From here to Cook’s Inlet we had rough sailing. Neptune was out on a lark. We realized fully that he was king of the sea and that we were his timid subjects.
The crowning glory of Alaska’s natural attractions is Cook’s Inlet. Sheltered by a great mountain wall on the west, its shores enjoy delightful summer weather. Only the pen of a Milton or the matchless brush of a Turner could paint this fair empire of earth, sea and air. Glacier after glacier, frozen to the cold breast of the mountains, lay glistening in the sunshine. The finest waterfalls in Alaska leap from rugged cliffs and go singing to the sea.
A grand panorama of snowy peaks, smoking volcanoes, forested slopes, grassy glades bright with flowers and fertile valleys, lend enchantment to this wild Arcadia of the North. Goethe truly says: “Him whom the gods true art would teach, they send out into the mighty world.”
Moose graze in the open glades, mountain goat and sheep leap from cliff to rock and away. Extensive level plateaus line both shores of the inlet, which will make fine grazing country some day in the near future. The grass grows luxuriantly and in many places reaches a height of six feet. We traveled up the inlet seventy miles to a branch of the inlet known as the Turnagain Arm, which is from five to eight miles wide and enclosed by high mountains. These mountains are covered with timber at the base. Tall grass covers the mountain side to the height of three thousand feet, sweet grass for all the flocks of some future Pan.
We landed at Sunrise, which is the largest city on the inlet. It has a population of one hundred and fifty, mostly miners. Hope, twelve miles away, has a population of seventy-five miners. Fine vegetables grow here. A storekeeper has a small garden. His potatoes are as fine as any grown in the states, some weighing one and one-half pounds. He has cabbages weighing seven pounds, and turnips weighing eleven pounds. Beets, peas and other vegetables are as fine as grown anywhere. People who have lived here during the winters say that the temperature rarely falls twenty degrees below zero, and that the winters are dry and without blizzards.
Moose, mountain goat and wild sheep furnish the towns and camps with meat, which is usually bought from the Indians, who are good hunters, but very superstitious. They are afraid of a giant who, Odin like, rides from mountain to mountain on the wind, killing every Indian whom he finds traveling alone. White men don’t count, so if you wish to employ a guide to accompany you on a hunting expedition you must also employ a brother Indian to protect him, or he “no go.”
Farther south along the coast a black dwarf haunts the mountains, making life miserable for lone Indians. His arrows, like the magical spear of Odin, never miss their mark.
In the mountains north and west of the inlet a giant floats his birch canoe on the wind, from peak to peak, seeking lone Indians, whom he slays with the canoe paddles. This wonderful canoe, like that good ship of Frey, always gets a fair wind, no matter for what port its oarsman is bound.
This portion of the inlet, Turnagain Arm, is a treacherous bit of water. The highest tides rise fifty feet. Then there is the bore, which runs up just as the tide comes in, rising eighteen to twenty feet perpendicularly.
No boat can live in it. The tide usually comes in three great waves, one right after the other. The water is thick with mud, ground up by the glaciers at the head of the Arm and brought down by the streams.