Alaska Part 19

When dawn came the sound had ceased. Absolute silence reigned; nor was there any living object to be seen on the sh.o.r.e, save clouds of carrion birds, whose dark wings beat the still air above the fort. The Kolosh had fled; the fort was deserted by all save the dead. The bodies of thirty Kolosh warriors were found; also those of many children and dogs, which had been killed lest any cry from them should betray the direction of their flight.

The fort was destroyed by fire, and the construction of magazines, barracks, and a residence for Baranoff was at once begun. A stockade surrounded these buildings, each corner fortified with a block-house.

The garrison received the name of Novo Arkangelsk, or New Archangel. The tribal name of the Indians in that locality was Sitkah--p.r.o.nounced Seetkah--and this short and striking name soon attached itself permanently to the place.

Immense houses were built solidly and with every consideration for comfort and safety, and many families lived in each. They ranged in size from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet in length, and about eighty in width, and were from one to three stories high with immense attics. They were well finished and richly papered. The polished floors were covered with costly rugs and carpets, and the houses were furnished with heavy and splendid furniture, which had been brought from St.

Petersburg. The steaming bra.s.s samovar was everywhere a distinctive feature of the hospitality and good cheer which made Sitka famous.

To the gay and luxurious life, the almost prodigal entertainment of guests by Sitkans from this time on to 1867, every traveller, from writers and naval officers down to traders, has enthusiastically testified. At the first signal from a ship feeling its way into the dark harbor, a bright light flashed a welcome across the water from the high cupola on Baranoff's castle, and fires flamed up on Signal Island to beacon the way.

The officers were received as friends, and entertained in a style of almost princely magnificence during their entire stay--the only thing asked in return being the capacity to eat like gluttons, revel like roisterers, and drink until they rolled helplessly under the table; and, in Baranoff's estimation, these were small returns, indeed, to ask of a guest for his ungrudging and regal hospitality.

Visions of those high revels and glittering banquets of a hundred years ago come glimmering down to us of to-day. Beautiful, gracious, and fascinating were the Russian ladies who lived there,--if we are to believe the stories of voyagers to the Sitka of Baranoff's and Wrangell's times. Baranoff's furniture was of specially fine workmanship and exceeding value; his library was remarkable, containing works in nearly all European languages, and a collection of rare paintings--the latter having been presented to the company at the time of its organization.

Baranoff had left a wife and family in Russia. He never saw them again, although he sent allowances to them regularly. He was not bereft of woman's companionship, however, and we have tales of revelry by night when Baranoff alternately sang and toasted everybody, from the Emperor down to the woman upon his knee with whom he shared every sparkling gla.s.s. He had a beautiful daughter by a native woman, and of her he was exceedingly careful. A governess whom he surprised in the act of drinking a gla.s.s of liquor was struck in sudden blind pa.s.sion and turned out of the house. The following day he sent for her, apologized, and reinstalled her with an increased salary, warning her, however, that his daughter must never see her drink a drop of liquor. When in his most gloomy and hopeless moods, this daughter could instantly soothe and cheer him by playing upon the piano and singing to him songs very different from those sung at his drunken all-night orgies.

That there was a very human and tender side to Baranoff's nature cannot be doubted by those making a careful study of his tempestuous life. He was deeply hurt and humiliated by the insolent and supercilious treatment of naval officers who considered him of inferior position, notwithstanding the fact that he was in supreme command of all the Russian territory in America. From time to time the Emperor conferred honors upon him, and he was always deeply appreciative; and it is chronicled that when a messenger arrived with the intelligence that he had been appointed by the Emperor to the rank of Collegiate Councillor, Baranoff, broken by the troubles, hardships, and humiliations of his stormy life, was suddenly and completely overcome by joy. He burst into tears and gave thanks to G.o.d.

"I am a n.o.bleman!" he exclaimed. "I am the equal in position and the superior in ability of these insolent naval officers."

In 1812 Mr. Wilson P. Hunt, of the Pacific Fur Company, sailed from Astoria for Sitka on the _Beaver_ with supplies for the Russians. By that time Baranoff had risen to the t.i.tle and pomp of governor, and was living in splendid style befitting his position and his triumph over the petty officers, whose names are now insignificant in Russian history.

Mr. Hunt found this hyperborean veteran ensconced in a fort which crested the whole of a high, rocky promontory. It mounted one hundred guns, large and small, and was impregnable to Indian attack unaided by artillery. Here the old governor lorded it over sixty Russians, who formed the corps of the trading establishment, besides an indefinite number of Indian hunters of the Kodiak tribe, who were continually coming and going, or lounging and loitering about the fort like so many hounds round a sportsman's hunting quarters. Though a loose liver among his guests, the governor was a strict disciplinarian among his men, keeping them in perfect subjection and having seven guards on duty night and day.

