Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska Part 5

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 munic.i.p.ality. I was half willing to believe that an underground pa.s.sage 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 cl.u.s.ter of tumbledown houses scattered along a bleak and rocky sh.o.r.e. 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 sh.o.r.e--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 pa.s.senger 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 sh.o.r.es, 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 inc.u.mbent 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 b.u.mblebees. 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 a.s.sistant 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 gra.s.sy street that stretches from the church porch to the sh.o.r.e 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 gra.s.sy 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 Inst.i.tute, 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 sh.o.r.e; 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.

CHAPTER XIII.

Katalan's Rock.

Katalan's Rock towers above the sea at the top corner of Sitka. Below it, on the one hand, the ancient colonial houses are scattered down the sh.o.r.e among green lawns like pasture lands, and beside gra.s.s-grown streets with a trail of dust in the middle of them. On the other hand, the Siwash Indian lodges are cl.u.s.tered all along the beach. This rancheria was originally separated from the town by a high stockade, and the huge gates were closed at night for the greater security of the inhabitants; but since the American occupation the gates have been destroyed, and only a portion of the stockade remains.

Katalan's Rock is steep enough to command the town, and ample enough to afford all the s.p.a.ce necessary for fortifications and the accommodation of troops and stores. A natural Gibraltar, it was the site of the first settlement, and has ever remained the most conspicuous and distinguished quarter of the colony. The first building erected on this rock was a block-house, which was afterward burned. A second building, reared on the ruins of the first, was destroyed by an earthquake; but a third, the colonial castle and residence of the governors, stands to this day. It crowns the summit of the rock, is one hundred and forty feet in length, seventy feet in depth, two stories with bas.e.m.e.nt and attic, and has a lookout that commands one of the most romantic and picturesque combinations of land and sea imaginable.

It is not a handsome edifice, nor is it in the least like a castle, nor like what one supposes a castle should be. Were it anywhere else, it might pa.s.s for the country residence of a gentleman of the old school, or for an unfashionable suburban hotel, or for a provincial seminary. It is built of solid cedar logs that seem destined to weather the storms of ages. These logs are secured by innumerable copper bolts; and the whole structure is riveted to the rocks, so that neither wind nor wave nor earthquake shock is likely to prevail against it.

Handsomely finished within, it was in the colonial days richly furnished; and as Sitka was at that time a large settlement composed of wealthy and highbred Russians, governed by a prince or a baron whose petty court was made up of the representatives of the rank and fashion of St. Petersburg and Moscow, the colonial castle was most of the time the scene of social splendor.

The fame of the brilliant and beautiful Baroness Wrangell, first chatelaine of the castle, lives after her. She was succeeded by the wife of Governor Kupreanoff, a brave lady, who in 1835 crossed Siberia on horseback to Behring Sea on her way to Sitka. Later the Princess Maksontoff became the social queen, and reigned in the little castle on Katalan's Rock as never queen reigned before. A flagship was anch.o.r.ed under the windows, and the proud Admiral spent much of his time on sh.o.r.e. The officers' clubhouse, yonder down the gra.s.sy street, was the favorite lounging place of the navy. The tea-gardens have run to seed, and the race-course is obliterated, where, doubtless, fair ladies and brave men disported themselves in the interminable twilights of the Alaskan summer. In the reign of the Princess Maksontoff the ladies were first shown to the sideboard. When they had regaled themselves with potent punch and caviare, the gentlemen followed suit. But the big brazen samovar was forever steaming in the grand salon, and delicious draughts of caravan tea were in order at all hours.

What days they were, when the castle was thronged with guests, and those of all ages and descriptions and from every rank in and out of society!

The presidential levee is not more democratic than were the _fetes_ of the Princess Maksontoff. To the music of the Admiral's band combined with the castle orchestra, it was "all hands round." The Prince danced with each and every lady in turn. The Princess was no less gracious, for all danced with her who chose, from the Lord High Admiral to midshipmite and the crew of the captain's gig.

