Part 19 (1/2)
When dawn came the sound had ceased. Absolute silence reigned; nor was there any living object to be seen on the sh.o.r.e, save clouds of carrion birds, whose dark wings beat the still air above the fort. The Kolosh had fled; the fort was deserted by all save the dead. The bodies of thirty Kolosh warriors were found; also those of many children and dogs, which had been killed lest any cry from them should betray the direction of their flight.
The fort was destroyed by fire, and the construction of magazines, barracks, and a residence for Baranoff was at once begun. A stockade surrounded these buildings, each corner fortified with a block-house.
The garrison received the name of Novo Arkangelsk, or New Archangel. The tribal name of the Indians in that locality was Sitkah--p.r.o.nounced Seetkah--and this short and striking name soon attached itself permanently to the place.
Immense houses were built solidly and with every consideration for comfort and safety, and many families lived in each. They ranged in size from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet in length, and about eighty in width, and were from one to three stories high with immense attics. They were well finished and richly papered. The polished floors were covered with costly rugs and carpets, and the houses were furnished with heavy and splendid furniture, which had been brought from St.
Petersburg. The steaming bra.s.s samovar was everywhere a distinctive feature of the hospitality and good cheer which made Sitka famous.
To the gay and luxurious life, the almost prodigal entertainment of guests by Sitkans from this time on to 1867, every traveller, from writers and naval officers down to traders, has enthusiastically testified. At the first signal from a s.h.i.+p feeling its way into the dark harbor, a bright light flashed a welcome across the water from the high cupola on Baranoff's castle, and fires flamed up on Signal Island to beacon the way.
The officers were received as friends, and entertained in a style of almost princely magnificence during their entire stay--the only thing asked in return being the capacity to eat like gluttons, revel like roisterers, and drink until they rolled helplessly under the table; and, in Baranoff's estimation, these were small returns, indeed, to ask of a guest for his ungrudging and regal hospitality.
Visions of those high revels and glittering banquets of a hundred years ago come glimmering down to us of to-day. Beautiful, gracious, and fascinating were the Russian ladies who lived there,--if we are to believe the stories of voyagers to the Sitka of Baranoff's and Wrangell's times. Baranoff's furniture was of specially fine workmans.h.i.+p and exceeding value; his library was remarkable, containing works in nearly all European languages, and a collection of rare paintings--the latter having been presented to the company at the time of its organization.
Baranoff had left a wife and family in Russia. He never saw them again, although he sent allowances to them regularly. He was not bereft of woman's companions.h.i.+p, however, and we have tales of revelry by night when Baranoff alternately sang and toasted everybody, from the Emperor down to the woman upon his knee with whom he shared every sparkling gla.s.s. He had a beautiful daughter by a native woman, and of her he was exceedingly careful. A governess whom he surprised in the act of drinking a gla.s.s of liquor was struck in sudden blind pa.s.sion and turned out of the house. The following day he sent for her, apologized, and reinstalled her with an increased salary, warning her, however, that his daughter must never see her drink a drop of liquor. When in his most gloomy and hopeless moods, this daughter could instantly soothe and cheer him by playing upon the piano and singing to him songs very different from those sung at his drunken all-night orgies.
That there was a very human and tender side to Baranoff's nature cannot be doubted by those making a careful study of his tempestuous life. He was deeply hurt and humiliated by the insolent and supercilious treatment of naval officers who considered him of inferior position, notwithstanding the fact that he was in supreme command of all the Russian territory in America. From time to time the Emperor conferred honors upon him, and he was always deeply appreciative; and it is chronicled that when a messenger arrived with the intelligence that he had been appointed by the Emperor to the rank of Collegiate Councillor, Baranoff, broken by the troubles, hards.h.i.+ps, and humiliations of his stormy life, was suddenly and completely overcome by joy. He burst into tears and gave thanks to G.o.d.
”I am a n.o.bleman!” he exclaimed. ”I am the equal in position and the superior in ability of these insolent naval officers.”
In 1812 Mr. Wilson P. Hunt, of the Pacific Fur Company, sailed from Astoria for Sitka on the _Beaver_ with supplies for the Russians. By that time Baranoff had risen to the t.i.tle and pomp of governor, and was living in splendid style befitting his position and his triumph over the petty officers, whose names are now insignificant in Russian history.
Mr. Hunt found this hyperborean veteran ensconced in a fort which crested the whole of a high, rocky promontory. It mounted one hundred guns, large and small, and was impregnable to Indian attack unaided by artillery. Here the old governor lorded it over sixty Russians, who formed the corps of the trading establishment, besides an indefinite number of Indian hunters of the Kodiak tribe, who were continually coming and going, or lounging and loitering about the fort like so many hounds round a sportsman's hunting quarters. Though a loose liver among his guests, the governor was a strict disciplinarian among his men, keeping them in perfect subjection and having seven guards on duty night and day.
Besides those immediate serfs and dependents just mentioned, the old Russian potentate exerted a considerable sway over a numerous and irregular cla.s.s of maritime traders, who looked to him for aid and munitions, and through whom he may be said to have, in some degree, extended his power along the whole Northwest Coast. These were American captains of vessels engaged in a particular department of trade. One of the captains would come, in a manner, empty-handed, to New Archangel.