Besides those immediate serfs and dependents just mentioned, the old Russian potentate exerted a considerable sway over a numerous and irregular cla.s.s of maritime traders, who looked to him for aid and munitions, and through whom he may be said to have, in some degree, extended his power along the whole Northwest Coast. These were American captains of vessels engaged in a particular department of trade. One of the captains would come, in a manner, empty-handed, to New Archangel.

Here his ship would be furnished with about fifty canoes and a hundred Kodiak hunters, and fitted out with provisions and everything necessary for hunting the sea-otter on the coast of California, where the Russians had another establishment. The ship would ply along the California coast, from place to place, dropping parties of otter hunters in their canoes, furnishing them only with water, and leaving them to depend upon their own dexterity for a maintenance. When a sufficient cargo was collected, she would gather up her canoes and hunters and return with them to Archangel, where the captain would render in the returns of his voyage and receive one-half of the skins as his share.

Over these coasting captains the old governor exerted some sort of sway, but it was of a peculiar and characteristic kind; it was the tyranny of the table. They were obliged to join in his "prosnics" or carousals and his heaviest drinking-bouts. His carousals were of the wildest and coa.r.s.est, his tempers violent, his language strong. "He is continually,"

said Mr. Hunt, "giving entertainment by way of parade; and if you do not drink raw rum, and boiling punch as strong as sulphur, he will insult you as soon as he gets drunk, which is very shortly after sitting down at table."

A "temperance captain" who stood fast to his faith and kept his sobriety inviolate might go elsewhere for a market; he was not a man after the governor's heart. Rarely, however, did any captain made of such unusual stuff darken the doors of Baranoff's high-set castle. The coasting captains knew too well his humor and their own interests. They joined with either real or well-affected pleasure in his roistering banquets; they ate much and drank more; they sang themselves hoa.r.s.e and drank themselves under the table; and it is chronicled that never was Baranoff satisfied until the last-named condition had come to pa.s.s. The more the guests that lay sprawling under the table, upon and over one another, the more easily were trading arrangements effected with Baranoff later on.

Mr. Hunt relates the memorable warning to all "flinchers" which occurred shortly after his arrival. A young Russian naval officer had recently been sent out by the Emperor to take command of one of the company's vessels. The governor invited him to one of his "prosnics" and plied him with fiery potations. The young officer stoutly maintained his right to resist--which called out all the fury of the old ruffian's temper, and he proceeded to make the youth drink, whether he would or not. As the guest began to feel the effect of the burning liquors, his own temper rose to the occasion. He quarrelled violently with his almost royal host, and expressed his young opinion of him in the plainest language--if Russian language ever can be plain. For this abuse of what Baranoff considered his magnificent hospitality, he was given seventy-nine lashes when he was quite sober enough to appreciate them.

With all his drinking and prodigal hospitality, Baranoff always managed to get his own head clear enough for business before sobriety returned to any of his guests, who were not so accustomed to these wild and constant revels of their host's; so that he was never caught napping when it came to bargaining or trading. His own interests were ever uppermost in his mind, which at such times gave not the faintest indication of any befuddlement by drink or by licentiousness of other kinds.

For more than twenty years Baranoff maintained a princely and despotic sway over the Russian colonies. His own commands were the only ones to receive consideration, and but scant attention was given by him to orders from the Directory itself. Complaints of his rulings and practices seldom reached Russia. Tyrannical, coa.r.s.e, shrewd, powerful, domineering, and of absolutely iron will, all were forced to bow to his desires, even men who considered themselves his superiors in all save sheer brute force of will and character. Captain Krusenstern, a contemporary, in his account of Baranoff, says: "None but vagabonds and adventurers ever entered the company's services as Promishleniks;"--uneducated Russian traders, whose inferior vessels were constructed usually of planks lashed to timbers and calked with moss; they sailed by dead reckoning, and were men controlled only by animal instincts and pa.s.sions;--"it was their invariable destiny to pa.s.s a life of wretchedness in America." "Few," adds Krusenstern, "ever had the good fortune to touch Russian soil again."

In the light of present American opinion of the advantages and joys of life in Russia, this nave remark has an almost grotesque humor. Like many of the brilliantly successful, but unscrupulous, men of the world, Baranoff seemed to have been born under a lucky star which ever led him on. Through all his desperate battles with Indians, his perilous voyages by sea, and the plottings of subordinates who hated him with a helpless hate, he came unharmed.

