The main spring has a temperature of one hundred and fifty-three degrees Fahrenheit, its waters cooking eggs in eight minutes. From this spring the baths are fed, their waters, flowing down to the sea, being soon reduced in temperature to one hundred and thirty degrees.
Filmy vapors float over the vicinity of the springs and rise in funnel-shaped columns which may be seen at a considerable distance, and which impart an atmosphere of mystery and unreality to the place.
Vegetation is of unusual luxuriance, even for this land of tropical growth; and in recent years experiments with melons and vegetables which usually mature in tropic climes only, have been entirely successful in this steamy and balmy region.
There are four springs, in whose waters the Indians, from the time of their discovery, have sought to wash away the ills to which flesh is heir. They came hundreds of miles and lay for hours at a time in the healing baths with only their heads visible. The bay was neutral ground where all might come, but where none might make settlement or establish claims.
The waters near abound in fish and water-fowl, and the forests with deer, bears, and other large game.
The place is coming but slowly to the recognition of the present generation. When the tropic beauty of its location and the curative powers of its waters are more generally known, it will be a Mecca for pilgrims.
The main station of Government Agricultural Experimental work in Alaska is located at Sitka. Professor C. C. Georgeson is the special agent in charge of the work, which has been very successful. It has accomplished more than anything else in the way of dispelling the erroneous impressions which people have received of Alaska by reading the descriptions of early explorers who fancied that every drift of snow was a living glacier and every feather the war bonnet of a savage.
In 1906, at Coldfoot, sixty miles north of the Arctic Circle, were grown cucumbers eight inches long, nineteen-inch rhubarb, potatoes four inches long, cabbages whose matured heads weighed eight pounds, and turnips weighing sixteen pounds—all of excellent quality.
At Bear Lake, near Seward and Cook Inlet, were grown good potatoes, radishes, lettuce, carrots, beets, rhubarb, strawberries, raspberries, Logan berries, blackberries; also, roses, lilacs, and English ivy. In this locality cows and chickens thrive and are profitable investments for those who are not too indolent to take care of them.
Alaskan lettuce must be eaten to be appreciated. During the hot days and the long, light hours of the nights it grows so rapidly that its crispness and delicacy of flavor cannot be imagined.