"TO  WESTWARD" FROM         SITKA TO UNALASKA. 135
cers told him of one glacier that showed a peculiar rose-red tint in a certain light. Dr. Dall visited the sound in 1874, and declared the glacial landscapes the finest of their kind. Mr. Seton.Karr makes reference to them in his " Shores and Alps of Alaska." The dangers of navigation deter large vessels from attempting cruises in the unsurveyed waters, and the floating ice menaces canoes, so that the number, size, movement, and general features of these Chugach ice streams await exploration.
Cook's Inlet and the Kenai Peninsula.
Cook's Inlet extends inland 160 miles between the Alaska or Chignik range and the mountainous Kenai Peninsula. Sheltered by the great barrier on the west, its shores enjoy a different climate from any of the coast region south of it, and the warm, cloudless summers won Cook's Inlet the name of the Summer-land from the Russians. The best agricultural land lies along the Kenai shore of the Inlet, and the Russian company established five colonies of their pensioners in this garden spot, where they raised crops and cattle, and still continue to do so.
The Inlet is renowned for its scenery, which Captain Cook was first to extol. He discovered the great estuary during his search for a passage to Hudson Bay, passing the south point of Kenai Peninsula on the birthday of the Princess Elizabeth, May 21,1778. The mainland point, 40 miles across from this Cape Elizabeth, was named for Dr. Douglass, Canon of Windsor. Captain Cook took possession in the name of His Majesty, and buried coins and records in a bottle at Possession Point at the head of the Inlet, and Vancouver searched for these records in vain. Cook did not name the place on his map, referring to it as the Great River in his text. Lord Sandwich wrote in " Cook's River" after the great navigator's death. Cape Elizabeth is 550 miles from Sitka and 1,670 miles from San Francisco.
Coal-Fields.-Portlock mentioned the coal-veins in Graham or English Harbour, near Cape Elizabeth, in 1787, and the Russians afterward worked them on a considerable scale, and exported much of this lignite to California previous to the discovery of the Vancouver coal. Tramways, stone piers, and decaying buildings are memorials to the immense sums sunk by the Russian company and some San Francisco merchants who shared in the enterprise at Coal Harbour in Chugachik or Kachemak Bay. Recently, interest in these coal-mines has been revived, and also in the old works near Fort Kenai, where the equal of Nanaimo coal was promised.
Fort Kenai, the old Redoubt St. Nicholas, was garrisoned by U. S. troops for a few years after the transfer. There are two trading stations and three canneries in the Inlet, and king salmon weighing 100 pounds are often caught. Gold was found in small quantities by a