During his later years at Sitka, Baranoff, weighed down by age, disease, and the indescribable troubles of his long and faithful service, asked frequently to be relieved. These requests were ignored, greatly to his disappointment.

When, finally, in 1817, Hagemeister was sent out with instructions to a.s.sume command in Baranoff's place, if he deemed it necessary, the orders were placed before the old governor so suddenly and so unexpectedly that he was completely prostrated. He was now failing in mind, as well as body; and in this connection Bancroft adds another touch of ironical humor, whether intentional or accidental it is impossible to determine. "One of his symptoms of approaching imbecility," writes Bancroft, "being in his sudden attachment to the church. He kept constantly about him the priest who had established the first church at Sitka, and, urged by his spiritual adviser, made large donations for religious purposes."

The effect of the unexpected announcement is supposed to have shortened Baranoff's days. Lieutenant Yanovsky, of the vessel which had brought Hagemeister, was placed in charge by the latter as his representative.

Yanovsky fell in love with Baranoff's daughter and married her. It was, therefore, to his own son-in-law that the old governor at last gave up the sceptre.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by F. H. Nowell, Seattle

"OBLEUK," AN ESKIMO GIRL IN PARKA]

By strength of his unbreakable will alone, he arose from a bed of illness and painfully and sorrowfully arranged all the affairs of his office, to the smallest and most insignificant detail, preparatory to the transfer to his successor.

It was in January, 1818, that Hagemeister had made known his appointment to the office of governor; it was not until September that Baranoff had accomplished his difficult task and turned over the office.

There was then, and there is to-day, halfway between the site of the castle and Indian River, a gray stone about three feet high and having a flat, table-like surface. It stands on the sh.o.r.e beside the hard, white road. The lovely bay, set with a thousand isles, stretches sparkling before it; the blue waves break musically along the curving shingle; the wooded hills rise behind it; the winds murmur among the tall trees.

The name of this stone is the "blarney" stone. It was a favorite retreat of Baranoff's and there, when he was sunken in one of his lonely or despondent moods, he would sit for hours, staring out over the water.

What his thoughts were at such times, only G.o.d and he knew,--for not even his beloved daughter dared to approach him when one of his lone moods was upon him.

In the first hour that he was no longer governor of the country he had ruled so long and so royally, he walked with bowed head along the beach until he reached his favorite retreat. There he sat himself down and for hours remained in silent communion with his own soul. He had longed for relief from his arduous duties, but it had come in a way that had broken his heart. His government had at last listened to complaints against him, and, ungrateful for his long and faithful service, had finally relieved him with but scant consideration; with an abruptness and a lack of courtesy that had sorely wounded him.

Nearly thirty of his best years he had devoted to the company. He had conquered the savages and placed the fur trade upon a highly profitable basis; he had built many vessels and had established trading relations with foreign countries; forts, settlements, and towns had risen at his indomitable will. Sitka, especially, was his own; her storied splendor, whose fame has endured through all the years, she owed entirely to him; she was the city of his heart. He was her creator; his life-blood, his very heart beats, were in her; and now that the time had really come to give her up forever, he found the hour of farewell the hardest of his hard life. No man, of whatsoever material he may be made, nor howsoever insensible to the influence of beauty he may deem himself to be, could dwell for twenty years in Sitka without finding, when it came to leaving her, that the tendrils of her loveliness had twined themselves so closely about his heart that their breaking could only be accomplished by the breaking of the heart itself.

Of his kin, only a brother remained. The offspring of his connection with a Koloshian woman was now married and settled comfortably. A son by the same mistress had died. He had first thought of going to his brother, who lived in Kamchatka; but Golovnin was urging him to return to Russia, which he had left forty years before. This he had finally decided to do, it having been made clear to him that he could still be of service to his country and his beloved colonies by his experience and advice. Remain in the town he had created and ruled so tyrannically, and which he still loved so devotedly, he could not. The mere thought of that was unendurable.

All was now in readiness for his departure, but the old man--he was now seventy-two--had not antic.i.p.ated that the going would be so hard. The blue waves came sparkling in from the outer sea and broke on the curving shingle at his feet; the white and lavender wings of sea-birds floated, widespread, upon the golden September air; vessels of the fleet he had built under the most distressing difficulties and disadvantages lay at anchor under the castle wherein he had banqueted every visitor of any distinction or position for so many years, and the light from whose proud tower had guided so many worn voyagers to safety at last; the yellow, red-roofed buildings, the great ones built of logs, the chapel, the significant block-houses--all arose out of the wilderness before his sorrowful eyes, taking on lines of beauty he had never discovered before.