You will read of these things in the pages of Lutka, Sir George Simpson, Sir Edward Belcher, and other early voyagers. They vouch for the unique charm of the colonial life at that day. Washington Irving, in his "Astoria," has something to say of New Archangel (Michael), or "Sheetka," as he spells it; but it is of the time when the ships of John Jacob Astor were touching in that vicinity, and the reports are not so pleasing.

While social life in the little colony was still more enjoyable, a change came that in a single hour reversed the order of affairs. For years Russia had been willing, if not eager, to dispose of the great lands that lay along the northwestern coast of America. She seemed never to have cared much for them, nor to have believed much in their present value or possible future development. No enterprise was evinced among the people: they were comparative exiles, who sought to relieve the monotony of their existence by one constant round of gaity. _Soirees_ at the castle, tea-garden parties, picnics upon the thousand lovely isles that beautify the Sitkan Sea; strolls among the sylvan retreats in which the primeval forest, at the very edge of the town, abounds; fishing and hunting expeditions, music, dancing, lively conversation, strong punch, caviare and the steaming samovar,--those were the chief diversions with which n.o.ble and serf alike sought to lighten the burden of the day.

While Russia was willing to part with the lone land on the Pacific, she was determined that it should not pa.s.s into the hands of certain of the powers for whom she had little or no love. Hence there was time for the United States to consider the question of a purchase and to haggle a little over the price. For years the bargain hung in the balance. When it was finally settled, it was settled so suddenly that the witnesses had to be wakened and called out of their beds. They a.s.sembled secretly, in the middle of the night, as if they were conspirators; and before sunrise the whole matter was fixed forever.

On the 18th of October, 1867, three United States ships of war anch.o.r.ed off Katalan's Rock. These were the Ossipee, the Jamestown and the Resaca. In the afternoon, at half-past three o'clock, the terrace before the castle was surrounded by United States troops, Russian soldiers, officials, citizens and Indians. The town was alive with Russian bunting, and the ships aflutter with Stars and Stripes and streamers.

There was something ominous in the air and in the sunshine. Bang! went the guns from the Ossipee, and the Russian flag slowly descended from the lofty staff on the castle; but the wind caught it and twisted it round and round the staff, and it was long before a boatswain's chair could be rigged to the halyards, and some one hauled up to disentangle the rebellious banner.

Meanwhile the rain began to fall, and the Princess Maksontoff was in tears. It was a dismal hour for the proud court of the doughty governor.

The Russian water battery was firing a salute from the dock as the Stars and Stripes were climbing to the skies--the great continent of icy peaks and pine was pa.s.sing from the hands of one nation to the other. In the silence that ensued, Captain Pestehouroff stepped forward and said: "By authority of his Majesty the Emperor of Russia, I transfer to the United States the Territory of Alaska." The prince governor then surrendered his insignia of office, and the thing was done. In a few months' time fifty ships and four hundred people had deserted Sitka; and to-day but three families of pure Russian blood remain. Perhaps the fault-finding which followed this remarkable acquisition of territory on the part of the United States government--both the acquisition and the fault-finding were on the part of our government--had best be left unmentioned. Now that the glorious waters of that magnificent archipelago have become the resort of summer tourists, every man, woman and child can see for his, her and its self; and this is the only way in which to convince an American of anything.

Thirty years ago Sitka was what I have attempted to describe above.

To-day how different! Pa.s.sing its barracks at the foot of Katalan's Rock, one sees a handful of marines looking decidedly bored if off duty.

The steps that lead up to the steep incline of the rock to the castle terrace are fast falling to decay. Weeds and rank gra.s.s trail over them and cover the whole top of the rock. The castle has been dismantled. The walls will stand until they are blown up or torn down, but all traces of the original ornamentation of the interior have disappeared. The carved bal.u.s.trades, the curious locks, k.n.o.bs, hinges, chandeliers, and fragments of the wainscoting, have been borne away by enterprising curio hunters. There was positively nothing left for me to take.

