Januaey 10, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



39 



Sitka was then a stockaded town of about 

 2,000 inhabitants, with a village of more 

 than 1,500 Indians outside the walls. The 

 settlement contained a Greek church, a 

 Lutheran chapel, shipyards, warehouses, 

 barracks, a clubhouse for the officers, a 

 sawmill, a foundry where brass, copper and 

 iron castings of moderate size were made, 

 beside numerous dwellings. All the build- 

 ings were log structures, their outer walls 

 washed with yellow ochre, the roofs chiefly 

 of metal painted red. High above the rest, 

 on an elevated rock, rose a large building, 

 in which the governor of the Russian col- 

 onies had his residence. This, known to 

 visitors as the ' castle,' was built of squared 

 logs, with two stories and a cupola, and was 

 defended by a battery. The warm colors 

 of the buildings, above which rose the pale 

 green spire and bulbous domes of the Greek 

 church, seen against steep, snow-tipped 

 mountains densely clothed with sombre 

 forests of spruce, produced a picturesque 

 effect unique among American settlements. 



Outside the walls, along the beach, was 

 a long row of large Indian houses, low and 

 wide, without windows, built of immense 

 planks painfully hewn out of single logs 

 with stone adzes, whose marks could still 

 be distinctly seen. They were entered by 

 small, low doors, rounded above, so that he 

 who came in must bend to an attitude ill 

 suited to defense. The front of each house 

 was painted with totemic emblems in red 

 ochre. Their dimensions were sometimes 

 as much as 40 by 60 feet, and the area 

 within formed one large room, with the raf- 

 ters visible overhead, the middle portion 

 floored only with bare earth, on which the 

 flre was built, the smoke escaping through 

 a large square hole in the roof. On either 

 side were raised platforms with small par- 

 titioned retreats like state rooms, each shel- 

 tering a single family. As many as one 

 hundred people sometimes dwelt in one of 

 these houses. The only ornaments were to- 



temic carvings, generally against the wall 

 opposite the entrance; overhead hung nets, 

 lines and other personal property, drying in 

 the smoke, along with strips of meat or fish 

 and fir branches covered with the spawn of 

 herring. 



On the bank, which rose behind the 

 houses, densly covered with herbage of a 

 vivid green, were seen curious box-like 

 tombs, often painted in gay colors or orna- 

 mented with totemic carvings or wooden 

 efiigies. These tombs sheltered the ashes 

 of their cremated dead. On the beach in 

 front of the houses lay numerous canoes 

 whose graceful shape and admirable work- 

 manship extorted praises from the earliest 

 as well as the later explorers of the coast. 

 When not in use these were always shel- 

 tered from the sun by branches of spruce 

 and hemlock or tarpaulins of refuse skins. 

 Among the canoes innumerable wolfish dogs 

 snarled, fought, or played the scavenger. 



The natives still retained to some extent 

 their original style of dress, modified now 

 and then by a Russian kerchief or a woolen 

 shirt. As a rule they were barefooted, 

 stolid, sturdy, uncompromising savages, who 

 looked upon the white man with a defiance 

 but slightly tempered with fear and a de- 

 sire to trade. The mission church of that 

 day was built into the stockade, with doors 

 entering it both from the Indian and Rus- 

 sian town. When services were held, the 

 outer door was opened, the town door closed 

 and stoutly barred. Once these fierce 

 clansmen had endeavored to rush into and 

 take the settlement Avhen the door leading 

 inward had been left unfastened. From 

 the time when the first white men to touch 

 these shores, Chirikoff's boat's crew in 

 1741, were without provocation massacred, 

 these natives had not failed to maintain 

 their reputation for courage, greed, treachery 

 and intelligence. 



These conditions outside the settlement 

 necessitated a military discipline within it. 



