[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.