cook's inlet and its people. 83 



involuntaiy thought of admiration foi- the nautical genius, skill, and 

 courage of Captain Cook, who sailed vip to the very head of this 

 entirely unknown gulf, in 1778, seeking that mythical northwest 

 passage round the continent — his dauntless exploration to the utter 

 limit of Turnagain Canal — his extraordinary retreat in his clumsy 

 ships, and safe threading of his way out and through the hundreds 

 of then absolutely nameless and chartless islets and reefs to the 

 shoals of Bering Sea — all this, viewed to-day, seems simply marvel- 

 lous, that he should have escaped all these dangers which the best 

 sailor now hesitates to undertake, even with excellent courses laid 

 down and determined for him. 



The ship's entrance to this great land-locked gulf, which the 

 Kussians named, for many years, the Bay of Kenai, lies between 

 the extreme end of that peninsula called Cape Elizabeth, and Cape 

 Douglas, which is a bold promontory jutting out from the Alaskan 

 mainland. Nearly half-way between the two points is a group of 

 bleak, naked islets, tlie Barren Islands : around them the tide-rips 

 of this channel, which they obstruct, boil in savage fury, and are the 

 dread of every navigator, civilized or Innuit, who is brought near 

 to them ; these violent and irregular tidal currents here, even in 

 pei'fectly calm weather, will toss the waters so that the wildest fury 

 of a tempest elsewhere cannot raise so great a disturbance over the 

 sea, or one which will so quickly wash a vessel under. 



When your ship, bound in, passes this Alaskan "Hell Gate," 

 she enters into a broad and ample expanse of water caused by the 

 widening effect of two large bays which are just opposed to each 

 other on the opposite shores. The coast of the Kenai Peninsula is 

 low, the mountains contiguous are not high, though toward the 

 interior the ridges become much loftier ; but everywhere between 

 them and this coast-line is that characteristic marshy tvmdra of the 

 Arctic — a low, flat, broad strip, varying in width from forty to 

 fifty miles, through which sluggishly flow a multitude of streams 

 and brooks, wooded with birch, poplar, and spruce everywhere on 

 the banks, but bare of timber over the great bulk of its expanse. 

 As the inlet contracts still further, especially at the point between 

 the two headlands of East and West Foreland, the tide again in- 

 creases in velocity and violence of action until it attains a speed of 

 eight and nine knots an hovu-, with an average vertical rise and fall 

 of twenty-four to twenty-six feet. The northeastern extremity of 

 this large arm of the sea, which Cook entered with the confident 



