The average rainfall in the Sitkan district is between eighty-four and eighty-six inches annually—it is a very steady average, and makes no heavier showing than that presented by the record kept on the coast of Oregon and Vancouver’s Island. A pleasant season in the archipelago will give the observer about one hundred fair days; the rest of the year will be given over to rain, snow, and foggy-shrouds, which wet like rain itself.[11] A most careful search during the last hundred years has failed to disclose in all the extent of this Sitkan region an arable or bottom-land piece large enough to represent a hundred-acre farm, save in the valley of the Tahkoo River, where for forty or fifty miles a low, level plateau extends, varying in width from a few rods to half a mile, between the steep mountain walls that compass it about. Red-top and wild timothy grasses grow here in the most luxuriant style, as they do for that matter everywhere else in the archipelago on little patches of open land along the streams and sea-beaches; the humidity of the climate makes the cost of curing hay, however, very great, and prevents the profitable ranging of cattle. We have strayed from the landing which we made at Wrangel, and, returning to the contemplation of that town, candor compels an exclamation of disappointment—it is not inviting, for we see nothing but a straggling group of hastily erected shanties and frame store-houses, which face a rickety wharf and a dirty trackway just above the beach-level; a dense forest and tangled jungle spring up like a forbidding wall at the very rear of the houses, which are supplemented by a number of Indian rancheries that skirt the beach just beyond, and hug the point; this place, however, though now in sad decline, was a place of much life and importance during 1875-79, when the Cassiar gold-excitement in British Columbia, via the Stickeen River, drew many hundreds of venturesome miners up here, and through Wrangel _en route_. This forlorn spot was still earlier a centre of even greater stir and activity, for, in 1831, the Russians, fearing that they would be forced into war with the Hudson’s Bay people, made a quick movement, came down here from Sitka, and built a bastioned log fortress right where the present Siwash rancheries stand. Lieutenant Zarenbo, who engineered the construction, called his work “Rédoute Saint Dionys,” and had scarcely got under cover when he was attacked by several large bateaux, manned by employés of the great English company; he fired upon them, beat them off, and held his own so well that the grateful Baron Von Wrangel, who then was governor-in-chief, bestowed the name of the plucky officer upon the large, rugged island which overshadows the scene of the conflict, and which it bears upon every chart to-day.[12]