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Updated: May 12, 2025
"I have been so excited about discovering Andy's trick that I haven't had much time to consider where we're bound for nor what will be the best plan to follow." "Well, we're goin' to a region about seven hundred an' fifty miles northwest from Sitka," explained the old miner, as he pointed out the location on the map.
The courtly Chamberlain of the Tsar, Nicholas P. Resanof, son-in-law of Shelikof who was the founder of the first Russian colony in America, came to Sitka in 1805, via Petropavlovsk, Siberia, on the "Nadeshda," one of the first Russian ships to circumnavigate the world, and was a special representative of the Russian American Company, of which organization he was one of the founders.
John Jacob Astor was one of the first to engage in the trade. He sent the ship "Enterprise" to Sitka in 1810, and the "Beaver" in 1812.
His description of his visit to Sitka is entertaining, and of it he says: "In the fort we met nothing so unusual or costly as to be worthy of special remark; the fort consisted of solid log towers, and high strong palisades, with apertures or embrasures, in which were set guns and carronades of different calibres.
Such was the inauspicious introduction for Baranof to the founding of the new Russian fort at Sitka or Norfolk Sound. It was the end of May before the brigades glided into the sheltered, shadowy harbor, where Chirikoff's men had been lost fifty years before. A furious storm of snow and sleet raged over the harbor.
I never knew him, but Sitka Charley told me about him. 'It seems hard that a man with a sweet young wife like his should be putting in his years in this Godforsaken hole, where every year counts two on the outside. 'The trouble with him is clean grit and stubbornness.
The days are very short. At nine o'clock comes daylight. At three o'clock comes night. And it is cold. And even I, Sitka Charley, am tired. Will we go on forever this way without end? I do not know. But always do I look along the trail for that which they try to find. There are few people on the trail. Sometimes we travel one hundred miles and never see a sign of life. It is very quiet.
All that night, and for eight days and nights, the refugees of the forest lay hidden under bark and moss. Under cover of darkness, one, a herdsman, ventured down to the charred ruins of Sitka. The mangled, headless bodies of the Russians lay in the ashes. At noon of the eighth day the mountains suddenly rocked to the echo of two cannon-shots from the bay. A ship had come.
So, when the fire had grown lusty and thawed a damp circle in the snow about it, Sitka Charley forced his reluctant comrades to lend a hand in pitching a fly. It was a primitive affair, merely a blanket stretched parallel with the fire and to windward of it, at an angle of perhaps forty-five degrees.
Only energy, perseverance, and thrift, and those will be forthcoming. Approaching Sitka by the usual steamer route from the north at a distance of six miles the site of Old Sitka is passed. It lies to the left of the steamer track, in a small bay, and is marked by a native house which is visible from the ship.
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