Now, how different! As you step ashore you scarcely pause to notice the handful of whites who have assembled on the wharf, but at once the impression of general decay is made upon your mind; the houses, mostly the original Russian buildings, are settling here, there, and everywhere, rotting on their foundations, and scarcely more than half of them even occupied, while the combined population of some three hundred souls in number peers at you from every corner. The great majority of these people are the half-breeds, or “Creoles,” or the descendants of Indians and Russians; some of them are tall and well-formed, and a few of them good-looking, but they are nearly all short-statured, abject, and apathetic. Yet in one respect Sitka has vastly improved under American supremacy—she has become clean; for although the Russian officers kept the immediate surroundings of their residences in good order, still they never looked after the conduct of the rest of the town. There were, in their time, no defined streets or sidewalks, and mud and filth were knee-deep and most noisome. Our military authorities, however, who first took charge immediately after the transfer, and who are proverbial for cleanliness and neatness in garrison life, made the sanitary reformation of Sitka an instant and imperative duty; the slimy walks were soon planked, the muddy streets were gravelled and curbed, the main street especially widened, the oldest houses were repainted, and where dilapidated, repaired, and things put into shape most thoroughly; they also graded and sauntered over the first wagon-road ever opened in Alaska, which they constructed, from the steamers’ landing under the castle, back bordering the bay to Indian River, over a mile in length.