MORNING – and the sun-warmed wharf alive with the
activity of steamer-dayl
Men and women of Sitka stood about chatting with
Tourists and white-jacketed waiters
traded vociferously with the Indian women along the
edge of the dock. Stevedores trundled their hand-
trucks through the leisurely crowd.
The only motor-truck in town chugged down, making
a detour to avoid a dog lying in the middle of Gov-
ernor’s Walk. Behind came the truck’s business rival
a big brown horse drawing a seatless wagon full of
little boys. Among the squirming youngsters stoo&the
bare-headed driver, a sun-browned, laughing young
giant with a shock of blond hair. The sleeves of his
flannel shirt and the legs of his overalls were ‘ stagged ‘
that is, cut off at elbow and knee. As he drew up before
the warehouse his animated load spilled out, their
happy shrieks mingling with the clatter of the steamer’s
winches and the cries of expectant sea-gulls hovering
about the galley portholes.
The North-Western lay at a pier built upon the spot
where, more than a century ago, old Baranov moored
the hulk he used as a landing-stage. They say when
the tide is very low you may still see its rotting,
weed-grown timbers glimmering far down on the bottom.
I can remember the great, squared-log warehouse the
Russians built here. It burned in 1916. It was twenty-
two fathoms long, with hand-hewn timbers overhead
and heavy doors hung on wrought-iron hinges. Like a
tunnel through its centre led a dusky, low-ceilinged
passage that hinted, with delightful fearsomeness, of
dungeons and grim medieval things, rather than of
cargoes of furs and ivory and rum.
Even in the inventory of the goods stored in the old
magazine during the days of the Russian occupation,
there is the romance of far places ; for it held ‘ almost
every article carried in European trade as a necessity,
and many of the luxuries — sugar and sealing-wax ;
tobacco, both Virginia and Kirghis, silk and broad-
cloth, calico, and Flemish linens, ravens, duck, and
frieze, arshins of blankets and poods of yarn ; vedras of
rum, cognac, and gin ; butter from the Yakut, from
California, and from Kodiak ; salt beef from Ross
Colony, from England, and from Kodiak ; beaver hats
and cotton socks.’
To-day, into the hold, the rattling winches swung
cases of canned salmon and crab which had been
stored in the two modern warehouses that replace the
old one of logs. I made my way between them and
came out on Governor’s Walk, which the Americans
have pointlessly rechristened Lincoln Street.
The Walk runs straight for two blocks to the Russian
Church of Saint Michael, a grey clap-boarded edifice
which seems to have settled serenely in the middle of
the road. On my left, against the green of the Marine
parade Ground, stood the quaint summer Market of
the Thlingets, a row of tiny, open-fronted tents which
housed colourful displays on counters barely a foot off
the ground. Behind each counter squatted slant-eyed
native women wrapped in shawls.
These brown yendors were listening, in scornful
amusement, to the tourists who bargained with them
in astonishing pidgin English. Often they ceased nego-
tiations altogether to hail one another and in excellent
mission English exchange uncomplimentary remarks
about their customers. But they had soft eyes for the
ship’s gold-braided officers, who gave them friendly
greetings. And they clapped and crooned with ap-
proval when the musicians from the steamer — four
university boys on vacation — capered and sang down
the sunny roadway, arraying themselves in the beads
and moccasins they had just purchased.
They lent themselves to a gala scene, those dark
women of the once mighty Sitka Kwan, as they bar-
tered disdainfully with members of the race their
grandfathers had sworn to exterminate ; yet it was a
scene not without its touch of irony. For on the green
directly back of their little tents stood a rust-pitted
cannon once used by Baranov to rake the village of
their ancestors ; in the background rose the first Pres-
byterian Church built in Alaska — ‘ Powder and shot
and the help of God ! ‘ And between these two civiliz-
ing agents of the white man, placed as a show-piece
for curious travellers, lay a great war-canoe painted
with all the symbols of the Thlinget’s might a proud,
battling craft which would never again vibrate to a
cry of victory or feel the touch of the sea.
