The upper waters of Cook’s Inlet are said to be quite remarkable for their barrenness of fish—salmon only being plenty in the running season, ascending all the numerous rivers and rivulets; the reason most likely is due to the turbid upheaval of the bottoms everywhere by that violent tidal bore which prevails, recurring twice every twenty-four hours. The Indians here employ a curious trestle or staging of poles, which they use in spearing salmon, and netting them from its support. An extensive spread of the largest fresh-water lake in Alaska just over the divide from Cook’s Inlet, early led the Russians to explore it, and to find a portage via its waters to the sea of Bering. But, though this barrier can be passed by an active man in a single day, yet it has divided, and continues to absolutely separate, two distinct races of savages—the Innuits from the Indians; for the Kenaitze are Indians, as we understand them, based upon our types of the great plains and foothills of the Rocky Mountains; and, living here as they do on the shores of Cook’s Inlet, they live, perhaps, in the most romantic and picturesque region of Alaska. Burning volcanoes, smoking and grumbling, a large inland sea rolling for miles and miles therein, and lay at their feet; wide watery moors, tundra, timber and lakes, and rivers rising in the snow-white peaks everywhere visible, all combine to make the most striking lights and shades of natural scenery that human thought can realize in fancy. [Illustration: A Kenaitze Chief: Cook’s Inlet.] These natives of Cook’s Inlet are strongly defined from those of Kadiak as a separate people, both in language (which no white man has ever been able to repeat), in appearance, and in disposition. They are true Athabascans, or exactly like the meat-eating Indians of our great North American interior. An average man here is an Indian of medium height, say five feet seven or nine inches, well built and symmetrical, lithe and sinewy. The cold glint of his small, jet-black eyes is not relieved by any expression of good humor in his taciturn features and physical bearing. His nose will present, as a rule, the full aquiline or Julius Cæsar outline. Their skin is darker than that of the Innuit, though now and then a comely young person will show perceptible blood-mantlings to the cheeks. The mouth is large—lips rather full; beardless faces are the rule. Their women are much better-looking than either the Siwash squaws of the Sitkan region, or the females of the Aleutian and Innuit races. Their hair is worn in clubbed bunches and braids, hanging upon their backs, thickly larded over with grease, and often powdered with feathers and geese-down.