76 JOHN BURROUGHS 



petual snow, the more does vegetable life seem to simu- 

 late snow and cover the ground with softness — softness 

 to the foot, and dimpled surface to the eye. Such hand- 

 fuls of wild flowers as we all gathered! The thought 

 in everyone's mind was, Oh, if we could only place these 

 flowers in the hands of friends at home! The colors 

 were all deep and intense. 



In the afternoon the steamer picked us up. A little 

 after midnight we took aboard the party we had left at Co- 

 lumbia Glacier, and then returned to Harriman Fiord for 

 Gannett and Muir. When they were on board we once 

 more turned our faces to the open sea, bound for Cook In- 

 let, the largest of the Alaska bays. It penetrates the land 

 150 miles and is more than fifty miles broad at its mouth. 

 We entered it on the 30th, under bright skies, and 

 dropped anchor behind a low sandspit in Kachemac Bay, 

 _--.. on the end 



of which is 

 a group of 

 four or five 

 buildings 

 making up 

 the hamlet 

 of Homer. 

 There was 



nothing Homeric in the look of the place, but grandeur 

 looked down upon it from the mountains around, especi- 

 ally from the great volcanic peaks, Iliamna and Redoubt, 

 sixty miles across the inlet to the west. The former rises 

 over 12,000 feet from the sea and, bathed in sunshine, was 

 an impressive spectacle. It was wrapped in a mantle of 

 snow, but it evidently was warm at heart, for we could 

 see steam issuing from two points near its summit. 



Our stay in Cook Inlet was brief. Our hunters had 

 hoped to kill some big game here, but after interviewing 



HOMER, KACHEMAC BAY. 



