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.