FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION. 31 



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 exag- 

 gerated 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 visit- 

 ors and Russians alike, brevity and euphony making it " Sitka." 



It is not probable that the beautiful vistas of this sound influ- 

 enced 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 over- 

 shadow 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 oppo- 

 site 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 relig- 

 iously made every summer. Although the mountain is slightly 

 under three thousand feet in altitude and seemingly right at hand, 