From this hour Baranoff failed rapidly from day to day. His time was spent in bidding farewell to the Russians and natives--to many of whom he was sincerely attached--and to places which had become endeared to him by long a.s.sociation. He was frequently found in tears. Those who have seen fair Sitka rising out of the blue and islanded sea before their raptured eyes may be able to appreciate and sympathize with the old governor's emotion as, on the 27th of November, 1818, he stood in the stern of the _Kutusof_ and watched the beloved city of his creation fade lingeringly from his view. He was weeping, silently and hopelessly, as the old weep, when, at last, he turned away.

Baranoff never again saw Sitka. In March the _Kutusof_ landed at Batavia, where it remained more than a month. There he was very ill; and soon after the vessel had again put to sea, he died, like Behring, a sad and lonely death, far from friends and home. On the 16th of April, 1819, the waters of the Indian Ocean received the body of Alexander Baranoff.

Notwithstanding his many and serious faults, or, possibly because of their existence in so powerful a character--combined as they were with such brilliant talent and with so many admirable and conscientious qualities--Baranoff remains through all the years the most fascinating figure in the history of the Pacific Coast. None is so well worth study and close investigation; none is so rich in surprises and delights; none has the charm of so lone and beautiful a setting. There was no littleness, no n.i.g.g.ardliness, in his nature. "He never knew what avarice was," wrote Khlebnikof, "and never h.o.a.rded riches. He did not wait until his death to make provision for the living, but gave freely to all who had any claim upon him."

He spent money like a prince. He received ten shares of stock in the company from Shelikoff and was later granted twenty more; but he gave many of these to his a.s.sociates who were not so well remunerated for their faithful services. He provided generously during his life for his family; and for the families in Russia of many who lost their lives in the colonies, or who were unable through other misfortunes to perform their duties in this respect.

Born of humble parentage in Kargopal, Eastern Russia, in 1747, he had, at an early age, drifted to Moscow, where he was engaged as a clerk in retail stores until 1771, when he established himself in business.

Not meeting with success, he four years later emigrated to Siberia and undertook the management of a gla.s.s factory at Irkutsk. He also interested himself in other industries; and on account of several valuable communications to the Civil Economical Society on the subject of manufacture he was in 1789 elected a member of the society.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by Dobbs, Nome

A NORTHERN MADONNA]

His life here was a humdrum existence, of which his restless spirit soon wearied. Acquainting himself with the needs, resources, and possibilities of Kamchatka, he set out to the eastward with an a.s.sortment of goods and liquors, which he sold to the savages of that and adjoining countries.

At first his operations were attended by success; but when, in 1789, two of his caravans were captured by Chuckchi, he found himself bankrupt, and soon yielded to Shelikoff's urgent entreaties to try his fortunes in America.

Such is the simple early history of this remarkable man. Not one known descendant of his is living to-day. But men like Baranoff do not need descendants to perpetuate their names.

Bancroft is the highest authority on the events of this period, his a.s.sistant being Ivan Petroff, a Russian, who was well-informed on the history of the colonies.

Many secret reasons have been suspected for the sale of the magnificent country of Alaska to the United States for so paltry a sum.

The only revenue, however, that Russia derived from the colonies was through the rich fur trade; and when, after Baranoff's death, this trade declined and its future seemed hopeless, the country's vast mineral wealth being unsuspected, Russia found herself in humor to consider any offer that might be of immediate profit to herself. For seven millions and two hundred thousands of dollars Russia cheerfully, because unsuspectingly, yielded one of the most marvellously rich and beautiful countries of the world--its valleys yellow with gold, its mountains green with copper and thickly veined with coal, its waters alive with fish and fur-bearing animals, its scenery sublime--to the scornful and unappreciative United States.

As early as the fifties it became rumored that Russia, foreseeing the entire decline of the fur trade, considered Alaska a white elephant upon its hands, and that an offer for its purchase would not meet with disfavor. The matter was discussed in Washington at various times, but it was not until 1866 that it was seriously considered. The people of the present state of Washington were among those most desirous of its purchase; and there was rumor of the organization of a trading company of the Pacific Coast for the purpose of purchasing the rights of the Russian-American Company and acquiring the lease of the _lisiere_ which was to expire in 1868. The Russian-American Company was then, however, awaiting the reply of the Hudson Bay Company concerning a renewal of the lease; and the matter drifted on until, in the spring of 1867, the Russian minister opened negotiations for the purchase of the country with Mr. Seward. There was some difficulty at first over the price, but the matter was one presenting so many mutual advantages that this was soon satisfactorily arranged.