30 



OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



Sitkan post and to punish the Indians, so he sailed at once for the 

 place. 



Baranov found the Sitkans all entrenched behind a huge stock- 

 ade that was thrown up on the same lofty rocky site of the gov- 

 ernor's castle in the town to-day. They reviled him and defied 

 him, taunted him with his misfortunes, and easily succeeded in ex- 

 citing 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 



The Castle of Baranov: 1809-1827. 

 [Wholly remodelled and rebuilt by his successors.} 



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 fortifica- 

 tion, and retreated silently and quickly in canoes to Chatham Strait. 

 The Russians then took possession of the present town-site of 

 Sitka. The rocky eminence which the savages had so bravely held 



