CHAPTER XIII 



INTO THE KENAI HUNTING GKOUNDS 



THE Kenai Peninsula is a large, roughly triangular 

 piece of land jutting out from the sharply irregular 

 coast into the Gulf of Alaska. It is separated on 

 the west from the mainland by the waters of Cook's 

 Inlet and on the east by the much indented shores of 

 Prince William Sound. At its base the peninsula is 

 nearly cut through by bays which run into it from both 

 west and east. When Captain James Cook sailed up the 

 coast of Alaska in 1778, and entered the waters of Cook's 

 Inlet, he navigated them to the head where they forked, 

 one part running east and the other north. The old 

 adventurer was under orders to find the Northwest Pass- 

 age around America and here thought he had discovered 

 it. But when he had reached within twelve miles of 

 Portage Bay, which makes in from Prince William 

 Sound, he was forced to turn back, appropriately naming 

 this body of water Turnagain Arm. Cook's Inlet is 

 remarkable as having the greatest rise and fall of tide, 

 forty feet, of any place in the world except the Bay of 

 Fundy in Nova Scotia. 



Into the head of Cook's Inlet flow several rivers, 

 chief among them being the Susitna, which flows past 

 the vast slopes of Mount McKinley, and the Matanuska, 

 which in a general way parallels the Susitna on its east- 

 ern side. In the drainage systems of these two rivers 

 He some of the most important mineral deposits and 



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