Sixty
Russian officers and eight hundred white families lived within the
walls, with a retinue of two or three thousand Indian otter hunters
cabined along the beach. There was a shipyard. There was a foundry
for the manufacture of the great brass bells sold for chapels in New
Spain. There were archbishops, priests, deacons, schools. At the hot
springs twenty miles away, hospitals and baths were built. A library
and gallery of famous paintings were added to the fort, though Baranof
complained it would have been wiser to have physicians for his men.
For the rest of Baranof's rule, Sitka became the great rendezvous of
vessels trading on the Pacific. Here Baranof held sway like a
potentate, serving regal feasts to all visitors with the pomp of a
little court, and the barbarity of a wassailing mediaeval lord.
But all this was not so much fireworks for display. Baranof had his
motive. To the sea-captains who feasted with him and drank themselves
torpid under his table, he proposed a plan--he would supply the Aleut
hunters for them to hunt on shares as far south as southern California.
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