40 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



British Columbia, wlio, prospecting in every ravine and canon, never 

 let an opportunity pass to trade and trap for good furs, has also con- 

 tributed to this total stagnation of the business in the Sitkan region. 



The finest structure in Sitka to-day is the Greek church, which 

 alone did not pass from the custody of its original owners at the 

 time of the transfer. This building has been kept in repair, so that 

 its trim and unique architecture never fails to arrest the visitor's 

 attention and challenge inspection, especially of the interior. We 

 find the service of the church rich and profuse in silverware, can- 

 delabra, ornately framed pictures — oil-paintings of the saints — and 

 rich vestments ; two priests officiate, a reader chants rapid au- 

 tomatism, and a choir of small boys respond in shrill but pleasing 

 orisons ; instrumental music is banished from the services of the 

 Greek Church, and so are pews, chairs, and hassocks ; the Creole 

 congregation, men, women, and children, stand and kneel and cross 

 themselves, erect and bowed, for hours and hours at a time during 

 certain festivals, never moving a step from their positions. The 

 men stand on the right side of the vestibule, facing the altar, 

 while the women all stand by themselves, on the left, the children 

 at option as they enter. No one looks to the one side or the other, 

 but every face is riveted upon the priest, who says little, and is 

 busily engaged in symbolic worship. 



The Indians do not enter here, nor did they ever ; for them the 

 Eussians erected a small chapel, which still stands on the site of its 

 first location ; it is built against the inner side of the stockade, 

 and, like the old Lutheran church lower down in the town, it is fast 

 going to ruin ; the door is secured by one of those remarkable 

 Musc'ovitic padlocks— it is eight or ten inches long, five or six wdde, 

 and three deep ; these singular locks must be seen to be apiDreciated 

 in all of their clumsy strength. This little faded place of savage 

 worship was the scene in 1855 of the second and last stand ever 

 made by the Sitkan Indians in revolt against the Eussians. Those 

 savages, brooding over some petty indignities received from the 

 whites, became suddenly inflamed with passion, and a swarm of 

 armed warrioi'S from the adjacent rancheries rushed, one dusky 

 evening, upon the fortified palisade surrounding the village, and 

 began to cut and tear it down. The Eussians opened their brass 

 batteries of grape and round-shot upon the infm-iated, yelling 

 natives from the several block-houses which commanded the stock- 

 ade, but the Siwashes returned the fire fearlessly with their smooth- 



