Note 126 — Chapter X · AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS. (continued 2)

Veniaminov: Zapieskie ob Oonalashkenskaho Otdayla, 2 vols., St. Petersburg, 1842. This work of Bishop Innocent Veniaminov is the only one which the Russians can lay claim to as exhibiting anything like a history of Western Alaska, or of giving a sketch of its inhabitants and resources, that has the least merit of truth or the faintest stamp of reliability. Without it we should be simply in the dark as to much of what the Russians were about during the whole period of their occupation and possession of that country. He served, chiefly as a priest and missionary, for nineteen years, from 1823 to 1842, mainly at Oonalashka, having the Seal Islands in his parish, and was made Bishop of all Alaska. He was soon after recalled to Russia, where he became the primate of the national church, ranking second to no man in the Empire save the Czar. He was advanced in life, being more than ninety years of age when he died at Moscow, April 22, 1879. He must have been a man of fine personal presence, judging from the following description of him, noted by Sir George Simpson, who met him at Sitka in 1842, just as he was about to embark for Russia: “His appearance, to which I have already alluded, impresses a stranger with something of awe, while in further intercourse the gentleness which characterizes his every word and deed insensibly moulds reverence into love, and at the same time his talents and attainments are such as to be worthy of his exalted station. With all this, the bishop is sufficiently a man of the world to disdain anything like cant. His conversation, on the contrary, teems with amusement and instruction, and his company is much prized by all who have the honor of his acquaintance.” Sir Edward Belcher, who saw him at Kadiak in 1837, said: “He is a formidable-looking man, over six feet three inches in his boots, and athletic. He impresses one profoundly.”