he Siwash Indian lodges are clustered all along the beach. This
rancheria was originally separated from the town by a high stockade, and
the huge gates were closed at night for the greater security of the
inhabitants; but since the American occupation the gates have been
destroyed, and only a portion of the stockade remains.

Katalan's Rock is steep enough to command the town, and ample enough to
afford all the space necessary for fortifications and the accommodation
of troops and stores. A natural Gibraltar, it was the site of the first
settlement, and has ever remained the most conspicuous and distinguished
quarter of the colony. The first building erected on this rock was a
block-house, which was afterward burned. A second building, reared on
the ruins of the first, was destroyed by an earthquake; but a third, the
colonial castle and residence of the governors, stands to this day. It
crowns the summit of the rock, is one hundred and forty feet in length,
seventy feet in depth, two stories with basement and attic, and has a
lookout that commands one of the most romantic and picturesque
combinations of land and sea imaginable.

It is not a handsome edifice, nor is it in the least like a castle, nor
like what one supposes a castle should be. Were it anywhere else, it
might pass for the country residence of a gentleman of the old school,
or for an unfashionable suburban hotel, or for a provincial seminary. It
is built of solid cedar logs that seem destined to weather the storms of
ages. These logs are secured by innumerable copper bolts; and the whole
structure is riveted to the rocks, so that neither wind nor wave nor
earthquake shock is likely to prevail against it.

Handsomely finished within, it was in the colonial days richly
furnished; and as Sitka was at that time a large settlement composed of
wealthy and highbred Russians, governed by a prince or a baron whose
petty court was made up of the representatives of the rank and fashion
of St. Petersburg and Moscow, the colonial castle was most of the time
the scene of social splendor.

The fame of the brilliant and beautiful Baroness Wrangell, first
chatelaine of the castle, lives after her. She was succeeded by the wife
of Governor Kupreanoff, a brave lady, who in 1835 crossed Siberia on
horseback to Behring Sea on her way to Sitka. Later the Princess
Maksontoff became the social queen, and reigned in the little castle on
Katalan's Rock as never queen reigned befo