COOK'S INLET AND ITS PEOPLE. 85 



but as you advance into the interior, great swamps of tangled 

 heather, fir, jungle, and sphagnum are prevalent. The soil every- 

 where, not covered with grass and forest, is mossy, with a little 

 grass and many bushes. The trees are large, fifty to sixty feet 

 high, and eighteen inches to twenty-four in diameter, mostly spruce 

 no cedar or hemlock. That district adjoining the East Foreland 

 Head is, perhaps, the best with reference to dry, fertile soil, for, in 

 its vicinity, there are broad plains where wild timothy and red- 

 top grasses grow to the height of your waist and shoulders. An 

 extended experience of the Russians taught them to locate their 

 agricultural operations here ; that the coast-line belt of the Kenai 

 Peninsula, between the Forelands and Kooshiemak Bay, a belt of 

 low and semi-prairie uplands some eighty miles in length, and vary- 

 ing in depth from ten to twenty, was the most eligible base of 

 agricultural effort afforded anywhere in Alaska, the quality of the 

 crops always being best near the coast, the soil being drier, and the 

 danger of little nipping summer-frosts wholly abated. 



The several small settlements which we find upon this pastoral 

 strip to-day have a curious history, as to the origin of their inhabi- 

 tants. About the period of 1836-38, the expenses of the Russian 

 American Company in maintaining their trading stations in Alaska 

 were increasing to an alarming degree, while the receipts remained 

 stationary, or fell off. An enquiry into its cause revealed it. The 

 fact was, that hundreds of superannuated employes were drawing 

 their salaries and subsistence, rendering no adequate return for 

 the same. These persons had grown old, and had lost their health 

 in serving the company ; were, nearly all of them, infirm survivors 

 of Shellikov and Baranov's parties, whose daring and energy had 

 established the company. It would be inhuman to discharge these 

 aged and crippled Russians, and throw them upon their own re- 

 sources in such a region. After much deliberation the company 

 was authorized by the Crown to make the following terms of settle- 

 ment and relief, and thus locate them as permanent pensioners and 

 settlers in the country. Therefore all of the old employes who had 

 married or lived with native or half-breed women, and who were 

 unable to successfully engage in the trading avocations of the com- 

 pany, by reason of age and other infirmities, were, upon their writ- 

 ten or witnessed request, after being stricken from the pay-rolls, 

 provided for in this manner. 



The company was obliged to select and donate a piece of ground, 



