[39] Ivan Ismailov and Gayorgi Bochorov; they went in the dual capacity of explorers and traders, lured into the undertaking by rumors which had prevailed at Kadiak respecting great numbers of sea-otters in this bay.
[40] Had these enthusiastic builders then been able to have foreseen the tragedy which this vessel precipitated, five years later, they would have scarcely thus expressed themselves, but rather have stood in silence, with bowed heads, as the work of their hands swept into the flood that embraced her. In 1799 she sailed from the Okotsk, bound for Sitka, with the newly-ordained Bishop Joasaph and twenty priests and deacons of the Greek Church; she was never seen or heard of afterward, nor was anything seen or heard of her passengers and crew—she took them with her to the bottom of the sea.
CHAPTER V.
COOK’S INLET AND ITS PEOPLE.
Cook’s “Great River.”—The Tide-rips, and their Power in Cook’s Inlet.—The Impressive Mountains of the Inlet.—The Glaciers of Turnagain Canal.—Old Russian Settlements.—Kenai Shore of the Inlet, the Garden-spot of Alaska.—Its Climate best Suited to Civilized Settlement.—The Old “Colonial Citizens” of the Russian Company.—Small Shaggy Siberian Cattle.—Burning Volcano of Ilyamna.—The Kenaitze Indians.—Their Primitive, Simple Lives.—They are the Only Native Land-animal Hunters of Alaska.—Bears and Bear Roads.—Wild Animals seek Shelter in Volcanic Districts.—Natives Afraid to Follow Them.—Kenaitze Architecture.—Sunshine in Cook’s Inlet.—Splendid Salmon.—Waste of Fish as Food by Natives.—The Pious Fishermen of Neelshik.—Russian Gold-mining Enterprise on the Kaknoo, 1848-55.—Failure of our Miners to Discover Paying Mines in this Section.
That volcanic energy and amazing natural variation of the region known as Cook’s Inlet, and the Peninsula of Alaska, endow it with a certain fascination which it is hard to adequately define in words, and difficult to portray. The rugged, uninviting boldness of the Kenai Mountains turn us abruptly, after our departure at Noochek, to the southward, where, in an unbroken frowning cordon of one hundred and fifty miles in length, they bar us out from the waters of that striking estuary—the greatest on the northwest coast, which is so well exhibited by the map to everybody as Cook’s Inlet. But it is known only in name—not by the faintest appreciation, even, of its real character and of its strange belongings.
Two and three hundred miles still farther north than Sitka it does not in itself present that increased wintry aspect at any season of the year which would be most naturally looked for—but it does offer, in physical contour and phenomena, a most marked contrast to the Alexander archipelago and its people. It is an exceedingly dangerous and difficult arm of the sea to navigate, and prompts an involuntary thought of admiration for the nautical genius, skill, and courage of Captain Cook, who sailed up 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 marvellous, 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 Russians 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, the 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 perfectly 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 tundra 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 increases in velocity and violence of action until it attains a speed of eight and nine knots an hour, 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 hope of finding a watery circuit of a continent, and, being disappointed, applied to it the name of “Turnagain,” presents a tidal phenomena equal to that so well recognized in the Bay of Fundy. Here the tide comes in with a thundering roar, raising a “bore” wave that advances like an express train in rapidity, carrying everything before it in its resistless onward, upward sweep. High banks of clay and gravel, which at low-tide seem as though they were far removed from submersion, are flooded instantly, to remain so until the ebb takes place. The natives never fail to remember the angry warning of this incoming tide; they always hurriedly rush out of their huts, scan quickly everything surrounding, lest some utensil, some canoe, or basket-weir be thoughtlessly left within the remorseless rush of that swift-coming flood.
Those glacial sheets which fill countless ravines and cañons in the mountain ridges at the head of Cook’s Inlet, especially of Turnagain Canal, and avalanches of snow, from their lofty cradles thereon, all sweep down together upon the wooded flanks below, and are thus destroying great belts of forest and piling up innumerable heaps of rocky débris to such an extent as to often change the superficial aspect of an entire section of country from season to season; meanwhile the tide rushing up and down over this drift of avalanches and glaciers, carries the débris hither and thither, so as to constantly alter the channels, and the very outlines of the coast itself.
One of the oldest and best of Russian posts was early established on the Kenai Peninsula, a few miles to the southward of that narrowing of Cook’s Inlet, caused by the two Forelands. On the low banks of the Kinik River, and facing the gulf, the ruins of the “Redoubt St. Nicholas” are still to be plainly seen, though at the time of the transfer of the Territory, this old post was yet fortified with a high stockade and octagonal bastions. But both stockade and bastions have disappeared since then; a number of new frame buildings have been erected close by, and quite a colony of Russian half-breeds are living here now, trading, and growing, to better advantage than anywhere else in Alaska, fair crops of potatoes and turnips. They keep a few hardy cattle, and it is said that as much as ten or twelve acres of ground are under cultivation by them.