,
that the walk requires a supreme bodily effort, if the trip be made
up there and back in the same day.
This view from “Yahponskie” gives an exceedingly good idea of the
ultra-mountainous character of Baranov Island, much better than any
power of verbal description can. It also illustrates the futility
of land travel in the Sitkan archipelago, and affords ample reason
for the utter absence of all roads, even footpaths, in that entire
region; it also preserves the somewhat imposing front which the
extensive warehouses and official quarters of the Russian American
Company presented in 1866, before their transfer to us, and the
ravages of fire and that decay which has since well-nigh destroyed
them; it recalls the shipyards and the brass and iron foundries and
machine-shops that have not even a vestige of their existence on that
ground to-day, and it outlines a larger Indian village than the one
we find there now.
For the objects of self-protection and comfort the Russians built
large apartment-houses or flats, and lived in them at Sitka. Several
of these dwellings were 150 feet in length by 50 to 80 feet in depth,
three stories high, with huge roof-attics. They were constructed of
big spruce logs, smoothly trimmed down to 12’ × 12’ timbers. These
were snugly dovetailed at the corners, and the expansive roof covered
with sheet-iron. The exteriors were painted a faint lemon-yellow,
while the iron roof everywhere glistened with red-ochre. The windows
were uniformly small, but fitted very neatly in tasteful casemates,
and usually with double sashes. Within, the floors were laid of
whipsawed planks, tongued and grooved by hand and highly polished.
The inner walls were “ceiled” up on all sides and overhead by light
boards, and usually papered showily. The heavy, unique Russian
furniture was moved in upon rugs of fur and tapestry, and then these
people bade defiance to the elements, no matter how unruly, and led
therein the most enjoyable of physical lives. The united testimony of
all travellers, who were many, and who shared the hospitality of the
Russians at Sitka, is one invariable tribute to the excellence and
the comfort of their indoor living at New Archangel.
[Illustration: A GLIMPSE OF SITKA
View in Sitka Sound, looking up towards the town: Mt. Verstova, in
the middle distance, and the rugged granitic peaks of Indian River on
the horizon. Sitkan Indians running down to Borka Islet for halibut.
June, 1874]
The shipyard of Sitka was as complete as any similar establishment
in the Russian Empire. It was actively employed in boat and
sail-vessel building, being provided with all sorts of workshops and
materials. Experiments were also instituted and prosecuted, to
some extent, in making bricks, so much prized in the construction of
the big conventional Russian “stoves,” the turning of wooden-ware,
the manufacture of woollen stuffs from the crude material brought
up from California; but the great cost of importing skilled labor
from far-distant Russia, and the relative expense of maintaining it
here, caused the financial failure of all these undertakings. Much
money was also wasted in attempting to make iron out of the different
grades of ore found in many sections of the country. The only real
advantage that the company ever reaped from the workshops at Sitka
was that which accrued to it from the manufacture of agricultural
implements, which it sold to the indolent rancheros of California
and Mexico. Thousands of the primitive ploughshares and rude hoes
and rakes used in those countries then were made here; also axes,
hatchets, and knives were turned out by industrious Muscovites for
Alaskan post-trading. The foundry was engaged most of the time in
making the large iron and brazen bells which every church and mission
from Bering’s Straits to Mexico called for. Most of these bells
are still in use or existence, and give ample evidence of skilful
workmanship, and of this early development of a unique industry on
our northern coast.
Naturally enough the contrast of what the Russian Sitka was, with
what the American Sitka is to-day, is a striking one: then a
force of six or eight hundred white men, with wives and families,
busily engaged as above sketched, directed by a retinue of fifty
or sixty subalterns of the governor, lived right under the windows
of his castle and within the stockade; then the Greek-Catholic
Bishop of all Alaska also resided there, with a staff of fifteen
ordained priests and scores of deacons all around him, maintained
regardless of expense, at this time, by the Imperial Government in
that ecclesiastical pomp so peculiar to this Oriental Church—then a
fleet of twelve to fifteen sailing-vessels, from ships in size to
mere sloops, with two ocean-going steamers, made the waters of the
bay their regular rendezvous, their hardy crews assisting to give
life and stir to the town, shore, and streets—all this ordered by
the concentration of the entire trade and commerce of Alaska at New
Archangel.
Now, how different! As you step ashore you scarcely pause to notice
the handful of whites who have assembled on the wharf, but at once
the impression of general decay is made upon your mind; the houses,
mostly the original Russian buildings, are settling here, there,
and everywhere, rotting on their foundations, and scarcely more than
half of them even occupied, while the combined population of some
three hundred souls in number peers at you from every corner. The
great majority of these people are the half-breeds, or “Creoles,”
or the descendants of Indians and Russians; some of them are tall
and well-formed, and a few of them good-looking, but they are nearly
all short-statured, abject, and apathetic. Yet in one respect Sitka
has vastly improved under American supremacy—she has become clean;
for although the Russian officers kept the immediate surroundings
of their residences in good order, still they never looked after
the conduct of the rest of the town. There were, in their time,
no defined streets or sidewalks, and mud and filth were knee-deep
and most noisome. Our military authorities, however, who first
took charge immediately after the transfer, and who are proverbial
for cleanliness and neatness in garrison life, made the sanitary
reformation of Sitka an instant and imperative duty; the slimy walks
were soon planked, the muddy streets were gravelled and curbed, the
main street especially widened, the oldest houses were repainted,
and where dilapidated, repaired, and things put into shape most
thoroughly; they also graded and sauntered over the first wagon-road
ever opened in Alaska, which they constructed, from the steamers’
landing under the castle, back bordering the bay to Indian River,
over a mile in length.
