Then began the restoration of the post, on the present site of Sitka, and with energy and despatch the building of a new Russian settlement proceeded. Around the kekoor the native houses were removed, and along with them more than a hundred burial houses with the ashes of the bodies which had been burned. The great tribal houses, or barabaras, as they are called in the Russian accounts, were spacious, some measuring 50 feet in width and 80 feet in length.[2] In their place rose the town of New Archangel (_Novo Arkangelsk_,) and on the kekoor was built a redoubt. This was the official name and generally recognized by the Russians, but the name Sitka was early used by them. Baranof frequently used the term Sitka in his letters, and in the letter of the Minister of Finance to the Minister of Marine, from St. Petersburg, April 9, 1820, Sitka is used in several places. The name Sitka, or Sheetkah, in the Thlingit language, means, in this place, that this is the place, or the best place, implying superiority over all other places. All winter there was cutting of logs in the forest and by the spring of 1805 there were eight substantial buildings, the space for 15 kitchen gardens had been cleared, the livestock brought on the ships were thriving, and an air of prosperity pervaded the place.[3] Surveys of the harbor were made by Captain Lisianski who also made the first ascent of Mt. Edgecumbe, and who then sailed for Kronstadt, Russia, by the way of Canton, with a cargo of furs for the China trade valued at 450,000 rubles.[4] CHAPTER III PROGRESS OF THE COLONY The courtly Chamberlain of the Tsar, Nicholas P. Resanof, son-in-law of Shelikof who was the founder of the first Russian colony in America, came to Sitka in 1805, via Petropavlovsk, Siberia, on the "Nadeshda," one of the first Russian ships to circumnavigate the world, and was a special representative of the Russian American Company, of which organization he was one of the founders.