DOMESTIC REINDEER INTO ALASKA. 33 



At 4.20 o'clock on the morning of the 29th we got under way, again 

 steaming north, and at 9.30 a. m. came to anchor 5 miles off Fort Kenai, 

 where we again went ashore. As the people of this place see but two or 

 three ships a year, an arrival is a great event, and large numbers of the 

 people gathered on the blnff to see us land. We were met at the landing 

 by Mr. Wilson, formerly a naval officer of the United States, but who 

 for twenty-five years has been in the employ of the Alaska Commercial 

 Company in the vicinity of Cook's Inlet. Making a call upon the Russo- 

 Greek priest, we found that his wife talked English fluently. The pop- 

 ulation of Kenai is given by the priest as 152, 89 males and 63 females; 

 to this population there are but 10 children; these are all in a school 

 taught by the assistant priest. The people are rapidly dying off; four 

 years ago in an outbreak of the grip, 10 people died in one month from 

 this small population. The place is divided into two small settlements; 

 the one on the bluff overlooking the beach is Russian Creole, and the 

 other, about a mile away, overlooking the valley of the Kaknu River, 

 is occupied by the Kenai Indians. The slope of the bluff from the creole 

 village down to the beach is covered with the vegetable gardens of the 

 people. The Creoles have gotten out the logs for a new church build- 

 ing, and are awaiting the expected arrival of their bishop from San 

 Francisco to secure permission to build. The priest lives in a large, 

 comfortable log building, and has taken a stand for temperance and 

 morality among his people that will do them much good. This can not 

 be said of many of his predecessors. The range of the thermometer 

 at this place is from 90° above zero in summer to 35° and 40° below 

 zero in winter. 



Near the Indian village is a large salmon cannery on the Kaknu River, 

 which is a large stream flowing from the Skillokh Lake. Across the 

 bay, immediately in front of Kenai, is Redoubt Mountain, an active 

 volcano. At the head of Cooks Inlet, on Turnagain Bay, are some gold 

 placer mines, worked by 30 white men. A few miles to the south of 

 Kenai is the mouth of Kassiloff River, a large stream taking its rise in 

 Tustumena Lake; at its mouth are two salmon canneries. Near the 

 mouth of Cooks Inlet, on the east bank, is the village of Soldavia, on 

 Kachekmak Bay. It has two stores, and is the largest settlement on 

 the inlet. The place has applied to the general Post-Office Department 

 to be placed on the mail route as a distributing point for Cook's Iniet. 



Having finished our duties in Cooks Inlet at 2.30 a. m., May 30, we 

 were again under way, bound south to Karluk. Going on deck at half- 

 past 7 o'clock, we were abreast of Illiamua Volcano (1,260 feet high), 

 which from base to peak, under the morning sun, glistened in its white 

 robe of snow and ice. In the crater, apparently to the southwest of 

 the peak, were occasional puffs of smoke. As far as the eye could reach, 

 north and south along the west coast of the inlet, stretched the won- 

 derful panorama of high sharp peaks and rugged mountains, all covered 

 with snow to the water's edge. In front of us Mount St. Augustin 

 S. Ex. 92 3 