One may still see the chamber occupied by Secretary Seward, who closed the bargain with the Russian Government at $7,200,000, cash down. Lady Franklin occupied that chamber when she was scouring these waters in the fearless and indefatigable, but fruitless, search for the relics of the lost Sir John. One handsome apartment has been partially restored and suitably furnished for the use of the United States District Attorney.

Two rooms on the groundfloor are occupied by the signal officers; but the rest of the building is in a shameful condition, and only its traditions remain to make it an object of interest to every stranger guest.

It is said that twice in the year, at the dead hour of the night, the ghost of a bride wanders sorrowfully from room to room. She was the daughter of one of the old governors--a stern parent, who forced her into a marriage without love. On the bridal eve, while all the guests were a.s.sembled, and the bride, in wedding garments, was the centre of attraction, she suddenly disappeared. After a long search her body was found in one of the apartments of the castle, but life was extinct. At Eastertide the shade of this sad body makes the round of the deserted halls, and in pa.s.sing leaves after it a faint odor of wild roses.

The bas.e.m.e.nt is half filled with old rubbish. I found rooms where an amateur minstrel entertainment had been given. Rude lettering upon the walls recorded the fact in lampblack, and a monster hand pointed with index finger to its temporary bar. Burnt-cork _debris_ was scattered about, and there were "old soldiers" enough on the premises to have quite staggered a moralist. The Muscovite reign is over. The Princess is in her grave on the hill yonder,--a grave that was forgotten for a time and lost in the jungle that has overgrown the old Russian cemetery. The Indians mutilated that tomb; but Lieutenant Gilman, in charge of the marines attached to the Adams, restored it; and he, with his men, did much toward preserving Sitka from going to the dogs.

Gone are the good old days, but the Americanized Sitka does not propose to be behind the times. I discovered a theatre. It was in one of the original Russian houses, doomed to last forever--a long, narrow hall, with a stage at the upper end of it. A few scenes, evidently painted on the spot and in dire distress; a drop-curtain depicting an utterly impracticable roseate ice-gorge in the ideal Alaska, and four footlights, const.i.tuted the sum total of the properties. The stage was six feet deep, about ten feet broad, and the "flies" hung like "bangs"

above the foreheads of the players. In the next room, convenient in case of a panic, was the Sitka fire department, consisting of a machine of one-man-power, which a small boy might work without endangering anybody or anything.

Suburban Sitka is sweet and sad. One pa.s.ses on the way to the wildwood, where everybody goes as often as may be,--a so-called "blarney stone."

Many a fellow has chipped away at that stone while he chatted with his girl--I suppose that is where the blarney comes in,--and left his name or initials for a sacred memory. There are dull old Russian hieroglyphs there likewise. Love is alike in all languages, you know. The truth about the stone is merely this: it is a big soft stone by the sea, and of just the right height to rest a weary pilgrim. There old Baranoff, the first governor, used to sit of a summer afternoon and sip his Russian brandy until he was as senseless as the stone beneath him; and then he was carried in state up to the colonial castle and suffered to sober off.

Beyond the stone, and the curving beach with the gra.s.s-grown highway skirting it, is the forest; and through this forest is the lovers' lane, made long ago by the early colonists and kept in perfect trim by the latest,--a lane that is green-arched overhead and fern-walled on either side, and soft with the dust of dead pine boughs underfoot. There also are streams and waterfalls and rustic bridges such as one might look for in some stately park in England, but hardly in Alaska. Surely there is no bit of wilderness finer than this. All is sweet and grave and silent, save for the ripple of waters and the sighing of winds.

As for the Siwash village on the other side of Sitka, it is a Siwash village over again. How soon one wearies of them! But one ought never to weary of the glorious sea isles and the overshadowing mountains that lie on every side of the quaint, half-barbarous capital. Though it is dead to the core and beginning to show the signs of death, it is one of the dreamiest spots on earth, and just the one for long summer solitude,--at least so we all thought, for on the morrow we were homeward bound.

CHAPTER XIV.

From the Far North.