Here his s.h.i.+p would be furnished with about fifty canoes and a hundred Kodiak hunters, and fitted out with provisions and everything necessary for hunting the sea-otter on the coast of California, where the Russians had another establishment. The s.h.i.+p would ply along the California coast, from place to place, dropping parties of otter hunters in their canoes, furnis.h.i.+ng them only with water, and leaving them to depend upon their own dexterity for a maintenance. When a sufficient cargo was collected, she would gather up her canoes and hunters and return with them to Archangel, where the captain would render in the returns of his voyage and receive one-half of the skins as his share.
Over these coasting captains the old governor exerted some sort of sway, but it was of a peculiar and characteristic kind; it was the tyranny of the table. They were obliged to join in his ”prosnics” or carousals and his heaviest drinking-bouts. His carousals were of the wildest and coa.r.s.est, his tempers violent, his language strong. ”He is continually,”
said Mr. Hunt, ”giving entertainment by way of parade; and if you do not drink raw rum, and boiling punch as strong as sulphur, he will insult you as soon as he gets drunk, which is very shortly after sitting down at table.”
A ”temperance captain” who stood fast to his faith and kept his sobriety inviolate might go elsewhere for a market; he was not a man after the governor's heart. Rarely, however, did any captain made of such unusual stuff darken the doors of Baranoff's high-set castle. The coasting captains knew too well his humor and their own interests. They joined with either real or well-affected pleasure in his roistering banquets; they ate much and drank more; they sang themselves hoa.r.s.e and drank themselves under the table; and it is chronicled that never was Baranoff satisfied until the last-named condition had come to pa.s.s. The more the guests that lay sprawling under the table, upon and over one another, the more easily were trading arrangements effected with Baranoff later on.
Mr. Hunt relates the memorable warning to all ”flinchers” which occurred shortly after his arrival. A young Russian naval officer had recently been sent out by the Emperor to take command of one of the company's vessels. The governor invited him to one of his ”prosnics” and plied him with fiery potations. The young officer stoutly maintained his right to resist--which called out all the fury of the old ruffian's temper, and he proceeded to make the youth drink, whether he would or not. As the guest began to feel the effect of the burning liquors, his own temper rose to the occasion. He quarrelled violently with his almost royal host, and expressed his young opinion of him in the plainest language--if Russian language ever can be plain. For this abuse of what Baranoff considered his magnificent hospitality, he was given seventy-nine lashes when he was quite sober enough to appreciate them.
With all his drinking and prodigal hospitality, Baranoff always managed to get his own head clear enough for business before sobriety returned to any of his guests, who were not so accustomed to these wild and constant revels of their host's; so that he was never caught napping when it came to bargaining or trading. His own interests were ever uppermost in his mind, which at such times gave not the faintest indication of any befuddlement by drink or by licentiousness of other kinds.
For more than twenty years Baranoff maintained a princely and despotic sway over the Russian colonies. His own commands were the only ones to receive consideration, and but scant attention was given by him to orders from the Directory itself. Complaints of his rulings and practices seldom reached Russia. Tyrannical, coa.r.s.e, shrewd, powerful, domineering, and of absolutely iron will, all were forced to bow to his desires, even men who considered themselves his superiors in all save sheer brute force of will and character. Captain Krusenstern, a contemporary, in his account of Baranoff, says: ”None but vagabonds and adventurers ever entered the company's services as Promishleniks;”--uneducated Russian traders, whose inferior vessels were constructed usually of planks lashed to timbers and calked with moss; they sailed by dead reckoning, and were men controlled only by animal instincts and pa.s.sions;--”it was their invariable destiny to pa.s.s a life of wretchedness in America.” ”Few,” adds Krusenstern, ”ever had the good fortune to touch Russian soil again.”
In the light of present American opinion of the advantages and joys of life in Russia, this nave remark has an almost grotesque humor. Like many of the brilliantly successful, but unscrupulous, men of the world, Baranoff seemed to have been born under a lucky star which ever led him on. Through all his desperate battles with Indians, his perilous voyages by sea, and the plottings of subordinates who hated him with a helpless hate, he came unharmed.
During his later years at Sitka, Baranoff, weighed down by age, disease, and the indescribable troubles of his long and faithful service, asked frequently to be relieved. These requests were ignored, greatly to his disappointment.
When, finally, in 1817, Hagemeister was sent out with instructions to a.s.sume command in Baranoff's place, if he deemed it necessary, the orders were placed before the old governor so suddenly and so unexpectedly that he was completely prostrated. He was now failing in mind, as well as body; and in this connection Bancroft adds another touch of ironical humor, whether intentional or accidental it is impossible to determine. ”One of his symptoms of approaching imbecility,” writes Bancroft, ”being in his sudden attachment to the church. He kept constantly about him the priest who had established the first church at Sitka, and, urged by his spiritual adviser, made large donations for religious purposes.”
The effect of the unexpected announcement is supposed to have shortened Baranoff's days. Lieutenant Yanovsky, of the vessel which had brought Hagemeister, was placed in charge by the latter as his representative.
Yanovsky fell in love with Baranoff's daughter and married her. It was, therefore, to his own son-in-law that the old governor at last gave up the sceptre.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by F. H. Nowell, Seattle