The Daily Alaska empire., 1930-06-07
BARRETT WILLOUGHBY'S LATEST
 BOOK.

"s,,tka. Portal to Romance" Barrett Wiloughby' latest book is one of the best she has done. It i not at all surprising that it is winning favor anon the critics It preserves the romance that its nam implies and the narrative and descriptive feature are authentic and do little or no violence to history One of the best reviews of the book appears Il the current New York Times which gives it hal page with two large illustrations in the Time Book Review. The article says;
 As one glances at the title of the book under review-"Sitka: Portal to Romance one cannot help feeling a bit mistrust- full and skeptcal Indeed, Sitka's name hardly appears in the newspapers It is conspicuous neither for international conferences nor for sensational divorce cases Hidden, with the gloomy picturesqueness of its bay fringed by mountains and with its one thousand-odd inhabitants in the South eastern corner of Alaska, 1t lives, between long Arctic Winters and short Summers, the monotonous and uneventful life Of all such hopelessly Northern fishermens and timber merchants settlements Where, then, does the portal to romance" in2 Yet Miss Barrett Wiloughby, the author of the book, fully succeeds in vindicating this title. Monotonous as Sitkas present may be, its past was interesting. Founded in l799, It was Russias first stronghold in Alaska, from which the conquest of the whole country, then known as Russian America, proceeded.
 
 book of travel She does describe her trip to Sitka and her impressions of it, but her chief purpose is to resuscitate Sitkas Rus sian past The tenacity and heroism with which a handful of Russian colonizers, gath cred in Sitka wthstood the pressure of the then bellicose Thnget Indians (once the little city was taken and burned by them) the heterogeneous and colorful crowd of imperial Russian officers. sturdy coonizers and international adventurers and scoundrels who passed through 1t; finally, the golden age of Silks brilliant economic development such are the things which interest Miss Woughby most. In her simple, unstrained, lively narrative visual impressions blend and contrast with these shadows of the past in a colorful picture. Moreover, she has a real gift for calling back to life the romance of the bygone days without shining against history, without losing that peculiar Russian flavor which characterized Alaska of the early nineteenth century.
 Miss Willoughby devotes much space to Alexander Andreyevich Baranov one of AL aska's earliest Governors tor, rather. Presi- dents of the Russian-American Fur Con- pany, for 1t is to this company that the Imperial Government leased out the exploi- tation and administration of the country. Indeed in the course of twenty seven years (l790-19l7 during which he held this post, this modest merchant, subsequently, en- nobled proved to be a genuine statesmen. The difficulties under which he labored in the new settlement are almost indescribable. Not only that he constantly threatened by the Thlingets not only that he threatened, too by the mutiny of his rough neck soldiers. recruited chiefly among the criminals exported from Siberia, the Aleuts, Sc; what was still worse, perhaps, the non- arrival of ship from Russia often would doom him and his companions to hunger, cold and dire misery for the span of or eight long Winter months. But this little man with the character of benevolent autocrat and with the iron hand of real ruler overcame all difficulties. With hand full of men, he could the rough sea in skin canoes and attack hundreds of In- dians: he could drink under the table any captain of the Seven Seas who visited him" and he could show wonders of diplomacy,