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. The aspect of the country surrounding this settlement is much more suggestive of farming and cattle-raising than is that presented anywhere else in the Alaskan Territory. The land is rolling and hilly, the higher eminences being covered with thick spruce forests; but as you advance into the interior, great swamps of tangled heather, fir, jungle, and sphagnum are prevalent. The soil everywhere, not covered with grass and forest, is mossy, with a little grass and many bushes. The trees are large, fifty to sixty feet high, and eighteen inches to twenty-four in diameter, mostly spruce—no cedar or hemlock. That district adjoining the East Foreland Head is, perhaps, the best with reference to dry, fertile soil, for, in its vicinity, there are broad plains where wild timothy and red-top grasses grow to the height of your waist and shoulders. An extended experience of the Russians taught them to locate their agricultural operations here; that the coast-line belt of the Kenai Peninsula, between the Forelands and Kooshiemak Bay, a belt of low and semi-prairie uplands some eighty miles in length, and varying in depth from ten to twenty, was the most eligible base of agricultural effort afforded anywhere in Alaska, the quality of the crops always being best near the coast, the soil being drier, and the danger of little nipping summer-frosts wholly abated.