ARRIVAL AT KADIAK 79 



tains surrounded us, pleasing to the eye and alluring to 

 the feet. Two large salmon canneries were visible on 

 shore, and presently a boat came off to us with fresh 

 salmon. Here we left a naphtha launch with a party of 

 six men, heavily armed, bent on finding and killing the 

 great Kadiak bear — the largest species of bear in the 

 world, as big as an ox. They had been making up their 

 mouths for this monster bear all the way, and now they 

 were at last close to his haunts. In two or three days 

 we were to return and pick them up and hoist their game 

 aboard with the great derrick. In the delicious sunshine 

 we steamed out of Uyak bound for Kadiak village on the 

 east end of the island, ioo miles away. Kadiak Island 

 lies nearly south from Cook Inlet, about fifty miles from 

 the mainland. It is 150 miles long and one-third as 

 broad. It would just about fill up Cook Inlet, out of 

 which it may have slipped some time for aught I know. 

 It is treeless except upon the east end, which faces toward 

 the great Alaska forests from which the tree infection 

 may have come. 



How beautiful and interesting the shores we passed 

 that day; smooth rounded hills as green and tender to the 

 eye as well kept lawns, recalling the hills we saw in May 

 upon the Snake River — natural sheep ranges such as one 

 sees in the north of England, but not a sign of life upon 

 them. 



I warn my reader here, that henceforth I shall babble 

 continually of green fields. There was no end to them. 

 We had come from an arboreal wilderness to a grassy 

 wilderness, from a world of spruce forests to a world of 

 emerald heights and verdant slopes. Look at the map of 

 Alaska and think of all the peninsulas from Cook Inlet 

 and all the adjacent islands, and the long chain of the 

 Aleutians sweeping nearly across to Asia, as being cov- 

 ered with an unbroken carpet of verdure — it must needs 