But the pomp and circumstance of the old castle—still the most
striking artificial feature now in all Alaska—will never wake to the
echoes of that proud and lavish hospitality which once reigned within
its walls, and when the flashing light in its lofty cupola carried
joy out over the dark waters of the sound to the hearts of inbound
mariners, who came safely into anchor by its gleaming—the elegant
breakfasts and farewell dinners given to favored guests, where the
glass, the plate, viands, wines and appointments were fit for regal
entertainment itself—all these have vanished, and naught but the
uneven, slowly settling floors, warped doors, and general mouldiness
of the present hour greets the inquiring eye. So heavy are its
timbers, and so faithfully were they keyed together, that in spite
of neglect, the ravages of decay and frequent vandalism, yet, in all
likelihood, an age will elapse ere the structure is removed by these
destroying agencies now so actively at work upon it. Moved by the
desire to preserve the salient features of this historical structure,
the author made, during one clear June day, a pre-Raphaelitic
drawing of it,[15] as his vessel swung at anchor under its shadows;
in it the reader will observe that the rocky eminence which it crowns
is covered to the very foundations and to the promenade cribbing
that surrounds them, with a thick growth of alders, stunted spruces,
and other indigenous vegetation. That walk around the castle, which
was artificially reared thereon, gives a most commanding view
of everything, over all objects in the town and Indian village,
and sweeps the landscape and the sound. Another picture from the
promenade walk under the flagstaff is also given, in order that a
faint effect may be conveyed to the reader of the exceeding beauty of
the island-studded Bay of Sitka. Descending and standing immediately
under the castle on the beach, to the right you have a perfect Alpine
scene as you look east along the pebbly shore to the living green
flanks of Mount Verstova, which carry your gaze up quickly over
rolling purplish curtains of fog to the snowy crest of it, and other
lofty crests _ad infinitum_, over far beyond. The little trading
stores on the left in this view hide the track so well known in Sitka
as the “Governor’s Walk,” for this is the only direction out to the
saw-mill in the middle distance, in which the earth lies smooth and
dry enough in all this archipelago for a clean mile-jaunt. These
still blue and green waters are alive with food-fishes, while the
dense coverts on the mountains harbor grouse and venison in lavish
supply; the oyster and the lobster you have not, but the clam and the
crab are here in overwhelming abundance and excellence. “Ah!” you
exclaim, “if it were not for this eternal rain, this everlasting damp
precipitation, how delightful this place would be to live in!”
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The superficial area of Alaska is 512,000 square miles; or, in
round numbers, just one sixth of the entire extent of the United
States and Territories. Population in 1880: Whites, 430; Creole,
1,756; Eskimo, 17,617; Aleut, 2,145; Athabascan, 3,927; Thlinket,
6,763—total, 33,426.
[7] When the Cassiar mines in British Columbia were prosperous,
Wrangel was a very busy little transfer-station—the busiest spot in
Alaska; then between four and five thousand miners passed through
every spring and fall as they went up to and came down from the
diggings on the Stickeen tributaries above; they left a goodly share,
if not most, of their earnings among the store and saloon keepers
of Wrangel. The fort is now deserted—the town nearly so; the whole
place is rapidly reverting to the Siwashes. Government buildings
erected here by the U. S. military authorities, which cost the public
treasury $150,000, were sold in 1877, when the troops were withdrawn,
for a few hundreds. The main street is choked with decaying logs and
stumps. A recent visitor declares, upon looking at the condition of
this place in the summer of 1883: “Fort Wrangel is a fit introduction
to Alaska. It is most weird and wild of aspect. It is the key-note to
the sublime and lonely scenery of the north. It is situated at the
foot of conical hills, at the head of a gloomy harbor, filled with
gloomy islands. Frowning cliffs, beetling crags, stretch away on all
sides surrounding it. Lofty promontories guard it, backed by range
after range of sharp, volcanic peaks, which in turn are lost against
lines of snowy mountains. It is the home of storms. You see that in
the broken pines on the cliff-sides, in the fine wave-swept rocks, in
the lowering mountains. There is not a bright touch in it—not in its
straggling lines of native huts, each with a demon-like totem beside
it, nor in the fort, for that is dilapidated and fast sinking into
decay.”
[8] 14,708 feet.
[9] 13,400 feet.
[10] I am aware that geologists do not all subscribe to this view,
which was the doctrine of Agassiz.
[11] The chief signal officer of the U. S. Army has had a number of
meteorological observers stationed at half a dozen different posts in
Alaska, and has had this service fully organized up there during the
last ten years; the inquirer can easily gain access to a large amount
of published data touching this subject.
The mean temperature of the year will run throughout the months in
the Sitkan region about as follows—an average, for the time, of 44°
7’ Fah.
January, 29° 2’
February, 36° 4’
March, 37° 8’
April, 44° 7’
May, 45° 5’
June, 55° 3’
July, 55° 6’
August, 56° 4’
September, 51° 9’
October, 49° 2’
November, 36° 6’
December, 30° 2’
[12] Zarenbo Island—it blocks the northern end of Clarence Strait,
and affords many varied vistas of rare scenic beauty.
[13] Sitka port is on the west coast of Baranov Island; north
latitude 57° 02’ 52”; west longitude 135° 17’ 45”.
[14] Not “Peril,” as it is translated by American geographers and
printed on all of our Alaskan maps.
[15] This building, as it stands upon its foundations, is 140 feet in
length by 70 feet in width—two stories with lofts, capped with the
light-house cupola; these foundations rest upon the summit of the
rock, 60 feet above tide-water.