cook's inlet and its people. 87 



which rise dominant are the summits of Mount Ilyamna and the 

 " Redoute," from which columns of brownish smoke ascend by- 

 day and ruddy fire-glowings by night. So precipitous is this main- 

 land shore of Cook's Inlet that at only two small points of the most 

 limited area is there any low land to be found, and these spots 

 have been promj^tly utilized by the Kenaitze Indians as sites for 

 their villages of Toyonok and Kustatan. The dense, sombre coni- 

 ferous forest which we have become so familiar with, clothes the 

 flanks of those grim mountain walls with the thickest of all cover- 

 ings to a height of one thousand feet above the beaches below. 

 Here and there we glance into the recesses of a caiion or a gorge 

 where the naked, mossy surface of immense rocky declivities ar- 

 rests and fixes the eye, while the glittering caps of ice and snow 

 far away above fit down snugly upon long, rough, treeless intervals, 

 covered with heather, lichens, and varied arctic sphagnum. 



The upper waters of Cook's Inlet are said to be quite i-emarka- 

 ble for their barrenness of fish — salmon only being plenty in the 

 running season, ascending all the numerous rivers and rivulets ; the 

 reason most likely is due to the turbid upheaval of the bottoms 

 everj'where Ijy that violent tidal bore which prevails, recurring 

 twice every twenty-four hours. The Indians here employ a curious 

 trestle or staging of poles, which they use in spearing salmon, and 

 netting them from its support. 



An extensive spread of the largest fresh-water lake in Alaska 

 just over the divide from Cook's Inlet, early led the Russians to ex- 

 plore it, and to find a portage via its waters to the sea of Be- 

 ring. But, though this barrier can be passed by an active man in a 

 single day, yet it has divided, and continues to absolutely separate, 

 two distinct races of savages — the Innuits from the Indians ; for 

 the Kenaitze are Indians, as we understand them, based upon our 

 types of the great plains and foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains ; 

 and, living here as they do on the shores of Cook's Inlet, they live, 

 perhaps, in the most romantic and picturesque region of Alaska. 

 Burning volcanoes, smoking and grumbling, a large inland sea roll- 

 ing for miles and miles therein, and lay at their feet ; wide watery 

 moors, tundra, timber and lakes, and rivers rising in the snow-white 

 peaks everywhere visible, all combine to make the most striking 

 lights and shades of natural scenery that human thought can real- 

 ize in fancy. 



These natives of Cook's Inlet are strongly defined from those of 



